When President Bush announced the surge strategy in January 2007, he argued that his plan would reduce violence and give the Iraqi government “the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas.” As former Press Secretary Tony Snow later explained

But the point is you’re trying to add strength to the forces in Iraq so that they’re going to be successful in taking out sectarian violence and also al Qaeda violence, so that you have the conditions under which people can pursue the important business of political reconciliation and economic development.

But the surge has failed to meet these objectives. According to a new report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, U.S. attempts at political reconciliation, economic growth, and building an effective police force in Iraq “have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation’s provincial regions and the capital.”

In fact, the New York Times notes that “the picture that emerges is far from confidence-inspiring, and raises the question of whether any Western program, no matter how well founded, can overcome the challenges of putting Iraq back together again.”

The answer seems to be that it can’t. As Gen. David Petraeus noted in March of 2007, without political reconciliation, there is no military solution to Iraq. Thus, by Bush’s own standard, the surge has failed. The troops must come home.

UPDATE: A few weeks ago, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told the Washington Post, “I don’t think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such.”

Yesterday, President Bush “derided Democrats for running a do-nothing Congress that has failed to address critical domestic, economic and security issues in the nine months since they took control of Capitol Hill.”

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. “Congressional oversight of the executive branch has intensified under Democratic rule, especially in the House, following years of inattention and deference by their Republican predecessors under unified government.”

Moreover, as ThinkProgress has pointed out, the “110th Congress has had more roll call votes this year than any other Congress in history, almost doubling the number under the previous Congress overseen by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL).” If Bush has forgotten that he has signed 96 bills into law since the opening of the 110th Congress, then here is a sampling of some of the “do nothing” he has overseen:

- Implementation of the 9-11 Commission recommendations

- Lobbying and ethics reform

- An increase in the minimum wage

- Reform of foreign investment rules

- A competitiveness package encouraging scientific research and innovation

In fact, “the Democratic Congress’s legislative harvest this year has been bountiful compared with that of its Republican counterpart in 1995,” despite Republican attempts to obstruct legislative progress. Bush has vetoed popular legislative initiatives, axing bills expanding children’s health care, timetables to “responsibly redeploy from Iraq” and an expansion of life-saving medical research on stem cells,” while Congressional Republicans have tried to block legislation. According to a July McClatchy report, “1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes.”

If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes.

While Democrats should do more to challenge the President on Iraq, public dissatisfaction with Bush’s policies and Republican obstructionism has contributed to the body’s sagging poll numbers. According to a recent Brookings Institution report,”Congress is catching the diffuse blame” for “public discontent with the direction of the country, the war in Iraq, the state of the economy and the performance of the president.”

Democrats correctly point to polling evidence that while Congress as an institution gets low marks, the public also rates the Democrats substantially higher than the Republicans on almost every important public issue and prefers to maintain the current majority in power.

It seems that the American public would rather Republicans “do nothing” than obstruct the Democratic agenda.

USA Today is reporting that “the Army, Navy and Air Force unwittingly advertised for recruits on a website for gays, who are barred from military service if they are open about their sexual orientation.”

Most of the military jobs posted were hard-to-fill positions requiring advanced training, although some ads sought to fill core combat slots at a time when the Iraq war has challenged recruiters to meet goals.

Barring gays from the military has undermined national security. “Since the policy was instituted, at least 11,000 servicemembers, hundreds of whom had with key speciality skills such as training in Arabic, have left the military. Currently in the midst of a readiness crisis, the military could attract as many as 41,000 new recruits if gays could serve openly. “

Rather than recruit gays, the military has lowered its recruiting standards. Last year, the US military “enlisted thousands of new soldiers with criminal records and fewer who have earned high school diplomas.”

The spike of new enlistees given “character” waivers for fiscal 2007 continues a steady upward trend in the number of recruits with past arrests and convictions allowed into the Army since the start of the war in Iraq. More than 11 percent of the Army recruits needed waivers for problems with the law – up from 7.9 percent the previous year and more than double the percentage in 2003, the year the U.S. invaded Iraq.

During today’s press conference, President Bush warned of the risk of ‘World War III’ if Iran acquires “the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it’d be a dangerous threat to world peace. So I told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.

But as Iran’s top political reformers have pointed out, a war with Iran would strengthen hard liners within Iran and destabilize the region. According to Mohsen Mirdamadi, one of Iran’s top reform politicians, “Western powers have to stop any talk of war if they want democracy to succeed in Iran. The threat of an attack helps Ahmadinejad’s political agenda.”

Any U.S. military action against Iran will only boost radicals within Iran … Military action will set back democracy in Iran for a decade or two.

Tonight on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani accused Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) of lacking experience.

So I’m trying to figure out where the experience is here. It would seem to me that in a time of difficult problems and war we don’t want on the job training for an executive. The reality is that these areas in which - maybe there are some areas in which she has experience but the areas of having the responsibility of the safety and security of millions of people on your shoulders is not something Hillary has ever had any experience with.

But Giulian’s own experience has also come into question. “Firefighters and families of 9/11 victims” have criticized the mayor for “failing to ensure “interoperability” of communications devices; placing the city emergency command center in the World Trade Center even after the 1993 terrorist attack at the Twin Towers; and Giuliani’s decision to abandon efforts to recover remains of dead firefighters as he sought a quick clean-up of Ground Zero.”

Giuliani’s characterizations of the events surrounding 9/11 and the war in Iraq have also raised some eyebrows. In fact, Giuliani’s strong support for President Bush’s failed foreign policy and his complete misunderstanding of the terrorist threat suggests that even his so-called 9/11 experience does not qualify him for the presidency.

In today’s Washington Post, twelve former Army Captains write that the U.S. military is overstretched and loosing ground to insurgents in Iraq.

Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles… There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition. America, it has been five years. It’s time to make a choice.

The captains’ argument has been echoed by retired and active duty military officials. Just days ago, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq, called the war “a nightmare with no end in sight.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Undersecretary for Intelligence Gen. James Clapper and other top officials have also argued that the war may be crippling the military’s ability to respond to other crises. ThinkProgress has the full run down here.

The Bush administration has consistently claimed that the decision to draw down troops from Iraq “will be made on a calm assessment by our military commanders based on the conditions on the ground, not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians or poll results in the media.” In reality, the President only listens to those who wear his brand of rose-colored glasses.

For instance, during today’s White House press conference, Press Secretary Dana Perino dismissed Sanchez’s criticism and responded like a “nervous…Washington politician.”

General Sanchez had a good career with the military and the President appreciates his service. I think that, by any measure, if you look at Iraq today, where we’ve been because of the surge — where we’ve come because of the surge, we’re in a much better place today because of what General Petraeus has been able to do in providing the additional troops and getting the Anbar — Anbari sheikhs to turn against al Qaeda, reducing civilian death, electricity is up around the country.

Similarly, fearing that a military drafty would rally the American people against the Iraq war, President Bush rejects the idea and its proponents. Rather than end the Iraq war and preserve the American military, Bush choses to fight the war on the cheap. Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, put it best:

I say to those people who want to keep up this surge indefinitely, if you have the courage of your convictions, then call for reinstatement of the draft. Because our volunteer Army was not designed, as Gen. Abizaid said, for the long war.

But Bush ignores all this. Rather than strategically deploying the American military to defend the homeland, Bush has hijacked America’s volunteer forces to propel a failed ideological agenda. Fortunately, members of the military are increasingly calling Bush on his bluff. For the second time in three months, American foot soldiers have provided the President and the American people with “calm assessments … based on the conditions on the ground in Iraq.” Today’s pleas, like those that came before, have fallen on deaf ears.

The ACLU is reporting that the Department of Defense improperly collaborated with the FBI and issued “hundreds of national security letters (NSLs) to obtain private and sensitive records of people within the United States without court approval.” According to ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero

The Department of Defense may have secretly and illegally conducted surveillance beyond the powers it was granted by Congress. It also appears as if the FBI is serving as a lackey for the DoD in misusing the Patriot Act powers. At the very least, it certainly looks like the FBI and DoD are conspiring to evade limits placed on the Department of Defense’s surveillance powers.

But in a January 2007 interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Vice President Dick Cheney described the practice of issuing national security letters as a “perfectly legitimate activity.”

There’s nothing wrong with it or illegal. It doesn’t violate people’s civil rights. And if an institution that receives one of these national security letters disagrees with it, they’re free to go to court to try to stop its execution.”

The ACLU documents seem to contradict Cheney’s assertions. “Although compliance with Defense Department-issued NSLs is voluntary, the coercive language found in these letters would lead a reader to believe compliance was mandatory.” Moreover, while “the Defense Department told Congress that it seeks NSL assistance from the FBI only in joint investigations… an internal program review shows that the military asks the FBI to issue NSLs in strictly Defense Department investigations.”

UPDATE: The Washington Post reminds us that “earlier this year, the Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI may have improperly obtained phone, bank and other records of thousands of people inside the United States since 2003 by using national security letters and exigent letters, or emergency demands for records. “

According to a survey of nearly 70 chief executives and presidents conducted by the National Association of Corporate Directors, most CEOs in the US believe executives are overpaid. The Financial Times reports that, “Nearly 60 per cent of the directors polled by the NACD said the reason for excessive pay packages was the absence of objective ways to measure an executive’s performance.”

UPDATE: A recent study found that “the income of a top CEO is about 364 times that of the average worker, and the earnings of U.S. CEOs far outstrip those of government leaders, nonprofit executives and even their European counterparts.”

Today in Arkansas (where 9.4% ( 67,123) of children go without health insurance), picking up where the GOP smear campaign left off, President Bush disingenuously defended his veto of the popular SCHIP expansion legislation.

My attitude is, let’s help the poor children. Let’s make sure the program does what it’s supposed to do…A program was created to help poor children with struggling families. When I was the governor of Texas, I supported it, and as president I supported it. But the piece of legislation I got doesn’t focus on the poor children.

President Bush may not have read the legislation he vetoed. As The Body Politik has pointed out, “the overwhelming majority of children who would gain health coverage… are precisely the low-income children the President says he wants to focus on.”

According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the SCHIP bill “at least 85 percent of the otherwise-uninsured children who would gain coverage under the bill have incomes below states’ current SCHIP eligibility limits;” two-thirds of “those who gain SCHIP coverage…would otherwise be uninsured.”

Moreover, since SCHIP needs “14 billion more over the next five years to keep covering current enrollees, let alone reach more of the nation’s nearly 9 million uninsured children,” Bush’s willingness to pony up just $5 billion is “tantamount to a cut.”

“The Senate already has enough votes, 67, to defeat Bush’s veto, so all the drama is on the House side for this showdown.” Firedoglake reports that “the vote to override the SCHIP veto will held on Thursday.” Please contact these representatives and encourage them to support children’s healthcare.

The Washington Post is reporting that “the U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.”

But the military has long overestimated the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq. According to “working-level analysts and troops on the ground,” in the first half of 2007, Al Qaeda accounted for just 8 percent to 15 percent of attacks in Iraq and the group is believed to comprise just 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. A recent Congressional Research Service report noted that attacks from al Qaeda are only a small percentage of the violence in Iraq.

In fact, even the President’s own Benchmark Assessment Report, released on September 14th, concedes that the “main elements” of Iraqi violence “include a communal struggle for power and resources between the Shi’a majority and Sunni, Kurd, and other minorities.”

The Post article also points out that “views of the extent to which AQI has been vanquished also reflect differences over the extent to which it operates independently from Osama bin Laden’s central al-Qaeda organization, based in Pakistan.”

“Everyone has an opinion about how franchisement of al-Qaeda works,” a senior White House official said. “Is it through central control, or is it decentralized?” The answer to that question, the official said, affects “your ability to determine how successfully [AQI] has been defeated or neutralized. Is it ‘game over’?”

But since the administration maintains that the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq is connected to the greater struggle against Al Qaeda Central in the “war on terror,” then judging by the administration’s own standards, the Iraq war has been unsuccessful in reducing the overall Al Qaeda threat. Military officials have consistently underestimated Al Qaeda’s resiliency. As ThinkProgress notes, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the leading advocate of a “declaration of victory” over Al Qaeda, “also fiercely advocated the declaration of Mission Accomplished” in 2003. President Bush has made similar missteps. Here is a sampling:

- Thanks to President Musharraf’s leadership, on the al Qaeda front we’ve dismantled the chief operators of al Qaeda…over 500 al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are detained, they’re no longer a problem. So slowly but surely, we’re dismantling the networks. [White House, 6/24/04]

- We have gone after al Qaeda and other terrorists with relentless determination, disrupting their communications, planning, training, and financing. We have put the enemy on the run, and now they spend their days avoiding capture, because they know America’s Armed Services are on their trail. [White House, 5/27/05]

- Absolutely, we’re winning. Al Qaeda is on the run…We’re winning, and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done. And the crucial battle right now is Iraq. [White House, 6/25/06]

But according to the National Intelligence Estimate, “Al Qaeda has reconstituted its core structure along the Pakistani border and may now be a stronger and more resilient organization today than it appeared a year ago.” Similarly, in early September, the Washington Post reported that “by drawing on lessons learned during 15 years of failed campaigns to destroy it,” Al Qaeda “has grown stronger, rebuilding the organizational framework that was badly damaged after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.”

While the extent of the relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq and Al Qaeda Central may not be known, one thing is certain: Bush’s ill planned “war on terror” and America’s continued presence in Iraq only fuels Al Qaeda’s recruitment efforts and endangers American lives.