Interesting Op-Ed piece in the News Tribune this morning. Morton Kondrake (sp?) is a clear supporter of W and all things Conservative. I submit, just asking the question, points to a deep problem for this President and his Administration. Here's the link:

http://www.tribnet.com/opinion/story/5612876p-5544386c.html

One paragraph that sums up the real problem among W's base:

"Bush's Iraq performance led one smart Republican I know to say, "There's no question in my mind that Bush deserves to be fired. But would you hire Kerry to replace him? There's no way I'd do that."

Will this affect the undecided voters that hold the key? We shall see....

A liberal in sheeps clothing. I saw a report yesterday that shows 15 of the 18 provinces in Iraq are quite and peaceful. If you compare what is going on in the other 3 to previuos wars its mild in comparison. If you are looking to validate your feelings look just at those three. Just as if you wanted to view America as the most violent place on earth I could point you to a few places in Newark NJ, Chicago,NY and LA to validaate that as well.
Wars and occupations are volitile until they are over.

Not to mention the Ranier Valley or along Martin Luther King Way in the Peoples Republic of Seattle or the Hill Top Neighborhood in Tacoma.

Bush's hometown paper endorses Kerry.
_____________________________________


Tue Sep 28, 1:19 PM ET

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) -

The newspaper in President Bush's adopted hometown of
Crawford Texas threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic
rival, Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites).

The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war
in Iraq (news - web sites) and for turning budget surpluses into record
deficits.

The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security
(news - web sites) and Medicare.

"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based
on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda,

" the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his
opponent, John Kerry."

It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his
political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."

Bush spends many of his weekends and holidays at his Crawford, Texas,
ranch.

The Iconoclast's publisher and editor-in-chief, W. Leon Smith, said
the newspaper is sent to Bush's ranch each week. "But I don't know if
he reads it," Smith said.

The Kerry campaign welcomed the endorsement in an email to reporters.

Imagine that another newspaper for Kerry. The state of tenn. voted for Bush in the last election. It means squat except to the desparate.

The King - Fairly typical response from the Bushies and one I expected - Do not look at what has been delivered, just shoot the messenger. Another article from this mornings paper that gives one pause:

http://www.tribnet.com/news/story/5612702p-5544197c.html

Now my guess as to the response to this one is somewhat along the lines of "that damn liberal media" again. But, to those that are not ideologues, this is pretty damaging stuff and may have an effect on W's reelection.

I didn't realize that one must be registered to see the link. Here's the story:

Security officials see thorns, not roses, in Iraq
DANA PRIEST AND THOMAS RICKS; The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials.

This view is according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and departments of state and defense.


While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight and study the Iraqi insurgency at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say.


People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."


"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer who served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad through e-mail. "It just seems there is a lot of pessimism flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago."


This weekend, in a rare departure from the positive talking points used by administration spokesmen, Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that the insurgency is strengthening and that anti-Americanism in the Middle East was increasing. "Yes, it's getting worse," he said of the insurgency on ABC's "This Week."


At the same time, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, told NBC's "Meet The Press" that "we will fight our way through the elections." Abizaid said he believes Iraq is still winnable once a new political order and Iraqi security force is in place.


Powell's admission and Abizaid's sobering warning came days after the public disclosure of a National Intelligence Council assessment, completed in July, that gave a dramatically different outlook than the administration's and represented a consensus at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.


In the best-case scenario, the NIC said, Iraq could be expected to achieve a "tenuous stability" over the next 18 months. In the worst case, it could dissolve into civil war.


The July assessment was similar to one produced before the war and another in late 2003 that also were more pessimistic in tone than the administration's portrayal of the resistance to U.S. occupation, according to senior administration officials. "All say they expect things to get worse," one former official said.


One official involved in evaluating the July document said the NIC, which advises the CIA director, decided not to include a more rosy scenario "because it looked so unreal."


White House spokesman Scott McClellan and other White House spokesmen called the intelligence assessment the work of "pessimists and naysayers" after its outlines were disclosed by The New York Times.


President Bush called the assessment a guess, which drew the consternation of many intelligence officials. "The CIA laid out several scenarios," Bush said Sept. 21. "It said that life could by lousy. Life could be OK. Life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like."


Two days later, Bush, reworded his response. "I used an unfortunate word, 'guess.' I should have used 'estimate.'"


"And the CIA came and said, 'This is a possibility, this is a possibility and this is a possibility,'" Bush continued. "But what's important for the American people to hear is reality. And the reality's right here in the form of the prime minister. And he is explaining what is happening on the ground. That's the best report."


Rumsfeld, who once dismissed the insurgents as "dead-enders," still presents a positive portrayal of prospects and progress in Iraq but has begun to temper his optimism in public. "The path toward liberty is not smooth there; it never has been," he said before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "And my personal view is that a fair assessment requires some patience and some perspective."


This week, columnist Robert Novak criticized the CIA and Paul Pillar, a national intelligence officer on the NIC who supervised preparation of the assessment. Novak said comments Pillar made about Iraq during a private dinner in California showed that he and others at the CIA are at war with the president. Recent and current intelligence officials interviewed over the last two days dispute that view.


"Pillar is the ultimate professional," said Daniel Byman, an intelligence expert and Georgetown University professor who has worked with Pillar. "If anything, he's too soft-spoken."


As for a war between the CIA and the White House, one intelligence expert with contacts at the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon said, "There's a real war going on here that's not just the agency (CIA)" against the administration on Iraq, "but the State Department and the military" as well.


National security officials acknowledge that the Nov. 2 presidential election also seems to have distorted the public debate on Iraq.


"Everyone says Iraq certainly has turned out to be more intense than expected, especially the intensity of nationalism on the part of the Iraqi people," said Steven Metz, chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department at the U.S. Army War College. But, he added: "I don't think the political discourse that we're in the middle of accurately reflects anything. There's a supercharged debate on both sides, a movement to out-state each side."


"The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."


A FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

Eddie,
I bet i could find just as many people that think you are an ahole as those that like you. Does that define you? No, it only means something to the viewpoint that I want to bring.

Iraq was a Shiathole by our standards before we went in and will be a Shiathole for many more years . Turkey is a Shiathole by our standards and it has been quasi secular democracy for 50+ years. So all this hand wringing about degrees is just that hand wringing. The bigger battle of starting to show an entire region the benifit of a constitutional democracy has just started. It will be a very bumpy ride for a long long time. Name anything in this world that has any value that did not come with great difficulty? Either you believe it is something that needs to happen or you do not. If not and you have a hands off view the end results have some pretty serious consequences. Much more serious than what is going on now.

I do not have a hands off view, GW has seen fit to that. My beef with him is that he chose this battle (Iraq - NOT the War on Terror) and now we have no choice but to follow it through to its conclusion. That conclusion has a huge cost (people, $'s, and resources) with at best an uncertain outcome. As mentioned in the Kondrake op-ed, Bush deserves to be fired for the mistakes he has made. We, as the American taxpayer and military forces will have to clean up his mess for years to come.

Eddie,

Your view treats the symptom not the cause. Bush's view treats the cause. Much like you head in the sand environmentalism treat minor symptons. Chasing Osama around the caves of Afghan and Pakistan should not be the number one priority. Changing a system that breeds Osama's is the number one priority. Just like weeding the garden, you can pick one weed at a time year after year or understand and change the environment so that they do not prosper and eventually pick only a few .

"We, as the American taxpayer and military forces will have to clean up his mess for years to come."

Who has always picked up the tab? The US. Who is the primary target of Islamo facisicst ? The rest of the world is like a cheap friend. they pay when you go out for burgers but when it's time to pony up for a steak they forget thier wallet.

------------------------------------------------------------
He's actually a moderate on the left side of the political spectrum who is voting for Bush because of Kerry's numerous inconsistancies on issues of vital importance.

He (Kondracke) represents the left viewpoint on McLaughlin Group and the counterpoint to right leaning Fred Barnes.

Kondracke, like many of those on the left has finally realized that Kerry's positions are framed more by focus groups and a finger in the wind than with real conviction.

During these difficult times people want a leader--not a poll taker.

What leadership? Ever since he declared mission accomplished, its been one disaster after another. Do I need to list them? True leadership implies one is accountable for each and every decision along the way and that you stay engaged and make modifications to the plan and don't make endless excuses or never admit mistakes. Who in his administratio has been held accountable for these mistakes?

"True leadership implies one is accountable for each and every decision along the way and that you stay engaged and make modifications to the plan and don't make endless excuses or never admit mistakes"

Name one excuse name on thing Bush has not taken responibility for?

Kerry is the one making the excuses about almost every thing he has said.

If I say you need to make modifications in your life are you going to do it or are you going to continue to do what you know is right?

It all sounds good on the evening news if you do not like Bush but in reality it's horse pucky.

Go back and read the histories of every war we have ever fought and you will see the same thing. It gets worse before it gets better. If Iwo Jima happened today all you hand wringers would have wanted the war with Japan called off.

I don't see any examples of leadership TK.

In Iwa Jima, we were fighting for our survival. This war is something else.

Jeff'ed

Then you do not understand the bigger picture and that has been clear from the beginning.

The King - You said "Your view treats the symptom not the cause. Bush's view treats the cause." I have heard nothing before that states so succinctly where we disagree. If you believe that line (and I expect that you do), your positions are consistent and rational. If someone (in this case me) believes that line to be false, then my positions are consistent and rational.

I am absolutely prepared to hear your arguements on how Iraq represented the cause of Islamo Fascism. Please elaborate.

------------------------------------------------------------

Bush 43 never 'declared' or said the words 'mission accomplished.'

Nice turn of phrase Rory - while technically true, he will forever be linked with that photo op.

Eddie,

"I am absolutely prepared to hear your arguements on how Iraq represented the cause of Islamo Fascism. Please elaborate."


Sadam paying bounties the families of palestinian homocide bombers.

Zawquari was operating inside Iraq prior to the invasion

The 9-11 report while noting no direct Iraq operational link. Notes involvement between Irag's government and Al Queda. This is backed up by Russian intelligence.

The difference between our views does not lie in that fact alone but the in the need to act premptively.


Islamofacist are operating in every middleeastern country today the question is what do we do about it? Your side wants to wait and see what happens while they negoatiate, capitulate and comittee the thing to death. My side says fine we can do that but there is a big stick and it will be used and they need to act in good faith or expect the consequences for their actions or inactions. It's thier decision. Islamofacists do not respond to timeouts!

------------------------------------------------------------

First of all you need to differenciate between Saddam/his regime and Iraq and the Iraqi people who want liberty. I don't know of anyone that suggests that Iraq was the 'sole' cause of Islamo Fascism, but I think it's safe to say they contributed to it if you consider:

When he (Saddam) and his regime were in power they paid $25,000 reward or bounty to the family of every Palestenian Islamic extremist that strapped explosives to themselves and murdered Jewish women and children in Israel with Suicide/Homocide bombings.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000976.php

Also Saddam sheltered and helped know Al Qaeda terrorists like al-Zarqawi who fled Afghanastan after the US invaision.
------------------------------------------------------------

The Iraq -- Al Qaeda Connections

By Richard Miniter Published 09/25/2003


Every day it seems another American soldier is killed in Iraq. These grim statistics have become a favorite of network news anchors and political chat show hosts. Nevermind that they mix deaths from accidents with actual battlefield casualties; or that the average is actually closer to one American death for every two days; or that enemy deaths far outnumber ours. What matters is the overall impression of mounting, pointless deaths.

That is why is important to remember why we fight in Iraq -- and who we fight. Indeed, many of those sniping at U.S. troops are al Qaeda terrorists operating inside Iraq. And many of bin Laden's men were in Iraq prior to the liberation. A wealth of evidence on the public record -- from government reports and congressional testimony to news accounts from major newspapers -- attests to longstanding ties between bin Laden and Saddam going back to 1994.

Those who try to whitewash Saddam's record don't dispute this evidence; they just ignore it. So let's review the evidence, all of it on the public record for months or years:

* Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large in the Clinton years. He fled to Iraq. U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show that Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and monthly salary.

* Bin Laden met at least eight times with officers of Iraq's Special Security Organization, a secret police agency run by Saddam's son Qusay, and met with officials from Saddam's mukhabarat, its external intelligence service, according to intelligence made public by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was speaking before the United Nations Security Council on February 6, 2003.

* Sudanese intelligence officials told me that their agents had observed meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and bin Laden starting in 1994, when bin Laden lived in Khartoum.

* Bin Laden met the director of the Iraqi mukhabarat in 1996 in Khartoum, according to Mr. Powell.

* An al Qaeda operative now held by the U.S. confessed that in the mid-1990s, bin Laden had forged an agreement with Saddam's men to cease all terrorist activities against the Iraqi dictator, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* In 1999 the Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat, had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," the Guardian reported.

* In October 2000, another Iraqi intelligence operative, Salah Suleiman, was arrested near the Afghan border by Pakistani authorities, according to Jane's Foreign Report, a respected international newsletter. Jane's reported that Suleiman was shuttling between Iraqi intelligence and Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 2 man.

(Why are all of those meetings significant? The London Observer reports that FBI investigators cite a captured al Qaeda field manual in Afghanistan, which "emphasizes the value of conducting discussions about pending terrorist attacks face to face, rather than by electronic means.")

* As recently as 2001, Iraq's embassy in Pakistan was used as a "liaison" between the Iraqi dictator and al Qaeda, Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* Spanish investigators have uncovered documents seized from Yusuf Galan -- who is charged by a Spanish court with being "directly involved with the preparation and planning" of the Sept. 11 attacks -- that show the terrorist was invited to a party at the Iraqi embassy in Madrid. The invitation used his "al Qaeda nom de guerre," London's Independent reports.

* An Iraqi defector to Turkey, known by his cover name as "Abu Mohammed," told Gwynne Roberts of the Sunday Times of London that he saw bin Laden's fighters in camps in Iraq in 1997. At the time, Mohammed was a colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen. He described an encounter at Salman Pak, the training facility southeast of Baghdad. At that vast compound run by Iraqi intelligence, Muslim militants trained to hijack planes with knives -- on a full-size Boeing 707. Col. Mohammed recalls his first visit to Salman Pak this way: "We were met by Colonel Jamil Kamil, the camp manager, and Major Ali Hawas. I noticed that a lot of people were queuing for food. (The major) said to me: 'You'll have nothing to do with these people. They are Osama bin Laden's group and the PKK and Mojahedin-e Khalq.'"

* In 1998, Abbas al-Janabi, a longtime aide to Saddam's son Uday, defected to the West. At the time, he repeatedly told reporters that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

*The Sunday Times found a Saddam loyalist in a Kurdish prison who claims to have been Dr. Zawahiri's bodyguard during his 1992 visit with Saddam in Baghdad. Dr. Zawahiri was a close associate of bin Laden at the time and was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989.

* Following the defeat of the Taliban, almost two dozen bin Laden associates "converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there," Mr. Powell told the United Nations in February 2003. From their Baghdad base, the secretary said, they supervised the movement of men, materiel and money for al Qaeda's global network.

* In 2001, an al Qaeda member "bragged that the situation in Iraq was 'good,'" according to intelligence made public by Mr. Powell.

* That same year, Saudi Arabian border guards arrested two al Qaeda members entering the kingdom from Iraq.

* Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi oversaw an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, Mr. Powell told the United Nations. His specialty was poisons. Wounded in fighting with U.S. forces, he sought medical treatment in Baghdad in May 2002. When Zarqawi recovered, he restarted a training camp in northern Iraq. Zarqawi's Iraq cell was later tied to the October 2002 murder of Lawrence Foley, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan. The captured assassin confessed that he received orders and funds from Zarqawi's cell in Iraq, Mr. Powell said. His accomplice escaped to Iraq.

*Zarqawi met with military chief of al Qaeda, Mohammed Ibrahim Makwai (aka Saif al-Adel) in Iran in February 2003, according to intelligence sources cited by the Washington Post.

* Mohammad Atef, the head of al Qaeda's military wing until the U.S. killed him in Afghanistan in November 2001, told a senior al Qaeda member now in U.S. custody that the terror network needed labs outside of Afghanistan to manufacture chemical weapons, Mr. Powell said. "Where did they go, where did they look?" said the secretary. "They went to Iraq."

* Abu Abdullah al-Iraqi was sent to Iraq by bin Laden to purchase poison gases several times between 1997 and 2000. He called his relationship with Saddam's regime "successful," Mr. Powell told the United Nations.

* Mohamed Mansour Shahab, a smuggler hired by Iraq to transport weapons to bin Laden in Afghanistan, was arrested by anti-Hussein Kurdish forces in May, 2000. He later told his story to American intelligence and a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.

* Documents found among the debris of the Iraqi Intelligence Center show that Baghdad funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden. According to a London's Daily Telegraph, the organization offered to recruit "youth to train for the jihad" at a "headquarters for international holy warrior network" to be established in Baghdad.

* Mullah Melan Krekar, ran a terror group (the Ansar al-Islam) linked to both bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Krekar admitted to a Kurdish newspaper that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan and other senior al Qaeda officials. His acknowledged meetings with bin Laden go back to 1988. When he organized Ansar al Islam in 2001 to conduct suicide attacks on Americans, "three bin Laden operatives showed up with a gift of $300,000 'to undertake jihad,'" Newsday reported. Mr. Krekar is now in custody in the Netherlands. His group operated in portion of northern Iraq loyal to Saddam Hussein -- and attacked independent Kurdish groups hostile to Saddam. A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told a United Press International correspondent that Mr. Krekar's group was funded by "Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad."

* After October 2001, hundreds of al Qaeda fighters are believed to have holed up in the Ansar al-Islam's strongholds inside northern Iraq.

Some skeptics dismiss the emerging evidence of a longstanding link between Iraq and al Qaeda by contending that Saddam ran a secular dictatorship hated by Islamists like bin Laden.

In fact, there are plenty of "Stalin-Roosevelt" partnerships between international terrorists and Muslim dictators. Saddam and bin Laden had common enemies, common purposes and interlocking needs. They shared a powerful hate for America and the Saudi royal family. They both saw the Gulf War as a turning point. Saddam suffered a crushing defeat which he had repeatedly vowed to avenge. Bin Laden regards the U.S. as guilty of war crimes against Iraqis and believes that non-Muslims shouldn't have military bases on the holy sands of Arabia. Al Qaeda's avowed goal for the past ten years has been the removal of American forces from Saudi Arabia, where they stood in harm's way solely to contain Saddam.

The most compelling reason for bin Laden to work with Saddam is money. Al Qaeda operatives have testified in federal courts that the terror network was always desperate for cash. Senior employees fought bitterly about the $100 difference in pay between Egyptian and Saudis (the Egyptians made more). One al Qaeda member, who was connected to the 1998 embassy bombings, told a U.S. federal court how bitter he was that bin Laden could not pay for his pregnant wife to see a doctor.

Bin Laden's personal wealth alone simply is not enough to support a profligate global organization. Besides, bin Laden's fortune is probably not as large as some imagine. Informed estimates put bin Laden's pre-Sept. 11, 2001 wealth at perhaps $30 million. $30 million is the budget of a small school district, not a global terror conglomerate. Meanwhile, Forbes estimated Saddam's personal fortune at $2 billion.

So a common enemy, a shared goal and powerful need for cash seem to have forged an alliance between Saddam and bin Laden. CIA Director George Tenet recently told the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb making to al Qaeda. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al Qaeda associates; one of these [al Qaeda] associates characterized the relationship as successful. Mr. Chairman, this information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources."

The Iraqis, who had the Third World's largest poison-gas operations prior to the Gulf War I, have perfected the technique of making hydrogen-cyanide gas, which the Nazis called Zyklon-B. In the hands of al Qaeda, this would be a fearsome weapon in an enclosed space -- like a suburban mall or subway station.

Mr. Miniter is a senior fellow at the Center for the New Europe and author of "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror" (Regnery) which is now on the New York Times' bestseller list.