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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (51984)	10/8/2006 2:28:20 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

Thanks for the lesson. Let's see if I can make it work now. Yup. Just like this: Donald Rumsfeld meets Saddam Hussein

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (51984)	10/8/2006 2:29:56 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 90947

U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply Growing American Role in Staving Off Civil War Leads to Most Wounded Since 2004 By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page A01 The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war. Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The sharp increase in American wounded -- with nearly 300 more in the first week of October -- is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S. military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say. Beyond Baghdad, Marines battling Sunni insurgents in Iraq's western province of Anbar last month also suffered their highest number of wounded in action since late 2004. More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in combat in the Iraq war, and about half have returned to duty. While much media reporting has focused on the more than 2,700 killed, military experts say the number of wounded is a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in armor and medical care today allow many service members to survive who would have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam. "These days, wounded are a much better measure of the intensity of the operations than killed," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The surge in wounded comes as U.S. commanders issue increasingly dire warnings about the threat of civil war in Iraq, all but ruling out cuts in the current contingent of more than 140,000 U.S. troops before the spring of 2007. Last month Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East, said "sectarian tensions, if left unchecked, could be fatal to Iraq," making it imperative that the U.S. military now focus its "main effort" squarely on Baghdad. Thousands of additional U.S. troops have been ordered to Baghdad since July to reinforce Iraqi soldiers and police who failed to halt -- or were in some cases complicit in -- a wave of hundreds of killings of Iraqi civilians by rival Sunni and Shiite groups. U.S. commanders have appealed for weeks for 3,000 more Iraqi army troops to help secure Baghdad but as of Thursday had received only a few hundred, according to military officials in the Iraqi capital. Mistrust of Iraqi police in Baghdad remains high, Abizaid said. Last week, an Iraqi police brigade with hundreds of officers was removed from duty over its involvement in sectarian killings. "The Baghdad security plan and the general spiral of operations is driving us to be more active than we have been in recent months," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. "We have more people on patrols and out of base, so we get more people hurt and killed in firefights," he said, explaining that U.S. military offensives -- more than other factors such as shifting enemy tactics -- tend to drive the number of American casualties. In March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that Iraqi forces -- not U.S. troops -- would deal with a civil war in Iraq "to the extent one were to occur." Today's operations in Baghdad demonstrate that that goal was not realistic, experts say. "In a sense, the Baghdad security plan is a complete repudiation of the earlier Rumsfeld doctrine where he said the Iraqis would prevent the civil war," said O'Hanlon. Despite the mounting cost in U.S. wounded and dead -- including 13 American soldiers killed in combat in Baghdad in three days last week -- Pentagon officials say aggressive military operations in the Iraqi capital are at best a short-term and partial solution, buying time for political compromise, which they call the only way to arrest Iraq's disintegration. CONTINUED 1 2 Next > washingtonpost.com

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (51984)	10/8/2006 2:29:59 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 90947

Foley Consuming GOP As Elections Draw Near By Michael Grunwald and Chris Cillizza Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page A01 FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.) was trying to talk about security Friday at bustling Port Everglades, but with planes roaring overhead and containers slamming onto trucks, nobody could hear him. That's a common problem for Shaw and Republican candidates around the country these days -- trying urgently 30 days before Election Day to frame a winning message but finding their efforts drowned out by the furor over former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.). "It's sucking all the air out of the room," Shaw said in an interview after his news conference at the port. "It's a tough time; there's just total saturation right now." Back in Washington, Republican strategists acknowledge privately that, even under their best-case scenario, Foley's sexually charged messages and allegations that House leaders were too passive in responding to them will remain an all-consuming distraction for GOP campaigns for the next week. Their strategy -- equal parts hope and calculation -- relies on waiting for the story to die down in local news outlets, even if it continues to dominate national news, while also accusing Democrats of exploiting a personal lapse for political gain. In both parties, there is rough agreement among operatives that the impact of the Foley scandal is likely to be felt in two different ways. There are several places where local factors could amplify the scandal's destructive power against Republican candidates. Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R), who is facing questions about his own role in responding to reports of Foley's conduct, is suddenly in a tough race against Democrat Jack Davis in an upstate New York district. In Pennsylvania, Republican Rep. Don Sherwood's already troubled campaign hardly needed anything that might remind voters of his admission earlier this year that he had an affair with a woman who accused him of physical abuse. Beyond these specific races, however, many strategists in both parties believe the scandal might echo principally as a metaphor for a GOP leadership that over the past year has drawn more attention for ethical lapses and partisan turmoil than legislative achievements. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted after the revelations found 63 percent of voters "dissatisfied" or "angry" with House Republican leaders, and 73 percent disapproving of the job Congress is doing. In a Time magazine poll, 68 percent said the scandal will have no effect on their vote, but only 16 percent said GOP leaders handled it appropriately. "People aren't going to vote on this issue, but it's given people an easy way to think about everything they're unhappy about," said Democratic media consultant Anita Dunn. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who is running the House Democrats' campaign committee, said he believes the GOP's own conservative activists are among the most repelled by Foley's behavior and by allegations of a lackadaisical response by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Among partisans, he said, "it only energizes our base and makes theirs more despondent." Among independent voters, he added, "nobody votes for this much chaos." CONTINUED 1 2 Next > washingtonpost.com