A White House employee accidentally sent out an email titled "Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan".  Ooops.  So much for the inexperienced Obama.  Especially since Bush himself has announce support for an Iraqi pullout on a schedule he’s calling a "general time horizon".  So much for not surprising the enemy with a withdrawal timetable.

According to Bloomberg,

Obama’s 16-month window is “the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'’ Maliki said in interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine published on its Web site yesterday. U.S. troops should leave the country “as soon as possible,'’ Maliki said.

The McCain camp responded quickly and shamelessly tried to take credit for the whole situation.  Tucker Bounds, McCain spokesman (until he sticks his foot in his mouth, aka Phil Gramm) sent out an e-mail response statement:

The only reason that the conversation about reducing troop levels in Iraq is happening is because John McCain challenged the failed Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq and argued for the surge strategy that is responsible for the successes we’ve achieved and which Barack Obama opposed.

Shameless indeed. 

You hear this thrown around just about every day coming out of every pundit’s mouth, but what are the real numbers? First you need to know there are basically two types of public debt - public and intergovernmental.  Public debt is a mix of t-notes, savings bonds, t-bills, etc.  This is the debt that is owned by foreign countries.  Intergovernmental debt consists of medicare obligations, military retirements, the FDIC program, etc.  According to the Treasury Department as of May 2008, there was $5.3 trillion in public debt and $4.1 trillion in intergovernmental debt.

How much can we spend?  Congress sets the limit.  Congress just raised the debt ceiling in September of 2007 by $1 trillion dollars, raising it to $9.815 trillion from $8.965 trillion.  From the May 2008 numbers above you can see we quickly used our new credit limit.

To get an idea of who owns the public debt, let’s look at t-notes.  The US Treasury department released a report of major foreign holders of Treasury Securities.  As of May 2008, there were $2.6133 trillion dollars in outstanding Treasury Securities.   Here are the top 4 foreign owners by percentage:

1. Japan owns $578.7 billion, or 22.1%.
2. China owns $506.5 billion, or 19.4%. 
3. The United Kingdom owns $272.5 billion, or 10.4%. 
4. The next category is oil exporters that own $164.3 billion or 6.3%.  The oil exporters category includes Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Indonesia, Venezuela, and Eqcuador.

Next time you are at a cocktail party, you can whip this out over a frozen margarita.

There is not much written about McCain’s first wife, Carol.  With good reason.  The story is a sickening example of a childish man stealing his buddy’s wife (Carol), then abandoning her, crippled and tattered, for a beauty queen beer heiress.   It sounds like a cruel political sound bite, but it is frightenly true.

Carol McCain gave the London mail an interview.  Here she tells of her car accident, recovery, and gaining weight all while McCain was a POW.  McCain returned from capture to cast Carol aside.  Carol says of the marriage:

My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.

Carol McCain, strapped financially by the accident, has a clause in her divorce settlement barring her from being vocal about the terms of the separation.  Carol’s marriage to McCain was not her first.  She was married to an Annapolis classmate of McCain and had two children.  McCain felt it was sporting to lure her away and married her….only to dump her for the next heiress that came along.

With values like that, we should all hide our loot should McCain become president.

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN yesterday, Nancy Pelosi called Bush "a total failure". 

God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States — a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject

Anybody born and raised in the south knows that "bless his heart" is polite code used to describe a person that just a bit pitiful.  As Pelosi speaks frankly about the leader of the free world (sigh), I look forward to the end of his reign as he limps pitifully, bess his heart, into the sunset.  Hopefully he will make it there without screwing anything else up.

No, this is not an April fool joke (the headline, not Bush).  George W. Bush, in his fruitless effort to make something of his presidency, is on the road trying to flex his foreign policy muscles.  Why just last week he invited former soviet states Kiev and Georgia to become NATO members.  He gave a singing endorsement that the US would not oppose such a membership, thereby pissing off the rest of NATO.

On it’s face it seems to be a nice little gesture, but as usual he speaks before he thinks.  No that the US has such a dastardly reputation, when you are invited to join NATO, you are invited to be occupied by the US.  The rest of NATO does not think it is a good idea.  If fact, George’s buddy, Putin (dictator of Russia), said if Kiev and Georgia become members of NATO and host the US, he will point his nukes at them (see CNN article).

CNN reported, US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, just "loves" the reporters at the Fox Network.  Rice was overheard a couple of days ago on an open mic between television interviews saying of Fox News correspondents:

 My Fox guys, I love every single one of them.

 

Last March the Smoking Gun got a hold of a document from Dick Cheney’s travel entourage that demands all TV’s in his hotel room be tuned to Fox News.

With the pleas for non-partisanship and peace still ringing over Washington, Bush aides announce today that he will completely ignore the will of Congress and the American People and send more troops to violence-ridden Iraq.

Bush decision also come on the wake of a Democratic Congress announcing they want to vote on a troop increase.  Bush’s need for more troops is not based on any rationality, but on Bush’s desire for revenge and control until the very end of his failed administration.  He sees the stance of Nancy Pelosi ("We will not be swiftboated on these issues") and Ted Kennedy (introducing legislation to block funding of additional troops) and Bush refuses to yeild to common sense.

Bush’s claim that he is responsive to what his generals in the field want is a farce.  Because General George Casey disagreed with Bush’s military wishes, he went shopping for another General that holds his point of view.  Insightfully Bush went to the person who was in charge of the failed mission to train the Iraqis to take charge of their own country, Lt. General David Petraeus.  Desirous of a promotion Petraeus agreed to support Bush’s position.  In return Bush promptly promoted him to General and put him in charge of Iraq.  Now when Bush pulls his string, Petraeus says, "More troops.  More troops.". 

You’re doing a hell of a job, Petraeus. 

After four years of a floundering war, hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of young American and innocent Iraqi lives lost, Bush is going on television tonight to try to convince the American People that more troops thrown on top of a bad war is a good thing.  It should be an interesting show.

It’s hard to believe.  Just when we need an additional 30,000 troops in Iraq, Bush bombs Somalia today in an effort to kill 3 suspected Al-Aqada men.  In the mean time he killed about 22 to 27 people.

Canada reports that Bush’s hasty strike may have killed 3 Canadians. Good job, B.

 Italy is not too thrilled with the hasty air strikes, either.  According to the BBC:

But Italy - the former colonial power in central and southern Somalia - condemned the US strikes.

Italian Foreign minister Massimo d’Alema said Rome opposed "unilateral initiatives that could spark new tensions".

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed "concern" that the air strikes could lead to an escalation of hostilities.

 Most of the European community has condemed Bush’s strike and claims it could lead to the destabilization of Somalia.  Usually when you bomb the crap out of a country, that’s what happens.

The evil, fork-tongued Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun Times reported today:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has gone public with criticism of President Bush’s Iraq policy, is caustic in private about the proposed ‘’surge'’ of 30,000 additional U.S. troops.

Powell noted that the recent congressional delegation to Iraq headed by Sen. John McCain heard from combat officers that they wanted more troops.

‘’The colonels will always say they need more troops,'’ the retired general says. ‘’That’s why we have generals.'’

A footnote: Senior Republican senators are trying to get word to the president that any troop surge would be dead on arrival in Congress.

When the breeze blows another way, Novak is there with the wind in his face. 

Do you ever wonder how the US Army is going to come up with the 30,000 surge in troops that Bush wants to send to Iraq?  The draft?  No, this is our crack military’s answer to increasing the number of troops:  send letters to 275 officers killed or wounded in action urging them to return to active duty.  CNN reported:

"Army personnel officials are contacting those officers’ families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters," the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night.

The Army did not say how or when the mistake was discovered. It said the database normally used for such correspondence with former officers had been "thoroughly reviewed" to remove the names of wounded or dead soldiers.

 Did they forget that soldiers die and are wounded on a regular basis?  Let’s rotate the recruiters out there for a tour.