Bush’s poll numbers are up. http://blogs.usatoday.com/gallup/2007/08/a-hint-of-more-.html
Supposedly the surge is working
Also, this Baghdad Diarist guy has been lying: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/beauchamp_recants.asp
Is this all part of a clever Democrat plot to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
Also, is anybody else offended by this fingerpointing thing that Obama does?
And how about Fred Thompson’s throat clearing! Anybody noticed that?
“None of these numbers are in and of themselves the types of public approbation exciting enough to cause champagne corks to pop in the White House.”
that is quite an understatement 
.
**that is quite an understatement **
Right–it would only be significant if they went down 5 points.
Gee, Bush’s approval rating went from 29% to 34% in a poll with 95% confidence of +/- 3% ?
Somehow I don’t think anybody’s popping champagne corks in the Whitehouse tonight…
(or maybe they are, and that explains a lot…)
.
**Supposedly the surge is working **
In what way is it working?
We have some very minor short term success by aligning ourselves with the Sunnis to help fight Al Qaeda, but that will be a long term disaster because it will further cause division against the Shiites. Once again, we have no idea what we are doing there.
The result of our alignment can be seen in the recent political problems with a large number of elected members of parliament abandoning their positions, which of course means the political benchmarks that were supposed to be met have no chance of success.
The problems in Iraq have to be solved internally, with a political solution and we continue to act as if the solution is by adding more troops and then claiming success if the deaths of our troops go down in a particular month. Look at how the deaths are rising again in August to see how nonsensical it is to attribute success to that factor.
Really, our definition of success in Iraq has been lowered to the point of absurdity. The surge is not working, has nerver worked and will never work. The problem has always been our presence there and our attempts to force solutions by force. I would have thought that after all these years, we would actually get that point but it appears it will take more time.
Also, this Baghdad Diarist guy has been lying: http://www.weeklystandard.com/...eauchamp_recants.asp
Questions remain (from the nytimes):
An Army investigation into the Baghdad Diarist, a soldier in Iraq who wrote anonymous columns for The New Republic, has concluded that the sometimes shockingly cruel reports were false.
“We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message. “The allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.”
The brief statement, however, left many questions unanswered. Just last week The New Republic published on its Web site the results of its own investigation, stating that five members of the same company as Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, who had written the anonymous pieces, “all corroborated Beauchamp’s anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one soldier, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)”
Private Beauchamp had revealed his identity after The Weekly Standard online and conservative bloggers expressed doubts about their veracity. As the Baghdad Diarist, he wrote that one soldier had jokingly worn the remnant of a child’s skull on his head. In another issue, he said he and a soldier had mocked a terribly disfigured woman sitting near them in the mess tent. Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic said that after Private Beauchamp revealed his identity, the Army severely curtailed his telephone and e-mail privileges.
Private Beauchamp is married to a reporter-researcher at the magazine, Elspeth Reeve.
Michael Goldfarb, the online editor at The Weekly Standard who had initially raised doubt about the columns, wrote yesterday that The Standard had learned from a source close to the Army investigation that Private Beauchamp “signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in The New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods — fabrications containing only ‘a smidgen of truth,’ in the words of our source.”
Earlier, The New Republic had conducted its own investigation and found only one inaccuracy: the story about the disfigured woman had occurred in Kuwait before the unit arrived in Baghdad.
Yesterday, The New Republic posted another note on its Web site saying its editors had spoken to Major Lamb and asked whether Private Beauchamp had indeed signed a statement admitting to fabrications. “He told us, ‘I have no knowledge of that.’ He added, ‘If someone is speaking anonymously , they are on their own.’ When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, ‘We don’t go into the details of how we conduct our investigations.’
In an e-mail message, Mr. Foer said, “Thus far, we’ve been provided no evidence that contradicts our original statement, despite directly asking the military for any such evidence it might have,” adding, “We hope the military will share what it has learned so that we can resolve this discrepancy.”
**Supposedly the surge is working **
In what way is it working?
duh… it’s working, because Bush’s poll numbers are up.
what did you think the surge was supposed to do?
I admire your Don Quixote-like quest to convert the great unwashed masses here to the idea that Mr. Bush *et al *are actually doing some things right, but I’m afraid that positions against him have hardened to the point of petrification, Mr. Monk (sad to say).
For an example of how little traction he gains in the majority of the mainstream media when something over which he supposedly has much control (and leaving aside the whole Minneapolis bridge collapse … which he seems to have been personally blamed for by more than a few of the more unhinged on the left), one need only look at how much attention was paid to last week’s 281 point drop in the stock market by the media and how *little *attention was paid to the market’s recovery with a subsequent 287 point increase. Sadly, that rebound seemed to have been greeted with little more than studied indifference or pointed silence by those on the left here in our great nation, and it seems almost to be actively abetted by many news outlets, all of who seem to have proven themselves incapable of reportage on much of the good news in the markets, Iraq and elsewhere.
I detect a whiff of self-hating, almost flagellant-like, behavior by my colleagues on the center-left and hard left, but I’ve been excoriated for that before in the past, so I’ll say no more on that particular aspect of the unrelenting Bush-bashing frenzy that’s occurred with depressing regularity since the '04 elections, and which only promises to become even more intense during the run-up to the '08 election cycle.
Regards,
T.
didn’t congress have a 5% approval rating in the same poll?
*one need only look at how much attention was paid to last week’s 281 point drop in the stock market by the media and how **little attention was paid to the market’s recovery with a subsequent 287 point increase. Sadly, that rebound seemed to have been greeted with little more than studied indifference or pointed silence by those on the left here in our great nation, and it seems almost to be actively abetted by many news outlets, all of who seem to have proven themselves incapable of reportage on much of the good news in the markets, Iraq and elsewhere. *
I never pay much attention to single data points and markets go up and down with regularity. The trend of the market is positive and that is encouraging. People who point at how the market performs on any single day (whether up or down) are demonstrating their lack of understanding.
Exchange rates are much more interesting and the trend there is not quite so positive – but as someone who gets paid in pound sterling I am not complaining!
**Supposedly the surge is working **
In what way is it working?
duh… it’s working, because Bush’s poll numbers are up.
what did you think the surge was supposed to do?
Best post I have read in the LR! Well done!
**one need only look at how much attention was paid to last week’s 281 point drop in the stock market by the media and how little attention was paid to the market’s recovery with a subsequent 287 point increase.
So do you think the President is directly responsible for an increase in the stock market? I for one neither blame Bush for a decrease or credit him for an increase as the stock market is not controlled by the President but the capital markets, but maybe that’s just me.
all of who seem to have proven themselves incapable of reportage on much of the good news in the markets
I don’t think that just because a stock market increased, it is a sign that our economy is perfect. I would suggest that China holding such a high % of our debt is the most worrisome part of our economy, they have far too much control over us by having the ability to sell off the debt. If Bush wants to actually do something to strengthen the American economy, he should start paying some attention to this point. The Treasury department have raised this issue and I hope he makes it a priority.
**Iraq and elsewhere. **
I think that just about everyone has realized that Iraq is going poorly and the only reason there is a remote glimmer of optimism is the result of our massive build up of troops. We now have more troops in Iraq (162,000) than at any point since the war began. If you can point to a single person in this administration who told us this would be the result in August 2007, then I will admit it is going well.
Where is the “elsewhere” where things are going well as a direct result of Bush’s policies.
I think that just about everyone has realized that Iraq is going poorly and the only reason there is a remote glimmer of optimism is the result of our massive build up of troops. We now have more troops in Iraq (162,000) than at any point since the war began. If you can point to a single person in this administration who told us this would be the result in August 2007, then I will admit it is going well.
To piggy back on your point, a large part of this mess was due to a relcutance to listen to the miltary startegists who told them they would need twice as many troops as Rumsfeld believed they needed. They were ignored. Now, all of the sudden, the administration is supposed to be given credit for listening to them several years later?
Yes, a troop surge will increase chances of success. A bigger one will increas the chances even further. But, like Newt Gingrich said (yes…I’m quoting the guy) “this is a phoney war,” meaning that we, as a country, won’t commit to it. We just sit in no man’s land. “We’ll stay in until the job’s done…AND we won’t raise your taxes a dime while we do it.” You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
The good news in some surge areas is, for me, tempered by what’s happening in the south and in particular Basra. As the Brits have pulled out, the security situation there has worsened. There is apparently no al-quaeda presence in that area, and the population is nearly 100% shiite. The violence is not shiite vs. sunni or iraqi vs. foreign fighter (al-quaeda), but is shiite vs. shiite. Will the US have to send troops into this region to replace the Brits? If so, how will the local shiites react to a US presence that would be new to them?
How about a Bush Poll outside the U.S.!
Who cares what they think.
Who cares what they think.
That’s part of the problem 
.
Part of *your *problem, maybe.
:o
**Part of your problem, maybe.
Tom,
Not my problem at all really, other than that I have to live next door. Funny, how many Europeans who have an ocean between them and the U.S. have an even stronger opinion and elsewhere in the world the feelings are even stronger.
I recall reading a poll in the Economist a few years ago it went as follows. Americans when polled think that 80% the rest of the world wants to live in the U.S. When foreigners are polled about wanting to live in the U.S., that number drops to just 20% of those polled!! Clearly their is a disconnect and the President being the most visiable American world wide has had an influence on those numbers.
Who cares what they think.
I do, because they own bombs too. We can impose foreign policy and be isolationists at the same time.