Obama won't be able to beat McCain unless the MSM and a majority of American voters are ready to accept, at the very least, two brutal truths:

1.  Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died for a mistake.

2.  We cannot achieve "success" in Iraq.

This is the takeaway from Thursday's debate.  Here's why.

Like a vulture picking at a carcass, I decided to examine the website for Bill 'O Reilly's All-Spin Zone.

By the way, the people who put together that website should use an online spell checker or the spell-check function in their word processing software.

My purpose behind this is to expose the different varieties of newspeak that 'O Reilly uses to make his points. For a man who claims to have a "No-Spin Zone", he actually spins a lot of information.

While this may be old news to most people on here, I've wanted to do this for a while. I just needed a forum

As reported on Olbermann last night. a group of 11 House Republicans met with the President and basically told him that he has "No More Credibility" on the Iraq War and that if we didn't see progress in Iraq "by fall" even more Republicans would running from his policies as fast as their elephant legs would take them.

Continued over flip...

For the past three and a half years the United States has been at a piviotal point in a war against terror that apparently a whole lot of folks don't have too keen of an understanding of. Now I think because I haven't personally been to concerned about Iraq or its consequences, and therefore haven't read much about it, I'm in a unique position to approach the subject with a open mind. Not all of you can make that claim. So, I'm starting my diary with a question I was asked by a former friend of mine:

"Bush said we were not winning but not losing too. Can you explain what he meant by that statement?" Signed, Anon

President Bush is spending this holiday season pondering what to do about the mess he created in Iraq. "Cut and run," "Phased withdrawal," "Stay the course," and "Double down" or "Surge" have been offered as options. But these political-military options fail to treat the people of Iraq as rationale and moral beings.

It was close to 50 years ago. Our boy scout troop (Iowa 171) had made its way north, crossing the border into the "Land of a Thousand Lakes."

It was probably early June. We would leave immediately after school let out. The Minnesota waters were still a bit chilly but the mosquito population was minimal compared to want it would be in weeks to come.

Being young, the cold water wasn’t that much of an issue.

So, it was that I decided this was my year to water ski.

President George W Bush continually reprimands the US citizen who declares that we should begin to withdrawal our troops from Iraq. He calls this "cutting and running", he calls it quitting, and he calls it, oddly, a "graceful exit." His implications are that this is not going to be easy and we're going to stay the course during his tenure in order to reach his goal. (Yeah, good luck) He believes that "cutting and running" is the easy way out.

But, the crazy thing is, in all of this, is that it is George W Bush who wants the easy way out of Iraq. The easy way would be the opposite of the hard way out, right.

(stay with me over the fold, please)

  With a showdown looming between the Bush Administration and the newly minted Democratic-led Congress over policy in Iraq, I forward a simple idea.  The House should hold hearings to draw together the best ideas from elected officials, focus groups, and the military, and then budget accordingly.  There should be a signing-statement-proof statement included that there is no other money available for operations in Iraq, and then let Bush go out and put his case to the people, who can choose which course is best.  Too simple?  Of questionable legality?  All good questions.  I say a clear approach is best, and hopefuly it will lead to more and more clarity.

Call it whatever you want.  But one thing is clear. Iraq has become the focal point of a Muslim power struggle.

Ultimately, the Muslims themselves must work out the extent to which they will embrace democracy, personal freedom and progress or whether they will reject those things in favor of some degree of repressive religious theocracy or a return to totalitarian rule. So long as we remain mired in the midst of this struggle, we obscure and impair the evolution of that process.

In many ways, "civil war" was always inevitable and necessary.  It is much bigger than Iraq.

I know we're not supposed to just cut & paste an entire article (in this case email), but I think Michael Moore's latest email commemorating the fact that this was in Iraq has now lasted longer than WWII is poignant (and worth punishment for breaking form) for.

It's below the fold...

Leave Iraq now! Or wait...as Michael Moore once said - not enough Americans have died yet. Wait `til it gets to 3,000 - the same number, more or less, killed on 9/11. So what if Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11, numbers are numbers.

Phase One - pull the soldiers off the streets. Phase Two - fall back to Kuwait. Three - come home. Four - pass a law that part-time Guardsman can't serve in foreign wars. Pass a law that American participation in any foreign war will continue only upon annual recertification by Congress.

My first diary Why we can't leave Iraq caused a tiny tremor among some members of the KOS community because I had the temerity to suggest that we could not leave Iraq.  To this day I am not convinced we should leave at the moment, but an editorial "How to cut and run" by LT. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.) in Wednesday's edition of the LA Times has me leaning closer to a withdrawal.

I got thinking that as "Stay the Course" has morphed into an attack line for the Dems, was "Cut and Run" actually a smart strategy to embrace?  As in "cut your losses" - which is what I think most people want in Iraq?

Right now, this October 2006 will likely be known as the United States’ deadliest month during the entire Occupation of the Iraq War. This is bringing down support for the war in the United States big time, and support for the President is even lower.

As of now, the Democrats look likely to definitely take the House and maybe even the Senate. I personally don’t trust either party much, but the Neo-Con run White House is up for a big challenge this mid-term election and it seems as though their policies will be haulted after November 7th if the Democrats have any gut.

Staythecourse,the official adminstration hobbyhorse was banished to the glue factory this week. That pony simply would not ride to the finish line on November 7th.

I've always loved numbers. My parents worked me hard (some would say, "too hard!") to learn my "tables" in grade school. I scored in the mid- to high- nineties in my New York State (high school) Math Regents Exams. I'm a musician and song writer, avocationally, and in case you didn't know, there's an incredible correlation between math and music.

Back at the beginning of 2003, I would have been in favor of going into Iraq had there been WMD's found. But I sensed the distortions this slimy administration was dishing out, and, I guess, through my intuitive processes, I knew we were making a terrible mistake. Only ... then ... I didn't know--quantitatively--how terrible!

I lost my younger brother in Viet Nam in 1967. He was 21; I was 25. Had I been as smart in life as I was in math, I would have dragged him, bodily, to Canada. Oh well.

Any television show which has had a long and profitable run, but is now losing the audience's interest, will add the most counter-intuitive of plot twists to try to boost their ratings.

did ya see this?

The Iraqi government is going to have to take over its country's security "sooner rather than later," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday, as the violence there continued to escalate.

Rumsfeld said U.S. officials, including Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in        Iraq, are working with the Iraqi government to develop projections as to when they think they can pass off various pieces of responsibility. He provided no detail.

"The biggest mistake would be to not pass things over to the Iraqis, create a dependency on their part, instead of developing strength and capacity and competence," said Rumsfeld. "It's their country, they're going to have to govern it, they're going to have to provide security for it, and they're going to have to do it sooner rather than later.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!