Monday, January 2nd, 2006
Support for President Bush and for the war in Iraq has slipped significantly in the last year among members of the military’s professional core, according to the 2005 Military Times Poll.
Approval of the president’s Iraq policy fell 9 percentage points from 2004; a bare majority, 54 percent, now say they view his performance on Iraq as favorable. Support for his overall performance fell 11 points, to 60 percent, among active-duty readers of the Military Times newspapers. Though support both for President Bush and for the war in Iraq remains significantly higher than in the public as a whole, the drop is likely to add further fuel to the heated debate over Iraq policy. In 2003 and 2004, supporters of the war in Iraq pointed to high approval ratings in the Military Times Poll as a signal that military members were behind President Bush’s the president’s policy.
The poll also found diminished optimism that U.S. goals in Iraq can be accomplished, and a somewhat smaller drop in support for the decision to go to war in 2003.
Conservatives will, of course, blame the slipping support for the Iraq war among members of the military on critics of the war (i.e. Liberals and Democrats) rather than the realities on the ground.
Posted by smithersmpls at 10:10 pm in Uncategorized | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
AP:
“The fact that somebody leaked this program causes great harm to the United States,” Bush said before returning to Washington from a holiday break at his Texas ranch. “There’s an enemy out there.”
Bush stressed that the surveillance involved telephone calls from “a few numbers” outside the United States by people associated with al-Qaida, the terrorist organization that plotted the Sept. 11 attacks. The White House later clarified Bush’s remarks, saying he meant to say calls going to and originating from the U.S. were being monitored.
“It seems logical to me that if we know there’s a phone number associated with al-Qaida or an al-Qaida affiliate and they’re making phone calls, it makes sense to find out why,” he said. “They attacked us before, they’ll attack us again.”
It seems logical to me that if you know of individuals in the United States who are associated with al-Qaida, you would get a warrant and pick them up. The President is simply not able to justify his warrantless wiretaps.
Posted by smithersmpls at 3:23 pm in Uncategorized | Permalink | 5 Comments »
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
My pals at
Anti-Strib have agreed to an Idea Exchange between our two sites. Over the past couple of weeks they have been discussing the abortion debate in a positive format that has avoided most of the emotional bile that usually accompanies these kinds of issues. So I thought it would be good to continue to discuss the issues that supposedly separate conservatives from liberals and really see where the differences are and where there may be common ground.
So I put it to you, dear readers: What would you like to ask a conservative?
I will post up the top five questions later this week.
Posted by smithersmpls at 2:58 pm in Uncategorized | Permalink | 3 Comments »
