Sorry for the lack of posting over the last few days. I’ve been on the road without constant access to internet access. Anyway, this is definitely good news.

US military losses in Iraq for September stood at 70 on Sunday, the lowest monthly figure since July last year, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures. The figure also marks the fourth consecutive drop in the monthly death toll following a high of 121 in May. June saw 93 deaths, July 82 and August 79. The monthly toll in July 2006 was 53.

“The trend is certainly in the right direction,” US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told a press conference in Baghdad.

“The surge unquestionably is what has been the catalyst that has created the opportunity to have more forces operating in more places at the same time and to deny Al-Qaeda and the extremists safe-haven and to take away sanctuaries.”

And it’s not an unimportant story, either. He claims, quoting himself as a source, that U.S. troops opened fire on innocent civilians. His using himself as a source is the only evidence he provides of the incident.

By Noor Mohammad Sherzai

BATI KOT, Afghanistan (Reuters) – U.S. troops opened fire on civilians near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Thursday after a failed suicide car bomb attack on their convoy, a Reuters witness said.

There was no immediate comment on the reported incident either from U.S.-led coalition forces or from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The witness said three suicide bombers in one vehicle attacked a convoy of U.S. troops in the village of Bati Kot, 15 km (9 miles) east of Jalalabad, but none of the soldiers was hurt.

Two of the bombers were immediately killed in the blast. The third, dressed in a police uniform, survived only to be shot dead by troops, the witness said.

A fire brigade vehicle arriving at speed at the scene then suffered brake failure and rammed into the U.S. vehicles. Troops inside then opened fire, wounding a number of bystanders.

“I saw everything,” said Reuters correspondent Noor Mohammad Sherzai. “I saw the suicide bomb attack …

“I saw the fire brigade vehicle rushing to the area at top speed, somehow its brakes failed and hit one police vehicle and coalition vehicles, then the Americans started firing at the people and everyone lay flat on the ground and then fled the area.”

Sherzai said a number of people had been wounded in the attack, but he did not know how many. “I ran away to save my own life.”

Sherzai and other reporters at the scene said many shots were fired and Afghan police were among those fleeing the scene.

“I was running away as fast as I could, but some of the police overtook me,” Sherzai said. The police, he said, “were very angry because the Americans were shooting and wanted to shoot back but others stopped them”.

Ok, they’re not even trying to be unreliable anymore.

Now, would this be retreating on retreating? Of the Democratic frontrunners for the nomination, not a single one was willing to commit withdrawing troops from Iraq…by 2013.

HANOVER, N.H. – The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013.

“I think it’s hard to project four years from now,” said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation’s first primary state.

“It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting,” added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“I cannot make that commitment,” said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Good to get on record. While Obama and Clinton are criticizing Bush for keeping troops there, they themselves couldn’t guarantee the troops would be withdrawn for another 4 years.

Maybe he’ll think next time before jumping on the Republican/war bashing bandwagon…nah.

Which is pretty much their solution across the board. How do you fight global warming? Apparently by raising taxes.

WASHINGTON — Dealing with global warming will be painful, says one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. To back up his claim he is proposing a recipe many people won’t like _ a 50-cent gasoline tax, a carbon tax and scaling back tax breaks for some home owners.

“I’m trying to have everybody understand that this is going to cost and that it’s going to have a measure of pain that you’re not going to like,” Rep. John Dingell, who is marking his 52nd year in Congress, said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

But we’re going to do it anyway! Does Dingell realize what’s wrong with what he just said? The “representative” says he’ll introduce a plan you won’t like and is going to cost you even more money. Isn’t that sort of like, ya know, taxation without representation?

But Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that will craft climate legislation, is making it clear that he believes tackling global warming will require a lot more if it is to be taken seriously.

“This is going to cause pain,” he said, adding that he wants to make certain “the pain is shared in a way that is fair, proper, acceptable and accomplishes the basic purpose” of reducing greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

Dingell says he hasn’t rule out such a so-called “cap-and-trade” system, either, but that at least for now he wants to float what he believes is a better idea. He will propose for discussion:

_A 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and jet fuel, phased in over five years, on top of existing taxes.

_A tax on carbon, at $50 a ton, released from burning coal, petroleum or natural gas.

_Phaseout of the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for homes over 3,000 square feet. Owners would keep most of the deduction for homes at the lower end of the scale, but it would be eliminated entirely for homes of 4,200 feet or more.

If Democrats don’t have their hand reaching in your pocket, they’re simply not doing their job.

Some of the revenue would be used to reduce payroll taxes, but most would go elsewhere including for highway construction, mass transit, paying for Social Security and health programs and to help the poor pay energy bills.

Am I missing something here? How does this help with your crusade against global warming? Is the philosophy here that it’ll cost us more, so we’ll stop using as much? We’re Americans; we pay 3 bucks for a gallon of gas and $600 for a cell phone. It’s just more taxes.

He thought he was clever, too, which would make this ever the more sweet. David Shuster of MSNBC was filling in for Tucker Carlson when he decided to play a grotesque game of “Gotcha” with Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in order to make a political point.

SHUSTER: Let’s talk about the public trust. You represent of course a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last soldier from your district who was killed in Iraq?

MARSHA BLACKBURN: The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district? I do not know.

SHUSTER: OK, his name was Jeremy Bohannon. He was killed August the ninth, 2007. How come you didn’t know the name?

BLACKBURN: You know, I do not know why I did not know the name. We make contact with the families that are in our district, and when you have a major military post you are very sensitive to this and sensitive to working with those families and that is something that my staff and I do daily. Our district director is a gentleman who has served in the U.S. Army and currently serves in the National Guard, and we do everything that we possibly can do to assist those families. We are very appreciative of the sacrifice –

SHUSTER: Well, you weren’t appreciative enough to know the name of this young man, he was 18 years old who was killed, yet you can say chapter and verse what goes on with the New York Times and MoveOn.org

Well, now, this has turned up:

It now turns out that Army Private Jeremy Bohannon had not, contrary to Shuster’s claim, lived in Rep. Blackburn’s congressional district. As blogger Conservative Belle brought to NB’s attention, and as she has written about at her site, Private Bohannon lived in Bon Acqua, TN. Checking his nine-digit zip code reveals that he in fact lived in Tennessee District 8, represented by John Tanner, a Democrat.

I have now spoken with an aide in Rep. Blackburn’s office, who confirmed that Pvt. Bohannon had not lived in the congresswoman’s district.

Mr. Shuster, if you intend to criticize and speak about public trust, at least get your facts straight.

UPDATE:

Hot Air commentator Conblog_Nh wrote Shuster, and he apparently responded:

I respect your point of view… But if you are truly an “editor,” as you say, I’m sure you will understand that this segment was about the priorities of Representative Blackburn. What do you think it says when any lawmaker, regardless of their party, knows more about a newspaper ad than about their constituents serving and dying in Iraq?

In other words, he considers it Fake, But Accurate. The facts he presents are actually incorrect, but he feels he made a grander political point. Shuster, thing is, when you report false facts, people don’t want to hear your lectures on public trust. You have no podium from which to preach, metaphorically speaking. The public trusts you to report correct facts. When you violate that trust, you’ve lost your ability to lecture somebody else on the topic.

One day Joe Biden woke up and thought “Hey, let’s partition Iraq! What I great idea!”, and 74 other SenatorsLemmings followed suit. The Senate has passed a non-binding resolution calling for the partitioning of Iraq into 3 regions. Additionally it calls upon the UNSC to come together and agree on a future in Iraq, which is about as likely as a snowball in hell. I won’t even go into the fact that Iraq is a nation with its own legislative branch.

In a strong rebuff to the Bush Administration on Iraq, the Senate overwhelming approved a plan by Biden that essentially calls for breaking Iraq into three sections: Kurd, Sunni, and Shia. While the amendment is nonbinding, it’s the first measure to pass, (vote was 75-23,) that goes against the administration’s war strategy.

Biden’s chief co-sponsor was Brownback. Fellow candidates Clinton and Dodd also supported the plan. Obama and McCain did not vote.

In a news conference after the vote, Biden said his plan is consistent with the Iraqi constitution which calls Iraq to be made up of “a decentralized capital, regions, and governorates, and local administrations.” Biden says this plan illustrates how to “end this war in a way that we are able to ultimately to bring our troops home and leave a stable Iraq behind… [that] is consistent with the Iraqi constitution.” He described it as “pushing on an open door.”

Translation: It made him and his fellow Senators fell macho without having to actually do something regarding Iraq. John Burns of the New York Times thought it was a wonderful idea…not.

HH: John Burns, when we went to break, we were talking about the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq, and I’m hoping, given how many years you’ve spent there, you can sort of explain to me and to the audience how…you mentioned that Saddam’s weight of terror suppressed this divide. How palpable is that divide, even, say, among the employees of the New York Times? Does it rise up as say racial tension would have in the South in the 50’s and the 60’s? Or is it much deeper and much more concealed than that?

JB: No, you mentioned in the last segment the situation in India, and I think that you could say this in common about the two societies in sectarian friction and violence, which is that it’s a manmade thing. It’s a provoked thing. So let me tell you, for example, about the mood in the New York Times’ compound in Iraq. I think among media organizations, we are the largest employer. We have more Iraqi staff than anybody else. And one of the most pleasing things said to me as I left a few weeks ago by one of the Iraqi staff was that you’ve made it possible for us within these high walls, the high blast walls with which we’ve had to surround our compound in Iraq to protect ourselves, and our Iraqi employees, you’ve made it possible within these four walls for us to be Iraqis, not Sunni and Shia. There’s no sectarianism here. I have to say, I was extremely pleased to hear that. And it wasn’t we who created that. We made it possible for Iraqis, decent, hard-working, conscientious Iraqis, the sorts of people we employed, and who contribute so heavily to our daily report in the New York Times on Iraq, made it possible for them to be themselves. And their natural default position, and I’m speaking now of the great majority of Iraqis, is one of peaceable intent and goodwill across the Sunni-Shiite schism, if you will. This sectarian violence has been provoked in the first place by al Qaeda and the Baathist underground as it became, that is to say the remnants of Saddam’s regime, who for a very long time, in the fact of, I have to say, passive Shiite resistance, were killing Shiites in very large numbers in their Mosques, in their markets, on the streets, in their schools, with the sorts of bombings which Americans became so familiar with. It was really only in 2006 that Shiites began to strike back in a serious way with militia death squads of their own. But on both sides of this, it’s extremists who have prevailed. I don’t think that they represent, they don’t represent the default position on either side. That said, of course, the fundamental question of power, and the division of power, is a thing that divides Sunni and Shia. At the New York Times, it wasn’t an issue that we had to address, but it is an issue that Iraq has to addressed, and that’s going to be an extremely difficult one to resolve, absent active religious friction.

It worked out so craptabulously in the past, so let’s do it again! Meanwhile, Congress continues to sit on funding for our troops.

Good. The final vote was 341-79 in favor of the resolution condemning MoveOn’s ad. Both houses of Congress have now condemned the despicable ad with the headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”.

Some Notable Nays: Waxman, Kucinich, Nadler, Abercrombie, Ackerman, Conyers, Hastings, Jackson-Lee.

Oy. Here’s what Condi said:

He was diabolically brilliant. I think he was an outstanding organizer, I think he had a kind of strategic sense, and I don’t think the follow-on leadership has been quite as good. So when you hear people say, “You know, well, if you kill one of them, they’ll just replace him with another leader,” remember that that’s like saying, you know, if you take out Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant, well, they’ll just replace them with another leader. It’s – there are people who are better at this than others and I think the loss of Zarqawi, they – they started to make more mistakes.

It wasn’t even a freakin metaphor this time; it was a simile. Think Progress, of course, has to try to capitalize on this, as Allah says, manufactured controversy.

Yes, the month. Via Don Surber.

“The world does not have to prove to Iran that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. Iran has to convince the world that it is not striving towards such a bomb.” — Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany.