Is Al Qaida regifting “The Surge”?

 Bush, General Politics, Iraq  No Responses »
Jul 122007
 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes, according to a senior government official who has seen it.

art.terror.gi.jpg

A Pakistani soldier mans a bunker near the Afghan border in a tribal area of Pakistan.

Despite a campaign of military action and counterterrorism operations, al Qaeda has regained its strength and found safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the report says, according to counterterrorism officials familiar with the report.

The five-page intelligence analysis remains classified and was prepared for senior U.S. policymakers. It was not issued in response to a specific threat.

Two intelligence officials said the report’s finding are similar to what is expected to be in the National Intelligence Estimate anticipated to be released later this summer. The NIE is the intelligence community’s collective analysis of pressing national security issues. Continue reading »

 Posted by Administrator at 5:50 pm

Bush to Congress, “I’ll do what I damn well please”.

 Bush, General Politics, Hopewatch '08  No Responses »
Jul 092007
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.

White House counsel Fred Fielding made the executive privilege claim in a letter to congressional panels.


The White House, however, did offer again to make former counsel Harriet Miers and one-time political director Sara Taylor available for private, off-the-record interview

In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in good faith and refused lawmakers’ demand that the president explain the basis for invoking the privilege.

The latest move in the separation of powers fight between the legislative and executive branches came as members of Congress began returning from their Fourth of July recess. An atmosphere of high tension accompanied the resumption of work as a fight also loomed there between majority Democrats and some key Republicans and Bush over his Iraq war policy.

In his letter regarding subpoenas the Judiciary panels issued, Fielding said, “The president feels compelled to assert executive privilege with respect to the testimony sought from Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Miers.”

“You may be assured that the president’s assertion here comports with prior practices in similar contexts, and that it has been appropriately documented,” the letter said. Continue reading »

 Posted by Administrator at 12:17 pm

Cindy, please…..

 Bush, General Politics, Hopewatch '08, Iraq, Weird News  No Responses »
Jul 092007
 

(CNN) — Despite swearing off public life earlier this year, peace activist Cindy Sheehan would run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as an independent in 2008 unless the speaker moves to impeach President Bush, a Sheehan spokeswoman said Sunday.

Sheehan, a northern California resident, is taking part in a protest caravan from President Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas, to Washington, which is scheduled to arrive July 23. Spokeswoman Tiffany Burns told CNN that Sheehan would challenge the speaker, who has held her San Francisco-area seat since 1987, unless Pelosi introduces articles of impeachment before then.

There was no immediate reaction from Pelosi’s office to Sheehan’s threat. The speaker said in November that calls for impeaching Bush were “off the table,” but that Congress would push for an end to the widely unpopular, 4-year-old war under Democratic control.

Sheehan achieved national attention when she camped outside Bush’s home 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 May, after congressional Democratic efforts to set a March 2008 goal for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq failed in the face of a presidential veto, Sheehan quit the anti-war movement in disgust and declared that her son Casey — a U.S. soldier killed in Baghdad in 2004 — had died “for nothing.”

She said she was exhausted by the personal, financial and emotional toll her campaign had taken, disillusioned by the failure of Democratic politicians to end the war and tired of a peace movement she said “often puts personal egos above peace and human life.”

 Posted by Administrator at 7:44 am

Officials decide that American lives are worth more that capturing senior Al Quaida agents, meanwhile in Iraq….

 Bush, General Politics, Iraq  No Responses »
Jul 072007
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) — A secret 2005 mission to capture senior al Qaeda members in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last moment when Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Citing intelligence and military officials, including a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning, the Times said in a story posted on its Web site that the target was a meeting of al Qaeda leaders. That conference was thought by intelligence officials to have included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, who was believed to run the group’s operations, it said.

The classified mission was scotched even as Navy SEALs in parachute gear had boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected a last-minute appeal by then-CIA director Porter Goss, the Times said, citing the officials and the former intelligence official, all of whom requested anonymity.

Rumsfeld felt the mission, which grew from a small number of personnel to several hundred, would risk too many U.S. lives, and he was also concerned about possible repercussions on U.S.-Pakistan relations, the Times said.

But that decision also frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret special operations units. Some said the United States missed a significant opportunity to possibly nab senior al Qaeda members, the newspaper reported.

Another concern was his determination that the United States could not carry out the mission without Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf‘s permission, which was unlikely given its size and scope, the officials said.

The former intelligence official involved in the mission’s planning said it grew to the point where “the whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan,” which he nonetheless felt was still worth the risk.

“We wanted to take a shot,” the official added. Several former officials said it was not the only time since the September 11, 2001 attacks that plans were developed for a large U.S. military force in Pakistan, the Times said.

Spokesmen for the Pentagon, CIA and the White House declined to comment, the Times said.

“We’re not going to speculate about contingency planning — past or present,” Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters on Saturday.

The newspaper said it was not clear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.

 Posted by Administrator at 9:03 pm

The surge keeps going strong…

 Bush, General Politics, Iraq  No Responses »
Jul 072007
 

art.iraq.boy.afp.gi.jpgBAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — A suicide car bomber targeting a busy market in a northern Iraqi village killed at least 105 people Saturday morning, a government official told CNN.

A boy is taken to a hospital in Kirkuk, Iraq, after a suicide car bomber attacked a village market.

A truck laden with two tons of explosives detonated in an outdoor market in Amerli. The truck resembled an Iraqi military truck, according to an official at the Joint Coordination Center in the city of Tuz Khurmatu.

Amerli is a village predominately populated by Shiite Turkmens and Kurds, located about 100 miles north of Baghdad in Salaheddin province, near Tuz Khurmatu. Continue reading »

 Posted by Administrator at 12:36 pm
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