On Friday, Mitt Romney suggested that overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, would move the country towards a place “where there was no abortion.”

“I would love to see an America where there was no abortion. But that’s not where the American people are…What I do want to see, and where I think the American people are today, is to see a conservative jurist on the Supreme Court and to see Roe v. Wade overturned.”

Romney’s naiveté is contradicted by the facts. According to a study released yesterday by The World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute, “abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.”

Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.

Rather than reducing the number of abortions, overturning Roe v. Wade would jeopardize women’s lives. Romney had it right in 1994 (”I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.”) and 2002 (”The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government’s.”). Unfortunatley, since he decided to seek the Republican nomination for president, Romney has been willing to place politics ahead of women’s well being.

In fact, by dismissing the science that contradicts his new-found ideology, Romney, like Rudy, is following in the footsteps of our current president.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran of “lying” about its nuclear program. “There is an Iranian history of obfuscation and, indeed, lying to the IAEA,” she said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “There is a history of Iran not answering important questions about what is going on and there is Iran pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to nuclear weapons-grade material.”

While Iran’s intentions are uncertain, the United States has no evidence that it is lying about its nuclear capabilities. In fact, Rice’s rhetoric is reminiscent of the false charges levied by the Bush administration against Iraq in 2002. On March 6, 2003 President Bush accused Saddam Hussein of lying to UN weapons inspectors.

Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents to avoid detection by inspectors…We know from multiple intelligence sources that Iraqi weapons scientists continue to be threatened with harm should they cooperate with U.N. inspectors…. These are not the actions of a regime that is disarming. These are the actions of a regime engaged in a willful charade. These are the actions of a regime that systematically and deliberately is defying the world….Inspection teams do not need more time, or more personnel. All they need is what they have never received — the full cooperation of the Iraqi regime. Token gestures are not acceptable. The only acceptable outcome is the one already defined by a unanimous vote of the Security Council — total disarmament.

The following day, testifying before the United Nations, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix contradicted Bush’s assessment.

In matters relating to process, notably prompt access to sites, we have faced relatively few difficulties and certainly much less than those that were faced by UNSCOM in the period 1991 to 1998. This may well be due to the strong outside pressure….This is not to say that the operation of inspections is free from frictions, but at this juncture we are able to perform professional no-notice inspections all over Iraq and to increase aerial surveillance.

Five years and one war later, the cautious-fact based approach of the United Nations is vindicated. Even today, the UN is singing a similar tune. While acknowledging that Iran’s nuclear ambitions may not be “entirely peaceful,” Mohammad ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA maintains that “he had seen no evidence to back allegations that the country was attempting to build a bomb.”

If the war in Iraq has taught Americans anything, it’s that ideology should not overwhelm reality. A policy driven by “wild-eyed theories and fantasies” will most certainly lead towards another catastrophic war.

Yesterday, The Body Politik noted that while former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani portrays himself as an expert on terrorism, his actual statements and policy judgments usually reveal his ignorance. Today, Josh Marshall notes that Rudy Giuliani has hired “Michael Rubin as Senior Iran and Turkey Advisor and Middle East Advisory Board Member.”

Rubin worked at “Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans” and “like the most interesting and frightening neos, Michael is that perfect mix of extreme factual knowledge and extreme lack of judgment, prone to wild-eyed theories and fantasies of various sorts but all in the end leading inexorably toward catastrophic policy moves for the United States.” Below is a sampling of Rubin’s greatest hits:

- IRAQ: “The question with Iraq is not whether they were involved on Sept. 11. The question with Iraq is, do we think they have the capacity, the will and the means to create mass casualties in the United States. I think they do. The evidence shows they do. And then the issue is, why should we wait and sacrifice another 5,000 innocent lives?” [10/24/01 Yale Daily News]

- “September 11 has helped to persuade the region that the United States isn’t going to take it anymore. Even onerous regimes are eager or willing to be part of the U.S. coalition against Usama bin Ladin’s terrorism. Under resolute U.S. leadership, some of this spirit could be mobilized against Iraq.… [Ankara, Amman, Kuwait City, and Riyadh] want to see a plan that is focused, determined, and close-ended. If the United States can produce one, its regional allies will fall into line.”[Winter/02, Middle East Quarterly]

- “The Kurds themselves, many of them patriotic veterans of the Iraqi Army do not wish to split from Iraq; they do want a federal, unified and democratic Iraq. Their only problem is with Saddam Husayn himself. Until he is removed, nothing can proceed.” [ 7/10/01, Middle East Forum]

- The New York Times reports that Rubin advised The Lincoln Group, a Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print American propaganda, on the content of the propaganda campaign in Iraq. [1/2/06, NYT]

- IRAN: “U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq are diametrically opposed, and will continue to be until one side wins and the other loses.” Diplomacy with Iran is “a mirage, a tactical tool to divert U.S. policy attention away from the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officials charged with implementing the Iranian leadership’s objectives…For the U.S. government to succeed in Iraq, it must engage not with the illusion of Iranian policy, but refine its strategies to neutralize and counter the Iranian strategies.” [8/09/07, Washington Post]

- “In the wake of Sadr’s uprising, Washington is faced with the same choice: End Iran’s infiltration through forceful action, or wish it away. How long can we afford to keep choosing the latter?“ [4/26/04, New Republic]

- ISLAMIC WORLD: “In the Islamic world, confrontation may work better than dialogue. As the Taliban were driven from Kabul, Afghans spontaneously celebrated, cheering America in the streets…Washington should not negotiate with rogue regimes, at least not until they move beyond mere rhetoric and unilaterally cease all weapons proliferation and terror sponsorship without precondition.” [12/12/01, Opinion Journal]

- REGIME CHANGE IN SYRIA: The Asia Times reported that Michael Rubin and the usual neo-con suspects “signed a report released three years ago that called for using military force to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to end its military presence in Lebanon.” [4/17/03, Asia Times]

By recruiting hard line neo-conservatives, Giuliani is tacitly endorsing the failed foreign policy of the Bush administration. If the war on terror and the war in Iraq have radicalized jihadists and increased the terror threat, Giuliani’s willingness to pursue a confrontational and militant foreign policy– possibly extending the war to Iran– would jeopardize American safety and security.

While former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani portrays himself as an expert on terrorism, his actual statements and policy judgments usually reveal his ignorance. Last night’s debate was no exception. Consider this exchange between Giuliani and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX):

GIULIANI: And the point — I think it was Congressman Paul — made before, that we’ve never had an imminent attack — I don’t know where he was on September 11th. (Laughter.)

PAUL: That was no country. (Applause.) That was 19 thugs. It has nothing to do with a country.

GIULIANI: And there have been — and since September — well, I think it was kind of organized in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And if we had known about it, maybe hitting a target there quickly might have helped prevent it.

But as Time Magazine and the chairmen of 9/11 Commission point out, Giuliani has it backwards. While ‘hitting a target’ in Afghanistan would not have foiled the 9/11 attacks, mounting an aggressive campaign “to degrade the terrorist network worldwide,” and heeding the advice of Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke may have.

By the beginning of that year [2001], Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two Arabs who had been leaders of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, were already living in Florida, honing their skills in flight schools. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had been doing the same in Southern California. The hijackers maintained tight security, generally avoided cell phones, rented apartments under false names and used cash-not wire transfers-wherever possible. If every plan to attack al-Qaeda had been executed, and every lead explored, Atta’s team might still never have been caught.

Steve Benen put it best: “Does Giuliani really think airstrikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the summer of 2001 could have prevented 9/11? That would have led the 19 terrorists to just give up and go home? Does that even make any sense?”

Fred Thompson’s reviews are in. According to the AP, “Fred Thompson stayed on script. The newcomer to the Republican presidential field didn’t stand out in his first debate of the 2008 race, but he didn’t blow it either.” And while Thompson has benefited from the bigotry of low expectations and the softball horse race media punditry, his policy pronouncements were less than accurate. Consider the following fact check:

Trade: “Free and fair trade has been good for America; responsible for millions of jobs in this country. We cannot turn our back on that.” In reality, free trade has led to an exodus of jobs and more appear to be at risk.

According to Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and staunch free trade advocate, “a new industrial revolution — communication technology that allows services to be delivered electronically from afar — will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two. That’s more than double the total of workers employed in manufacturing today. The job insecurity those workers face today is “only the tip of a very big iceberg.”

Taxes: “Generally speaking, lower taxes and lower tax rates grow the economy.” Unfortunately for Thompson, there is simply no evidence for this.

The claim that high taxes impede economic growth “is just not supported by the evidence in the U.S. or across countries.” Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan and Jon Bakija compared the G.D.P. per capita with the level of taxes in the two dozen member nations. According to their calculations, “relatively low-tax nations like the United States and Japan did well…but so did high-tax nations in Scandinavia and elsewhere. More important, the authors contradict earlier findings that purported to show that high taxes reduced growth rates. There is no such relationship, they found; many economists now agree.”

Iraq: “Clearly, to me, we didn’t go in with enough troops [into Iraq] and we didn’t know what to expect when we got there.” Thompson may not have known, but the administration sure thought it did.

Vice President Dick Cheney: “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators... The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.” (Meet The Press, 3/16/03) “I think that the people of Iraq would welcome the U.S. force as liberators; they would not see us as oppressors, by any means. (CNN American Morning, 9/9/02)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “Think of the faces in Afghanistan when the people were liberated, when they moved out in the streets and they started singing and flying kites and women went to school and people were able to function and other countries were able to start interacting with them. That’s what would happen in Iraq.” (Media Roundtable, 9/13/02)

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.” (Wolfowitz, House Budget Committee, 2/27/03) “Until the regime is gone it’s going to be very hard to do anything. Even in cities that are liberated. I think when the people of Basra no longer feel the threat of that regime, you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief.” (Wolfowitz, News Conference, 3/25/03)

Secretary of State Colin Powell: We would hope that if it came to that, there would be such a sea change in the region, rather than it being seen as an assault, it would be seen as a liberation, and it would be seen as the beginning of a new era in that part of the world, as Mr. Lantos has spoken of. (Powell, HIRC, 9/19/02)

Press Secretary Ari Fleisher: My point is, the likelihood is much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors.” (Fleischer, Press Briefing, 10/11/02)

On Tuesday, fearing that they will be perceived as weak on terror, the Democrats in the House will propose a bill that “would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.”

The new bill, the RESTORE Act of 2007, clarifies “that no court orders are required for the government to conduct surveillance on communications outside the United States even when the surveillance is conducted on U.S. soil” and “allows the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to request an “umbrella warrant” to conduct surveillance of foreign targets” for up to one year.

The New York Times notes that the new bill does include some oversight provisions:

In an acknowledgment of concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the interception of foreign-based communications by the security agency…the House bill would not give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications utilities that participated in the eavesdropping. That has been a top priority of the administration. The temporary measure gave the utilities immunity for future acts, but not past deeds.

The House bill would also require the administration to disclose details of the program. Democrats say they plan to push the administration to turn over internal documents laying out the legal rationale for the program, something the administration has refused to do.

The extension comes on the heals Mike McConnell’s, the Director of National Intelligence, attempts to intimidate Congressional Democrats into extending blanket NSA eavesdropping authority by falsely claiming that “the new expansive FISA legislation passed by Congress prior to the August recess — the so-called Protect America Act — had helped to thwart a an alleged terror plot in Germany.” McConnell, who had previously claimed that “Americans are going to die “if Congress publicly debated wiretapping, later “acknowledged that he lied to the Senate.”

Congressional Democrats should not reward the administration’s scare tactics. Rather than allowing Republicans to frame the debate, the Democrats, recalling the consequences of unchecked surveillance, must demand adequate oversight. For the most part, the public is on their side. According to a AP-Ipsos poll released in January of 2006, when asked:

Should the Bush administration be required to get a warrant from a judge before monitoring phone and internet communications between American citizens in the United States and suspected terrorists, or should the government be allowed to monitor such communications without a warrant?

Fifty-six percent of respondents said “the administration should be required to get a warrant; only 42 percent of those polled said it should proceed without one.” And while the RESTORE Act of 2007, may be an improvement over the August bill, the new legislation “still authorizes the interception of Americans’ international communications without a warrant in far too many instances, and without adequate civil liberties protections.” Americans deserve better.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald makes a good point:

It is important here to recall that there is actually an amendment to FISA that is at least arguably justifiable. Even the original FISA law never required warrants in order to eavesdrop on (a) foreign-to-foreign calls or (b) calls involving a U.S. citizen where the target was a non-citizen outside the U.S. (who just happened to call into the U.S.). But recently, technological developments resulted in such calls, even foreign-foreign calls, being routed through the U.S. via fiber optics, and a FISA court ruled this year that the language of FISA requires warrants for such calls.

Even civil libertarian stalwarts such as Russ Feingold agree that it was never the intent of FISA to require warrants for those categories of calls and that amending FISA strictly to fix that problem is justifiable.

UPDATE II: A summary of the RESTORE Act can be found here.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once asked, “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?” Now, a new report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) has concluded that the answer is a resounding No.

According to the report, “the war on terror is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements.” Paul Rogers, the report’s author, explains that the best way to combat and contain Al Qaeda is through “conventional policing and security measures…but this will require a change in policy at every level.”

Rogers’ critique should sound familiar. During the 2004 elections, then presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) argued that “the war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering law enforcement operation.” The administration said that Kerry was a “weak opponent for terrorists.” President Bush caricatured Kerry’s position:

After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and supporters declared war on the United States of America — and war is what they got.

With the ‘08 election in full swing, the President and the top contenders for the GOP nomination continue make the argument that war is a deterrent for terrorism; some even argue that an attack on Iran would help contain the terrorist threat. They know better. Unfortunately, they are more interested in winning elections than protecting America.

The Republican base is broken. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, “some business leaders are drifting away from the party because of the war in Iraq, the growing federal debt and a conservative social agenda they don’t share.” Now, the GOP’s loyal values voters are also showing signs of cracking.

Since 2000, the religious right has successfully galvanized so-called value voters around abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research. But now, just eight years later, the influence and political clout of the “religious right” is fading. Unable to organize around a single GOP candidate, the ‘old lions’ of the Christian Conservative movement are seeing their dominance “challenged in recent years with the emergence of new leaders.”

These new leaders are pushing evangelicals to expand their agenda beyond abortion and homosexuality, to include issues like poverty, AIDS and global warming. Like other Americans, evangelicals tell pollsters they care a great deal about the war in Iraq, health care, immigration and security. If evangelicals more and more vote like average Americans, it becomes increasingly complex for the candidates to calculate how to win them over.

According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, 30 percent of white born-again or evangelical Republican primary voters “said it would be possible for them to vote for a candidate they didn’t agree with on issues like abortion or same-sex marriage.” In fact, if religious leaders are successful in expanding their social agenda “to include issues like poverty, AIDS and global warming,”– issues the GOP has ignored or been slow to act on– the Republican party may quickly spiral towards irrelevancy.

Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that for the GOP candidates, “the unspoken problem is the same: how to establish a clear break from the legacy of President Bush and his sagging poll numbers without alienating the party faithful.”

And while the top tier GOPiers have criticized Bush for not mobilizing “more troops for the invasion of Iraq” botching the response to Hurricane Katrina, supporting comprehensive immigration reform, and failing to “veto spending bills,” most Republican presidential hopefuls disagree with Bush in name only.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani echo Bush’s failed approach to foreign and economic policies.

- Support the war in Iraq and the surge strategy:

Romney: “Well right now, I don’t have a different view than he [Bush] does with regards to the surge. I think the surge is the best course we have at this stage.” [This Week, 8/5/07]

McCain: “And I can assure you, it’s more than apparent, it [the surge] is working and we have to rally the American people. [FNC GOP Debate, 9/5/07]

Giuliani: “Success or failure in Iraq is not a matter of partisan politics but a matter of national Security…In that spirit, I support the president’s increase in troops.” [CNN, 1/10/07]

- Support keeping the military option on the table in Iran:

Romney: “You do not rule out a military strike…we must consider our military options.” [National Journal, 9/28/07]

McCain: “There’s only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option, that is, a nuclear-armed Iran…Now, the military option is the last option but cannot be taken off of the table…We are tied up to a great degree. But that does not mean that we don’t have military options.” [Agence France Presse, 1/15/06]

Giuliani: “America has to have a clear position. The position should be that Iran is not going to be allowed to go nuclear. Senator McCain put it very well a few months ago. He said it would be very, very dangerous to take military action against Iran, but it would be even more dangerous if Iran were a nuclear power. And I think a president has to make that very clear.”" [FNC GOP Debate, 9/5/07]

- Support the ill-conceived tax cuts for the rich:

Romney: “If the Bush tax cuts are allowed the expire, and that would result in a massive tax increase, why you’d see that go up and up that would hurt our economy… it’s a bad idea.” [CNBC, 2/7/07]

McCain: “I think it’s very clear that the increase in revenue that we’ve experienced is directly related to the tax cuts that were enacted and they need to be made permanent, rather than the family budgets and businesses being uncertain about their future.” [FNC GOP Debate, 9/5/07]

Giuliani: “I made supply-side economics work in a city that didn’t understand it. And I ended up having a very positive impact on the economy of the city as the result of that.” [FNC GOP Debate, 9/5/07]

McClatchy is reporting that “four and a half years after the nation’s top military leaders saluted and fell in behind President Bush’s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, their replacements are beginning to question the mission and sound alarms about the toll the war is taking on the Army and the Marine Corps.”

While Bush has a proven track record of ignoring the recommendations of military officials, as the war in Iraq creeps into its fifth year, military leaders are growing increasingly skeptical of the administration’s Iraq war strategy and its policies in the broader war on terror. Here is a sampling:

- 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 also are concerned that the war may be crippling the military’s ability to respond to other crises.

- Gen David Petraeus disagrees with the administration’s use of torture.

- As a member of the Iraq Study Group, Gates has “called for the United States to reach out to Syria and Iran and ’strongly urged’ a drawdown in Iraq.

- Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen recently testified that barring a political reconciliation in Iraq, “no amount of troops will make much of a difference.”

- Mullen also disagreed with Bush’s assertion that the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is based on “progress on the ground,” arguing instead that the withdrawal is necessary because the U.S. will quite simply run out of troops by next summer. Mullen testified at his confirmation hearings last month that the ’surge’ in Iraq could not be sustained at present levels past April 2008.

Ironically, some of these criticisms echo the concerns of Democratic lawmakers, whom the administration and its conservative allies regularly dismiss as “defeatists.” No word from Rush yet on whether Gates, Casey, Mullen and Petraeus are “phony soldiers.”

UPDATE: ThinkProgress notes that “incoming Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike McMullen is also opposed to the use of the words “global war on terror.”