The military met its recruiting and retention goals for every branch of the service and reserves for the month of April 2008.
Strange, if you had listened to the media you would think this just couldn't happen, but it does, month after month despite the Democrats and the media.
Today we're only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes on Iraq. One important new source is the recently published War and Decision by Douglas Feith, the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon from 2001 to 2005.
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One such narrative is "Bush lied, people died." The claim is that "neocons," including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have already concluded. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam's hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.
DKKPushing back against political punditry, more than six in 10 Democrats say there's no rush for Hillary Clinton to leave the presidential race even as Barack Obama consolidates his support for the nomination and scores solidly in general-election tests.
Despite Obama's advantage in delegates and popular vote, 64 percent of Democrats in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say Clinton should remain in the race. Even among Obama's supporters, 42 percent say so.
President Hugo Chavez has signed a decree to nationalise Venezuela's biggest steelmaker, Ternium-Sidor.
Argentina's Techint, which owns 60% of it, has been given until the end of June to hand it over.
In the past two years the Venezuelan state has taken over foreign-controlled companies including cement, telecoms, oil, gas and electricity firms.
DKK
A massive search and rescue operation is under way in south-western China after one of the most powerful earthquakes in decades.
Troops have arrived in Wenchuan county at the epicentre, which was largely cut off by the quake - but heavy rain is hampering rescue operations.
Elsewhere in Sichuan province, frantic efforts are being made to reach thousands of people under the rubble.
The death toll is now nearly 12,000, an official said, and looks set to rise.
DKKA survey released this month by the independent Pew Research Center found that most voters described Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, as “a centrist whose views are fairly close to their own,” even though McCain describes himself as a thoroughgoing conservative. The same voters described Obama as the most liberal of the candidates still in the race, well to the left of what they saw as the midpoint of American politics.
And Obama ranked below both McCain and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, on the question of whether the candidate was “tough enough” to protect the nation’s security.
Obama has “handicaps and potential problems, race being one of them, [but] it’s not the only one,” Pew Center President Andrew Kohut said. “He is perceived as a liberal. He is perceived by many voters as not well grounded on foreign policy and not tough enough . . . and he has a potential problem, distinct from race, of being seen as an elitist, an intellectual.?
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez allegedly tried to arm Colombian rebels with help from Belarus, the El Pais newspaper reported Saturday, citing documents from the computer of a slain rebel leader.DKK
The Spanish daily quoted a February 8 e-mail from Ivan Marquez, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), saying Chavez had considered with Belarussian authorities the possibility of providing weapons to FARC.
The e-mail was alleged to have been found in the seized computer of FARC second-in-command Raul Reyes, who was killed in March, El Pais said.
The partially coded message mentioned someone identified only as "friend of Belarus," who El Pais identified as Victor Sheiman, secretary of the Belarus Security Council and a close associate of Alexander Lukashenko, the hardline president of the former Soviet republic.
El Pais added that other possible arms sources for FARC, particularly ground-to-air missiles, were mentioned in computer messages, including contacts with "Australian traffickers".
The left-of-centre newspaper reported last December that Venezuela had become a safe haven for FARC, harbouring several rebel camps on its territory. Venezuela has denied this.
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis student Keith John Sampson was charged with "racial harassment" simply because he was "caught" reading an anti-Ku Klux Klan book. I'm not kidding.
KABUL (Reuters) - A prominent member of al Qaeda was killed in fighting with U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, the group said in a statement posted on an Islamist website on Sunday.
Abu Suleiman al-Otaibi, formerly one of the group's leaders in Iraq, was killed in a "fierce battle with the worshipers of the cross" in Paktia, it said without giving the date of the battle.
DKK
(IsraelNN.com) Israel is sending aid teams to devasted Myanmar (formerly Burma) on Wednesday, where the death toll from a cyclone that battered the Southeast Asian nation over the weekend is said to be between 23,000-50,000.
The Foreign Ministry sent teams from the IDF's highly trained search-and-rescue team as well as a 10-member team of top Israeli doctors and nurses. The Jewish State also dispatched badly needed supplies, including plastic sheeting, food, household appliances and water filters.
Aid trickles into Burma, but toll 'could reach 1 million if disease set in'Times UK
A trickle of aid shipments arrived in Myanmar on Sunday, more than a week after a massive cyclone smashed the country, but officials continued to bar major shipments to the storm's hard-hit survivors.The junta is refusing to grant entry to foreign aid workers, who relief officials say are crucial to preventing more deaths from disease among an estimated 1.5 million victims of the May 3 storm.
On the plus side, IRONMAN dominated for the second week pulling in 2 1/2 times what Speed did.A Chicago pol's wife gets a 200 grand salary bump (almost tripling her compensation) and a year later hubby seeks to channel a million bucks to the wife's employer. Good old time Chicago poltics, right?Apparently not, because the candidate in question is running on a platform of change, and he seems like such a nice fellow. Leon H. Wolfe of Redstate is being awfully judgmental here isn't he?
Okiro said, “The Al-Qaeda network has threatened to send time bombs to Nigeria. The AIG Surveillance should intensify surveillance while the CP Airwing, CP Border Patrol and the CPs of all the commands should be on the alert and ensure that these items (bombs) do not pass through their end.”
When moderator Charlie Gibson pointed out that Obama's handwriting was on a 1996 candidate survey that said he favored banning handguns, Obama flatly denied his writing was on the questionnaire, contradicting what a campaign staffer had told Politico weeks earlier. Asked if he still supports licensing and registering guns, Obama said he favors "common-sense approaches" to gun control like keeping guns from "the mentally deranged." When Clinton was asked if she maintains her past support for licensing and registration, she too sidestepped the question, saying, "What might work in New York City is certainly not going to work in Montana."
So it ends not as a formal coup but as an informal one, with the government temporarily brought to its knees to remind it who’s boss.
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Why the pullout this morning? Per yesterday’s post, they don’t want to run the country, they want a safe base of operation against Israel and its western allies without interference from the Lebanese government. Mission accomplished
“But nobody said he would initiate contacts at the presidential level; that requires due preparation and advance work.”The problem is, Barack Obama did say he’d meet with Iran unconditionally, in front of a lot of people, at the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate last July.
Little Green Footballs catches the flip.
Diplomacy: Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions
"To encourage a country with only rhetoric, rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people, is not a promise of hope," McCain said, alluding to Obama's speaking skills and campaign theme. And in another jab he added, "I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need."
