ARLINGTON, Virginia (CNN) — President Bush marked Memorial Day with a call for Americans to stand firm in their efforts against U.S. enemies around the world and with a tribute to fallen troops.

“From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled, where our nation is more secure from attack and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it,” he said. “This is our country’s calling. It’s our country’s destiny.”

Bush spoke after a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington, Virginia, addressing a crowd that included relatives of the dead, veterans, military officials and members of Congress and the public.
“Nothing said today will ease your pain, but each of you need to know that your country thanks you and we embrace you, and we will never forget the terrible loss you have suffered,” he said. “I hope you find comfort knowing that your loved ones rest in a place even more peaceful than the fields that surround us here.”

Bush noted that Arlington National Cemetery holds the bodies of seven generations of Americans, including 360,000 from the Civil War, 500,000 from World Wars I and II, and 90,000 from the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

“Now, this hallowed ground receives a new generation of heroes,” he said. “Men and women who gave their lives in such places as Kabul and Kandahar, Baghdad and Ramadi.” Read the rest of this entry »

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Eight U.S. troops were slain in Iraq on Monday in a deadly chain of events that began when a U.S. helicopter crashed, apparently shot down by small-arms fire, according to a U.S. military official.

A military vehicle rushing to the helicopter crash site was hit by an exploding roadside bomb, and a second “quick-reaction force” vehicle also was hit, the official said.

The two pilots of the Kiowa helicopter were killed in the crash; six soldiers died in the bombings of the two vehicles, and three others were injured.

The eight Memorial Day deaths occurred in volatile Diyala province between Baquba and Muqdadiya, the U.S. military announced on Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

(CNN) — Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became an anti-war leader after her son was killed in Iraq, declared Monday she was walking away from the peace movement.

She said her son died “for nothing.”

Sheehan achieved national attention when she camped outside President Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas, throughout August 2005 to demand a meeting with the president over her son’s death.

While Bush ignored her, the vigil made her one of the most prominent figures among opponents of the war.

But in a Web diary posted to the liberal online community Daily Kos on Monday, Sheehan said she was exhausted by the personal, financial and emotional toll of the past two years. Read the rest of this entry »

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The body of a man dragged from the Euphrates River south of Baghdad has been identified as Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., one of three U.S. soldiers missing after an attack nearly two week ago, according to the U.S. military.

Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle said Thursday that reports of a second body being found along with Anzack’s are false.

Also Thursday in Iraq, a car bomb killed at least 28 Iraqis taking part in a funeral procession in Falluja, west of Baghdad.

Anzack, 20, was a gunner from Torrance, California.

“They told us, ‘We’re sorry to inform you the body we found has been identified as Joe,’ ” the soldier’s aunt, Debbie Anzack, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I’m in disbelief.”
The other two missing soldiers are Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Michigan.

Jimenez’s mother, Maria del Rosario Duran, pleaded Wednesday for his safety.

“This is very hard for me and for my family,” she said. “Everybody loves Alex. Alex, I miss you. Please come back. If somebody’s got him, please bring my son back, please.”

As the search went on for the other two missing soldiers, Spc. Daniel Seitz, 22, a member of Anzack’s platoon, told the AP he was trying to remain strong.

“It just angers me that it’s just another friend I’ve got to lose and deal with, because I’ve already lost 13 friends since I’ve been here and I don’t know if I can take any more of this,” he said.

Anzack’s platoon leader, 1st Lt. Morgan Spring-Glace, told CNN last week that local media had once — before the May 12 attack — erroneously reported Anzack was dead.

A massive military manhunt in the area — known as the Triangle of Death — started immediately after news of the three soldiers’ apparent abduction.

On Wednesday, an official with Iraq’s Interior Ministry said authorities in Mussayib were notified by Iraqi civilians who saw a body floating down the Euphrates. Witnesses told police the man looked “Western.”

Witnesses said he had gunshot wounds to the head and torso, and a U.S. military source said the body was clad in U.S. military-issued pants.

Mussayib is about 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Mahmoudiya, a town south of Baghdad where an eight-person military team was attacked on May 12. Four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi soldier were killed, and three U.S. soldiers were thought to be captured.

Car bomb kills at least 28 in funeral procession

At least 28 people were killed and 52 others were wounded Thursday when a parked car bomb detonated during a funeral procession in central Falluja, an Interior Ministry official said.

Falluja is in Anbar province, a Sunni-dominated region west of Baghdad that has been the scene of fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and insurgents.

Also Thursday, 15 “suspected terrorists” were detained by U.S.-led coalition forces targeting al Qaeda in Iraq, the U.S. military said. The arrests were made in Karma in Anbar province, east of the Anbar town of Amiriya and in Mosul in northern Iraq.

Troops also “found a cache of mortars, dynamite and jihadist media” in an operation near Salman Pak south of Baghdad.

Also, the military on Thursday reported the Monday arrests in Diyala province of three militants wanted for “murder, kidnapping and displacing Shia families.”

Team working up new strategy

The U.S. military is joining forces with the State Department to prepare a new Iraq strategy that includes negotiating cease-fire and power-sharing agreements with some enemy combatants, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

A “joint campaign plan redesign team” is preparing the diplomatic and military strategy for Iraq, which is expected to be approved by the end of the month.

The team laying out the new course for how to proceed in the four-year-old war is led by Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the officials told CNN.

One element of the plan is to try to identify groups of people — possibly including Sunni extremists and militia groups — with whom U.S. officials feel they can do business, such as negotiating power-sharing and cease-fire agreements and granting economic aid, the sources said.

But those with whom officials feel they cannot do business — such as determined suicide bombers — will remain targets of military forces, the sources said.

“We have been focused too long on defeating the enemy,” one official said. “We need to bring them to the negotiating table.”

Other developments

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A memo from Sen. Hillary Clinton’s deputy campaign manager proposing the New York Democrat pull out of the Iowa contest is giving her campaign heartburn.

A source dismisses the memo as an unsolicited idea which was floated, but solidly rejected.

The pull-out suggestion was made in response to a number of changes in the primary campaign schedule which put other big states into the forefront of the primary season — a calendar change which forces candidates to divide up their time and finances in ways that are unprecedented in a primary season which has traditionally featured the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as the key contests.

A Clinton spokesman says the campaign is unequivocally committed to competing in Iowa. She plans to be in the state over the next three weekends and the campaign says it has doubled the size of the Iowa field staff over the past month.

“We are committed to building an organization there,” the spokesman said.

Clinton is scheduled to make at least six campaign stops this Friday and Saturday in the Hawkeye State.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Democrat-led House approved legislation Wednesday that would give the Federal Trade Commission more authority to probe price profiteering from gasoline and other refined products.

With average U.S. pump prices at an all-time, inflation-adjusted high of $3.22 a gallon, the House voted 284-141 for the “Federal Price Gouging Protection Act,” which bans sellers from charging prices that are “unconscionably excessive,” or take “unfair advantage” of consumers.

It was the second energy-related bill the House passed in as many days, after it voted Tuesday to give the FTC the authority to sue members of the OPEC producers group for price manipulation. The Bush administration has threatened to veto both bills, warning that they could pinch supplies. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A former Justice Department official said Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty was “not fully candid” about the 2006 firings of U.S. attorneys and described an “uncomfortable” conversation with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the shake-up.

Monica Goodling, a former Gonzales aide and the Justice Department’s White House liaison, also acknowledged Wednesday that she screened job applicants based on political ties — something she said she regretted.

Goodling testified before the House Judiciary Committee under a grant of immunity after the controversy over the firings prompted her to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

She took the Fifth after McNulty told senators that she had incompletely briefed him about the firings, which he had described as “performance-related” in February testimony.

Goodling, who resigned shortly afterward, said McNulty’s accusations were false.

“Despite my and others’ best effort, the deputy’s public testimony was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects,” she said.

She said McNulty “was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision,” and did not disclose the White House’s interest in replacing the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, with a former aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove.

McNulty rebuts Goodling’s testimony

After Goodling’s testimony, McNulty issued a statement saying he “testified truthfully” before the Senate panel “based on what I knew at the time.”

“Miss Goodling’s characterization of my testimony is wrong, and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress,” said McNulty, who has announced plans to resign this summer.

The description of the firings as “performance-related” provoked an outcry from the ex-prosecutors and triggered allegations of political influence over investigations and hiring in the Justice Department. The resulting controversy has Gonzales fighting for his job, although President Bush has continually expressed firm support for his longtime aide.

Goodling said Gonzales “laid out his general recollection” of the firings of several U.S. attorneys during a March meeting before she left. At the time, she was aware that she was likely to have to testify about the controversy, and “I didn’t know if it was maybe appropriate for us to talk about that at that point.”

She said Gonzales told her, “Let me tell you what I can remember,” and “laid out his general recollection” of the process leading up to the firings — that he believed they had all been dismissed for performance-based reasons.

“Then he asked me if he thought, if I had any reaction to his iteration,” Goodling said.

“I just did not know if it was a conversation that we should be having, and so I just didn’t say anything,” she added.

Goodling said she did not believe the attorney general was trying to shape her testimony about the firings. But Rep. John Conyers, the Judiciary Committee’s chairman, said Goodling’s testimony showed that Gonzales “attempted to coach her as a witness” — an allegation the Justice Department denied.

In a written statement Wednesday evening, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Goodling requested the meeting to seek a transfer, and it took place before the department launched an internal probe of the firings.

“The attorney general has never attempted to influence or shape the testimony or public statements of any witness in this matter, including Ms. Goodling,” Roehrkasse said. “The statements made by the attorney general during this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period of her life, as Monica described today when she said, ‘He was being kind.’ ”

No indication of illegality, Republicans say

The committee’s Republican members said Goodling’s testimony revealed no evidence of wrongdoing and reinforced Gonzales’ contention that his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, was the key official in the shake-up.

Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, dismissed her contradiction of McNulty’s testimony as “a really small conflict” and said her acknowledgment that she checked up on the political affiliations of applicants for career prosecutorial jobs involved “a few cases where she asked inappropriate questions.”

“Are we looking for violations by Monica Goodling, who’s a relatively low-level Justice Department employee, or are we looking for corruption?” he asked. “This started out as corruption. Where’s the corruption?”

Gonzales gave Goodling and Sampson wide authority over hiring and firing of political appointees in a March 2006 order. But she shed little light on the firings of at least eight prosecutors, who other Justice officials have said were chosen largely by Sampson.

Conyers said Goodling’s testimony still left the central question about the firings unanswered.

“Although she was involved in preparing explanations for the firings to the Congress, she still doesn’t know the real reasons for who was involved and who was put on the list,” he said.

Goodling said that despite her post as the department’s White House liaison, “I did not hold the keys to the kingdom as some have suggested.”

Conyers said one of the aspects the committee is examining is whether Justice officials violated the Hatch Act, which protects federal employees from political coercion. Goodling did reveal she had screened applicants for Justice career posts based on political affiliation, but said she “tried to act in good faith.”

“I do acknowledge I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions, and I regret those mistakes,” she said.

She said she occasionally used Internet searches and databases such as Lexis-Nexis to determine the political affiliations of candidates, but “I actually was too busy to get around to doing it terribly often.”

She said she would sometimes give other staffers resumes with instructions to check them out, “But, frankly, we had a lot of other things going on and it didn’t often turn up anything and it wasn’t very helpful most of the time, anyway.”

Roehrkasse said Goodling’s admission was “troubling.” But he said the subject was being investigated by the department’s inspector-general and the Office of Professional Responsibility, “and we cannot comment further.”

Goodling testified that she didn’t recall meeting with Rove or then-White House counsel Harriet Miers during her tenure, “and I’m certain that I never spoke to either of them about the hiring or firing of any U.S. attorney.”

Rove and Miers have been accused of having a role in the dismissal process, but the White House has resisted calls for them to testify.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to cut in half the number of guest workers that would be allowed into the United States under a controversial immigration overhaul backed by the White House.

The 74-24 vote was the first major change to a “grand bargain” unveiled last week and sent to the Senate floor for debate on Monday.

Senators voted to reduce the number of guest workers that would be allowed into the country from 400,000 to 200,000. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: Saddam Hussein did NOT allow outside parties to set up terrorist cells in his country without his blessings, which Osama did NOT have. So… Our invasion of Iraq created a situation that Osama supposedly planned to exploit, and THAT exploit, which bush created the grounds for is NOW his justification for the initial invasion. So… the logic is, We should stay because Bi Laden plans to exploit a situation that exists because we went….

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush is expected to use declassified intelligence about Osama bin Laden to defend his Iraq war policy during a commencement address Wednesday.

The intelligence says that in 2005 bin Laden planned to use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks in the United States, according to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The 11th straight day of record high gas prices Wednesday resulted in a new measure of pain for the nation’s drivers — the longest stretch of time with gas above $3 a gallon, according a closely-watched daily survey.And relief is no where in sight heading into the Memorial Day holiday that marks the start of the summer driving season. Prices continue to rise in most of the country, as the Midwest saw prices soar a nickel or more a gallon in one day in several states. Read the rest of this entry »