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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45036)9/6/2008 10:57:56 PM
From: Ann Corrigan4 Recommendations  Respond to of 224729
 
Ken, McCain made the mistake of reaching across the aisle once to often in the Keating case. The Keating five included FOUR Democrats and John. Honorable McCain admitted his mistake, and was the only one of the five congressmen to appear in court to testify on behalf of investors. Their lawyer said Sen McCain's testimony helped the savings and loan investors win their case.

Face it, Ken, you can't fight his maverick reform streak and painfully won true grit. McCain's character combined with his reform minded running mate will prove to be exactly what the doctor ordered for all Americans. Obama will finish his senate term and possibly win re-election. He'll have a bright future, just not in the WH.



To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45036)9/6/2008 11:39:51 PM
From: puborectalis  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 224729
 
McCain's effort to frame himself as a political outsider and rebel is complicated by the fact that he has served in the Senate for 22 years and solidly endorsed key elements of President George W. Bush's record, most notably the war in Iraq and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. McCain originally opposed the tax cuts but changed his mind as he sought the Republican presidential nomination.



To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45036)9/7/2008 12:05:33 AM
From: puborectalis  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 224729
 
Also on 60 Minutes tonite

Friday, Sept. 5, 2008 15:47 EDT
Woodward: Don't credit surge for Iraq turnaround
At a campaign stop in Cedarburg, Wis., Friday, Sarah Palin skewered Barack Obama for not supporting the 2007 troop surge in Iraq: "I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue, maybe it's comforting to pretend that everyone else was wrong too," Palin zinged.

Maybe. Or, maybe the vaunted surge, in which President Bush sent nearly 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, isn't all it's been cracked up to be.

Today, the Washington Post reports that in Bob Woodward's new book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008," which will be released on Monday, the investigative journalist contends that the surge wasn't the primary reason that violence decreased in Iraq over the past 16 months. "Rather, Woodword reports 'groundbreaking' new covert techniques enabled U.S. military and intelligence officers to locate, target, and kill insurgent leaders and key individuals in extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq," the Post reports.

It was these covert operations, along with militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr reining in his Mahdi Army and tens of thousands of Sunnis turning against al-Qaida in Iraq and allying with U.S. forces, in addition to the surge, that lessened the violence in the country, according to "The War Within."

Maybe the Obama campaign should send Sarah Palin a copy.

Katharine Mieszkowski
Posted in: Iraq War, 2008 Election, Barack Obama



To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45036)9/7/2008 12:08:40 AM
From: puborectalis  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 224729
 
This Sunday on 60 Minutes: Correspondent Scott Pelley interviews Bob Woodward. Sept. 7, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.


The Bush administration has conducted an extensive spying operation of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his staff and others in the Iraqi government, according to a new book by Washington Post editor and author Bob Woodward.

"We know everything he says," according to one of multiple sources Woodward cites about the practice in "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008," scheduled for publication by Simon & Schuster on Monday, Sept. 8.



The book also says that the U.S. troop surge of 2007, in which President Bush sent nearly 30,000 additional U.S. combat forces and support troops to Iraq, was not the primary factor behind the steep drop in violence there during the past 16 months.

Rather, Woodward reports, "groundbreaking" new covert techniques, beginning in 2007, had enabled U.S. military and intelligence officials to locate, target and kill insurgent leaders and key individuals in extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Woodward does not disclose the code names of these covert programs or provide much detail about them, saying in the book that White House and other officials had cited national security concerns in asking him to withhold specifics. But he quotes "several authoritative sources" as saying that "85 to 90 percent of the successful operations and 'actionable intelligence' had come from" these breakthrough techniques.

Overall, Woodward writes, four factors combined to reduce the violence: the covert operations; the influx of troops; the agreement by militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to rein in his powerful Mahdi Army; and the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied with U.S. forces.

The 487-page book is Woodward's fourth to examine the inner debates of the Bush administration and its handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington Post will run a four-part series based on the book beginning Sunday. Fox News published a news story about the book on its Web site tonight after obtaining an embargoed copy.

The new book concentrates its attention on Bush's leadership and governing style, based on more than 150 interviews with the president's national security team, senior deputies and other key players in the intelligence, diplomatic and military communities. Woodward conducted two on-the-record interviews with Bush in May 2008.

The book portrays an administration riven by dissension, either unwilling or slow to confront the deterioration of its strategy in Iraq during the summer and early fall of 2006. Publicly, Bush maintained that U.S. forces were "winning"; privately, he came to believe that the military's long-term strategy of training Iraq security forces and handing over responsibility to the new Iraqi government was failing. Eventually, Woodward writes, the president lost confidence in the two military commanders overseeing the war: Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then commander of coalition forces in Iraq, and Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command,

In October 2006, the book says, Bush asked Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, to lead a closely-guarded review of the Iraq war. That first assessment did not include anyone from the military, however, and proceeded secretly because of White House fears that news coverage of a review might damage Republican chances in the midterm congressional election.

"We've got to do it under the radar screen because the electoral season is so hot," Hadley is quoted as telling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is described as challenging the president on the wisdom of sending additional troops to Iraq when "we're not getting a clear picture of what's going on on the ground."

The quality and credibility of information about the war's progress became a source of ongoing tension within the administration, according to the book. Rice complained about the Defense Department's "overconfident" briefings during the tenure of Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Rather than receiving options on the war, Bush would get "a fable, a story . . . that skirted the real problems," Rice is quoted as saying.

According to Woodward, the president maintained an odd detachment from the reviews of war policy during this period, turning much of the process over to Hadley. "Let's cut to the chase," Bush told Woodward, "Hadley drove a lot of this."

Nor, Woodward reports, did the president express much urgency for change during the months when sectarian killings and violent attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq began rising, reaching more than 1,400 incidents a week by October 2006 -- an average of more than eight an hour. "This is nothing that you hurry," he told Woodward during one of the interviews, when asked if he had given his advisers a deadline for revising the war strategy.

To a question about how the White House settled on a troop surge of five brigades after the military leadership in Washington had reluctantly said it could provide two, Bush said, "Okay, I don't know this. I'm not in these meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do."

The book presents an evolving portrait of the president's decision-making. On the one hand, the book portrays Bush as detached, tentative and slow to react to the escalating violence in Iraq; on the other, once he decides that a surge is required, he is shown acting with focus and determination to move ahead with his plan in the face of strong resistance from his top military advisers at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.



cbsnews.com



To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45036)9/7/2008 8:09:01 AM
From: TideGlider  Respond to of 224729
 
The Mansourian Candidate Exclusive by Jack Cashill

Chicago, IL September 7 2008

Please Note New EMail Address & Domain Name: winston@winstonglobal.org
Winston Mid East Analysis & Commentary September 6, 2008
The Mansourian Candidate Exclusive: Jack Cashill Lists Obama Mentors With Less-Than-Upright Pasts
forwarded with comments by Emanuel A. Winston, a Middle East Analyst & Commentator
The question in the unenthusiastic media might ask how long has Obama been in a program of preparation. You might ask about the Syrian, Tony Rezko and the cash flow that assisted the Obamas.
Is Rezko also the enabler of Michelle getting a job at the University of Chicago at a salary of $300,000 for a job seemingly worth at max $75,000 yearly?
Come on, Journalists. Isn’t it time you pretended to be investigators and search for the facts?
So, how long has Islam been funding Obama’s career and what was he supposed to do when he got there?
COMMENTS BY EMANUEL A. WINSTON
###
worldnetdaily.com Friday, September 05, 2008

The Mansourian Candidate Exclusive: Jack Cashill Lists Obama Mentors With Less-Than-Upright Pasts By Jack Cashill September 04, 2008
Having written a book on intellectual fraud, "Hoodwinked," and being something of a literary detective, I had no doubt on reading Barack Obama's 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father," that Obama did not really write it.
The style is above his pay grade, way above.
As Obama tells the story of the book's genesis, "a few publishers called" after he had been elected president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990.
In the real world, publishers don't call unknowns unless someone influential prompts them. Obama does not tell us who.
Nor does Obama tell the reader how he got elected president of the Review in the first place. Historically, the position had gone to students whose writings in the Review had shown real skill.
Prior to his election, however, Obama had written only one unsigned note and that one heavily edited. Once elected, Obama contributed not a word.
As Matthew Franck has pointed out in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
Beyond his ethnic appeal, however, Obama had something else going for him. As I previously reported, this information came to light last week courtesy of a newly surfaced DVD that features an interview with Percy Sutton on the New York-based "Inside City Hall."
A Manhattan borough president for 12 years and the most powerful black politician in New York state, Sutton spoke knowingly with host Dominic Carter about the Obama candidacy.
"I was introduced to [Obama] by a friend," Sutton told the interviewer. Sutton named the friend as "Dr. Khalid al-Mansour." Sutton described al-Mansour as "the principle adviser to one of the world's richest men." The billionaire in question is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.
Knowing that Sutton had friends at Harvard, al-Mansour asked Sutton to "please write a letter in support of [Obama] ... a young man that has applied to Harvard."
Sutton gladly did so. Unclear in the interview is whether Sutton intervened to get Obama in to Harvard, to get him elected president of the Law Review, or both.
Khalid al-Mansour is a piece of work. Although impressively well connected, the Texas-born attorney and black separatist has not met the paranoid racial fantasy unworthy of his energy.
His many books include titles like "The Destruction of Western Civilization as Seen Through Islam" and "Will the West Rule Forever?"
Several of his speeches can be seen on YouTube. In one named, "A Little On the History of Jews," he shares his distinctive insights into the creation of Israel.
"God gave you nothing," al-Mansour says to the world's Ashkenazi Jews in a typical rant. "The children from Poland and Russia were promised nothing. But they are stealing the land the same as the Christians stole the lands from the Indians in America."
No matter how many books he has written, al-Mansour himself lacks the talent to have written "Dreams from My Father." He was, however, one of many people in Obama's network with enough money and influence to get the book written and published.
That network includes the inevitable Tony Rezko. The Syrian-born scalawag owed his bank account and his clout in Chicago politics to Jabir Herbert Muhammad, son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad.
The younger Muhammad knew something about bogus memoirs. In the mid-1970s, he recruited the now celebrated writer Toni Morrison to "edit" Muhammad Ali's fictionalized account of his life, "The Greatest." Muhammad reviewed every page to make sure it hewed to the Nation's racist worldview.
Muhammad made Rezko general manager of his company, Crucial Concessions, in 1983. Muhammad later created the Muhammad Ali Foundation to spread Islam and appointed his confidante Rezko executive director.
Just last week, Muhammad died in Chicago. "Jabir did much for the cause of Islam," said the keynote speaker at the memorial, none other than Louis Farrakhan.
Much has been made of Rezko's Catholic background. The question has to be asked how he could possibly head a foundation whose express purpose was to promote Islam around the world, let alone the racist Islamic cult, the Nation of Islam.
Khalid al-Mansour had other friends of influence in the literary and publishing world, foremost among them the late, literary leftist superstar and terrorist suck-up, Edward Said.
Said and Obama knew each other. A photo floating around the blogosphere shows the pair engaged in intimate discussion at an Arab-American community dinner in Chicago 1998.
Bloggers ask how a then obscure state senator managed to wangle a seat next to the evening's keynote speaker, a man the Nation would describe as "probably the best-known intellectual in the world."
The answer can be traced back to Obama's two-year stint at Columbia University in the early 1980s, where Said taught as a distinguished professor of comparative literature.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama took at least one course from Said. The intimacy of their 1998 conversation suggests a deeper relationship.
Obama, however, will not talk at all about Said, his New York years or his trip to Pakistan during those years despite numerous requests from the New York Times.
Like Obama, Said made his deracinated childhood the central, compelling metaphor for his significant life work. His identity as a Palestinian and a refugee, driven from his homeland by Israeli violence, would inform everything he wrote.
Said did not shy from using his grief and his influence to advance his cause. For 14 years, he served on the Palestine National Conference, a kind of parliament-in-exile alongside the likes of the PLO's Yassir Arafat and still harder core radicals from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the terrorist group that hijacked the Achille Lauro.
Unfortunately for Said, an Israeli scholar named Justus Reid Weiner did two years of hard-nosed, boots-on-the-ground background research on Said's life and published his findings in Commentary.
Weiner had proved beyond all doubt that America's most celebrated Palestinian refugee was not a Palestinian or a refugee, let alone a Muslim.
In reality, Said was a Christian and an American citizen from birth, who grew up not in Palestine but in Cairo, where he attended the best British schools before leaving for a pricey American prep school as a teenager.
Although the New York Times reluctantly confirmed Weiner's findings, the major media had no more interest in exposing the fraud of Said's life any more than they do Muhammad Ali's or Obama's.
Among Said's friends and allies on the American-hating, Arafat-loving left were none other than Khalid al-Mansour and – drum roll, please – William Ayers.
Radical turned actor Peter Coyote suggests as much in his diary written for the 1996 Democratic National Convention.
"After that," Coyote writes, "I inform Martha that I'm dragging her to the apartment of old friends, ex-Weathermen, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, hosting a party for Senator Leahy. Perhaps Edward Said will be there."
When Ayers published his memoir, "Fugitive Days," in 2001 – the book that made "unrepentant" part of our everyday vocabulary – Said was happy to provide a blurb.
"For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in," Said wrote, "this book is essential, indeed necessary reading."
America is poised to elect a man to the presidency whose known mentors and sponsors – al-Mansour, Rezko, Said, Wright, Ayers – put a lie to just about everything Obama has said on the campaign trail.
A sorry mess indeed!
**********************************************************************************************************

Emanuel &/or Gail Winston
Analyst and Commentator
Winston Mid East Analysis and Commentary
Chicago Area, IL
Phone : 847-432-1735
Fax : 847-433-3981
Contact Emanuel A. Winston
expertclick.com



To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45036)9/7/2008 9:59:22 AM
From: Thomas A Watson3 Recommendations  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 224729
 
Dear Kenneth E. Phillipps, once again your comment with naked context convicts you beyond all reasonable doubt of a total ignorance of the American Legal System.

When John McCain associated with Mr. Keating he was guilty of breaking no laws and appeared to be a successful business man who gave John McCain much financial and political support.

When Keating's crime were being exposed, he asked for McCain's help and got no il-legal help and little legal help. And as you have already seen posted on this thread, John McCain was also the only Republican Senator of 5 linked to Keating and the only one who helped the victims of Keating. Yes not one of the 4 democrat Senators gave assistance to the victims.

Your post is disgusting and reeks of malevolent intent.