Situation in Iraq

Atrios reminds us that it was “just one year ago today that the Iraq Study Group report was released. What would we do without bipartisan commissions of elder Villagers to save us? Or a media to tell us what it all means. Approximately 980 US troops have been killed since the world-changing report was released.”

View key recommendations of the ISG report HERE.

Gracing the Washington Post’s opinion page today are two former Bush administration officials, two movement conservatives and a journalist-turned-columnist warning that “47 million uninsured” isn’t “our biggest health-care problem.” Hardly anyone’s idea of balance. Here’s how the page is advertised on the frontpage of the Post’s website:

Today, President Bush will announce a freeze on some subprime mortgages in an effort to stop a wave of foreclosures. Bloomberg writes, “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s success in crafting agreement on a five-year fix of subprime mortgage rates owes a debt to an unlikely source: congressional Democrats.” Atrios has more. The NIE’s conclusion that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program came about after intelligence agencies obtained notes last summer of Iranian military officials complaining “bitterly” about the “decision by their superiors in late 2003 to shut down” a central part of the program. One in three Americans “want to deny social services, including public schooling and emergency room healthcare,” to undocumented immigrants, according to a LAT/Bloomberg poll. However, 60 percent still favor creating a pathway to citizenship for law-abiding individuals.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) yesterday took offense at being described as a “puppet” of President Bush by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman, “said it’s understandable that Republicans are sensitive about being associated with Bush.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule under the “Healthy Forests Initiative” that “allowed logging and burning projects in national forests without first analyzing their effects on the environment.” (more…)

On Tuesday, President Bush said he was never forewarned by the intelligence community that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003:

In August, I think it was John — Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was.

Now the White House is revealing that wasn’t true. In fact, Bush did know what the information was. CNN reports:

President Bush was told in August that Iran’s nuclear weapons program ‘may be suspended,’ the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday.”

The White House statement released by Dana Perino tonight also states McConnell told Bush “the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran’s covert nuclear program.”

On Tuesday, Bush said “nobody ever told me” to back down from his hawkish rhetoric on Iran. No, maybe not. But Bush knew Iran “may have suspended” its nuclear weapons program and that the intelligence community was in the process of “changing its assessment.” And yet, he continued to warn of “World War III” and a “nuclear holocaust” because nobody told him specifically to stop.

UPDATE: Dan Froomkin reported today that Bush deceptively “changed the way he talked about Iran” starting in August. “Instead of directly condemning Iranian leaders for pursuing nuclear weapons, he started more vaguely accusing them of seeking the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon. Even as he did that, however, he and the vice president accelerated their rhetorical efforts to persuade the public that the nuclear threat posed by Iran was grave and urgent.”

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