Feingold on the 5th anniversary of Bush's signing of Congressional authorization for use of military force in Iraq:

“I will not stand idly by while this mistaken war continues. I will continue working to end this war and bring our troops home, and I will continue looking in the days and weeks ahead for opportunities to debate and vote on ending the war – this year, and, if necessary, next as well. My colleagues may complain, they may be inconvenienced, they may prefer to focus on other matters. But this Congress has no greater priority than making right the mistake it made five years ago when it authorized this misguided war.”

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

Yes, she was covert until being outed by the White House.

Yes, she was monitoring nuclear weapons and other WMD going into and coming out of Iraq and Iran, as RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna correctly and originally and exclusively reported in February of 2006.

Yes, her outing led to a still-classified CIA damage assessment and "serious" consequences" to other members of her CIA intelligence network.

No, despite Bush's promise, no one has ever been held accountable for leaking her identity in the first such outing of a covert CIA operative by agents of the U.S. Government itself.

No, Bush "is not a man of his word," as Valerie Plame Wilson told 60 Minutes tonight in her first broadcast network interview. Here's the video in two parts...

Some of what Plame is still not allowed to say, including details about "being taken hostage and subjected to torture for two days," is covered by her former CIA colleague, Larry Johnson, right here...

And in another posting today, Johnson gives us some details from Plame's new book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, in which it's disclosed that "In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were en route to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame."

So what did the White House do about it? Johnson tells us...

Amazing.

Well now we're really confused. Over the last three days we've heard McCain and Rush and O'Reilly all reprimand us for not paying attention to how well the "new" strategy is working in Iraq and how things are finally beginning to get straightened out over there.

Yet 12 former U.S. Army captains who served in Iraq between '03 and '06, all indicate otherwise on today's usually-rightwing WaPo editorial page.

Criticizing "the surge" as not working, their comments begin: "Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles."

...And concluding thusly:

Once again, we must ask: Why do the troops hate the troops? And when will the troops on the ground start listening to the troops on the ground?

Let's play Republican-like politics.

Turns out, some 50 (mostly Republican) members of the Senate are in favor of attacking "the honor, integrity, and patriotism" of those who have served honorably in the U.S. Armed Forces.

We knew that already, and not only from the Republican filibuster of a bill that would have given members of the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq as much time off as they were forced into serving in the field.

But a less-discussed vote in the Senate last week underscored just how much Republicans despise honorably serving members of our military, and how impotent Democrats seem to be at exploiting that fact...

Good lord. Looks like the "Straight Talk Express" has driven straight over the cliff. But nobody has managed to tell McCain yet. Not even McCain. And to think I might have once considered voting for this guy...

(On an unrelated note: Working on a number of things today, so posting has been light. Reading with interest, however, the outpouring of reaction and comments from BRAD BLOG readers to the Tasering Incident. Let's call those comments "recommend reading" for the moment, as most are quite thought provoking. I may have more of my own thoughts on it all later...)

During last Wednesday's televised address from the Oval Office, George W. Bush said, "We thank the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq."

As it turns out, you'll be stunned to learn that his number was a lie. But it wouldn't be the first time the Administration has lied about who is, and isn't, a part of the so-called "Multinational Coalition" in Iraq, as The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively as far back as October of 2004, prior to the Presidential Election.

Concerning Bush's "36 nations" mentioned last week, Spencer Ackerman reports, in an exclusive over at TPM, that the number is fudged at best, and just another unsupportable, outright lie by the administration at worst. The White House's fuzzy math used to comprise the "36 nations" with "troops on the ground in Iraq" apparently includes several nations which "aren't in Iraq in any capacity anymore," according to Ackerman.

The number also includes Canada's one soldier who had been serving at the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), who has since been withdrawn; New Zealand's single troop (yes, like Canada, just one!) commitment to UNAMI; Tonga's now-withdrawn force; a single press aide from Iceland; and an unknown number from Hungary which may, or may not, have anybody still in Iraq at all as part of a tiny NATO contingent.

Bush's prepared statement lie on national television last week, however, simply continues the pattern set years ago, prior to the 2004 Presidential Election, by Dick Cheney, as The BRAD BLOG exposed in a series of reports back then in what would become our first breakthrough story to be picked up by both national and international media alike...

If you've been living in a cave (or happen to be one of America's humorless Republicanists) the above video is a parody of this one.

As a side note, to those dead-ender Republicanists embarrassingly willing to display their desperation --- not to mention contempt for the first amendment --- with your fits of phony outrage over "General Betray Us," we'll join with Dick Cheney on this one by telling you to "go fuck yourselves."

Beyond that, we'll not be drawn into your quagmire of transparent attempts to hijack the real news, but will chose instead to move on to issues that actually matter. But nice try, losers!

George W. Bush did not --- I repeat, did not --- melt into a puddle of tears tonight on live television during his address on Iraq. It was stunning. I say it was a home run!

(NOTE: My pre-speech expectations may or may not have been lower than some of yours.)

Written "at the tail end of a 15-month deployment" in Iraq, seven U.S. service members filed a devastating opinion piece in the New York Times last August 19th, headlined "The War as We Saw It."

Their insightful, nuanced, and intelligent piece countered the simplistic "We're makin' progress!" message of the Administration, the Republicans, their Media Talking Heads, and General Petraeus. It began this way...

The troops on the ground concluded that "Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise," adding, "we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence."

Yance T. Gray and Omar Mora of the 82nd Airborne Division, two of the service members who wrote the op/ed "at the tail end" of their 15-month deployment, were killed outside of Baghdad on Monday.

According to Editor & Publisher:

They are now, indeed, "heading back home."

Another of the seven, "Staff Sergeant Jeremy Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head while the article was being written. He was expected to survive after being flown to a military hospital in the United States."

(via A.J. Rossmiller at AMERICAblog)

Guest Blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

During the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today:

If the head of our military in Iraq doesn't know if the war there is making us safer, who does?

Guest Blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

After months of hype, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday about the status of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Although neither of Bush's men uttered the exact phrase, the essence of their testimony could be summed up in three little words: "Stay the course."

Republicans --- especially the half-dozen or so GOP senators facing election in unsafe seats next year --- will take comfort in Petreaus's promise to recommend ending the surge by next summer. But even if Petreaus recommends reducing deployments to pre-surge levels, and if Bush agrees to it, the only surprise will be that the surge strategy itself was not a false cover for a permanent troop build-up. (And that remains to be seen.)

The stark reality is that Bush's current Iraq policy draws heavily from the playbook of his predecessor from Texas, Lyndon Johnson. The Vietnam War decimated LBJ's presidency, forcing him to leave office with no resolution in sight. Just as LBJ left the mess he created for Nixon and Ford to clean up, now Bush intends to leave his war in Iraq to his successor. As Ken Pollack at Brookings put it: "Bush has found his exit strategy."

Nothing matters --- not the safety of the troops, the lives and well-being of Iraqis, the viability of the U.S. military, or, certainly, the anti-Iraq war sentiments of a majority of Americans --- none of it matters in the face of Bush's urgent desire to rewrite his epitaph so that it won't say the war he started based on deception, divisiveness, and rank ineptitude was lost on his watch.

This strategy is as flawed as it is cynical. Look again at Johnson. Handing Vietnam to Nixon did nothing to improve his legacy. What saved Johnson's reputation was the fact he signed the Civil Rights Act, plus his stoic leadership in the wake of the Kennedy assassination.

Bush has no accomplishments --- nothing --- to weigh against this disastrous war. And the fact that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of U.S. troops and innocent Iraqis will die for the impossible goal of salvaging his place in history just compounds his disgrace.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: The good Pokey Anderson sends us this toon, which meshes neatly with Jon's commentary above...

Plus...Liberal, terrorist-loving, America-hating, cut-and-run, surrenderer George Will says "the surge has failed"...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Women serving in the military today are unlikely to share General Petraeus' rosy outlook given during his "Surge" testimony before Congress today. Because, as NOW on PBS reported last Friday, government compiled statistics show that nearly 1 in 4 active duty women in the military are victims of sexual assault. By contrast, during the much shorter first Gulf War, "about 15% of the women were raped."

The problem is compounded because many female soldiers fear the consequences of reporting such incidents. Also, little appears to happen when assaults are reported. According to the broadcast, there were 1,400 investigations of sexual assault last year which have resulted in only 72 court-martials.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

This short preview clip from tomorrow night's NOW episode shows a former Iraq war medic who sought conscientious objector status after, among other incidents, witnessing an innocent Iraqi man killed for driving too close to a convoy: "We're unfortunately hurting people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. This individual obviously had no intention of harming us. There was nothing in his vehicle that was found. Yet, someone doesn't have a father. So that's a memory that really stuck with me."

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review

When you hear the sound bites from George W. Bush's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today in which he compares his botched war in Iraq to the Vietnam war, think about what he was doing while thousands of U.S. soldiers were wounded and killed in the mud of Southeast Asia.

As is well known, rather than serving in Vietnam, George W. Bush spent the war years in a cushy assignment to the "Champagne Unit" of the Texas Air National Guard. There are witnesses from that era who say Bush's main preoccupations then were doing drugs, chasing women and driving drunk. There are also rumors he seriously damaged a fighter jet while taxiing it on a runway.

Conversely, no witnesses have ever been found who can verify that he completed his service with honor --- and there is circumstantial evidence that he did not. Around the time he was in the TNG, the Pentagon began requiring drug testing of all military pilots. The record indicates that Bush never submitted to a physical after the drug testing was required — and thus was never honorably discharged.

Today, in what may be his most astoundingly outrageous speech to date, Bush had the temerity to lecture the American people about lessons the country should have learned from Vietnam:

And:

Just when you think there is nowhere lower Bush can go to try to fool people into supporting his illegal and misbegotten war, he finds a way to make us even more disgusted with him, the people who work for him and their rank incompetence --- as well as with our leaders who insist on allowing him to remain in office.

Update: Flip-flop alert: In 2004, Bush bristled at comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam: "I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy."

Update 2: The complete text of Bush's speech is here. The excerpt about Vietnam follows below the fold: