Oh, now it’s just a “goal.”

From IraqSlogger.com

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced in April that he would be extending US Army deployment in Iraq from 12 to 15 months, he also offered a guarantee that the extensions would allow troops a full year of home leave between war zone deployments. But with the announcement this week of 35,000 troops scheduled for deployment by the end of the year, it appears that a number of soldiers are having that guarantee shorted.

Stars and Stripes reports that members of the 1st Armored Division’s 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, Company A, learned Tuesday that they are scheduled to head back to Iraq in November, just nine months after the 150’soldier company left the combat zone in February after a 13-month deployment.

Gates had announced last month that active-duty US Army force deployments in Iraq would be extended from 12 months to a maximum of 15 months, with a guaranteed 12 months at home base between deployments.

Gates said the new 15-month maximum deployment, 12-month minimum home base scheme would give soldiers “a more predictable, reliable” timetable for planning.

“What we-re trying to do here is provide some long-term predictability for the soldiers and their families about how long their deployments will be and how long they will be at home, and particularly guaranteeing that they will be at home for a full 12 months,” Gates said during the press conference announcing the extensions.

On Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, tempered the DoD’s commitment to an absolute 12-month home leave rule. Rather than a guarantee, Whitman said, the 12-month dwell time between deployments “is a goal, to have units and individuals to have an appropriate amount of time for recovery and for stability purposes at home station and to be able to be with their families.”

But asked late Wednesday about the situation, Stars and Stripes reports Gates said he could not explain why the Army was sending back the company from Germany just nine months after its last Iraq deployment.

“I’ll be very interested in finding out more about that,” Gates said. “We just need to find out about that, because I made it clear that people would have 12 months at home.”

Get us O U T NOW!!

WASHINGTON - The U.S. commander in northern Iraq said Friday he doesn’t have enough troops for the mission in increasingly violent Diyala province.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon also said that Iraqi government officials are not moving fast enough to provide the “most powerful weapon” against insurgents - a government that works and supplies services for the people.

Mixon commands the area that includes Diyala province, north of Baghdad. It was a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency before the start of the Baghdad security crackdown and has worsened since militants fled there to avoid the increased U.S.-led operations started in the capital in February.

His comments on the Iraqi government were unusually candid and in keeping with the sentiment in Congress and among some administration officials as well as an American electorate becoming ever more impatient with the war.

Mixon has already received extra troops, but violence in Diyala is on the rise, he said, both because more militants have moved in and because coalition forces are taking the offensive.

“We are sure there are elements of both Sunni extremists and Shia extremists that have moved out of Baghdad and relocated into not only Diyala province, but also into Salah ad Din province,” he said.

More at Yahoo News

WASHINGTON - The United States hasn’t yet persuaded Saudi Arabia, the Sunni power broker in the Middle East and a close U.S. ally, that it should support Iraq’s Shiite-led government, a senior State Department official said Friday.

It’s an uphill fight.

“We believe the Saudis would best advance their and our interests … were they to be constructively engaged” in helping the elected Iraqi government succeed, said David Satterfield, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s top adviser for Iraq.

Asked whether the administration has succeeded in that lobbying effort, Satterfield gave a half smile and said, “We continue to make the point to them, for their own sake.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Satterfield also said the United States is certain that radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is still living next door in Iran. That contradicts aides to the anti-American religious and political leader.

“We know he’s out of the country, we don’t (merely) think” so, Satterfield said. “He’s in Iran, which is where he has been since mid-January.”

More at Yahoo News

A federal judge today ordered a former aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to testify in Congress about the firings of U.S. attorneys, granting her limited immunity from prosecution so she can tell lawmakers what she knows.

Under the order from U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the District of Columbia, Monica M. Goodling “may not refuse to testify, and may not refuse to provide other information” if asked by Congress.

The ruling clears the way for Goodling’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys last year, which has sparked a furor in Congress. The committee extended the offer of immunity in response to Goodling’s refusal to testify or answer questions from congressional investigators.

More at the Washington Post

Bush-Cheney Impeachment Might Be Idle Talk, But Numbers Show True Trouble
By Matt Towery

Anti-war Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania is prominent among some Democrats in his use of the “I” word — impeachment — about President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Murtha made his comments on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and elsewhere.

Few serious observers think things will ever get to actual impeachment. And yet the American public seems more open to the concept than many imagine, according to a new national poll. The implications of this public sentiment could be huge for the 2008 presidential elections.

Our InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion poll asked this:

“Would you favor or oppose the impeachment by Congress of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?”

Favor: 39 percent.

Oppose: 55 percent.

Undecided/Don’t Know: 6 percent.

The survey of 621 registered voters has been weighted for age, race, gender and political affiliation. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

About four out of 10 Americans favor impeaching the president and vice president. But the biggest news from this survey is not the overall results, but the opinions of independent voters, who usually decide presidential elections.

Forty-two percent of independents want Bush and Cheney impeached. These aren’t just voters who disapprove of the White House. Instead, they’re for initiating a process that could remove them from office.

Continue reading here

I’ve been waiting to hear more about these guys. Yesterday the Republicans were praising Gonzales for catching these guys. How about we praise the guy at Kinkos…..or better yet, hire him as Attorney General!

The US Justice Department has charged six immigrants in New Jersey with participating in an alleged terrorist plot to attack a heavily fortified US Army base in the state, according to federal court papers filed Tuesday. FBI officials say the accused-four ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, one Jordanian and a young man from Turkey who had all lived in the US for years-were planning to kill scores, if not hundreds, of US soldiers at Fort Dix.

The media and various political figures immediately parroted the government charges about a Muslim terrorist plot, adding that the fact the suspects had no known connections to a Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda, made them even more dangerous because they were a “new breed” of homegrown and loosely organized terrorists who were harder to detect. “This is a stark reminder that we cannot let down our guard,” said US Rep. James Saxton, a New Jersey Republican and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. “Today is proof positive that terrorists can be among us, even in suburban locations like Cherry Hill, N.J., and that Americans must stay vigilant.”

The six-Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22; Dritan “Anthony” or “Tony” Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; Eljvir “Elvis” Duka, 23; Serdar Tatar, 23; and Agron Abdullahu, 24-were ordered held without bail for a hearing Friday in a Camden, New Jersey federal court. Five were charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. military personnel; the sixth, Abdullahu, was charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in obtaining weapons.

Defense attorneys for the accused have yet to present their side of the story. The only information about the alleged plot that has been provided has come from the prosecution and the FBI. From the indictment, however, it is evident that the case follows a pattern of similar highly publicized terrorist “conspiracies” pursued by the Bush administration, in which the chief instigator of the alleged plot was a paid government informant and agent provocateur who encouraged the operation, made arrangements to secure weapons and pressed ahead in the face of the caution and reluctance of the so-called jihadists.

As in a key previous case-the 1995 conviction of blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman-the US government used a former member of the Egyptian military to infiltrate the New Jersey group and tape record conversations with the alleged plotters and apparently play the central role in the supposed plot. While the indictment includes what are alleged to be the taped remarks of several of the six men-in which they declare their determination to kill US soldiers-it does not include what the informant might have said to provoke these responses.

A hint of the relationship, however, is included in what is presented as the transcript of recorded remarks, in which one of the defendants, Mohamad Schnewer, is quoted as telling the informant, “I am at your services as you have more experience than me in military bases and in life.”

Coninue reading at Global Research

Things are getting ugly when nuns protest your presence Georgie!

LATROBE, PA. - President Bush could hardly have picked a better private liberal arts college to find a welcoming audience for a commencement address than St. Vincent, a Catholic school run by a loyal former White House aide in a conservative region.

Yet consider what has taken place here since Bush was invited for today’s speech: Students vigorously debated the invitation at a town-hall meeting last month. A former St. Vincent College president wrote a scathing newspaper essay saying Bush had no place on the campus. About a quarter of the tenure-rank faculty wrote an open letter to Bush challenging the Iraq war as contrary to Roman Catholic doctrine. Several dozen people held a candlelight vigil Thursday night protesting the visit. And for several Sundays, nuns protested on the edge of the campus.

The discord, polite and reasoned as it may be, is emblematic of passions across the country as the war moves further into its fifth year, with increasing military deployments and mounting death tolls among Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops.

If anything, the debate there - at a college associated with the Order of St. Benedict and led by a man who once ran Bush’s faith-based initiative - suggests that dissent is spreading into places with little history of protest.

It also suggests that the Bush-led Republican drive to increase support among Catholics, built around Bush’s stance on abortion and other social policy issues, could run into trouble over the Catholic doctrine of a “just war.”

More at the LA Times

The U.S. would join allies to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons? Who are these allies you speak of? Does anyone in the world believe a friggin word you say anymore? And talk about a photo op! I wqn’t write what I’m thinking……

ABOARD USS JOHN C. STENNIS - Vice President Dick Cheney issued a warning to Iran while aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf on Friday, saying the United States would join allies to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons “and dominating the region.”

With two U.S. carrier groups now in the region, the vice president declared, “We’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike. We’ll keep the sea lanes open.”

Iran exerts considerable control over the narrow passageway that separates the Persian Gulf from the open waters of the Arabian Sea. Roughly a quarter of the world’s oil supplies pass through the Straits of Hormuz.

Iran loomed about 150 miles to the east as Cheney spoke aboard the USS John C. Stennis. The carrier was steaming about 20 miles off Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Cheney is spending time there after a two-day tour of Iraq.

More at YahooNews

This poor guy…….

From the Miami Herald

NORFOLK, Va. — A Navy lawyer accused of giving classified information about Guantánamo Bay detainees to an unauthorized person will go on trial Monday in a military court, the Navy announced Thursday.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz, who was stationed at the U.S. base in Cuba for six months, could face more than 36 years in prison if convicted during his general court-martial at Norfolk Naval Station.

Diaz, 41, of Topeka, Kan., is charged with failing to obey a lawful general regulation, engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer by wrongfully transmitting classified documents to an unauthorized person and turning over to an unauthorized person secret information related to national defense.

Diaz allegedly mailed a list containing names and other identifying information about Guantánamo detainees to a civil liberties law firm in late 2004 or early 2005, while working as a staff judge advocate at Guantánamo Bay.

Since 2002, when the U.S. military opened its detention center at the base and airlifted in captives from Afghanistan, civilian lawyers have pressed for access to the detainees and information about them.

The U.S. Supreme Court has twice ruled for detainee rights.

Diaz has remained free and is stationed in Jacksonville.