Top Items:
White House:
Initial Benchmark Assessment Report — This report to Congress is submitted consistent with Section 1314 of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007 (Public Law 110-28) (the "Act"). It includes an assessment …
Discussion:
Outside The Beltway, Agence France Presse, The Corner, michellemalkin.com, Taylor Marsh, Gateway Pundit, Wizbang, Guardian, USA Today, MoJoBlog and TIME: Swampland
RELATED:
Bob Woodward / Washington Post:
CIA Said Instability Seemed 'Irreversible' — Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House. — For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give …
Washington Post:
White House Gives Iraq Mixed Marks in Report — Assessment Identifies Positive Movement in 8 of the 18 Benchmarks — Iraqi progress on political and military goals sought by Congress has been mixed over the past several months, with slow advances toward some of the targets and paralysis …
Jules Crittenden:
Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant? — Right now, all the talk in DC is whether there has been any progress in Iraq. No one can wait till September. They need to know now. Primarily, it appears, because they need to kill the war for their own domestic political reasons before it kills them.
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice, NewsBusters.org, If I Ran the Zoo, Confederate Yankee and Michael Yon
Kevin Drum / Washington Monthly:
IRAQ UPDATE....Non-insane conservative James Joyner has read …
IRAQ UPDATE....Non-insane conservative James Joyner has read …
Discussion:
Eschaton
Washington Post:
U.S. Warns Of Stronger Al-Qaeda — Administration Report Cites Havens in Pakistan — Six years after the Bush administration declared war on al-Qaeda, the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks …
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Orlando Sentinel:
Rep. Bob Allen arrested on sex charge — TITUSVILLE - State Rep. Bob Allen was arrested Wednesday afternoon at a local park after offering to perform a sex act on an undercover officer in exchange for $20, police said. — Allen, R-Merritt Island, was booked into the Brevard County jail …
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Sridhar Pappu / Washington Post:
A Bush Aide's Long Road From The White House — On a snowy evening in December 1998, Sara M. Taylor, the daughter of a former pipe fitter at a John Deere plant in Iowa, came to a meeting at the Capital Hilton. Washington had grown dark and quiet, and the hotel restaurant was empty …
Discussion:
TalkLeft, PoliBlog (TM), Corrente, Balkinization, Sister Toldjah, Townhall.com, The Heretik and New York Times
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Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
Against Claims of Executive Privilege, a Committee Comes Up Dry
Against Claims of Executive Privilege, a Committee Comes Up Dry
Discussion:
Slate, Salon, New York Times, Crooks and Liars, Los Angeles Times, The Carpetbagger Report, QandO, TPMCafe blogs and TPMmuckraker
James Hohmann / Dallas Morning News:
Nobel laureate calls for removal of Bush — Irish peace activist's speech at Dallas event gets standing ovation — Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams came from Ireland to Texas to declare that President Bush should be impeached. — In a keynote speech at the International Women's Peace Conference …
Discussion:
Hot Air, michellemalkin.com, NewsBusters.org, Little Green Footballs and Blue Crab Boulevard
David Ignatius / Washington Post:
A Consensus Waiting to Happen — The last time I remember Ambassador Ryan Crocker warning about a possible bloodbath, it was in September 1982 as the Sabra-Shatila massacre was taking place in Beirut. So when Crocker tells the New York Times that a rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could produce …
Discussion:
The Atlantic Online, The Carpetbagger Report, If I Ran the Zoo, Ezra Klein and Washington Monthly
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Jim Henley / Unqualified Offerings:
Slop Will Eat Itself
Slop Will Eat Itself
Discussion:
Total Information Awareness, Lawyers, Guns and Money, Daily Kos and Middle Earth Journal
New York Times:
McCain Call Raises an Ethics Question — About 3 p.m. Tuesday, Senator John McCain ducked off the Senate floor, entered the Republican cloakroom and took out his mobile phone. Just hours after accepting the resignation of his two top campaign aides, he was making a conference call …
Washington Post:
Wishful Thinking on Iraq — IT SEEMS like just weeks ago, because it was, that Congress approved funding for the war in Iraq and instructed Gen. David H. Petraeus to report back on the war's progress in September. Now, for reasons having more to do with American politics than with Iraqi reality, September isn't soon enough.
Andrew Sullivan / The Atlantic Online:
The Presser — He's arguing he didn't decide to go to war; Saddam did. He's saying he agrees with his Republican critics. He's blaming the generals for all the combat decisions that have made this war a failure. His blaming Tommy Franks specifically for the troop levels was particularly piquant.
Discussion:
Watching Those We Chose
Eric Lipton / New York Times:
A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in U.S. Security — Undercover Congressional investigators set up a bogus company and obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March that would have allowed them to buy the radioactive materials needed for a so-called dirty bomb.
Rasmussen Reports:
Poll: 19% Consider Troop Surge a Success — Just 19% of American voters believe that the U.S. troop surge in Iraq was a success. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 43% of voters consider the surge a failure. Twenty-four percent (24%) say it's too soon to tell while 15% are not sure.
Leonard Doyle / The Independent:
'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?' — Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq — It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn.