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"When you stand up and are arrested, and the Hindu is allowed to go free, this country has gone upside-down," Benham added — though when asked, he later clarified that he does not believe people of other religions should be arrested for their beliefs."

Labels: Haggard, music

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a Churchillian vision of victory in Iraq and defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. "A constitutional order is emerging," he said.

Two hours later, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

The Tucson FBI office got several tips in 2001 that military test scores were being rigged. When an undercover FBI informant met a National Guard recruiter in a Tucson parking lot to pay for a rigged test, the recruiter opened the trunk of his government vehicle and also tried to sell the informant part of a kilogram of cocaine, the agent testified.

That led to the creation of a fake cocaine ring the FBI used to see how many other military personnel and public officials would be willing to take part in drug running for money.

Dozens did, leading to cocaine-related criminal charges against more than 60 defendants.

Hi Ho Fiddledy Dee
My Recruiter Lied to Me

It was, even by his standards, an unusually rambling speech, alternately folksy and haranguing, most of it about the virtues of tax cuts and private health care. A half-hour passed—and the cable news channels cut away to an incident at the Oakland airport a couple of times—before he came to the main point, the reason they were carrying the speech live: to articulate his latest views on Iraq.

And the startling thing about these views is that they haven't changed a bit.

Unlike earlier talks of this sort, in which Bush's speechwriters at least assembled some stray facts and passed them off as evidence of progress, this speech—which seemed entirely improvised—was founded on nothing but faith.

"We can accomplish and win this fight in Iraq," Bush said at one point in the speech. "I strongly believe we will prevail … that democracy will trump totalitarianism every time," he said later, as if the war in Iraq is somehow about democracy and totalitarianism.

But as the experience of the troops in Ubaidi indicates, U.S. forces so far have been unable to establish security, even for themselves. Iraqis continue to flee their homes, leaving mixed areas and seeking safety in religiously segregated neighborhoods. About 32,000 families fled in June alone, according to figures compiled by the United Nations and the Iraqi government that are due to be released next week.

U.S. forces have staged offensives to push insurgents out of some safe havens. But many of the insurgents have escaped to new areas of the country, launching attacks where the U.S. presence is lighter.

And there has been no sign of any of the crucial political progress the administration had hoped to see in Iraq.

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional committee today that top officials in the Bush administration repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

Dr. Carmona, who served as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, said White House officials would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues because of political concerns. Top administration officials delayed for years and attempted to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand tobacco smoke, he said in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.

The Army missed its recruiting goals in June for the second straight month, as rising casualties in Iraq and a strong economy at home kept the service from enlisting enough new soldiers, Pentagon officials said.

It reminds of an early-ish Bush campaign speech in which he quoted Pericles and I just about fell off my chair laughing. You just knew they'd had to tell him how to pronounce the name...

"I'm not sure Bush had a choice," says one of the advisers. "If he didn't act, it would have caused a fracture with the vice president."

Since more senators seem to be defecting each day, the president is running out of GOP support for the disastrous Bush-Cheney-McCain-Lieberman Iraq war.

But if he signals a willingness to begin withdrawing troops, that will only inspire those mean guys in Congress to press for even more and sooner withdrawal.

“Lots of people are concluding that the president has got to get out ahead of this train.”

It might have an exciting new name, it might have enough rhetorical flim-flam to let Official Washington provide cover for wavering Republicans, but there's no way Bush is going to even an announce an intention to maybe withdraw some troops, except with the caveat "if a bunch of stuff which isn't going to happen actually happens."

So: "We're looking at the possibility that if we find the pony we can withdraw some troops" might happen.

"We're looking at the possibility that we can withdraw some troops" won't.

So the White House is debating whether to announce that it has the "intention" of beginning a "gradual" withdrawal at some point.

This is very nice to hear, but according to The Times, the explicit goal here is merely to prevent GOP defections on actual legislation that would accomplish a pullout. So doesn't it seem likely that such a White House announcement would simply give GOPers the cover they need not to defect and thus not to support any actual withdrawal policies?

Sure, an announcement of this sort would give war opponents some more leverage. But it would also allow Republicans allegedly thinking about defecting to say, you know, "the Commander in Chief has said he intends to begin pulling out, so let's pay him deference and give him the time and flexibility he needs to do this right," yada yada yada.

In truth, that time arrived long ago, when it became obvious to most Americans that the government in Iraq has chosen to leave the heavy lifting to our country. Voters expressed their displeasure at the polls last year but Bush’s response was to intensify the war effort through a “troop surge.”

It has failed dismally and there is little surprise that people like Domenici are defecting now. They haven’t given up on Iraq as much as they have given up on Bush.

The changes of heart by the key senators may lead, in time, to a welcome change in direction in Iraq. But it’s unlikely to come in the twilight years of this administration. Yet there is no less violence, no tangible sign of a government willing to shoulder the mantle of Iraq’s future.

To date, there have been almost 3,600 American casualties. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. It’s a terrible price to pay for a flawed vision, stubbornly held.

Spokesmen for the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the White House declined to comment. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.