World-News

Common Dreams
by Yifat Susskind

01/11/07

Wednesday night, Bush the Decider announced his intention to throw gasoline on the inferno he ignited in Iraq. He will send in another 21,500 US soldiers, who will kill and injure many more Iraqis and may be killed themselves. Bush's move shows total contempt for the demands of public opinion and the better judgment of Congress, the Iraq Study Group, and his own top generals (two of whom had to be replaced in order to push the plan through). This decision is not just 'stay the course.' It is speed up the course even though you're headed straight off a cliff. ... So what now? We should demand that Congress take advantage of the hearings scheduled over the next few weeks to really interrogate Bush's proposal. We should demand that they refuse Bush's request (expected in February) for another $100 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we should forcefully remind them that it's not nearly enough to say 'no' to a troop increase. There are already 132,000 US soldiers in Iraq. A new Iraq policy must begin by bringing all of them home...

https://www.commondreams.org/views07/0111-26.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp


https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=bring+them+home

Fox News
by Susan Estrich

What are the Democrats so afraid of? The country opposes the 'surge,' as it is now known. The numbers for President Bush and his war have never been lower. You don't go to war with 36 percent of all Americans behind you. The military opposes the surge. The guys who were for more troops in the first place say it's too late now in any event. Everybody else recognizes that our surge doesn't solve someone else's civil war. Consider the testimony of General John Abizaid before the Senate Armed Services Committee in November...

https://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,242905,00.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Abizaid
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Susan+Estrich

Mother Jones
by James Ridgeway

01/11/07

As usual, observers are grasping wildly for an explanations as to why Bush is doing what he's doing. No matter what one thinks of the President, when push comes to shove, it's hard to believe he really wants to drag out the war so it can be handed over to a successor in 2008; or that he is such a psycho he can't stop referring to defeat as victory. That's not the kind of stuff the Bush family legacy is made of. There may well be a much more sinister game plan here, one that centers around the emergence of Henry Kissinger over the last year as an adviser to Bush and other top officials in Washington...

https://tinyurl.com/yahn5s


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Kissinger
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=James+Ridgeway

There is significant doubt that President Bush's "surge" can do anything to stop the unwavering sectarian violence in Iraq. In Iraq Diaries today, Hussein Iyad provides a glimpse at that violence in a simple and devastating piece.

https://electroniciraq.net/news/2819.shtml

AntiWar.Com
by Pat Buchanan

01/12/07

Commenting on the speech on MSNBC, where he is a regular these days, Pat [Buchanan] went so far as to say that, on this basis, if he were a sitting Senator, he would vote 'aye' on the surge. Pat is motivated by a desire to avert a real disaster for American interests in the region, and sees this as 'Bush's last chance' to undo what he has wrought. But there are no do-overs when it comes to war. Bad policies have bad consequences. As ye reap, so shall ye sow. It's a principle ordained by heaven, and fully applicable to everyone on earth -- Americans included. The war both Pat and I opposed is having exactly the effect we envisioned. The idea that a 'surge' of some 20,000 troops will do anything but further irritate and inflame this open wound is a fantasy, and hardly a patriotic one. For it delays the necessity of looking reality square in the face, and -- worse -- prevents the public and the policymaking elites from absorbing the vital lessons of this radical misadventure: that interventionism leads to exactly the opposite of its stated intentions, and the business of Empire is a losing proposition...

https://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10310


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Pat+Buchanan

"When the President announced that he had already 'committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq,'" writes the Nation Institute's Tom Engelhardt, "when he 'surges' them into Baghdad and al-Anbar Province, he is surging from Kenai, from Wasilla, from South Gate. And he is ensuring a spate of future Pentagon 'announcements' that will again take us to what's left of the hamlets, villages, small towns, and out of the way smaller cities of this country, the places Americans increasingly don't notice. When the President talks to us, as he did last night, about "a year ahead that will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve," this is who he is mainly sacrificing."

https://electroniciraq.net/news/2816.shtml



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Tom+Engelhardt

Salon
by Michael Scherer

01/12/07

'I have to say, Madam Secretary, that I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam,' announced [Nebraska Senator Charles] Hagel, who earned two Purple Hearts as an infantryman in that war. 'I've gone along with the president on this, and I bought into his dream,' Ohio Sen. George Voinovich added a few minutes later. 'At this stage of the game, I don't think it's going to happen.' Minnesota's Norm Coleman seemed to agree: 'The cost is too high,' he said of the plan for more troops. New Hampshire's John Sununu expressed mild disappointment. Added Alaska's Lisa Murkowski: 'I'm not convinced, as I look to the plan that the president presented yesterday, that what we are seeing is that much different than what we have been doing in the past.' And those were just the sentiments of Republicans...

https://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/01/12/condoleezza/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Michael+Scherer

Waterloo Courier

01/11/07

President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq ran into a wall of criticism on Capitol Hill on Thursday as administration officials drew confrontational, sometimes mocking challenges from both Democrats and Republicans. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in response that the administration might abandon the increase if the Iraqi government doesn't do its part, but he provided no timetable. 'I think most of us, in our minds, are thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years,' he told the House Armed Services Committee...

https://tinyurl.com/uw7sj


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge

Flash video presentation
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/yourwar.htm

Text of President Bush’s address on Wednesday, as prepared by the White House.

https://www.ludingtondailynews.com/news.php?story_id=34536


From Information Clearing House



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troop+surge