I don’t know why General Petraeus didn’t just give the friggin speech. And did you know there are 36 countries fighting with us in Iraq? 1 guy from Poland, 2 guys from Peru……… WTF is he talking about? Why oh why oh why oh do I even listen to this guy? I’ll have a commentary on the whole dirty speech later in the week……but for now, here’s the transcript. Get the Pepto out prior to listening. You’ll need it. I have chalky lips as I type this…….

Transcript of speech here

Transcript of Democratic response by Jack Reed here

Transcript of John Edwards commercial response here

In sharp contrast to the lionization of General David Petraeus by members of the US Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus’s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (Centcom), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad in March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” and added, “I hate people like that,” the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

More at the Asia Times

By Cenk Uygur (I love this guy)

President Bush has told us a million times that he listens to his commanders on the ground (the ones he didn’t already replace because they disagreed with him). Well, how about his top commander?

Admiral William Fallon is the Commander of US Central Command. And by the way, the boss of the legendary, godly and saintly General Petraeus (who despite being the most independent person in the world might run for president as a Republican one day, according to some sources).

Does Bush not want to hear from Admiral Fallon? Doesn’t he care what his top commander thinks? Or is it that he has already heard from Fallon and wants to make sure we don’t hear from him?

I’ll be honest. I already know the answer (they taught us in law school not to ask a question you don’t already know the answer to; on the other hand, they also taught us that the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments could not be violated by the president or vice-president, shows you how much they knew). President Bush talked to Admiral Fallon in early September.

More at the Huffington Post

Oh Good Lord…….

President Bush is looking at the decades-long U.S. troop presence in South Korea as a model for a future U.S. role in Iraq, senior administration officials said Thursday.

More than 38,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea and along the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea more than 50 years after the end of the war on the Korean Peninsula.

The president will compare Iraq to the U.S. deployment on the Korean peninsula in a speech to the nation Thursday night at 9:01 p.m. ET.

During the speech, Bush is also expected to endorse the recommendation of the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, that the U.S. military can begin pulling 30,000 combat troops from Iraq.

But the president will also talk about a long-term commitment to Iraq, the senior officials said, along the lines of the U.S. commitment to South Korea.

More at CNN

By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive

Kevin Egler initially was charged with illegal advertising after he placed an “Impeach Bush” sign at an intersection in Kent, Ohio. The city dropped that charged but then threatened him with a littering charge. (See “Impeach Bush” Defendant Tells His Story at www.progressive.org)

On the morning of September 6, the city of Kent dropped all charges. “I just got back from the courthouse,” Egler said in an e-mail. “We entered into an agreement with the city to drop all charges against me. I signed the agreement which stated that A-if I place any type of sign on property without obtaining permission from the property owner first, that I may be cited and/or arrested for the criminal offense of littering.- We do plan on following up with city council to see that all sign placements in the future are handled in the same manner.”

Egler expressed his gratitude to people who rallied to his side.

“Thanks to all of you for the support throughout this process,” he wrote. “It has been a remarkable journey that was made easier by all of your actions. I have met many good people that I look forward to working with in our future projects. We all have to do all we can to make sure that our freedoms are not revoked. Let’s all keep up the good fight.”

from The Independent, UK
cross posted at The Democratic Underground

An al-Jazeera journalist captured in Afghanistan six years ago and sent to Guantanamo Bay is close to becoming the fifth detainee at the US naval base to take his own life, according to a medical report written by a team of British and American psychiatrists

Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese national, is 250 days into a hunger strike which he began in protest over his detention without charge or trial in January 2002. But British and American doctors, who have been given exclusive access to his interview notes, say there is very strong evidence that he has given up his fight for life, experiencing what doctors recognise as “passive suicide”, a condition suffered by female victims of Darfur.

Dr Dan Creson, a US psychiatrist who has worked with the United Nations in Darfur, said Mr Haj was suffering from severe depression and may be deteriorating to the point of imminent death.

He said the detainee’s condition was similar to that of Darfuri women in Sudan whose mind suddenly experiences an irreversible decline after enduring months of starvation and abuse. He said: “In the midst of rape, slow starvation, and abject humiliation, they did whatever they could to survive and save their children; then, suddenly, something happened in their psyche, and, without warning, they would just sit down with their small children beneath the first small area of available shade and with no apparent emotion wait for death.”

read more HERE

by Nicholas von Hoffman
The Nation

The first thing the members of Congress did before they heard the testimony of General David Petraeus, the Administration’s new political point man on the war, was to throw the members of Code Pink out of the room. The Code Pinkers are those obnoxious females wearing their eponymously colored T’shirts with end-the-killing slogans on them.

The women of Code Pink are liable to pop up at any solemn public gathering demanding peace at the top of their voices. They are unable to understand that elected officials are better informed and wiser than they are and thus they mistakenly dis people important enough to warrant bodyguards.

During Code Pink’s brief moment in the sun, several Republican members of Congress groused to House Arms Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D. Mo) about the scandalous trouble-makers. American politicians, who these days are equipped with security details, have come to regard political heckling as a misdemeanor of greater gravity even than making a pass at an undercover cop in a men’s room. Heckling used to be an inseparable part of public debate and, once upon a time, a politician was judged in part by his ability to come through with the kind of humorous riposte that sets audiences to laughing and the hecklers to the sidelines. Lincoln, Churchill and Disraeli were masters at it.

read more HERE

CBS NEWS.COM

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admits he “didn’t really get it” that the sub-prime lending trend was significant enough to hurt the economy until very late 2005, but still defends his lowering of interest rates from 2001 until 2004 that critics say caused the crisis in the first place.

Greenspan, who led the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank through 18 years and four presidents, speaks to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in his first major interview this Sunday, Sep. 16, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Greenspan says he knew about the questionable sub-prime lending tactics that gave loans to homebuyers and investors with low adjustable interest rates that could rise precipitously, but not the severe economic consequences they posed. “While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late,” he tells Stahl. “I really didn’t get it until very late in 2005 and 2006.”

Even though one of the Federal Reserve governors raised a red flag on those lending practices, Greenspan says there was little he could do. “Well, it was nothing to look into, particularly because we knew there was a number of such practices going on, but it’s very difficult for banking regulators to deal with that,” says Greenspan.

read more HERE

By Kristin Jensen
Bloomberg.com

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) — Hillary Clinton said during an online forum of Democratic presidential candidates that she would curb the power of insurers as part of a universal health- care coverage plan she’s set to release Sept. 17.

“I intend to dramatically rein in the influence of the insurance companies,” Clinton said during the recorded forum posted today on Yahoo! Inc.’s Web site. “They have worked to the detriment of our economy and of our health-care system.”

Clinton, who as first lady in the early 1990s led a failed attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, didn’t give any details about her proposal. She said she learned through her earlier defeat during the administration of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that she needs to win broad support for changes to the way health care is paid for in the U.S.

“A plan is necessary but not sufficient,” Clinton said. “We’ve got to have a political consensus in order to withstand the enormous opposition from those interests who will have something to lose in a really reformed health-care system.”

Among others, Clinton got suggestions from a group of chief executive officers and John Castellani, the president of the Business Roundtable. The group, which represents about 160 CEOs from companies such as drugmaker Pfizer Inc. and health insurer Aetna Inc., is pushing for a policy that involves both private insurers and the government as well as incentives for preventive care and ways to compare treatment regimens, Castellani said.

read more HERE

By K.T. Arasu
Rueters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Iran may be dueling with Washington over its nuclear ambitions, but when the country desperately needed corn last month, it turned to the United States.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made no secret of his disdain for U.S. President George W. Bush, calling him a donkey and even Satan, but when millers in Caracas need wheat to make bread, they go shopping for American supplies.

Nations like Iran, Venezuela, Syria and Cuba have icy diplomatic ties with Washington but they do not let politics stand in the way of importing competitively-priced food or feed ingredients from the United States.

The world’s largest exporter of corn, soybeans and wheat, the United States ships its agricultural commodities across the globe, to friends and foes from Spain to Iraq to Sudan.

“They want to make sure they feed their people. They don’t want to screw with that. Politics is politics,” said veteran grains analyst Don Roose of brokerage U.S. Commodities.

“They know they are buying from people they don’t like, but they don’t want a revolt because they can’t feed the people,” he said, adding that tight global supplies of wheat was also pushing some countries to buy from the United States.

read more HERE

from Media Bistro

Tonight on World News, ABC’s Bob Woodruff updates the story of Omar, an Iraqi translator who helped save Woodruff’s life after the anchor was wounded in a roadside attack. Omar had been working with the US military, but later fled to Syria as a refugee.

In June, Woodruff tracked down Omar in Syria, for a series of reports about the exodus of Iraqi refugees to neighboring countries. Well, Omar recently arrived in the U.S. on a special immigrant visa that grants him permanent residency.

Tonight, after President Bush makes yet another argument for continuing the war in Iraq, John Edwards will speak directly to the American people in a nationwide address on MSNBC.

Our campaign has bought airtime on MSNBC immediately following the President’s address at 9 p.m., and John Edwards will challenge the President’s remarks with a strong call to the nation to end the war now.

Please watch in that timeframe-and forward this e-mail to your friends, asking them to watch as well. Each of us has a responsibility to make sure that President Bush and Congress understand that the time for excuses has run out. John Edwards will deliver a strong message tonight on our behalf. It’s time to end this war and bring our troops home.

Buying this kind of airtime is expensive. But we believe that President Bush’s address must be countered with a strong voice in opposition to the failed policies that have kept our troops in harm’s way for far too long. Tonight, John Edwards will continue to lead, and make the case to the nation that we cannot wait for an election to change course in Iraq-we as citizens must make Washington understand that the time to end this war is now.

Don’t miss John’s address tonight on MSNBC, immediately following the President.

from The Christian Science Monitor
cartoon by Clay Bennett

By Gregory Rodriguez
The Christian Science Monitor

Los Angeles - In Kansas, federal officials are investigating an Indian tribe for allegedly selling tribal memberships to illegal immigrants, along with the promise that the documents will protect them from deportation. By their spokesman’s own admission, the Kaweah Indian Nation has sold more than 10,000 memberships for prices starting at $50 and going as high as $1,200.

On one level, its success underscores how desperate many undocumented immigrants are to legitimize their status in the United States. On another, it is a powerful contemporary example of historical fact: Mexicans long have used and manipulated race to improve their social status.

Unlike in the US, where race is understood as purely biological, in Mexico it’s defined by culture and class as much as it is by DNA. An Indian, for example, is not simply someone with Indian blood, but an individual who behaves, dresses, and speaks “like an Indian.” Someone of wholly Indian heritage who speaks Spanish and lives according to Hispanic (as opposed to indigenous) customs would be considered mestizo, or mixed. Not surprisingly, when race is a question of culture, it is a fluid and even changeable category.

This isn’t to say that race has had no social meaning in Mexican history. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Spain imposed a hierarchical racial order in colonial Mexico, one that favored those with European heritage and lighter skin. Whites, blacks, mestizos, and Indians were assigned different levels of access to property, power, and prestige. But through the years, racial mixing eroded the categories and weakened that social order.

read more HERE

By Gilles Castonguay
Reuters

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - What price exclusivity? If you ask Lamborghini, one million euros ($1.4 million) should do it — before tax, of course.

In a bid to add more prestige to what it already has, the Italian maker of super luxury sports car unveiled the Reventon at Frankfurt’s international autoshow, a very limited edition car that looks more like an arrow than anything on four wheels.

With the six-figure price tag, it is the most expensive car that it has ever built.

Needless to say, Lamborghini has already sold the 20 cars that it plans to build.

“As soon as the word got out, we sold out in four days,” Chief Executive Stephan Winkelmann told Reuters, adding that they could have easily sold another 20.

Most of the buyers were men from the United States, Lamborghini’s biggest market, he said.

Some of them are already owners of a Lamborghini, which competes with the likes of Ferrari in speed and exclusivity.

“We have among our customers movie stars, sports stars… (but) the majority of our clients are businessmen. Men. Lovers of luxury goods,” said Winkelmann.

True to its tradition of cultivating an aggressive image, Lamborghini named the car after a bull that killed matador Felix Guzman in 1943.

read more HERE