CNN is firing on all blasters with this story:
McCain camp rips Obama for cutting troop visit

Sen. John McCain's campaign Saturday lashed out at Sen. Barack Obama for canceling a visit to a U.S. military base in Germany on Thursday. Obama failed to fulfill a "responsibility to the men and women who serve this country," a McCain campaign spokesman said

Inspired by McCain's new ad:

I guess John McCain would rather lose our respect than lose an election

It appears John McCain would rather lose his bearings than lose an election.

It appears John McCain would rather hurl specious, lie-filled attacks at Barack Obama than lose an election.

It appears John McCain would rather try to distract us from his lack of an economic plan, health care plan or responsible energy plan than lose an election.

It appears that John McCain would rather have his campaign taken over by Karl Rove than lose an election.

Gladly:

During a March 2005 Senate budget debate, McCain voted to kill an amendment that would have "increase[d] veterans medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006." That amendment lacked an assured funding stream, but lest one mistake this incident for a maverick's stance against budget-busting, there's more. Just a year later McCain voted against an amendment that would have "increase[d] Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes." Two days after it failed, he voted to kill "an assured stream of funding for veterans' health care that [would] take into account the annual changes in the veterans' population and inflation to be paid for by restoring the pre-2001 top rate for income over $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy." That amendment died quietly, forty-six to fifty-four.

More below.

My Son Gabe's Obama Donation Link

By now, it seems that most people here are aware of the new,disgusting ad that the McCain camp is putting out. Let us show our support for Senator Obama by donating to the campaign.

Let's give Senator Obama the financial means to fight these smears and to finish off the so called "Maverick" come November

Here's a link where you can donate:

My Son Gabe's Obama Donation Link

My Son Gabe's Obama Donation Link

My Son Gabe's Obama Donation Link

Just after 5pm Pacific Daylight time on July 24th, I had my first personal run in with a swift boat gunning for my candidate in this 2008 election cycle - e-mail forwarded by a long time friend saying that Barack had snubbed the troops in Afghanistan in the interests of a photo op.

I'll show the e-mail below the fold, and provide the SNOPES link to debunk it.

Buried inside all the usual morning news noise was this piece regarding Obama's not visiting the wounded troops in Germany. The Obama campaign is saying that they were told by the Pentagon that they could not visit the troops as his trip was now political rather than an official congressional visit. That they say is why he was allowed to visit wounded troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. commanders are asking the Pentagon for up to 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan.

The request was a subject of discussion when President Bush met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

But getting more troops to the increasingly violent battle zone is unlikely to happen before Bush leaves office in January, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

I'd like to know who created the "Time Horizon" scheme. It's a brilliant piece of nonsense. They found another way to say, "we have no plan," to placate everyone who's upset that they have no plan! I wrote and drew this before I knew Maliki spoke out in favor of Obama's withdrawal plan. This doesn't speak to that directly but I do think it's in line with the toon below.



©2008 s.e.forsch     http://www.evan4sh.com

One of the enduring memes employed by the Republican Party and more recently by McCain himself is the assertion that the surge has worked and that we are finally succeeding in the war in Iraq. Like many here I call bullshit, but with caveats I think are important to the political discourse.

For a long time now, I have been following the KBR corruption storyline: the dirty water, the electrocutions, the rape cover ups and the tax dodging.

KBR was turned loose on our troops because the Bush administration's blind adherence to right-wing dogma — "government bad, private industry good" — drove it to outsource the management of the war to dozens of private contractors. And, no surprise, the abuses don't end with KBR

"My shot made Joseph Dwyer famous. Did it also help lead to his death?"  So begins a new article in The Washington Post by Warren Zinn.

He is referring to a tragedy I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago:  A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war had died of an apparent overdose.  Joseph Patrick Dwyer died at a hospital in Pinehurst, N.C., after battling PTSD.  He was 31.

The photograph, taken by Zinn in March 2003, showed Dwyer running to a makeshift military hospital while cradling the boy. The photo appeared in newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts worldwide, making Dwyer a symbol of heroism.  But he tried to deflect praise back to his entire unit.

I've written often here about my friend Cheryl Harris, whose son Ryan Maseth was electrocuted and died in Iraq.  You remember: the military lied and told her he had carried an electrical appliance into the shower.  I helped her trace a total of at least a dozen other electrocutions and she had been instrumental in getting Congress, and the Pentagon, to probe the  issue -- and she finally testified before Democrats in Congress yesterday.

She is also suing KBR, the contractors in charge, and two former KBR people also blew the whistle yesterday.  Another mother, Larraine McGee, who lost a son in Iraq, accused KBR of "homicide" yesterday.

"It is about time we got some answers ... at long last," said Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa. He released a letter to Gen. David Petraeus asking why his command had only recently ordered "theaterwide" technical inspections of military facilities despite being alerted to widespread wiring problems in Iraq installations more than three and a half years ago in a report filed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers safety specialist.

Bloomberg.com
reports today:

Schwarzenegger wrote in a letter sent to Republican President George W. Bush today.

``With more lightning storms forecast for later this week, we sit at a critical tipping point in California that requires immediate federal help and aggressive pre-positioning of federal resources,'' wrote Schwarzenegger, also a Republican. ``I respectfully request federal active duty forces.''

Between now and the end of President George Bush’s term in office on January 20, 2009, almost half of the Soldiers scheduled to deploy to Iraq are members of our National Guard. Never before in the history of our all-volunteer military have we relied so heavily on the National Guard for such a long period of time to serve overseas.

Never.

Over the past six plus years, we have sent over 260,000 members of our National Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan and while the focus and heated debate in Washington may have turned away from Iraq, every day, we are sending more and more members of the National Guard overseas.

Now that Iraq's PM is demanding a US pull out time table it would be interesting to see how Sen McCain and the Bushes spin this after years of saying If Iraq wanted us to leave we will leave... intriguing. Since PM Nuri al-Maliki is now calling what appears to be Bushes, the repugs and McSame's bluff.  Sit back and enjoy peeps...

McCain, Obama at odds over Iraqi withdrawal demand

http://afp.google.com/...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Iraq's hardening demand for a pullout deadline for US troops on Tuesday sent shockwaves through the White House campaign, putting Republican hopeful John McCain on the defensive.
McCain, who says it is too early to leave Iraq, said US pull-backs must be dictated by security conditions, after Democrat Barack Obama said the Iraqi government now shared his desire for a timetable for withdrawals.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that Iraq was seeking such an arrangement in talks with Washington on the future US force structure in the country.

Here are the top stories this week related to our soldiers here and abroad, taken from the Our Troops Newsladder.

In Part V of its War Torn series, The New York Times examines the increased rates of alcoholism among returning combat veterans. (nytimes.com)

After the deadliest month in the war in Afghanistan so far, President Bush announced plans to increase the number of troops deployed to Afghanistan. 28 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in June, outnumbering the June count in Iraq, which has triple the number of forces there. (armytimes.com)

Iraq’s National Security Advisor is the latest official to insist on a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, following such dead enders such as the Iraqis themselves, not to mention al Maliki and the Iraqi Parliament (in fact, this is one of the only things that they do agree on).

Everybody has wondered when Obama was going to push back against the flip-flop meme that the media was tarring and feathering him with. Paul Krugman today went so far as to suggest that it had Rove's fingerprints written all over them. But Obama has begun pushing back against the flip-flop meme by releasing a fact sheet on Iraq. The fact sheet points out that Obama has the same positions on Iraq now that he did several months ago. You can read the fact sheet here.