Twenty-five people killed in Gaza fighting overnight, mortar attacks on an all girl school in Iraq kills one and injures a dozen more, fifteen killed in bomb attacks in Pakistan…

This is where the United States should be stepping forward not as a military power, but as a beacon for reason and peace. But for this administration, seeking a peaceful and diplomatic solution to anything is absolutely impossible and is never given a serious consideration for any global problem.

Where are the TEAMS of diplomats working with nations in the middle east region? Where is Secretary Rice working tirelessly on shuttle diplomacy? Where are the images of the President reaching out to other global leaders to lead a frontal attack on terriorism, or developing a more intelligent strategy on the middle east?

The Bush administration is in a real pickle this week over the leaking of classified intelligence documents that were critical of the President’s war in Iraq. (If Vietnam was Johnson’s war, why shouldn’t Iraq be Bush’s war?) Al Kamen, at WashingtonPost.com did an excellent piece this morning where he examines the administration’s use of shock that someone would leak such a document, considering this administration’s spotty history of cracking down on leaks.

Sadly, this is not the first time such damaging leaks of sensitive information — information jihadi recruiters couldn’t possibly have known — have occurred shortly before an election. Four years ago this month, back in September 2002, a leak of secret intelligence on Saddam Hussein ‘s efforts to get “specially designed” aluminum tubes to make nuclear weapons showed up in the New York Times.

As recounted in the new book “Hubris,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn , a White House official worried in the Times article that the tubes might mean that “the first sign of a ‘smoking gun’ might be a mushroom cloud.” The brilliant line (later used by Rice) was conceived by White House chief speechwriter Michael Gerson , according to the book, and had been discussed in a White House meeting a few days earlier.

Vice President Cheney , on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” cited it to moderator Tim Russert as backing for the claim that Hussein was trying for atomic weapons. “There’s a story in the New York Times this morning,” Cheney noted when asked about Saddam’s push for nukes.
Unclear why no one went after the leaker…

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.

I think it is important to highlight the real advantages to being an American that many of us take for granted. Of these advantages, the right to publicly speak out about a particular subject is the most important. Whether it is a citizen standing in front of the Congressional Representative, or writing a letter to the editor of the local or national newspaper, or whether it is writing in the weblog fashion, it is a fantastic right that Americans have.

Compare this to the degree of freedoms that others throughout the world have. Muslims for example have no such rights, or at the least very limited rights, in this respect. Bashir Goth has written an excellent piece on The Washington Post blog community that deals with this very topic.

You are not allowed to be a person with vices and virtues, you cannot follow your own reasoning, and you cannot be unpopular or defend an unpopular idea. You cannot go out of the circle. To express yourself freely means to risk death. And death indeed if you change your faith. Invention itself is considered as an act of blasphemy.

Thank God the United States is free of this kind of treatment. But pray to God that our own extremisim is not leading us down this path. Goth continues:

On a personal level, I remember writing a poem in early 1980s, which was considered critical of Somalia’s dictatorial regime of Siyad Barre. Later when I wanted to visit my ailing father I had to travel by land from Djibouti, taking a longer route, rather than risking an arrest at the airport of Hargeisa.

In another unfortunate instance, a lyric I wrote on raising awareness about HIV/AIDS and encouraging safe sex has to remain under wraps because musicians were all afraid to set them to music. They considered its message un-Islamic.

Goth’s words should also serve as a reminder to us that creating a democracy in the Muslim world may not be that simple, and what’s more important, it may not be desired. Democracy is a sociopolitical system, whereas Islam is a socioreligious system. The two do not always belong together.

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.

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.

For all of the self-serving pat on the backs that the Republicans give themselves for being “tough” on terrorism, there seems to be a back story to the E. coli spinach disaster that the MSM has missed:

Shouldn’t the protection of our food supply be a part of this new war on terror? Imagine for a moment that somehow a terrorist released a batch of germ cells on spinach, or oranges, or in the cattle feed yards. One would think that the U.S. government has taken great steps to prevent, or at the very least catch, such occurrences.

Apparently that line of thinking is wrong. It seems that the only way the federal government knows that there is a problem with the food chain is when people start dying.  So how is it again that we are safer under this administration? The food chain is still exposed, our sea ports are still largely unchecked, the borders with Mexico and Canada are a joke, the freight carried on airliners is sorely unmonitored. Wow! That leaves only two obvious steps to “protect” the American people: airport passenger screening, and wiretapping on any form of communication which is a clear violation of the Constitution.