US Losing War on Terrorism, Experts Say
The United States is losing its fight against terrorism and the Iraq war is the biggest reason why, more than eight of 10 American terrorism and national security experts concluded in a poll released Wednesday.
One participant in the survey, a former CIA official who described himself as a conservative Republican, said the war in Iraq has provided global terrorist groups with a recruiting bonanza, a valuable training ground and a strategic beachhead at the crossroads of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Turkey, the traditional land bridge linking the Middle East to Europe.

The Wreckage in the China Shop
After all the sound and fury of the past few years, how is the U.S. doing in its fight against terrorism?
Not too well, according to a recent survey of more than 100 highly respected foreign policy and national security experts. The survey, dubbed the "Terrorism Index," was conducted by the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine. The respondents included Republicans and Democrats, moderates, liberals and conservatives.
The survey's findings were striking. A strong, bipartisan consensus emerged on two crucial points: 84 percent of the respondents said the United States was not winning the war on terror, and 86 percent said the world was becoming more — not less — dangerous for Americans.
The sound and fury since Sept. 11, 2001 — the chest-thumping and muscle-flexing, the freedom fries, the Patriot Act, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the breathtaking expansion of presidential power, Guantánamo, rendition, the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars — seems to have signified very little.
An article on the survey, in the July/August edition of Foreign Policy, said of the respondents, "They see a national security apparatus in disrepair and a government that is failing to protect the public from the next attack." More than 8 in 10 of the respondents said they believed an attack in the U.S. on the scale of Sept. 11 was likely within the next five years.
"We borrow a billion dollars every working day to import oil, an increasing share of it coming from the Middle East," said Mr. Woolsey, the former C.I.A. director.

Bush Losing Core Supporters
A new Gallup poll shows that, for the first time, Bush’s approval rating has fallen below 50% among total fucking morons, and now stands at 44%. This represents a dramatic drop compared to a poll taken just last December, when 62% of total fucking morons expressed support for the president and his policies.
"We need to bring public discourse back into the realm of stupidity and vacuity. We should be talking about homosexual illegal immigrants burning flags. We should be talking about the power of pride. We should be talking about freedom fries. These are the issues that resonate with total fucking morons.”

'Mark Twain's writing should resonate with all Americans today'
"An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war," wrote Mark Twain in 1906. A century later, the writer's words are more true than ever. Twain would have made his typewriter smoke with invective if he were alive today to see the base behavior of the Bush administration and the "profiles in cowardice" of a Democratic Party that has become mere "Bush Lite" instead of the opposition party this nation and this world so desperately need as "the land of the free" lunges toward a mindless and militaristic police state of fascism, American style.
As the war drags on and the death toll mounts, the Bush team is hoping more and more Americans will swallow the line predicted so well and so mordantly by Mark Twain in "The Chronicle of Young Satan" back in 1900:
"Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame on the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

U.S. Back at Full War Footing in Afghanistan
The United States military is quietly carrying out the largest military offensive in Afghanistan since U.S. troops invaded the country in 2001.
"The Taliban has made a comeback, and we have the next 90 days to crush them," said a senior U.S. military official.

With ineptitude on full display, the party's over for Republicans
By Garrison Keillor
Meanwhile, the Current Occupant goes on impersonating a president. Somewhere in the quiet leafy recesses of the Bush family, somebody is thinking, "Wrong son. Should've tried the smart one."
This one's eyes don't quite focus. Five years in office and he doesn't have a grip on it yet. You stand him up next to Tony Blair at a press conference and the comparison is not kind to Our Guy. Historians are starting to place him at or near the bottom of the list. And one of the basic assumptions of American culture is falling apart: the competence of Republicans.
You might not have always liked Republicans, but you could count on them to manage the bank.
It is painful to look at your father and realize the old man should not be allowed to manage his own money anymore. This is the discovery the country has made about the party in power. They are inept. The checkbook needs to be taken away. They will rant, they will screech, they will wave their canes at you and call you all sorts of names, but you have to do what you have to do.

Global equity meltdown costs investors $2 trillion
The month-long slide in global stocks has wiped out at least $2 trillion in wealth, leaving investors few alternatives to preserve their holdings aside from bonds and money markets.

Field commanders tell Pentagon Iraq war 'is lost'
Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war "is lost" and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month.
Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is "just the tip of the iceberg" with overstressed, out-of-control Americans soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally.
"We are in trouble in Iraq," says retired army general Barry McCaffrey. "Our forces can't sustain this pace, and I'm afraid the American people are walking away from this war."

Mysterious red cells might be aliens
Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)
So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.
If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

MILITARY LEADERS MUTINYING
More recently, another retired Marine, Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in Time that the Iraq war was “unnecessary” and that the rationale for war by those whom he called “the zealots” made no sense. Newbold’s choice of the word “zealots” was loaded. The term arises from the legend of the Zealots—an ancient sect of Jewish fanatics.
Newbold quit the service four months before the Iraq invasion, in part, he said, because he opposed those who exploited the 9-11 tragedy “to hijack our security policy” He added:
“Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public.” But, he said, “I’ve been silent long enough.”
What particularly disturbed Newbold’s critics was that he said he was speaking out “with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership.”
Newbold brandished his anger at the armchair war hawks, most of whom never served in the military, saying, “the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.”