Senate Cowers on Iraq, Americans Want Out, Iraq, Afghanistan, Homeland Insecurity and Head Dick.

According to the Senate it's better for troops to die than admit that Iraq is a major mistake.

"Stay the course!" That's not even a plan, it's an act of desperation. Senators desperate that the American people don't see them as a bunch of fools let into a war for no reason by the lies of an idiot.

So in order to preserve the facade of accomplishing something in Iraq, other than a rise in terrorist recruitment numbers, the Senate is willing to swap lives for image.

Six incredibly sorry excuses for Democrats voted right along with all the other Republicans, except one, Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island. I'd gladly give those six crap for brains Democrats to the Republicans for Chafee.

Democratic senators were Mark Dayton (Minn.), Mary L. Landrieu (La.), Joseph I.
Lieberman (Conn.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.).

Remember them, they obviously don't work for us or the good of the country. Lieberman must be feeling crowded with all those other Democrats crawling up Bush's backside with him.

The American people are getting fed up with Mr. Bush's experiment in American colonialism. All the polls are showing that we're thinking exit strategy, while all we're getting from the Republican Adminsitration and Congress is "Stay the course."

This conclusion, however, flies in the face of surveys by all major polling
firms, as E&P has chronicled over the past two years.

But here's the key finding. The pollsters stated a series of positions,
ranging from opposing gay marriage to repealing the estate tax, and asked if a
candidate running for congress who embraced such a position was more or less
likely to gain their vote. One position was: "Favors pulling all American troops
out of Iraq within the next 12 months.

"That couldn't be more simple and clear. The result? Some 54% said they would
be "more likely" to vote for such a candidate and only 32% said "less
likely."

While the Senate was showing us what a gutless bunch of followers they are, we lost four more Marines Tuesday and a soldier on Wednesday.

BAGHDAD, June 22--The military announced today that four Marines were killed
Tuesday in the Western province of Anbar, and said a U.S. soldier died in a
bombing south of Baghdad on Wednesday morning.

Three of the Marines died when their vehicle was blasted by a roadside bomb,
U.S. officials said. The other was killed when a patrol came under attack.

On Wednesday, the soldier was killed when the vehicle he was traveling in was
struck by a roadside bomb, the military said.

And for those who like to talk about the imaginary progress in Iraq, Iraqi police are reporting that American troops have killed 15 farm workers in Baquba.

Iraqi police have accused the US military of killing 15 farm workers during a
raid near Baquba, north of Baghdad.

But the US Army says the dead men were all insurgents who had opened fire on
soldiers during an operation in the area.

But Iraqi police and relatives of the dead men say the victims were poultry
farm workers who had been sleeping in the fields when US troops attacked.

In Afghanistan, they're trying to copy the American media. Fortunately, the Afghan press isn't putting up with it.

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 21 -- An unofficial attempt by Afghanistan's national
intelligence service to quash sensational and negative coverage by the Afghan
news media appears to have backfired badly this week, provoking both outrage and
ridicule among journalists and opinion makers, and swift repudiation by the
office of President Hamid Karzai.

We've just had four more KIA in Afghanistan. I understand why we went into Afghanistan and if we had a competent leader we might have actually accomplished what we went in for. But, we had Bush. He lost Osama, saw Saddam and left Afghanistan hanging in the wind. Once again, the troops pay for a politician's ignorance.

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 22 -- Al-Qaeda's second-in-command urged Afghans in a
new videotaped message to rise up against U.S troops stationed in their country,
a day after American officials warned that clashes with Taliban forces in remote
border areas could get
worse.
U.S. military officials said Thursday morning that four soldiers were killed
and a fifth was injured Wednesday in clashes with insurgents in the northeastern
part of the country, a region near the border with Pakistan where attacks
against foreign troops and Afghan security forces have been on the rise.

Do you think all this is keeping us safer at home? Hell, the Republicans don't even have any faith in Homeland Security. Just more failed crap from the folks that haven't had a good idea since they've been in power.

During a break in the proceedings at yesterday's House Homeland Security
Committee hearing, George Foresman, the Bush administration official in charge
of disaster preparedness, put down the "Read Ahead Book" his staff had prepared
for him and began to wring his hands.

For good reason: He was the guest of honor at a ritual sacrifice,
Washington-style. His Department of Homeland Security has slashed
counterterrorism funding for New York City and the Washington area by 40
percent, and Foresman, though armed with many excuses, lacked an explanation
that passed what Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.) called "the common-sense test."

And just to show that some things never change, Dick Cheney's lack of acumen has provided the country with the same disastrous results that he achieved at Halliburton. I wonder if we can bring a class action lawsuit against Cheney and Bush.

Amid all his other troubles, Vice President Richard Cheney is now stalked by a
ghost from his past--the Richard Cheney who for five years was CEO of the
Halliburton Company. When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George W. Bush's running mate, the Republican ticket was touted as two tough-minded business
executives running against wimpish politicians. "The American people should be
pleased they have a vice presidential nominee who has been successful in
business," Karen Hughes, Bush's then-communications director, enthused.

A rather different story is told by a class-action investor lawsuit against
Halliburton, recently revived after languishing for four years. It describes
Cheney as not much different from other corporate titans ensnared by accusations
of fraud. Brushing aside facts and subordinates' warnings, CEO Cheney made a
series of daring but wrong decisions that were disastrous for the company. The
managerial incompetence was compounded by fraudulent accounting gimmicks that
concealed the company's true condition. Cheney, however, relentlessly issued
bullish assurances, hiding the losses and pumping up the stock price.

A Republican dream come true. The middle class is rapidly disappearing, at this rate the U.S. will be made up of just Republicans and the rest of us, the peasants.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Middle-class neighborhoods, long regarded as incubators for
the American dream, are losing ground in cities across the country, shrinking at
more than twice the rate of the middle class itself.

In their place, poor and rich neighborhoods are both on the rise, as cities
and suburbs have become increasingly segregated by income, according to a
Brookings Institution study released Thursday. It found that as a share of all
urban and suburban neighborhoods, middle-income neighborhoods in the nation's
100 largest metro areas have declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in
2000.