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Question: You said October 24th, “Absolutely, we’re winning.” And I wanted to…

Bush: Yes, that was an indication of my belief we’re going to win

Question: Mr. President, less than two months ago at the end of one of the bloodiest months in the war, you said, “Absolutely we’re winning.” Yesterday you said, “We’re not winning, we’re not losing.” Why did you drop your confident assertion about winning?

Bush: My comments — the first comment was done in this spirit: I believe that we’re going to win; I believe that — and by the way, if I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have our troops there. That’s what you got to know. We’re going to succeed. My comments yesterday reflected the fact that we’re not succeeding nearly as fast as I wanted when I said it at the time…”

With regard to the first Q & A just because you believe that something is going to happen in the future does not make it an absolute in the present. Anyone that cannot see the difference should not be the leader of the country.

With regard to the second answer, if it was written by Hunter S Thompson one would say - HST finally crossed the line into complete pyscobabble - but this was spoken by the leader of the free world…

Update: Judge to decide on AT&T spying suit

If your telephone company is one of the companies that decided to take financial compensation from the federal government in exchange for illegally proving your records to them it seems to me that they owe you $1,000. Now IANAL but this seems pretty damn clear cut to me.

The Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Access, Section 2703(c) outlines exactly five reasons that a phone company can disclose your records to the fed:

a warrant
a court order
the customer’s consent
for telemarketing enforcement
administrative subpoena

Keep in mind that the NSA does not have subpoena power and it is easy to see that not only is your federal government breaking the law by stripping you of your expectation of privacy in your papers and effects but that the Telcos are breaking the law by supplying this info to the Fed.

Section 2707 of the Communications Act says that the phone company are liable for $1000 per individual violation of the Act and outlines a private right of action to any customer “aggrieved by any violation.”

So there you go, a clear cut explanation of why your phone company ( unless you are lucky enough to be a Qwest customer ) owes you $1,000. If there is one thing that big corporations understand is profit and loss - I think handing out millions of thousand dollar checks will get their attention.

After three years and the death of more than 2,300 American soldiers ( amd 17,000 wounded ) in Iraq, Congress has yet to consider, debate and vote on alternatives to the President’s disastrous course.

Right now, in the House of Representitives there is a resolution sitting on the House floor - House Resolution 543. If it is signed by 218 members it would stop the House in its tracks and force them to debate on the Iraq war.

Then the congresscritters would be forced to take an up-or-down vote on any proposed alternatives to the “stay the course” non strategy of Bush Co.

Your voice – right now – can make a BIG difference.

The whole Valerie Plame deal is just the latest example of Bush Co’s modus operandi - they play up the intelligence that helps them justify their predefined plans and goals and they suppress the information that refutes their “truth”. While this may be business as usual in politics, it is no way to run a country.

Bush did not really “declassify” the NIE. Declassification of information follows a defined process which was not followed in this case. The president’s explanation of this fiasco sounded allot like Nixon’s “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal” line.

While what The President did is probably not technically illegal, think back about all those months of W talking about the leak like he didn’t know anything about it even though he was responsible for it. Doesn’t it piss you off that he was up there pretending he wanted to find the leakers – just like O.J. wants to find the real killers…

Joe Wilson pissed off Bush/Cheney by claiming the administration’s pre war intelligence (that they also cherry picked) was bad. They wanted to get back at him so they cherry picked certain classified information and gave it to Scooter so he could out Wilson’s wife and in the process sabotage an entire CIA front company that cost millions of dollars and many years to establish.

The bottom line is that they declassified intelligence and then leaked it to the press to discredit a political adversary, period.