The Hollywood Liberal

McCain: Iraqi government can’t order U.S. withdrawal

Raw Story
Excerpt
On NBC’s Meet the Press this morning John McCain told host Tim Russert that the Democrats’ plan of setting a date for withdrawal from Iraq “would lead to … an enormously challenging situation as a result.”

“But, Senator,” Russert countered, “the Iraqi parliament, a majority of the Iraqi parliament, has signed a petition asking for a date certain for withdrawal of American troops. If the Iraqi parliament wants it, a majority in the Congress want it… then why do you stand there and say, ‘No, you can’t have it’?”

McCain replied that he understands “that if the American people don’t continue to support this effort that [the US] will be forced to withdraw” but his job as a senator is to tell the American people that his assessment is that withdrawal would be “catastrophic.”

Iraq Insurgents Boast of Ambush

Washington Post
Excerpt
BAGHDAD, May 13 — The insurgent coalition that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq asserted responsibility on Sunday for the ambush south of Baghdad that left four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter dead and three other American soldiers missing….
The suicide truck bomb that exploded in Makhmur, near the southern border of the area known as Kurdistan, killed at least 50 people and wounded at least 115, according to government and hospital officials. The blast targeted the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the political organization run by Massoud Barzani, at a time when Kurdish politicians and police were meeting to discuss constitutional issues surrounding the fate of territory around Kurdistan, said Col. Khurshid Abdullah of the 3rd Iraqi Army Division.

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

Bend (Ore.)
Excerpt
In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country’s Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch “said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights.” In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as “a kind of tribal democracy.”

Neil Mallon Bush, the son of President George H. W. Bush and the brother of President George W. Bush, attended the forum to renew old family friendships and to drum up a little business for his educational software company. “The Jeddah Economic Forum has been very productive,” Bush told Arab News. “I have been to this conference four times since 2002. I have seen it develop from the very beginning. There was less participation in the past, now there is more international participation.”

HLs Take
This is the guy who was behind the Silverado Savings and Loan Scandal in the ’80s that may have cost his father a second term. As usual with the Bush family Millions of Dollars were stolen. Of course nowadays they steal Billions at a time.) They ended up paying about 10% of it back in fines. Niel was Poppy’s hand picked successor until he screwed up and got caught. After Clinton was elected Poppy spent the next 8 years greasing the rails for his other son. The Murder Monkey to steal the election so the theft of Billions could continue. They all belong in The Federal Penitentiary.

Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani’s Legacy

NY Times
Excerpt
At the same time, the administration warned companies working on the pile that they would face penalties or be fired if work slowed. And according to public hearing transcripts and unpublished administration records, officials also on some occasions gave flawed public representations of the nature of the health threat, even as they privately worried about exposure to lawsuits by sickened workers….
City officials and a range of medical experts are now convinced that the dust and toxic materials in the air around the site were a menace. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing. City officials estimate that health care costs related to the air at ground zero have already run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one knows whether other illnesses, like cancers, will emerge…
Mr. Giuliani has said very little publicly about how his leadership might have influenced the behavior of the men and women who worked at ground zero. Mr. Giuliani, whose image as a 9/11 hero has been a focus of his run for president, declined to be interviewed for this article. His representatives did not respond to specific questions about the pace of the cleanup, the hazards at the site and Mr. Giuliani’s reticence about the workers’ illnesses.