Interesting this was linked via Andrew Sullivan without comment.

Sometimes we need to mind our own business. Let Iraqis be Iraqis at least until we stop the killing and then we can teach them the Queensbury Rules.

From Majeed's mouth to Bush's ear.

The Bush admin policy just made a shift to quit funding reconstruction. See, it's not cutting-and-running as long as its the same policy in NOLA after Katrina -- it's just an insistence on self-reliance.

BAGHDAD -- The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. When the last of the $18.4 billion is spent, U.S. officials in Baghdad have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to take up what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people.

"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview this past week, McCoy said: "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

Wish they'd told us this earlier.

Hi, did you lose your moral clarity? I found some over here, buried under the situational ethics and moral relativism.

I thought you might be missing it.

He is only cutting and running because the traitors on Left forced him to cut and run.

He is only cutting and running because the traitors on Left forced him to cut and run.

So how's that work? Who has this mysterious power over the resolute president whose party controls Congress, the same Congress that rubber-stamped every request for Iraq?

Ah, the preznit capitulates to Michael Moore, even though we're winning in Iraq. Of course. Got it.

Wasn't the preznit against nation-building before he was for it, which was before he gave up on it?

Probably worth noting that the admin is giving up right after elections made clear that Iran (via SCIRI) is the winner in Iraq.

Maybe they decided that they have helped the Axis of Evil enough already, without spending billions and billions more.

They already turned Iraq into Terrorist Training Intl.

"Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank....

"President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war....

"Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government."

So now cutting off reconstruction, with most Iraqis still suffering from shortages of water, electricity, and now gas, marks the end of the the strategy for victory in Iraq, only weeks after it was announced.

No one can lose like Republicans can.

Is it so hard to type in a name?

Ye gods, the trolls are getting even lazier than usual!

F

Ye gods, the trolls are getting even lazier than usual!

Yeah, her terrorist training camp source is a year old. Recycling old news 'cuz she's too lazy to get out and find a decent current reference.

Is it so hard to type in a name?

Is it so hard to respond to a point, rather than to a persona?

I think the idea is that you might defend the claim that the US is winning, or that the election results are not good for Iran, or that the cutoff of reconstruction funds is somehow good for the Iraqis, or that Iraq has not become a haven for terrorists, or that US complicity in beating and torture are somehow okay, in a situationalist ethics way. No name needed.

Anyone?

Yeah, her terrorist training camp source is a year old.

So you think it has gotten better?

Evidence? Or too lazy?

Evidence of Iraq's progress as a terrorist training camp comes from Afghanistan, where Iraqi techniques contribute to resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

This is not good news. This is bad news.

Is it so hard to respond to a point, rather than to a persona?

Yeah, it is. We can't track your arguments or your particular beliefs. It's a pain during a discussion when an anonymous dork starts protesting that "I never said that." How are we to know? This may be your first visit, or you may be one of the myriad knee-jerk McChimpyBushHitlerHalliburtonDiebold that pester the site. In the former case we're likely to give you a fair shake (unless you link to AmeriBlog); in the latter you're just deceiving us and wasting our time.

And if Bush requested billions more dollars for Iraq, no name would be squealing like the proverbial stuck pig about how Iraq is bleeding to death all the vital social service programs here at home.

The stench of bad faith is palpable.

Yeah, it is. We can't track your arguments or your particular beliefs.

And it's just TOO HARD to actually, you know, counter an argument.

Pick from the list above.

I'm not surprised at the growing hesitance about defending the current admin. I'm seeing it all over.

In the former case we're likely to give you a fair shake (unless you link to AmeriBlog);

Cheap smear. Let's see if you can put up. What part of the following do you take exception with? Or do you admit you are merely smearing?

It's one thing to give up our civil liberties in exchange for the safety of our children. It's quite another to give them up and get little in return. Let's examine just how much safer George Bush has made America since September 11.

1. Osama is still free, and Bush never even talks about him anymore.

2. Our military is bogged down in a war that had nothing to do with Osama or Al Qaeda UNTIL WE INVADED AND MADE IRAQ AL QAEDA'S NEW HOME.

3. We've turned Iraq into the biggest terrorist training camp in the world:

"Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank....

"President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war....

"Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government."

4. Far too many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, recommendations to make us safer, have still not been implemented.

5. The Homeland Security budget is being spent on frivolous pork:

"The District of Columbia used part of its grant to buy leather jackets and to send sanitation workers to self-improvement seminars. Newark bought air-conditioned garbage trucks. Columbus, Ohio, bought body armor for fire department dogs. These are not the priorities of a nation under threat."

6. The 9/11 Commission gives Bush a grade of "D" under the category: "Maximum effort to prevent terrorists from acquiring WMD" - i.e., he gets a D for his efforts to stop terrorists from getting nuclear bombs. Here's what the 9/11 Commissioners had to say about Bush's efforts to stop Osama from getting a nuclear bomb and dropping it on an American city:

"Countering the greatest threat to America's security is still not the top national security priority of the President and the Congress."

7. Most of the world now hates us.

"Iraq has joined the list of conflicts -- including the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand -- that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology."

8. And let me leave you with the words of the head of Republican head of the 9/11 commission, just a few weeks ago:

"Four years after 9/11 it is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis," said Thomas Kean, the Republican who was chairman of the commission.

"It is scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on a terrorist watch list.

"It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork barrel spending, not risk...."

"While the terrorists are learning and adapting, our government is still moving at a crawl."

Original with links to WaPo, Chicago Tribune etc., despite what geoff says. C'mon, geoff. Are you merely deceiving and misleading, or wasting our time?

Or both?

Evidence of Iraq's progress as a terrorist training camp comes from Afghanistan, where Iraqi techniques contribute to resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

That's a very indirect bit of evidence, particularly as recent reports from Iraq are indicating that the competence and training level of the terrorists is dropping as we eradicate their senior leadership. And as far as I can tell, the "resurgence" of the terrorists in Afghanistan is very weakly sourced (largely from the Newsweek article), and the US military has said that they're not seeing a significant effect from any cross-fertilization. There have been reports of the "resurgence" of the Taliban in every year since the invasion.

But in any case, calling a "terrorist training camp" is a misnomer - you're really talking OJT at best.

Let's see, first of all, I've spent time on Aravosis' site before, and an objective or deep-thinking analyst he is not. That's why I'm unimpressed with his one-sided synopsis. But running down his points:

1) Agree
2) Disagree
3) Strongly disagree
4) Ghost of the 9/11 Commission says it's so, and I haven't seen anyone defend the adminstration, so I'll agree. Doesn't include any of the positive comments, though.
5) Grossly overstated, and will be corrected within the system
6) This should be included with 4)
7) This argument isn't really a compelling reason to modify our policy, if we're happy with it. In any case, most conservatives feel that we were always hated, and that the recent events have only served to put everybody's cards on the table. Nice to see, though, that our attempts to reform the Muslim communities' impressions of us are being undermined as we speak by the NYT.
8) Should be in 4)

There you go - I agree with the 9/11 Commission members' criticisms, and I think that it's healthy that they brought them forward. Pretty much everything else is arguable.

2) Disagree

So you believe that the Bush admin has been sitting on evidence of Al Qaeda in Iraq prior to invasion? That's idiotic.

3) Strongly disagree

Take it up with the CIA. It's not just Afghanistan. Iraqi-trained terrorists are turning up in Algeria, Egypt, elsewhere. The number of attacks daily in Iraq, and the on-going support, also suggest a different story.

5) Grossly overstated, and will be corrected within the system

Spending wasn't done in accordance with any risk assessment, which is why most of the spending can be characterized as pork (politically driven, not rationally allocated). So it isn't grossly overstated. If you think the current legislative body has undergone some miraculous change, please let us know why. Any evidence at all would be a plus.

Nice to see, though, that our attempts to reform the Muslim communities' impressions of us are being undermined as we speak by the NYT.

You forgot to say why, or how.

That's all you've got? I think I've seen enough.

1) Not true, Bush just recently mentioned him On Mon Dec. 19th at a news conference:

"The fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak," the president said. "And guess what happened? Saddam -- Osama bin Laden changed his behavior. He began to change how he communicated."

I could mention several other times this year, but my point is made.

2)Google "Operation Viking Hammer" where our special forces tracked down and killed an international terrorist training camp in the FIRST WEEK of our invasion in IRAQ
3)Check out the following to see the numbers on the insurgency collasping.

http://www.jeffkouba.com/myblog/2005/12/insurgency-collapsing-inward.html#comments

Plus given that the terrorists have resorted to drugging the recent sucide bombers and even using disabled children, I don't think they have a line waiting at the recruitment office.

4) May be true, but I never trusted the 9-11 comission to make us safer, I trusted Bush, and he came through on that one, you can't even deny it.

5) Such is government beaucracy.

6) See #4

7) And might that be because of the drumbeat of the left like yourself yelling "illegal war" and spreading the lies you have spread here. Thanks for that buddy.

8)See #4

No one can lose like Republicans can.

Yeah, it's a good thing President Kerry is in the White House to... What's that? Oh. Well, at least the Republicans don't control Congress, or... Hmm? Really? Damn! Well, at least the libs have the Supreme Court!

Fuck. I give up.

2) No, I disagree that the military is bogged down. The Al Qaeda-Iraq connection was tenuous, but the Iraq-terror connection was more substantial.

3) The latest report I find from the CIA is your year-old reference. The latest military briefings from Iraq say that the insurgency is unsustainable, and they're looking to draw down US forces since the Iraqi forces are performing well and since we've made so much headway in establishing control. Your 'suggestions' notwithstanding, the Iraq-as-a-terrorist-training-camp story is inflated, alarmist, drivel. Unless you've got some relevant cites . . .

Spending wasn't done in accordance with any risk assessment

Which is not the adminstration's fault, since the Senate held up the risk assessment bill. But more to the point, while extreme examples of waste exist, most of these date from prior to 2004. Since then, the DHS/ODP has been issuing spending guidelines and approving state expenditures. But I agree that the current fund distribution formula is useless and should certainly be converted to one based on risk assessment.

You forgot to say why, or how.

That's because I mistakenly thought you'd be savvy enough to note the NYT thread currently running on this site.

That's all you've got? I think I've seen enough.

Whatever. Your cites are ancient, except for the 9/11 commission references (and their examples of state waste are ancient), the argument is completely one-sided, incomplete, and adds up to a "so what?" Good luck with that.

I find it amazing that the trolls will say that the "faulty" CIA information was not a good enough reason to "drag us into a quagmire" but the same CIA has indisputable proof that the president has made Iraq a terrorist training camp.
In addition they want the 9-11 commision's recomendations to be followed to the letter!
Hmmm.... is this the same commission that has Jamie (the information wall) Gorelick as a member?

I think the idea is that you might defend the claim that the US is winning, or that the election results are not good for Iran, or that the cutoff of reconstruction funds is somehow good for the Iraqis, or that Iraq has not become a haven for terrorists, or that US complicity in beating and torture are somehow okay, in a situationalist ethics way.

Ah, yes. I think I've seen these arguments a couple times before. The first time I believe they were called "brutal Afghan winter."

Sorry, Chicken Little, you've screamed "sky is falling" at the top of your lungs one too many times. Scratch that - about 1,000 too many times. Excuse me if once again, I trust my own lying eyes instead of you.

U