Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
My question was regarding last night's speech - not some quote from the past.

Bush said that there were 100,000 trained Iraqi police, but Reuters reports that "[t]he documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as 'untrained.'"

Bush was wrong.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Not Me
a viable middle class
a viable middle class
a viable middle class

How do you develop a viable middle class in a country with an economy built on oil resources and no real manufacturing base?

I guess we could make them all police. That would have the added bonus of boosting Bush's "trained Iraqis" number.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
In sum, Poland's maybe not the best example.

And another thing about Poland. Why do we care so much what the Poles think? All week long, I'm hearing that Bush has 8% lead with the Poles, and he's ahead with the Poles in Ohio and Florida, and so on? Who cares? Enough with the Poles already.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Not Me

You mean Saudi Arabia? That is where those terrorists came from. You prepared to give up your gas-guzzling SUV or are you still driving with OBL next to you.

I'm prepared to move back into the city and take a train, on only one condition. That the neighborhood and city aren't overrun by subsidized, er, forget it.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
How do you develop a viable middle class in a country with an economy built on oil resources and no real manufacturing base?

It isn't going to happen fast, that is for sure. However, the longer we postpone even trying, the longer we postpone winning the war on terrorism.

I don't think that a manufacturing base is essential to having a middle class. Less and less manufacturing is done in the US and our incomes have risen over time. A service based and agricultural based economy can work, too. If the Iraqis develop their service sector and their agricultural sector, that along with their oil revenues will go a long way toward developing a middle class.

One of the problems in these middle eastern countries is that they outsource all the jobs that the oil industry provides to foreigners.
Training their own people to do these jobs will help their unemployment situation.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Then it probably should have been nat security types instead of campaign types, don't you think?

Wasn't one of the CPA guys? That makes some sense to me.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
I'm prepared to move back into the city and take a train, on only one condition. That the neighborhood and city aren't overrun by subsidized, er, forget it.

You can live in the burbs and drive a car that gets better gas mileage. You can also car pool with others.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Wasn't one of the CPA guys? That makes some sense to me.

As I posted previously, the Washington Post reported that it was a guy who was previously with the CPA but who is now with the campaign.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
First of all, let's be clear that you're not accusing me of selective editing, you're accusing the Australian radio network that reported this. Their story very clearly implies that the President of Poland was upset that we misled them about WMD. Second, unless you have access to the original French interview -- and surely you don't speak French, mon ami -- you don't have any reason to think that the Australian network misrepresented what the Pole Prez said. And it's hard to imagine a context in which his comments could have been aimed at someone else.

In sum, Poland's maybe not the best example.

So you are saying that an Australian network's take (isn't Rupert Murdoch Australian), reporting on a French interview of a Polish president, is probably accurate?

Dude!

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by bilmore
You watched the debate that was on TV tonight, right?

(Good lord, that was the one thing he was the MOST focused and on-target with.)

Actually, the one thing I felt Bush was most focused and clear on is that being President is hard work. I stopped counting how many times he said it at 20, but he sounded like young Bubba after his first day at the slaughterhouse.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Not Me
You can also car pool with others.

Does that mean I have to get in a car with others, and come and go when they come and go?

Just checking.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The orange face, manicure and arm-waving are a helluva lot more likely to impact the "undecideds" than anything either of these schmoes said.

What orange face? Bush looked more like he had a fake tan than Kerry. As if anybody but Karl Rove, you, and not me gives a rat's ass.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by bilmore
True. And, like I said, the wonks have already decided.

Hey, leave us out of this, penguin.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Bush said that there were 100,000 trained Iraqi police, but Reuters reports that "[t]he documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as 'untrained.'"

Bush was wrong.

Spencer Ackerman gives Bush's claim the Full Monty:

• It was hard to watch last night's debate and not conclude that John Kerry won. But listening to President Bush talk about Iraq, it was clear that all Kerry really had to do was show up. Amid a rising tide of violence and with a constricting area of the country under the control of the weak Iraqi interim government, Bush repeatedly emphasized, "I have a plan." (Presumably, this is the plan that he promised in the spring he would detail in a series of televised speeches that he never delivered.) But the only time Bush ever specified what that strategy is--namely, training Iraqi security forces--he badly misrepresented the situation on the ground.
  
  "The best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job," Bush said. "We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year." These numbers are simply inaccurate. For much of this year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld totaled the figure of trained Iraqi police, soldiers, and national guardsmen at 200,000--despite the April collapse of those forces during the Sunni and Sadrist insurgencies--only to scale the number back to about 90,000 last month. The 100,000-force figure Bush repeatedly quoted last night has been the one his administration has stuck with.
  
  But that figure isn't even close to the truth. According to internal Pentagon documents recently obtained by Reuters, only 22,700 Iraqi forces have received enough training to be considered even "minimally effective." Barely 8,000 of the 90,000-strong police force have completed a full eight weeks of training--after a year and a half of occupation. While Lieutenant General David Petraeus wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Sunday that the Iraqi civil-intervention force is "now conducting operations," the leaked Pentagon documents show that training hasn't even begun for its 4,800 members. And perhaps most significantly, while Bush promised 200,000 Iraqis would be trained by the end of the next year, the documents state that it will take until July 2006 to train 135,000 Iraqi police officers.
  
  But the flimsy numbers on Iraqi security forces don't fully capture the dire condition of the administration's so-called Iraqification approach. Iraqi security-force recruits don't appear to be enlisting primarily out of a desire to defend the interim Iraqi government; they're joining up because of widespread unemployment. When they get in uniform, they often collude with the insurgency. In the relatively quiet southern city of Basra, British occupation soldiers have reported taking fire from Iraqi police, and U.S. intelligence believes many policemen are truly loyal not to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, but to Moqtada Al Sadr. What's more, the presence of U.S. forces attacking insurgent-controlled cities has been eroding Iraqi security forces' willingness to fight for Allawi. According to the Iraqi newspaper Addustour, American bombardment of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit has led Iraqi national guardsmen to resign in protest. With Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Al Shalaan promising to retake insurgent cities this month--and, as the debate ended, news broke of U.S. forces fighting their way to the center of Samarra--this dynamic may further expose the picture painted by the president last night as fundamentally divorced from reality.
  
  At one point in the debate, moderator Jim Lehrer asked Kerry to substantiate his charge that President Bush has "essentially [been] lying to the American people about Iraq." Before laying out his case, Kerry cautioned, "I've never, ever used the harshest word, as you did just then." But listening to the sham numbers at the center of Bush's argument supposedly showing that his Iraq strategy is succeeding, Kerry would have been well within his rights to say bluntly that Bush is lying.

Seems to me that getting this stuff right is a lot more important than which subway was closed for which convention.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Spencer Ackerman gives Bush's claim the Full Monty:

• It was hard to watch last night's debate and not conclude that John Kerry won. But listening to President Bush talk about Iraq, it was clear that all Kerry really had to do was show up. Amid a rising tide of violence and with a constricting area of the country under the control of the weak Iraqi interim government, Bush repeatedly emphasized, "I have a plan." (Presumably, this is the plan that he promised in the spring he would detail in a series of televised speeches that he never delivered.) But the only time Bush ever specified what that strategy is--namely, training Iraqi security forces--he badly misrepresented the situation on the ground.
  
  "The best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job," Bush said. "We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year." These numbers are simply inaccurate. For much of this year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld totaled the figure of trained Iraqi police, soldiers, and national guardsmen at 200,000--despite the April collapse of those forces during the Sunni and Sadrist insurgencies--only to scale the number back to about 90,000 last month. The 100,000-force figure Bush repeatedly quoted last night has been the one his administration has stuck with.
  
  But that figure isn't even close to the truth. According to internal Pentagon documents recently obtained by Reuters, only 22,700 Iraqi forces have received enough training to be considered even "minimally effective." Barely 8,000 of the 90,000-strong police force have completed a full eight weeks of training--after a year and a half of occupation. While Lieutenant General David Petraeus wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Sunday that the Iraqi civil-intervention force is "now conducting operations," the leaked Pentagon documents show that training hasn't even begun for its 4,800 members. And perhaps most significantly, while Bush promised 200,000 Iraqis would be trained by the end of the next year, the documents state that it will take until July 2006 to train 135,000 Iraqi police officers.
  
  But the flimsy numbers on Iraqi security forces don't fully capture the dire condition of the administration's so-called Iraqification approach. Iraqi security-force recruits don't appear to be enlisting primarily out of a desire to defend the interim Iraqi government; they're joining up because of widespread unemployment. When they get in uniform, they often collude with the insurgency. In the relatively quiet southern city of Basra, British occupation soldiers have reported taking fire from Iraqi police, and U.S. intelligence believes many policemen are truly loyal not to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, but to Moqtada Al Sadr. What's more, the presence of U.S. forces attacking insurgent-controlled cities has been eroding Iraqi security forces' willingness to fight for Allawi. According to the Iraqi newspaper Addustour, American bombardment of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit has led Iraqi national guardsmen to resign in protest. With Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Al Shalaan promising to retake insurgent cities this month--and, as the debate ended, news broke of U.S. forces fighting their way to the center of Samarra--this dynamic may further expose the picture painted by the president last night as fundamentally divorced from reality.
  
  At one point in the debate, moderator Jim Lehrer asked Kerry to substantiate his charge that President Bush has "essentially [been] lying to the American people about Iraq." Before laying out his case, Kerry cautioned, "I've never, ever used the harshest word, as you did just then." But listening to the sham numbers at the center of Bush's argument supposedly showing that his Iraq strategy is succeeding, Kerry would have been well within his rights to say bluntly that Bush is lying.

Seems to me that getting this stuff right is a lot more important than which subway was closed for which convention.

Capsule? This is too long. Just gimme something you'd spit at the judge.