Sunday 24th of November 2024
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attention deficit disorder .....

‘For the first time in American history, Americans have gone to the polls in wartime and rejected that war. Not only that, but they've done so overwhelmingly. Just as the election of 1932 was a seismic repudiation of the failed economic policies of the Hoover Republicans, the election of 2006 was a landslide against the Bush Republicans and their criminally misguided war against Iraq.

Amid pre-election polls showing that voters oppose "staying the course" by margins of as much as three to one, the American people have issued a sweeping mandate to the U.S. government: Get out of Iraq.

How that mandate is handled by Democrats and Republicans is yet to be resolved.

And both energized Democrats and chastened, mainstream Republicans who want to change course in Iraq will confront a stubborn, blinkered president who, for the next two years, is still the commander-in-chief, and a giant stone Sphinx of a vice president, who has already declared that "it doesn't matter" what voters think. "We've got the basic strategy right," Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News over the weekend.’

The Iraq Mandate

Lame duck or lame duck?

From the New York Times

Bush to Ask Lame Duck Congress to Confirm Gates

By DAVID STOUT
Published: November 9, 2006
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — The White House said today that it would seek Senate confirmation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s successor in the lame duck Congress [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/us/politics/09bushcnd.html?hp&ex=1163134800&en=a6a0da65de66e57a&ei=5094&partner=homepage|that is about to reconvene], and that it would seek confirmation of United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton as well.
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Gus: Hey what kind of headline is that? Lame President begs New Congress should be more appropriate... Who's the president guy with the bird flu again?

and while you were snoozing...

U.S. Missile Defense Spending to Peak in 2016 at $15 Billion

By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — [http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2006_11_9.html#7A5EADD8|Current U.S. plans indicate that annual spending on the missile defense system] will peak in 2016 at about $15 billion, according to a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (see GSN, Oct. 30).

The government has spent billions on a missile shield designed to protect the United States and its allies from the threat of ballistic missiles, but the program has yet to create an operational defense, critics say.
Missile defense programs have a mixed record in testing; in September, a target missile in an intercept drill had to be destroyed shortly after launching (see GSN, Sept. 14).
The most advanced components of the system “may” rather than “should” have some defensive capability against a limited attack, Defense Department Operational Test and Evaluation Director David Duma stated in January (see GSN, June 26).
Defense officials, though, have continued to express their belief in the system’s ability to bring down an ICBM. Asked in June how much faith he put in the system, Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said, “In my mind it’s a much higher confidence than what has been described by our critics.”
Funding for the program remains robust and the budget office expects it to reach its highest level in 2016 as a number of defense systems move through the procurement phase and begin to be deployed. Annual costs would then decline to about $8 billion in 2024, the office expects.
The peak comes roughly three years later than the date projected by budget analysts in a 2005 report, due to delays a number of major projects. The budget office analysis does not detail the nature of those delays.

Another case of bird flu

From our ABC

Bolton's UN nomination in trouble
A second leading figure in the Bush administration looks set to be replaced as a result of the Democrats' winning control of Congress in the mid-term elections.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, was hand picked by President George Bush and needs to have his appointment confirmed by the Senate to stay in office.

But the White House's resubmission of the nomination has sparked an immediate row with Democrats.

The Democrat Senator, Joseph Biden, says the confirmation will not happen.