How Republicans Think: Wildebeest in Every Pot

Sometimes even the most altruistic notions come to naught. Take California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter's nifty idea to help the neediest of the needy: the 230,000 refugees in Chad who have fled the slaughter in Darfur and are desperately in need of food.

Hunter's staff contacted the embassy in N'Djamena, Chad, last week to see whether Hunter could distribute food at a camp. Hunter also wanted to put together an outing to hunt wildebeest and distribute the meat to refugees.

The embassy was decidedly lukewarm. It worried about logistics and the need to divert scarce staff to coordinate Hunter's schedule. There also were concerns about coordinating with the World Food Program's distribution schedule. The embassy sought advice from Foggy Bottom as to what to tell Hunter, a former presidential candidate, who will Congress at the end of this term.

Here's State's response last week: "Talking Points Regarding CODEL Hunter":

· The embassy "welcomes Congressman Hunter's interest in food assistance to Darfur refugees in Chad. Given the significant" U.S. aid in the world program, the embassy "would encourage the congressman to time his visit to coincide with an already scheduled food distribution."
· The embassy will "make the necessary arrangements for" Hunter to watch a food distribution in a camp.

· "Regarding the Congressman's desire to hunt wildebeest and distribute the cured meat to refugees, wildebeest are not present in Chad." (We're told some have been there, mostly in a no-hunting wildlife refuge.)

And, in case Hunter was looking for other game:

· "The Government of Chad does not permit the hunting of large mammals."

Actually, there's not a whole lot of wild game roaming these days near the refugee camps in Chad. It's a desert, and it has been at war for the last few decades. (The wildebeest's annual migration between Kenya and Tanzania is under serious threat from poachers, CNN reported last week.)

Hunter's office called State on Thursday and said he had decided not to go and that he was looking instead at commercial hunting expeditions in Kenya, Tanzania and Southern Africa.

But Hunter's office said yesterday that his trip -- the idea was two separate trips, we were told -- was not intended to be an official CODEL. Hunter, his office said, had always intended them to be private trips. "At this point, neither trip has been settled," a spokesman said.
Well, happy hunting.
Is wildebeest best cooked medium-rare?

McCain was against a long-term presence in Iraq before he was for it (more than once)

John McCain’s stated position, repeated over and over again throughout the campaign, is that he’s willing to leave U.S. troops in Iraq up to a century, so long as we’re not taking major casualties. He compares this to a presence along the lines of U.S. troops who remain in Korea a half-century after the war there.
There’s no shortage of problems associated with such an approach. First, it’s based on truly ridiculous assumptions. Second, it wouldn’t work. And third, as Sam Stein reminds us, McCain has frequently disagreed with his own vision.
Three years before the Arizona Republican argued on the campaign trail that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for 100 years in the absence of violence, he decried the very concept of a long-term troop presence.
In fact, when asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan — something McCain has repeatedly advocated during the campaign — the senator offered nothing short of a categorical “no.”
“I would hope that we could bring them all home,” he said on MSNBC. “I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff.”
Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue. “You’ve heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I’ve heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German…the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?”
McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. “I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence,” he responded. “And I don’t pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be.”
Keep in mind, McCain 2008 believes those of us who agree with McCain 2005 are terrorist-sympathizing defeatists.
I’d just add that the “evolution” of McCain’s thinking on a permanent U.S. troop presence in Iraq has taken a surprising number of twists and turns.

Consider:
* In 2005, McCain decided Iraqis resent our military presence, so we should reject a Korea-like model for long-term troop deployment. He insisted that “U.S. ‘visibility’ was detrimental to the Iraq mission and that Iraqis were responding negatively to America’s presence — positions held by both Obama and Clinton.”
* In 2006, McCain reversed course, and embraced the Korea model for a long-term military presence.
* In 2007, McCain reversed course again, saying the Korean analogy doesn’t work and shouldn’t be followed. “[E]ventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws,” McCain told Charlie Rose last fall.
* And in 2008, McCain reversed course yet again, deciding that we should be prepared to leave troops in Iraq, even if it means 100 years or more.
At each step, McCain was not only convinced that he was absolutely right, but dismissed anyone who dared to disagree with him as uninformed and unreliable.
Now, I should clarify that the point here is not just to embarrass McCain by exposing a spectacular series of flip-flops. Rather, the point is to highlight the fact that McCain apparently doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about. He does 180-degree turns without explanation, and then insists that he’s been consistent the entire time.
Noting McCain’s wholesale reversals on tax policies over the last 10 years, Josh Marshall mentioned the other day:
Genuine political and ideological transformations are pretty rare in contemporary American politics. Two in a row in less than a decade is close to unprecedented. McCain went from conservative Republican, to embracing many core Democratic policy positions and actively discussing a possible party switch, to cycling back and re-embracing the same policies.
What’s gotten the most attention is McCain’s position on taxes — the same Bush tax cuts that he said earlier in the decade “offend[ed] his conscience”, he now says must be made permanent and added on to by another round of tax cuts on the Bush model. This can be reduced down to cheap charges of ‘flip-flopping’ or expediency. But it actually goes a lot deeper than that. McCain is absolutely gung-ho and certain that he’s right about whatever his position and ‘principles’ are at the given moment. But they change repeatedly.
On taxes, McCain changed his mind four times in 10 years. On long-term troop presence in Iraq, McCain changed his mind four times in four years.
Remind us again, campaign reporters, about McCain’s “consistency” and “straight talk.”

Bosnian Serb Leader and Top War Crimes Suspect Arrested

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in the town of Jajce, northwest of Sarajevo, in 1995.

Bosnia’s Serb wartime president, Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, has been arrested, Serbian President Boris Tadic’s office said on Monday.
Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, said in a statement late Monday that Mr. Karadzic would be transferred to The Hague, but “the date will be determined in due course.”
Mr. Karadzic’s place of arrest was not announced, but Serbian government officials said Mr. Karadzic had been arrested by the Serbian secret police at a site not far from Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, nearly 13 years after he was first indicted on war crimes.

Radovan Karadzic
Radivoje Pavicic/Associated Press
Radovan Karadzic, the ultranationalist leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the 1992-1995 civil war in the former Yugoslavia, is widely regarded by diplomats as the chief architect of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia — crimes that were Europe’s worst atrocities since World War II. One of the world’s most wanted men, he was arrested on July 21, 2008.
Dr. Karadzic, a psychiatrist by profession and a published poet and writer, was twice indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The charges say he authorized the shooting of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo and for directing the slaughter of an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men in Srebenica, in eastern Bosnia.
Regarded as a war hero by many Serbs, he went into hiding in 1997 and escaped capture for years. Officials at the war crimes tribunal say a well-financed support network that included police officers and members of the intelligence services in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, as well as members of the Serbian Orthodox Church, enabled Dr. Karadzic to remain on the run.

Mr. Karadzic had topped the tribunal’s most-wanted list for more than a decade and was said to have resorted to elaborate disguises to elude authorities. Hague and European Union officials have long suspected that he was hiding in Serbia, and have pressed Belgrade to hand him over.
His reported hide-outs included refurbished caves in the mountains of eastern Bosnia and Serbian orthodox monastaries. Some Serbian newspapers reported that he had eluded arrest for the past 13 years by shaving off his signature mane of wild gray hair and disguising himself in a brown cassock.
The arrest, 11 years after Mr. Karadzic went into hiding, marks the culmination of a long and protracted effort by the west to press Serbia to arrest Mr. Karadzic for what is widely considered among the most heinous crimes committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
It comes just weeks after a new pro-western coalition government in Serbia was formed whose overriding goal is to bring Serbia into the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc. The EU has made delivering indicted war criminals to the Hague a precondition for Serbia’s membership.
The arrest was hailed by western diplomats as proof of Serbia’s determination to link itself to the west and put the virulent nationalism of the past behind it. It has particular resonance because the new coalition government is the result of an alliance between the Democrats of President Boris Tadic and the Socialist Party of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, which fought a war against the west in the 1990s, but has now vowed to bring Serbia back into the western fold.
In a sign that the move would accelerate Serbia’s path to the European Union, the EU’s enlargement chief Olli Rehn said Monday that the arrest of the top Bosnian Serb warcrimes fugitive was a “milestone” that would help clear the way for the poor Balkan nation to join the bloc.
“This is certainly a milestone in Serbia’s cooperation with the international criminal tribunal on the former Yugoslavia. It proves the determination of the new government to achieve full cooperation with the tribunal,” he said. He said he and EU foreign ministers would meet with Serbia’s foreign minister Vuk Jeremic at an EU foreign affairs meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss how the EU might accelerate ties with Serbia.
A NATO spokesman described the arrest as “good news for the international community”.
Karadzic’s location has long been a subject of international speculation since he went underground in 1997. The west has long suspected Belgrade of failing to pursue Karadzic, who is believed to have been hiding within Serbia until arrest Monday.
The United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague indicted the former leader on July 24, 1995, just days after thousands of unarmed Bosnian men were executed in and around the Bosnian town of Screbrenica, a UN protected enclave which was overrun by Bosnian Serb military and police. Their forces were assisted closely by Serbian troops sent by Belgrade.
The prosecution charged him with genocide, persecution, deportation and other crimes committed against non-Serb civilians in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war. He was indicted together with his chief military commander, Bosnian
Serb General Ratko Mladic, who is still on the run and believed to be in Serbia.

Manipulating With the Facts in the War on Iraq

It can not be explained too much, that the Bush Administration is forced to keep their opinion in charge that they stop the insurgence in Iraq effectively with a counter-surge and defeated Al Qaeda, while the Iraqi government is handling the Iranian backed extremists with the help of allied occupiers. And it can not be explained too much that this opinion is as false as the historical facts expose.

What was until the recent changes the Iraqi government led by Nouri al-Maliki? The opposition, parties who did not collaborate with the occupier’s troops, was a majority in the parliament. The USA had no other choice than to co-operate with what they left to remain the Iraqi government. The core of the government is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by Shiite Ayatollahs, according to the model of Iran and backed by Iran. Also Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki himself lived in Iran during the reign of Saddam Hoesein later moving to Syria. His Badr militia forces are backed, trained and armed by Iran. Those militia forces were needed during the elections to guarantee the “democratic” support. Most of the political allies of Al-Maliki were in exile in Iran during the Baath-regime.
So, who is backed by Iran, that’s very clear and indisputable.

The other parties were dependent on support of the Iraqi people and that’s why they could not collaborate with the occupiers. Muqtada al-Sadr has the most support of the Arab Shiite people, because he did not go to the Persians in Iran and did not ask or get help from Iran. He has his own militia the Mahdi Army. Than there are also the Sunnis who boycotted the government and the former Baathists who were not involved in the elections. They are in the armed Awakening Forces and this were the forces who could define, find, hunt and defeat the foreign Al Qaeda combatants among the whole of insurgent’s fighters. Third you have the Kurds, most Sunnis and also not backed by the Iranian government, but already strong during the last years of the Baath-regime.
Those who are not backed by Iran, that’s also very clear and indisputable.

The insurgence was in real life a fight of rival tribal and sectarian groups with a lot of bloodshed leading to separation of the different groups. It was always one group against all others and special all groups against the occupiers who could not do very much against it, but shoot violent shooters, moving shadows, kids, and peaceful civilians. Foreign troops also took part in further destructions with air strikes. By the time the separation of different groups was settled and new positions secured there were only the foreign Al Qaeda combatants which maintained terror among all groups of the Iraqi people and only local Sunni fighters could make the distinction between them and former insurgent Iraqi Sunnis. The Americans paid the Awakening Forces ten dollar the man per day to fight Al Qaeda. That was the surge and nothing more than that.

In the meantime the Iranian backed power is no longer Iranian backed.
Almost anybody wants the foreign troops out of their country and no Iranian influence in their place. They are united by that idea and that is the situation by now. It was a concession of Nouri al Maliki after his failed attack on the Mahdi Army and Muqtada al Sadr. It was a concession to save his life and the political existence of his party. They still think different about the future. Al Maliki wants an federal state with borders along tribal and sectarian regions, while Al Sadr and the others opt for an unity-state like during the Baath era. The elections in October will decide the issue. Sunni politicians entered this week the government again to make sure that there will not be an civil war after withdrawal of the foreign troops. Also Awakening Forces are now in the governments army and police, like the Mahdi Army and the Badr Movement infiltrated the army and police forces earlier. Kurds have their own forces in their own territories as before.

There are no Iranian backed extremists or Al Qaeda forces anymore.
Now read the following:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s appeared to be doing everything he could do this weekend to give his statements advocating a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal maximum exposure. Just days before Obama’s trip to Iraq, Maliki must have known that the American press would be covering Iraq in greater detail than usual and that the Prime Minister's endorsement of Obama’s plan would work also its way into every article written about Obama’s travel to Afghanistan.

And what follows next:

“Aware of this predicament, the McCain campaign found an ally today: Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Mullen declared when asked about the consequences of a withdrawal within two years that it could be “very dangerous:” “I’d worry about any kind of rapid movement out and creating instability where we have stability.” Desperate to get any support for its candidate’s position, the McCain campaign was quick to blast Mullen’s comments out in a statement:
Today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, the nation’s highest ranking officer, made clear that he believes such an approach could be ‘very dangerous.’ Admiral Mullen further added that his view is shared by U.S. commanders in Iraq, who are ‘adamant about continuing progress, about making decisions based on what’s actually happening in the battle space.’ Barack Obama says he wants a ’safe and responsible’ withdrawal from Iraq, but is stubbornly adhering to an unconditional withdrawal that places politics above the advice of our military commanders, the success of our troops, and the security of the American people.
Joe Lieberman also rushed to McCain’s rescue, echoing the talking-point the campaign first responded with yesterday, namely that the success of (McCain’s) surge is the only reason we can even talk of withdrawal today. Lieberman declared today,
If Barack Obama’s policy in Iraq had been implemented, he couldn’t be in Iraq today, is because he was prepared to accept retreat and defeat, and that would mean, today, al Qaeda would be in charge of parts of Iraq, Iranian-backed extremists would be in charge of other parts of Iraq. There’d be civil war and, maybe, even genocide.

You see how politics are manipulated by lying about the facts.
That’s not new in this war.

John McCain’s Fake Town Halls

It’s always nice to hear both sides, so we have to hear what a McCain admirer has to say about her beloved candidate. If I should try to be objective, you will never believe me anymore, but we have Mayhill Fowler who can do the word. Well I’ve read the article before passing it through to you, thus I know that nothing good can be said about McCain, at least not without lying, but she tries to be kind.
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The John McCain town hall meeting is a fraud. Unlike other writers at HuffPost, I want John McCain to do well this summer, so it pains me to report this. "I believe the town hall meeting is the most important element of democracy," Senator McCain said last week in Portsmouth, Ohio. I wouldn't go that far, but I would hate to see one senator hand the election to another. It's not good for Senator Obama, who already exudes enough confidence to power a wind turbine; it's not good for us, because we profit from spirited debate. And isn't that what a town hall meeting is supposed to be?
The town hall meeting yesterday in Albuquerque, New Mexico is typical in that the real action is not on the ground in the small conference room of Hotel Albuquerque but in the internet air war waged at the same time. There's an old-fashioned quaintness to John McCain's insistence on the centrality of the town hall meeting -- even he doesn't really believe in it, for he always shapes his meetings not to the locals and their concerns but to the action taking place in the campaign email and conference call skirmishes over the addled attention of the press that particular day. McCain, for example, gives his Albuquerque supporters a speech on Afghanistan (much to the surprise of some, who had been hoping to hear about social issues and the economy) because that very day Obama delivers his major foreign policy speech, "A New Strategy for a New World," at the same time in Washington, D.C. Obama is setting the pace elsewhere, far from New Mexico. The McCain Campaign is as usual playing catch-up in Albuquerque, for Obama has been warning about the need to win the war in Afghanistan at least as far back as his Pennsylvania speeches before that state's primary.
Beyond the illusion of locality, there's the atmosphere to these meets. Despite the crackle in the air war, the town hall meetings themselves are soporific. Sometimes we begin with the hagiography of American patriotism: the trooping of the colors, the singing of patriotic hymns, the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem. That was the drill in Portsmouth. But then quickly, and without fanfare, Mrs. Cindy McCain, as she's called, is giving a two-line introduction of her husband, and there's something about her soft voice -- I'm ready for a nap. Maybe because Cindy McCain is absent, Albuquerque isn't such a yawner. For one thing, the air war is heated, especially over what Senator Obama did or did not say about "the surge." For another, there is a plethora of security -- in addition to the usual suspects, five state troopers standing and staring, perhaps because most of New Mexico's Republican Party poobahs are seated in the small conference room. (A fillip to the unusual drama is that Governor Bill Richardson is holding an Obama fundraiser nearby at the same time.)
The absence of Mrs. Cindy McCain may be significant, for John McCain does not begin well, delivering his "Comprehensive Strategy for Victory in Afghanistan" speech haltingly. And he had spoken so beautifully just the day before at the La Raza convention in San Diego! I know the Senator is having an off day when he leans on the phrase "my friends" too often. (The McCain Campaign has tried to put their candidate on a "friends-free" diet.) From there Albuquerque descends into gaffe-querque, with poor John McCain stumbling through a series of verbal missteps.
Picked up ad nauseam by the national media is John McCain's calling the Czech Republic "Czechoslovakia" for the second time in two days. In answer to a question about buying gas, the Senator typically ranges far afield and wanders (no surprise) into one of his favorite topics, Iran. "As you also know, in recent days they [the Iranians] have tested missiles which could probably, in some ways, deliver a nuclear weapon, so it's very serious, a very serious situation. Now I believe that we are seeing a positive response from our European friends. I suggested a long time ago a League of Democracies, and it's very clear that Russia and China, especially Russia, will veto significant measures which will impact the behaviour of the Iranians. Now I regret that. And I regret some of the recent behaviour that Russia has exhibited, and I will be glad to talk about that later on, including the reduction of oil supplies to Czechoslovakia after they [the Czechs] agreed with us on missile defense system, etc."
It's too bad John McCain doesn't confine himself to a "talk about that later on." And what's up with the missiles that could probably, in some ways, deliver a nuclear weapon? Shouldn't Senator John McCain be able to speak more to the point than "in some ways?" He has a problem with vagueness all morning long, but it is this first question, the one on buying gas, that is most illustrative. A gentleman suggests that, as a way to help with the gas price crisis, "we first list the people who are selling us gas and doing us harm," like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Then, according to this man, we should have "a good list and a bad list" and buy only from the good.
In reply John McCain says, "I think that you are right. I think that the American people are beginning to understand more clearly that this huge transfer of $700 billion a year of your money is one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. And it is a national security issue, my friends. It is an environmental issue, clearly an economic issue. But we can't afford this as far as our national security is concerned -- that money goes -- you mentioned a couple of them, Venezuela, ah, some other countries that -- that are clearly not our friends, and there is compelling evidence that some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations. So it is a national security issue. And I would be glad to identify them, although the American people, whom we tend sometimes to underestimate, have figured a lot of this out."
Who are the "we" who "tend sometimes to underestimate?" Aren't all of us in the room in Albuquerque Americans? Besides the condescension in we v. the people, what's clear is not that "some other countries" are our enemies but that John McCain cannot think of them. This is the third thing that is wrong with the town hall meetings: John McCain is no longer able to muster the facts necessary for spirited discourse. He is not the master of policy detail that is required now, in 2008, to make a credible run for the presidency. Ironically, we have George Bush to thank for raising the bar. The American people are no longer willing -- at least, I believe this to be so -- to proffer their trust to a candidate merely because of his good humor and personality. From what I've seen of John McCain in the summer's town hall meetings, he relies entirely too much on jokes and bonhomie to slide past the specifics he may not be able to recall quite in the moment.


Well, you do know now how it goes but that’s not all.
Read more:

The End Of a Murderous Beast

It is better that Barack Obama will not become the next President of the United States of America. Americans do not deserve such a honourable privilege. The American people is the most bloodthirsty monster ever on planet Earth. The murderous monster has to take some lessons.

Here you can find the poll
Half of the 300 million Americans want to kill all the 30 million Iraqi, the only way to win the war, while the Iraqi political parties are united now in a peaceful and orderly approach of their resurrection as a unity-state, without interference of Iran and Saudi Arabia and with the occupiers on leave within a certain schedule. Than the Iraqi War will be lost by the USA. About 94% of the Iraqi people want the foreign troops out of their country and prepare to fight for that.
They have good reasons.
The USA demands 60 permanent military bases in Iraq and legal immunity for their troops and contractors (the private slaughters who kill and rape). That’s an unlimited license to kill.
It is impossible to calculate what will cause more killings, the free hand to the foreigners without resistance of the people or a systematic genocide, but the last will faster be decided. To prevent the genocide it is reasonable for Russia, China and Europe to interfere and protect the Iraqi people with harsh military force, ruining the American economy and defeating them all over the world.
We can not tolerate that the whole population of a sovereign state will be wiped off the map for nothing more than “America’s honour.”
Will Barack Obama be able to defeat McCain in the elections and save the USA?
Yes he can, but Americans do not deserve that.
Half of the American population wants the genocide and that makes it the most bloodthirsty monster-people of the world since human mankind exists. They have to be exterminated for the safety of us all.
If Barack Obama will bring some change for a while, one day the monster will awake with their furious desire to kill again. For ones and all times we have to get rid of this cancer.

What has caused this hysterical desire for total genocide?
Well, it is simple and alone that they can not stand to lose an illegal war. That is only their honour, no need or ratio. For the Americans honour is the records of slaughtering people. They offer the lives of their youngsters to kill more of the others without any reason. The honour to be the most bloodthirsty killer is for most of the Americans the highest goal to achieve. And do not make mistakes, a part of them think that the young Barack Obama will do the job better than the old creep John McCain, a 100% mental disabled Vietnam veteran!

We sought that a peaceful and orderly transition to a democratic Iraq should satisfy the USA. It would be difficult. This year in his spring briefing general David Patreus said to see no light in the tunnel and McCain called that a tremendous success. During some months there was real success, but not thanks to the occupiers, who were at the side of the Iranian funded PM Nouri al Maliki fighting against the Mahdi Army of the mighty nationalist shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr who has the support of the whole opposition. Muqtada, a better politician than strong in armed forces, negotiated a cheese fire, The Russian President Putin granted Iran’s security in return for Iran’s not interfering in Iraq and by then Nouri al Maliki, his Badr party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq stood alone with the Prime Minister’s life in play, if and as soon as the foreign troops should leave the country. Muqtada al Sadr position was stronger than ever and Nouri al Maliki went the other, the nationalist side and refused to negotiate the American proposals, for the first time gaining full support of the majority in the parliament and Al Sadr. Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites were united!
And the light in the tunnel?
There was no tunnel anymore.
The foreign troops were bound to leave and the Prime Minister of the sovereign unity-state Iraq demanded a time schedule to achieve that end of the occupation.
One can say, the war has made things better in Iraq.
It had to be so.
It’s just what Barack Obama wanted and that point of view was popular in the USA. But things changed in a way where McCain can believe in. Fuel prices rise to unthinkable record highs and the American economy is in bad shape, while the troops sit on the third largest oil reserve in the world and are foreseen to be send home. That makes all the difference.

What is the profit of the war?
If there is no profit, the war is lost!
To gain profit you need a crime.
To call that honour, McCain has to become the next President and that will cause World War III and the end of America.

Overstating Our Fears

Glenn L. Carle was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats. He has something to say to us, which is heard from his position outspoken a bit more convincing than my comments.
As it goes:
Sen. John McCain has repeatedly characterized the threat of "radical Islamic extremism" as "the absolute gravest threat . . . that we're in against." Before we simply accept this, we need to examine the nature of the terrorist threat facing our country. If we do so, we will see how we have allowed the specter of that threat to distort our lives and take our treasure.
The "Global War on Terror" has conjured the image of terrorists behind every bush, the bushes themselves burning and an angry god inciting its faithful to religious war. We have been called to arms, built fences, and compromised our laws and the practices that define us as a nation. The administration has focused on pursuing terrorists and countering an imminent and terrifying threat. Thousands of Americans have died as a result, as have tens of thousands of foreigners.
The inclination to trust our leaders when they warn of danger is compelling, particularly when the specters of mushroom clouds and jihadists haunt every debate. McCain, accepting this view of the threats, pledges to continue the Bush administration's policy of few distinctions but ruthless actions.
I spent 23 years in the CIA. I drafted or was involved in many of the government's most senior assessments of the threats facing our country. I have devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat.
We rightly honor as heroes those who serve our nation and offer their lives to protect ours. We all "support the troops." Yet the first step for any commander is to understand the enemy. The next commander in chief should base his counterterrorism policies on the following realities:
We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears. Al-Qaeda is the only global jihadist organization and is the only Islamic terrorist organization that targets the U.S. homeland. Al-Qaeda remains capable of striking here and is plotting from its redoubt in Waziristan, Pakistan. The organization, however, has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation. Al-Qaeda threatens to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, but its capabilities are far inferior to its desires. Even the "loose nuke" threat, whose consequences would be horrific, has a very low probability. For the medium term, any attack is overwhelmingly likely to consist of creative uses of conventional explosives.
No other Islamic-based terrorist organization, from Mindanao to the Bekaa Valley to the Sahel, targets the U.S. homeland, is part of a "global jihadist movement" or has more than passing contact with al-Qaeda. These groups do and will, however, identify themselves with global jihadist rhetoric and may bandy the bogey-phrase of "al-Qaeda." They are motivated by hostility toward the West and fear of the irresistible changes that education, trade, and economic and social development are causing in their cultures. These regional terrorist organizations may target U.S. interests or persons in the groups' historic areas of interest and operations. None of these groups is likely to succeed in seizing power or in destabilizing the societies they attack, though they may succeed in killing numerous people through sporadic attacks such as the Madrid train bombings.
There are and will continue to be small numbers of Muslims in certain Western countries -- in the dozens, perhaps -- who seek to commit terrorist acts, along the lines of the British citizens behind the 2005 London bus bombings. Some may have irregular contact with al-Qaeda central in Waziristan; more will act as free agents for their imagined cause. They represent an Islamic-tinged version of the anarchists of the late 19th century: dupes of "true belief," the flotsam of revolutionary cultural change and destruction in Islam, and of personal anomie. We need to catch and neutralize these people. But they do not represent a global movement or a global threat.
The threat from Islamic terrorism is no larger now than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. Islamic societies the world over are in turmoil and will continue for years to produce small numbers of dedicated killers, whom we must stop. U.S. and allied intelligence do a good job at that; these efforts, however, will never succeed in neutralizing every terrorist, everywhere.
Why are these views so starkly at odds with what the Bush administration has said since the beginning of the "Global War on Terror"? This administration has heard what it has wished to hear, pressured the intelligence community to verify preconceptions, undermined or sidetracked opposing voices, and both instituted and been victim of procedures that guaranteed that the slightest terrorist threat reporting would receive disproportionate weight -- thereby comforting the administration's preconceptions and policy inclinations.
We must not delude ourselves about the nature of the terrorist threat to our country. We must not take fright at the specter our leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are.
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But even this is too scaring, while 9/11 was a false flag operation, an inside job and Al Qaeda did until now not dare to attack the USA homeland.