President Bush’s mortgage relief plan was “set by the mortgage industry and Wall Street firms. The effort is voluntary and it leaves . Moreover, it would affect only a small number of subprime borrowers.”
“Senate Republicans are planning to to investigate the conclusions of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as well as the specific intelligence that went into it.”
“In a sharp rebuke to White House counterterrorism policy,” the Senate and House intelligence committees agreed last night “to require all American interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive methods,” effectively .
With just a week before News Corporation takes control of Dow Jones & Company, Rupert Murdoch plans to remove many executives in the “upper echelon at Dow Jones” and replace them with his “.”
Bush recently announced a new, “” occupation of Iraq, to be implemented . Today, Sens. Jim Webb (D-VA), Bob Casey (D-PA), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Carl Levin (D-MI) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) against committing the U.S. to a long-term presence without congressional consent:
[W]e want to convey our strong concern regarding any commitments made by the United States with respect to American security assurances to Iraq to help deter and defend against foreign aggression or other violations of Iraq’s territorial integrity. Security assurances, once made, cannot be easily rolled back without incurring a great cost to America’s strategic credibility and imperiling the stability of our nation’s other alliances around the world. […]
It is unacceptable for your Administration to unilaterally fashion a long-term relationship with Iraq without the full and comprehensive participation of Congress from the very start of such negotiations. […]
We trust you agree that the proposed extension of long-term U.S. security commitments to a nation in a critical region of the world requires the full participation and consent of the Congress as a co-equal branch of our government.
Read the below:
A new Government Accountability Office Pentagon Inspector General report details “,” revealing that there is “more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces.” According to the analysis, the military, for example, “could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.”
In 2005, while “in the midst of congressional and legal scrutiny” over its secret detention program, the CIA “ of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody,” the agency admitted today. The videotapes, which contained footage of “severe interrogation techniques,” were “destroyed in part” out of concern that they could “could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy.” The decision to destroy the tapes was made “within the C.I.A. itself.”
UPDATE: The AP reports that “ of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them.”
The Bush reaction to [the NIE] — he didn’t try to block it. He didn’t try to postpone it. He didn’t spend weeks, he didn’t ask the intelligence community ‘give me a couple of weeks, let’s see if we can figure out some kind of negotiating initiative or some way to respond to this.’ He didn’t try to spin it to our advantage. This is an amazing moment of candor by the United States.blockquote> ThinkProgress criticized Klein for his comment that Bush’s reaction to the NIE was “ by the United States.” In a post titled “,” Klein responds to our criticism:This is wrong. OBviously, I was referring to the NIE itself as a remarkable moment of candor for the United States. I thought that Bush’s reaction to it was, literally, incredible. As in, not to be believed–which was made completely clear in my cover story.In just a few short hours, Klein has gone from saying Bush engaged in an “,” to saying Bush is “.” We appreciate the conversion, but we don’t appreciate the disingenuousness of it.We weren’t “wrong” or “misinterpreted.” TV pundit Joe Klein explicitly said that an “amazing moment of candor” occurred in the context of “the Bush reaction” to the NIE; he marveled that Bush “didn’t try to block it” and “didn’t try to spin it.” But Time magazine blogger Joe Klein says, “I thought that Bush’s reaction to it was, literally, incredible. As in, not to be believed.” So what was it? Was Bush’s reaction part of America’s “moment of candor,” or was it “not to be believed”? The two Joe Kleins should interpret one another, sort it out, and get on the same page. And maybe one of the Joe Kleins should apologize to the other. As stated, “Is it possible for Joe Klein to admit error at all? He could just say: I misspoke, which is easy to do on live radio or television.”
UPDATE: BarbinMD recalls Joe Klein’s classic response to his : “ to figure out who’s right.”
During his today announcing his plan “, President Bush accidentally gave out the wrong number for his new “Hope Now Hotline” that worried homeowners are encouraged to call for assistance. CNN :
President Bush accidentally gave out the wrong phone number for the new “Hope Now Hotline” set up by his administration.
“And I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call 1-800-995-HOPE. That is 1-800-995-H-O-P-E,” he said.
Anyone who dialed 1-800-995-HOPE was greeted by just a busy signal.
Watch it:
The correct “Hope Now Hotline” number is 1-888-995-HOPE.
In a 235-181 vote, the House the today.
The bill would raise the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) level for cars and light trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, require utilities to generate 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources, and increase funding for biofuels like “cellulosic” ethanol. The White House has the bill.
Like , Dick Cheney seems to have forgotten how the Iraq War got started. In an with Mike Allen, Jim Vandehei and John Harris of Politico.com, he said he’d have to do a little research to figure out just who was pushing whom to war:
Q Speaking of the history in Iraq, there’s been a debate recently on the buildup to the vote for us to go to war, and you obviously were very intimately involved in that. Karl Rove , listen, Democrats — and Daschle — they wanted a speedy vote, before the elections, for the war. And Daschle has said, well, it’s nonsense, they’re trying to rewrite history. What is your recollection of what was happening? Were they — were Democrats pushing for a quick vote on the war before the election?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don’t want to get into that. I, frankly, I’ve heard a little bit of the argument and I don’t understand it. (Laughter.)
Q I’m sorry, what do you mean by that?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I mean, I thought we proceeded in an orderly fashion. But I have not gone back and looked at that. I don’t — it’s not clear to me what the issue is that’s being debated there.
Q The issue is whether the White House was pushing, or Democrats were pushing.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I thought we had approached it on a fairly bipartisan basis, and that was reflected in the vote. And we also went through a process with respect to intelligence matters, work at the United Nations seeking resolutions from the U.N. Security Council that applied to the situation. But in terms of, you know, we were pushing, or the Democrats were pushing, that’s not — I’d have to go back and do a lot of research to have an opinion on that.
Q Mr. Vice President, this was so nice of you. Speaking of 2009, is this it for public service for you…?
In the spirit of bipartisanship, ThinkProgress provides this jumpstart to help the Vice President’s research.
Right before the 2002 election, Cheney conceded that there was an option “to wait till January or February” of the next year, but he argued, “we’re to the point where we think time is not on our side.” Here’s Cheney that Democrats should vote before the 2002 election:
MR. RUSSERT: So you want a vote in Congress in October?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Our preference would be to have a vote in Congress before they go home. And when they go home is up to them ordinarily. Now, they’ve scheduled an early October adjournment. I don’t think they’ll ever make that ’cause they’ve got all the appropriation bills to do yet, too, but this is not-I mean, the suggestion that I find reprehensible is the notion that somehow, you know, we saved this and now we’ve sprung it on them for political reasons. The president and I have talked about this for months. And now we’ve asked them to engage on it, not because it’s a campaign year. As I say every other year is a campaign year anyway. We’ve asked them to engage in it because they have a constitutional responsibility to do so. They need to stand up and be counted.
Feel free to help Mr. Cheney with his memory by adding your own reminders in the comments.
– t-dub
This post was submitted through our Blog Fellows program. Make your own contribution — and get paid for it — by clicking .
Variety :
The latest National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program four years ago has claimed one casualty: CNN has postponed speculative documentary “We Were Warned — Iran Goes Nuclear.”
The two-hour spec, which was slated for Dec. 12 under the “CNN Presents” banner, was “set partially in the future,” featuring a what-if scenario as former government officials — playing fictional cabinet members — debate how to deal with the Iranian threat.
That special was “based on a different set of rules and a different set of conditions,” said CNN veep-senior exec producer Mark Nelson, noting that the surprising NIE report “changed everything.”
(HT: )
