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.

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”.

Last night, the government of Thailand fell to a coup from the military. Today, the leader of the coup, General Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, said that the military would run the country for one year and that new elections are expected around October 2007.

Speaking to reporters for the first time since tanks and troops under his command took to the streets of the capital late Tuesday night, General Sondhi offered a political timetable for the country’s democratic rehabilitation. An interim government would be chosen within two weeks, he said, and the process of writing a new constitution would follow.

“Drafting a new constitution should not take more than one year,” General Sondhi said; new elections could be then expected sometime around October 2007.

What a novel concept! Instead of simply winging the practice of over-throwing the government and failing to protect the people and treasures of the land, this guy walks in with his military, secures the safety of the citizens, takes action to secure the communication networks and protect the treasures of the nation and sets a timetable to secure a new constitutional government.

Why can’t the United States think in these terms? What is so difficult about this?

According to the Australian radio program “AM“, the United Nations Secretary General, just back from a tour of the Middle East, has said that many leaders in the region are expressing private concerns about the U.S. invasion of Iraq and that the entire operation has destabilized the region.

TONY EASTLEY: The head of the United Nations says most leaders in the Middle East believe the US invasion of Iraq and its aftermath have been a disaster.

UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan has relayed the damning assessment after returning from a trip, which included visits to Iran and Syria.

A new US intelligence report meanwhile calls the security situation in Iraq’s western Anbar province “dire”.

Washington Correspondent, Kim Landers reports.

KIM LANDERS: In the past day around Baghdad, police have found the bodies of 65 men who’d been tortured and shot.

Car bombings and mortar attacks have killed at least 39 others and wounded dozens more.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says the violence in Iraq is troubling other leaders in the region.

KOFI ANNAN: Most of the leaders I spoke to felt the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath has been a real disaster for them. They believe it has destabilised the region.

KIM LANDERS: It’s an opinion that’s been instantly dismissed by White House spokesman Tony Snow.

TONY SNOW: I’m not going to engage in a further disputation with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, but we disagree with the characterisation.

KIM LANDERS: Kofi Annan says some in the Middle East think that having created the problem, the US can’t now walk away.

KOFI ANNAN: Then you have another school of thought, particularly in Iran that believe that the presence of the US is a problem and that the US should leave.

So in a way, the US has found itself in a position where it cannot stay and it cannot leave.

KIM LANDERS: Concern about Iraq is also surfacing in senior US military ranks.

The Chief of Intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq has filed a secret report concluding the prospects for securing the country’s western Al Anbar province are dim.

It also says al-Qaeda has filled the power vacuum, partly because of a lack of US and Iraqi troops.

On Capitol Hill today the former deputy ambassador to Iraq, David Satterfield, was asked for his appraisal.

DAVID SATTERFIELD: The situation in Anbar province is indeed very serious and we agree that major measures need to be taken to address the social, the political situation there.

We disagree that the situation is hopeless.

KIM LANDERS: But Ambassador Satterfield, who’s now the senior Iraq adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, added this blunt assessment.

DAVID SATTERFIELD: If sectarian violence cannot be demonstrably, tangibly reduced and sustained that reduction, over the next several months, an Iraqi government that represents all of its people as a partner against terror and as at peace, both at home and with it’s neighbours will be difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

KIM LANDERS: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says if the US does leave Iraq it has to be arranged in such a way that it doesn’t lead to even greater violence.

I find it incredibly difficult to believe that anyone within the administration actually believes that the war in Iraq is moving in a positive direction. How many new directions, changed focus, refined strategies are these guys going to come up with before they finally admit they made a mistake.

At this point, I say admit to your errors and publicly spell out the specifics to end this war. It’s going to take reaching out to those that disagree with the current logic and to other nations in the region that can actually help the situation.

Unfortunately, this administration will never admit to any errors, and they are certainly not going to reach out to anyone that does not have fists full of money for them. Bush has never proposed anything for peace in the Middle East, outside of calling people fascists and declaring war (or crusade, as W likes to call it) on them.

My anger at the Bush administraton has never been any higher than it was earlier in the week when Donald Rumsfeld (and the entire administration for that matter) pointed to those that oppose the war in Iraq, question the legal tactics of the administration in fighting the “war on terror”, or generally disagree with the administration as “morally and intellectually lacking”. And to use language like that in the same speech where he compared the disjointed group of thugs in Al Qaeda to the Nazis or worse leaves one to wonder exactly who he wants to do war with.

And then there are moments like these from Keth Olbermann that make me proud to be an American. The eloquence of his commentary is exactly what needed to be said. I can only hope and pray that more Americans see things the way Olbermann does and realize that unless the voters put an end to this regime this country will slip further into that abyss.

From AP newswires today comes word that the Pentagon is seeking bids from outside PR firms to analyze the news related to the Iraqi war and how it is reported in the United States and internationally.

Contractors also will be evaluated on how they will provide analytical reports and customized briefings to the military, “including, but not limited to tone (positive, neutral, negative) and scope of media coverage.”

The program comes during what has appeared to be a White House effort, before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, to take the offensive against critics at a time of doubt about the future of Iraq.

The military last year was criticized for a public relations in Iraq that included hiring a consulting firm that paid Iraqi news media to carry news stories written by American troops. 

So, if the U.S. can’t win the war they will simply resort to monitoring the media and working to craft a more positive tone about the war in the media. Never mind that the administration has lied repeatedly to us. I guess if someone makes the story more positive the think we will suddenly begin believing the lies they still spout.