According to an article in the International Herald Times, British military leaders were recently overruled by political leaders whne they asked to draw down the number of troops in Iraq in order to lend support to efforts in Afghanistan.

British military commanders were overruled by politicians in a request to withdraw troops from Iraq to strengthen force numbers in Afghanistan, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Wednesday.

It reported that a document compiled by a senior military officer also suggested military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were heading toward an “as yet unspecified and uncertain result.”

The BBC’s Newsnight television program said it had been passed a copy of the document, which it said was collated as part of a private British review of efforts across the world to combat terrorism.

It painted a bleak picture of military and counterterrorism work, similar to a U.S. intelligence assessment ó parts of which were declassified Tuesday ó which warned of a growing terrorist threat and concluded Iraq has become a “cause celebre” for jihadists.

British troops are being “held hostage in Iraq following the failure of the deal being attempted by the COS (Chief of Staff) to extricate UK Armed Forces from Iraq on the basis of doing Afghanistan,” the BBC quoted the document as saying.

Also, the BBC is reporting that British intelligence reports are tip-toeing around reports that the Pakistan security forces are secretly aligned with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in the region.

Great discussion over at Daily Kos on how Bush is perceived to be more responsible than Bill Clinton for not capturing bin Laden and heading off 9/11.

Of course, partisanship plays a role in the answers. 71 percent of Republicans are too stupid too realize that Bill Clinton hasn’t been in office the last six years and blame him rather than the guy currently in office. You know — the one that talks a big game but hasn’t delivered squat.

Three things come to mind. First, Republicans generally point fingers and assign blame when things go wrong and Bill Clinton continues to be that scape-goat for their inability to govern. Remember, it was the Republicants who raised hell over Monica Lewinsky because it “dirtied” the Presidency, all the while you never heard a peep from one Republican about national security or concerns over al Qaeda. Second, George W. Bush has never delivered a single promise he has made while in the White House or while in the Governor’s mansion in Texas. I never understood what the big deal was with him running for President. Seriously, I cannot recall a single measure he put before the legislature During his time as Governor.  And finally, there is plenty of blame to pass around on this issue with every administration, Democrat and Republican since Truman and the creation of the Israeli state. As a nation we have done a poor job of trying to deal with the issues in an honest and unbiased manner.

Do you remember what you were doing in the summer of 2001? More importantly, do you remember what your President and his Congress were doing in the summer of 2001? I do.

Just a few short weeks before 9/11 our President was perched at his Crawford, Texas ranch enjoying a very long vacation (5 weeks if I remember correctly). His attention was focused on the moral dilemma of stem cell research and how he could use the Christian cloth he had wrapped himself in to suppress promising research for curing diseases. This topic was so important that he took time away from chopping wood and barbecuing to address the nation in primetime.

If the Bush administration was so focused on terrorists (namely al Qaeda) why did he never once speak to the American people about the problem? After all, Bush knew that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole in the Fall of 2000. Why did he not go on national television to the tell the American people that he knew who attacked our service men and women? Why did the President not speak directly and openly to the American people and our enemies alike and say that the United States was not going to take it and that he would develop a master plan for eliminating terror from the face of the Earth? Why was Bush and Company not more proactive in their approach to the war on terror?

This is the kind of questioning that conspiracy theorists love to hear, because it is so easy to say that the President wanted to be attacked. Personally, I just think the President was distracted with giving tax breaks to the most wealthy and in becoming our moral leader on deeply personal issues and that he simply could not be bothered with the big picture.

Five plus years is a long time ago for some of us. Perhaps our memories have been clouded over with more recent events. So I ask then, what were the Republicans (Bush and Company) concerned with in the Spring of 2005? Was it the war in Iraq? Was it Afghanistan? Osama bin Laden? Was it on protecting our borders? Was it beefing up security on freight shipments and cargo ships that enter our ports everyday? The answer is no. The Republicans were worried about the obviously brain-dead Terri Schiavo and having her feeding tube removed. They [Republicans] simply could not stand to have a moral and personal decision go with intervening by creating bogus laws for one specific case. Once again the GOP decided to wrap itself in the Christian cloth of morality in hopes of undermining the personal freedoms and personal relationship between an individual choice and their belief system.

How is that related to the war on terror? Does this demonstrate that the Republicans are the party of protecting the American people? Again, no. But as long as the “war on terror” is being fought, the Republicans know that they have a banner to wave that proclaims them as the gladiators that are going to save us all.

In 2004 the GOP pulled out all of the stops and forced the same-sex marriage debate front and center for the general election. The plan was to stir fear that the American family was somehow threatened by two loving people sharing in the same rights (not privileges, but rights) as everyone else. The summer of 2006 started out the same way. The GOP was down in the polls and it needed a boost, so twice the House of Representatives passed bills to amend the Constitution to ensure that same-sex couples never receive any rights at all, and twice the Senate rejected the same initiative. When that didn’t work, the GOP turned to protecting our borders. The President even went before the nation on primetime (something he likes to do for political reasons and seldom out of the collective interest of the citizenry) to spell out his plan for protecting the border with Mexico and to lay out his plans for immigration. But in the spirit of true Republicanism, the House has spent the entire summer touring the country talking about the issue but doing little else. Now there isn’t enough time to act on any legislation, so Congress has delayed the vote until after the election.

How is any of this serving the needs of this country in the war on terror? The Republicans are not about protecting anyone but themselves and their financial supporters. Good people with good common sense and the ability to think critically should remember all of this as they head to the polls in November.

President Bush’s comments on the state of the world last week at the United Nations raise some interesting thoughts about not only his own personal view but of America’s collective view of the world around us. 

To say that the mission of this government is to eradicate tyranny from the face of the Earth sounds great. It is the battle call of so many wars before, and yet it is almost a hollow message. In World War II the allies pulled their resources to combat a common external enemy. The campaign was costly but effective in removing true fascists from the grips of power around the globe. Storming cities across Europe and invading islands throughout the South and North Pacific were all tasks that in themselves created a culture of appreciation for the West. But this war on terror is not as simple. 

The world we live in is a very complicated and often caustic world filled with hate and distrust for one another, not as nations but as people. William Arkin points this out rather eloquently in his blog posted today on The Washington Post website. 

Bush has an incredible knack for saying things that are throw-backs to the WWII era, but never really delivers any substance that supports his rhetoric. Many people were completely surprised and shocked to hear Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez refer to Bush as the devil last week, but really if examine the root cause of this language we can see that Chavez is merely expounding the underlying feelings of many around the globe that find themselves pointed out as the enemy in increasingly generic language used by Bush. Our global war strategy in terms of WWII is no longer sufficient. Instead, we need to take notice of the historical definition of war back to the middle-centuries when wars were more tribal and the underlying cause of such wars was religion and moral values. The people that Bush calls “extremists fascists” are the same people who were slaughtered by the Spanish and Romans centuries before our continent even existed on the map. Centuries of hatred and distrust are bubbling to the surface, and those “warriors” fighting this war are well-learned in the historical purpose of their cause.

The enemy is not one country. The enemy is not even a public state that can be pin-pointed on a map. The enemy is something much more dangerous and elusive and deserves a different approach militarily and politically. As Americans we really need to understand the world a little better, and as citizens, we need to demand that our government take a much more diplomatic and constructive approach to squelching the volume on extremist groups and not annihilating entire societies to eradicate the few and ultimately creating more “extremists”.

For years the Republicans have run around screaming about the wonderful job they are doing with terrorism, and how the country would not be in this mess were it not for Bill Clinton. Earlier this month they coaxed ABC to run a mocumentary about the lead up to the attacks on 9/11, with many parts that were out right fictional, much to the pleasure of the likes of Rush “Drug King” Limbaugh.

So, finally, Bill Clinton has his say, and he has it on Fox News, where it tells Chris Wallace to “sit there with that smug look on your face”. (By the way, there is a point where Bill Clinton asks Chris Wallace why he has never asked a Bush administration representative the same questions he is asking him, to which Wallace replies that he has and Clinton basically calls him a liar. Think Progress has done fact checking, and it looks like Clinton wins this round. Wallace in fact has had at least three opporunities to ask the same questions surrounding the 9/11 attacks and has never done so.)

And so the Republicans line up to cheer on Fox News (the same people who jeered them last week for contributing money to a gay journalists group), and point at Clinton as coming unhinged on the program. To me Bill Clinton appears to be more eloquent, more articulate and demonstrates a greater grasp of reality than George W. Bush ever has. Over on YouTube, there is a right-head who actually said:

His [Clinton's] narcissism, rambling answers and physical intimidation of Wallace are ridiculously embarrassing and far beneath a President.

WTF Mary! Um, if you exchanged “Wallace” with any global leader’s name you would have described George W. Bush.

It was revealed today, through CBS News, that Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, was threatened shortly after 9/11 to support the United States in its efforts to capture the al Qaeda and eradicate the Taliban or face the consequences of being “bombed back to the Stone Age”. 

According to CNN, this revelation is news to President Bush, who was “taken aback” by the “harshness of the words”. The news report goes on to say that Richard Armitage was the source of the threat. 

 Okay, let’s think about this for a minute. In the days following 9/11, Bush appears in every hide-away bunker and closet in the White House, the Pentagon, and his Crawford ranch using terms like “Wanted: Dead or Alive”, calls for a “crusade” against Muslims, and tells every nation on the globe “You are either with us or against us”, and he is “taken aback” by the harshness of the language used to persuade Pakistan to join the fight? 

One of two things is happening here. Either the President is completely delusional and has no concept of reality and history, or he is flat-out lying. My personal view is torn on which case is more accurate, both are plausible and probable. The bottom line is that as a leader on the world stage, you have a responsibility to act in a certain way. You simply cannot go around and make the kinds of statements that the President made after 9/11 and not expect repercussions. As President, people listen to you intently — especially in times of great need and desperation, and that means you should watch your language as not to create a sense of irresponsibility among your “followers”. 

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, FDR did exactly what had to be done, the only thing that he could do, and unified the nation for a common cause. When Korea was falling apart, Eisenhower did everything he could through negotiation, cooperation, reaching and forming allies and military might to solve a problem. When the Civil Rights movement was forming in the early 1960’s, JFK did much the same thing by utilizing diplomatic and police action to protect the rights of the minority while guiding the nation to a new sense of realization in terms of race. Even Reagan was diplomatic in fighting the Cold War while flexing military might (even if it was all “show”). Those are examples of leadership. Bush is an example of radical knee-jerk reactions gone astray. 

And finally, I wonder why it is that Richard Armitage, the man who apparently threatened Pakistan in the first place, AND revealed that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative has not been forced to face some type of music somewhere.