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PETERSON AFB, Colo. (AP) - In his 1 1/2 years as Pentagon chief, Robert Gates has made a mark by sacking leaders of the military services at a pace not seen before in the modern era of the U.S. military.

His acts of accountability stand out in a Bush administration that has not enjoyed a reputation for holding senior officials - military or otherwise - to account when they fall short of meeting certain standards.

Soon after Gates replaced Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary in December 2006 he forced Army Secretary Francis Harvey to resign, saying Harvey had not acted swiftly or boldly in response to revelations of shoddy care for wounded war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

In his six years leading the Pentagon, Rumsfeld fired only one top service official: Thomas White, the Army secretary, who had crossed Rumsfeld on issues relating to modernizing Army forces. In 2003 Rumsfeld weakened Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, but he did not remove him.

Gates is adamant in cautioning against equating his firing decisions with a lack of support for the overall performance of the military, including the Air Force, which he essentially decapitated by ousting its top civilian official, Michael Wynne, and its top uniformed officer, Gen. Michael Moseley, on the same day last week.

But he also leaves little room for doubt that when it comes to issues like those that brought down Moseley and Wynne - mainly a failure to reverse a record of shortcomings in the Air Force’s nuclear mission - he will not hesitate.

“There is simply no room for error in this mission,” he told airmen at Langley Air Force Base, Va., on Monday just hours after he announced in Washington his choices to succeed Wynne and Moseley.

Full Story Here:
Pentagon chief making mark as enforcer of accountability

How many times have you heard that one? How many times did you see it happen? To subordinate officers and perhaps a few high ranking NCOs that were designated to fall on their sword and take one for the team maybe. How many times, up until now, have you seen it happen to the top layer at the Pentagon?

I have long accused George Bush of micromanaging the war in Iraq, HIS war, and my opinion of that will never change, but perhaps his micromanagement was a necessary thing, Rumsfeld was not the brightest bulb on the string, not by a long shot, maybe Bush was left with no choice until Robert Gates took control.

Perhaps the Iraq war would have been prosecuted differently had Gates been SecDef, as opposed to Rumsfeld, Lord knows it couldn’t have been handled any worse, VICTORY was never the real issue for me, VICTORY in Iraq was, in my estimation, a given, the day the U.S. military can’t totally defeat a force like that of Saddam Hussein is the day that this nation is done for, we took a plus 1 in the win column, our troops did the job they were sent to do, they deposed Saddam and routed the Iraqi army, thus, VICTORY was achieved.

Had Sec. Gates been SecDef at that time, maybe we wouldn’t have blown the PEACE.

Keep on kicking ass and taking names Mr. Secretary, someone has to hold the behemoth that is the Department of Defense together, someone has to hold their feet to the fire and demand full accountability, that someone appears to be you, and all I can say is, good job so far and it’s about time that someone from the Bush administration exhibited this brand of definitive leadership.

Let me ask the readers this question, what do any of you think will happen to the DoD and our military if Obama becomes president? If you think the Clinton presidency raped the military and Intelligence forces, just stand by and watch, because you ain’t seen nothing yet!

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RALEIGH, N.C. - The presidential campaign’s focus turned sharply to the economy Monday, an inopportune time for Republican John McCain as Americans cope with record-high gasoline prices and a spike in job losses.

Democrat Barack Obama seized on the issue by launching a two-week economic tour meant to highlight his differences with McCain on taxes, spending priorities and other matters. At every turn he is tying McCain to President Bush, whose approval ratings are consistently low.

McCain pushed back, saying Obama’s bid to end the Bush administration’s tax cuts for upper-income Americans would only worsen the already struggling economy. He is airing TV ads in key states on the Iraq war, which he sees as a better issue this fall. But he took questions on the economy from donors in Virginia on Monday, and planned a speech Tuesday to small business owners in Washington.

With many voters blaming Bush for the economic woes, Republican candidates for federal and state offices are scrambling to distance themselves from the bad news without abandoning core principles such as low taxes and modest government intervention in activities like banking and lending.

Democrats are trying to cut off any escape routes.

The centerpiece of McCain’s economic plan “amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush’s policies,” Obama told about 900 people in Raleigh.

Full Story Here:
Obama hits McCain on economy

As with all things, the leader is ultimately responsible, a military leader is responsible for the actions of his men, even if he wasn’t there, he bears the brunt of the matter if something goes wrong, so goes the evaluation of George Bush and the economy apparently, at least in Obama’s estimation.

Obama is doing the only thing he can do, attack McCain by throwing him in with Bush on ALL matters but no one is going to buy it, Bush and McCain aren’t responsible for the economy, at least not directly, the economy is in the tank but the blame doesn’t fall on McCain other than the the simple fact that he DOES support the war in Iraq.

It is my sincere belief that Iraq IS the root cause of this fuel crisis, but as any sane person knows, war is good for business, the military needs stuff, lots of stuff, all kinds of stuff, and the American taxpayer is paying for it, in most cases back into American companies and into the pockets of American workers.

As anyone that has ever read my blog knows, I was not in agreement with Bush and his reasons for going to Iraq, I feel that the exorbitant price of oil is directly related to our actions in Iraq and I feel that oil is being used by OPEC as a weapon against us as they voice their displeasure with the USA in the only way they can.

Do I blame John McCain for this? No, I don’t, he supported the Bush effort to go to Iraq, and I feel that his support of that matter was wrong, but once we were IN Iraq, then ALL Americans should take up the mantle and support the troops and work to bring them hope once their mission is done.

John McCain is NOT the cause of this sluggish economy, and if Barack Obama had a bit more experience in life as well as politics, he might be able to see that, and should he happen to become president of the USA he will quickly find out that he will be accused of everything that ever went wrong with America, even before he became the junior Senator from Illinois.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.

None was borne out by intelligence.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, has staked his campaign on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, has trumpeted his unflagging support for the war, if not how it was waged.

The report released Thursday follows, by years, an earlier committee effort that assessed the quality of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and found it severely lacking. This report is known as “phase II” and spawned a nasty partisan fight in the committee. It plows well-tread political ground by contrasting what Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said between October 2002 and March 2003, when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began, with intelligence reports that since have been released.

“These reports are about holding the government accountable and making sure these mistakes never happen again,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

According to Rockefeller, the problem was the Bush administration concealed information that would have undermined the case for war. “We might have avoided this catastrophe,” he said.

I, and many other Conservative bloggers have tried, repeatedly, to make people aware of this, the FACT that Iraq was NOT the place to go, we pointed out on numerous occasions that there were no WMDs left in Iraq, Saddam was no part of 9-11 and had no direct ties to the attackers of 9-11, no more direct ties than the USA itself had, think about that one for a minute or 2…

Congressional, Senate and DoD reports have been published stating the above as a factual and accurate assessment, but no one listened, the Bush Bots screamed that we were denigrating their hero, that the only reason we said those things was because we didn’t like Bush, they sounded a lot like the Dems when we criticize Obama and get called racists simply because we tell the truth, and telling the truth was exactly what I and many others did, and the Bush Bots were beside themselves, bordering on terminal apoplexy…

Iraq has all but bankrupt this nation, financially and morally, we have spent 5 years doing the bidding of a MORON as our military settled a personal vendetta for George Bush, there was no other reason for going to Iraq, Bush and Company can plead ‘bad intel’ all they want, they had good Intel, and plenty of it, they had many warfighting experts trying every way they could to convince Bush that this was a very bad and completely unnecessary move, but The Decider had made up his mind, and right or wrong, nothing was going to stop him from settling a personal grudge with Saddam Hussein…

Bush’s press secretary, Dana Perino, said the problem was flawed intelligence heading into the war. “We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that,” she said.

“And we certainly regret that“, I’ll just bet you do, but you’ve got to wonder, how much regret do the families of the over 4,000 DEAD U.S. troops feel about their loved ones death having been in vain, all for a mistake, an action that never should have happened??

I know, al-Qaida came to Iraq to fight the U.S. troops, AFTER we were there, after we had decimated Saddam’s Republican Guard and deposed Saddam himself, I understand that we have been battling al-Qaida in Iraq and killing them, and hopefully wiping them out, but the fact remains, we were fully on the right track when we went to Afghanistan, that was where the REAL battle was, and al-Qaida would have come there too, they aren’t picky, they’ll go anywhere they have to in their effort to kill American troops, but that isn’t the point of this story, the point is, we went to Iraq on ‘faulty intel reports’ and it is my firm belief that Bush KNEW they were faulty and deliberately disregarded them in favor of the advice from commanders that were kissing his ass and telling him what he wanted to hear in hopes of securing another star…

A soldier goes where he is sent, does the job he is told to do and he follows orders, he has no choice, that’s the job and all soldiers know it, but for a morally bankrupt CiC to order those troops into combat knowing that his Intel was less than accurate, knowing full well that the intended target didn’t need to be ON the target list, when a United States President gives those orders and they come back to bite him as these have, that President should be brought up on charges, and this flippant bitch Dana Perino needs to be horse whipped for the “We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that,” remark, is that supposed to serve as some sort of an apology to the families of the troops??

This isn’t about winning or losing the war in Iraq, if the USA can’t take on a nation the size of Texas and WIN, then there’s something desperately wrong with our command structure, from the top right on down thru Flag Officers, winning was NEVER the gripe for me, I’m not a Harry Reid, I didn’t say the surge wouldn’t work, I DID make fun of it for having to be implemented, had Bush left the war to the war fighters and not tried to play ‘Little General’, this would not have had to take place, if you can give me a good reason to fight, it’s game on, but there were NO legitimate reasons for going to war in Iraq, NONE…

Is there not one shred of human decency left in the Bush White House and the Bush Bots themselves??

Full Story Here:
Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel

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BAGHDAD (AP) - Tens of thousands rallied in several cities Friday against a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, raising doubts that negotiators can meet a July target to finalize a pact to keep U.S. troops in Iraq after the current U.N. mandate expires.

Although U.S. officials insist they are not seeking permanent bases, suspicion runs deep among many Iraqis that the Americans want to keep at least some troops in the country for many years.

Now where do you suppose those presumptive Iraqis ever got a silly idea like that?? Here Maybe?

“We denounce the government’s intentions to sign a long-term agreement with the occupying forces,” Asaad al-Nassiri, a sheik loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said during a sermon in Kufa. “Our army will be under their control in this agreement, and this will lead to them having permanent bases in Iraq.”

President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a statement last December on the future of U.S.-Iraqi relations, saying they planned to finalize a new security agreement by July 31 - in time for Iraq’s parliament to approve the deal before a U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

Maybe they’ve been reading McClellan’s new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong With Washington, the cat is out of the bag and the Iraqis know they’ve been had once again…

You can tell people over and over and over again, ‘we’re the USA and we’re here to help you, stay the course, you’ll see’, you can BS them just so many times, after a while they want to see results, and it would appear that our ideas concerning freedom and democracy just aren’t catching on in Iraq, and those ideas never will catch on, I don’t care how much smoke Bush and Company blow up your skirt, it’s not about hearts and minds, it’s not about Iraqi Freedom, and it’s not about WMDs, it’s about G.W. Bush getting a hard-on for Saddam, his threats against ‘Daddy’ and his defiance, I mean, how dare Saddam think that he could run his country HIS way, the shame of it all…

And by the way, exactly where do we, and by we I mean the Bush and Company, where do we come off telling ANY nation how to run themselves?? Bush has managed to pretty well screw up this nation over the last 7 1/2 years, he’s considered to be weak and ineffectual as a military leader and has no idea of foreign policy or how it works, he sends Condi into the Arab world and that in itself is a horrendous mistake, he is the laughing stock of the global leaders that he wishes to be the leader of, and in MY opinion when Prescott and G.H.W. Bush put their stock into George as being the chosen one to lead a One World Government, they got the short end of the stick…

I personally believe we need to take care of the War on Terror where that war really is, and we need to take care of our own domestic problems before we traipse off to Iraq and try and settle their problems…

Before the Friday protests, al-Sadr’s office in Baghdad issued a statement branding the negotiations as “a project of humiliation” aimed at turning Iraq “into a small stooge of the United States.”

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

Well, it’s about time, not that any of this hasn’t already been speculated upon until it’s worn completely out, and that makes me wonder, is McClellan doing an expose’ or a CMA??

CMA being ‘cover my ass’…

He is bound to have had at least some insider knowledge you would think, or maybe not, perhaps he was deliberately kept in the dark, plausible deniability, someone has to be able to speak to the nation and keep a straight face…

He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover.

Oh c’mon Scott, a state of denial?? More like a state of utter confusion, that’s pretty much been the status quo for the Bush administration and that’s where  Bush has taken the entire GOP…

I really do appreciate McClellan coming out with a book that addresses the faux pas we know as the Bush administration, I hope it’s done in total candor, an honest observation from a real insider, someone that could document the failings of Bush and Company would be a welcome breath of fresh air, but you can bet that the Bush Bots are already lining up to throw rocks at McClellan, how dare he speak ill of The Bush…

Full Story Here:
McClellan whacks Bush, White House - Politico.com

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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) - There are no police anymore in Villa Ahumada. Even the mayor has fled.

Drug gangs have virtually seized this town of 1,500 not far from Texas, as Mexico’s cartels grow increasingly audacious.

The Mexican military took over the police department this week because all 20 officers on the force have either been killed, run out of town or quit, officials said Tuesday.

Mayor Fidel Urrutia took refuge in the state capital of Chihuahua City - 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) away - where he’s waiting for the soldiers to recover his town.

“Security will be in the hands of the army and the state (police) ministries, and it will remain like that indefinitely,” Chihuahua state police spokesman Marco Antonio Moreno said.

Late Saturday, some 70 assailants barged into town and killed the police chief, two officers and three residents. At least eight people were kidnapped.

The killings came a month after soldiers arrested eight men, including a police officer, during the burial of an alleged drug hit man in Villa Ahumada, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of El Paso, Texas.

Full Story Here:
Mexican military takes over town’s police force

There is little left to say that hasn’t already been talked to death, and about all I have to say is, when Mr. Bush??

When do we seal our border?? When do we put armed troops on the border?? When do we give those troops the order lock and load and to stop the border jumpers, drug dealers and other assorted trash and potential terrorists from entering this nation??

When do we reinforce our Border Patrol and take those ridiculous rules of engagement off of them and let them actually do the job that needs to be done??

Our government spends BILLIONS of our tax dollars in Iraq, floods that nation with our military and says it’s being done to make us safe here at home when all the while the invasion of the USA continues almost unabated and gun battles rage along our border as the drug cartels exercise their power, and Mr. Bush pretty much looks the other way…

When does it stop?? It certainly won’t stop under a McCain presidency, he is as pathetic on border issues as Bush, and the American people are buying right into it…

Will Obama give the orders to make it stop?? Maybe, if we can get pigs airborne…

And the ones that don’t buy into the possibility of a McCain presidency being a good thing and doubt it’s effectiveness are saying they’ll hold their noses and vote for him anyway, and I am finding that hypocrisy more and more against everything I hold dear in my heart…

The 1st time there is a story about a town or community on the U.S. side of the border being invaded, and having it’s citizens and police murdered by these drug gangs, well, maybe then McCain and his ‘amnesty‘ and ‘open borders’ buddies will actually take up the battle…

After a blood bath has occurred here the cries for border security will be loud and long, and the demands for action will be numerous, the MSM will publish and broadcast all kinds of investigative reports looking into why the border wasn’t secured and demanding answers as to why this was ever allowed to happen…

Yes, after the attacks happen here the call to action will be heard all over this nation, but that won’t be an action so much as a reaction…

A reaction too late…

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