Today's Fresh Blogs...

• As Basra Goes So Goes Iraq

  Published: August 8, 2007, 6:41 am

  Tags: Iraq, George W Bush, United Kingdom, Tony Blair, Tories, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Withdrawal, Military Affairs, Bush Administration

  British troops rush to scene of chopper crash Today's Iraq war cold shower is brought to you by the British. Despite its years-long efforts to stabilize Basra in southern Iraq, the Royal Army is watching Shiite militias fill the power vacuum being created as its troops draw down by escalating their rivalries in a violent effort to control the

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• Minneapolis Bridge Victims' Funerals: It's ALL FUN-erals ALL THE TIME To Pastor Fred Phelps

  Published: August 7, 2007, 8:04 pm

  Tags: Talk Radio, Hurricane Katrina, Crime, Social Commentary, Virginia Tech, Sectarian Violence, Christians, Death, Human Rights, Homosexuality, Legal Matters, Pornography

  Pastor Fred and his crew of self-styled Baptists who like to show up at funerals of gays, military and disaster victims, carrying signs saying God Hates You, and bellowing over bullhorns about how happy God is to murder human beings. He’s back. Again. They say decent Christians never speak out against others who hold themselves out to be

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• A Sane Re-Start for the Iraq Debate

  Published: August 8, 2007, 10:41 pm

  Tags: Foreign Affairs, War, Iraq, Sunnis, Muslims, Henry Kissinger, Al Qaeda, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Radical Islam, Withdrawal, Bush Administration, Mideast

  After all the wishful thinking and political posturing on all sides, a basis for serious discussion makes the tenuous case for staying in Iraq while scaling down our presence. The report urging strategic patience is by Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank chaired by former Democratic

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• Old Man & The War: The Lost Years

  Published: August 9, 2007, 3:46 pm

  Tags: Foreign Affairs, Iraq, George W Bush, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Withdrawal, Moktada Al Sadr, Military Affairs

  Think of the Iraq war as an old man. This old man would like nothing more than to go out in a blaze of glory. But his life is dominated by fights with a sister in law, and as he shuffles around his thoughts frequently turn melancholy as he thinks back to when he was young, full of piss and vinegar and the world was his red, white and blue oyster.

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• Lifting the Curtain on Dave & Ryan's Wondrous Iraq All-Star Minstrel Show

  Published: September 7, 2007, 6:10 am

  Tags: 2008 Elections, Congress, Middle East, Iraq, Sunnis, George W Bush, Shi Ites, Al Qaeda, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Gen Petraeus, Withdrawal, Military Affairs, Bush Administration, Refugees, Nouri Al Maliki

  With General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker set to testify before Congress next week and President Bush planning to deliver his own progress report on the Iraq war, here are five things you should know about these hugely anticipated events: (1.) THE BIG COVER-UP This dog-and-pony show is a cover-up for a White House-manufactured catastrophe of

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• Leading Questions For General Petraeus

  Published: September 12, 2007, 9:00 am

  Tags: Iraq, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Gen Petraeus

  RJ Matson, Roll Call

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• Meanwhile, Back at the War

  Published: September 12, 2007, 4:04 am

  Tags: 2008 Elections, Congress, Iraq, George W Bush, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Gen Petraeus, Withdrawal, Military Affairs

  Petraeus and Crocker: That’s a Wrap Now that we’ve gotten another 9/11 anniversary out of the way, there’s an opportunity to let the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker really sink in. And unless you’re one of those delusional souls for whom the corner in Iraq has been just about to be turned

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• Risha Killed: Huge Blow to U.S. Efforts

  Published: September 13, 2007, 1:18 pm

  Tags: Iraq, George W Bush, Sectarian Violence, Military Affairs

  The much-hyped Anbar Awakening has ended with a bang for Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, President Bush’s new best friend in Iraq. Bush had met with the sheik, a key figure in the U.S.-funded revolt of Sunni leaders against Al Qaeda, in a fly-by visit to an airbase in Anbar on September 3. Pentagon officials say that the [...]

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• The lies and exaggerations of George W. Bush

  Published: September 13, 2007, 10:08 pm

  Tags: Military, Iraq, War On Terror, Democrats, George W Bush, Barack Obama, 9 11, Terrorism, Al Qaeda, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Withdrawal, General David Petraeus

  I wrote this for The Reaction prior to Bush’s address this evening. It still applies after the fact. ********** President Bush is set to address the nation, and the world, in just over half an hour. Topic: Iraq. What will he say? The Politico has excerpts of his speech — “as released by the White House for use on dinnertime

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• Stretched Troops

  Published: September 16, 2007, 9:00 am

  Tags: Iraq, Sectarian Violence, Surge

  Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

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• Fact-Checking General Betray Us

  Published: September 20, 2007, 6:04 pm

  Tags: Politics, Military, War, Iraq, Ideologies, Robert Gates, Political Correctness, Sectarian Violence, Left Wing, Surge, Gen Petraeus, Withdrawal, Refugees, Spin, Pentagon, General David Petraeus

  The Washington Post’s Ad Watch Fact-Checker evaluates the claims made by MoveOn.org in its recent NY Times ad and concludes : The Pinocchio Test The data provided by Gen. Petraeus on sharply declining Iraqi casualty rates is certainly open to analysis, debate, and challenge. We plan to take a closer look at them in a future post. However,

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• Iraqi Civilian Casualty Sats: It Takes Lotsa Chefs to Cook These Books

  Published: September 26, 2007, 6:24 am

  Tags: Iraq, George W Bush, Nouri Al Maliki, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Withdrawal, Military Affairs, General David Petraeus

  because of the prevalence of sectarian killings. Which begs the question: Just what is a sectarian killing? Then there is the range of available statistics. To cite one example, Petraeus cherrypicked civilian deaths only for his presentations, while Dan Macomber, a chief warrant officer who is in charge of the Multi-National Force’s

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• The world according to Nouri

  Published: September 26, 2007, 11:30 am

  Tags: Middle East, War, Iran, Iraq, Nouri Al Maliki, Sectarian Violence, Surge

  stopping the explosion of a sectarian war. He also said that Iranian intervention in Iraq has “ceased to exist”. ********** This is a good news / bad news situation for President Bush and the warmongers. On the “good” side, they can take credit for what Maliki calls “the greatest victory,” namely, the

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• The Party Bong of Misleading Statistics & Other News on Mess-opotamia

  Published: October 4, 2007, 10:51 am

  Tags: China, Congress, Iraq, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Military Affairs, Bush Administration

  war statistics be they sectarian killings, plain-vanilla killings, U.S. killings, goat and other livestock killings, and so on and so forth is like getting high on opium. Things feel really good for a while and then you wake up. Or so I’m told. As White House and Pentagon mouthpieces and war supporters in the mainstream media and

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• Memo From Baghdad: The Surge Is Dead. By the Way, Partition Is, Too

  Published: October 9, 2007, 9:24 am

  Tags: Iraq, Democrats, George W Bush, Republicans, Joe Biden, Nouri Al Maliki, Sectarian Violence, Surge, Gen Petraeus, Withdrawal, State Department

  Al-Hashimi gifts children who lost fathers in civil war When the definitive history of the sad affair known as the Iraq war is written, a meeting on September 27 between Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, the country’s most influential Shiite politician, and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most respected Shiite religious leader, will

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