Cheney Kills American Soldier

Terrorists Practicing for Tet Offensive Blow Up Base During Cheney Visit

Veep's Pacemaker Get a Workout

One U.S. soldier was killed February 27 when terrorists targeted the U.S. Bagram airbase in Afghanistan being visited by Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney's deadly decision to travel outside D.C. comes at the conclusion of the Lewis Libby trial. A jury in Washington is deliberating the fate of Cheney's former honcho, who got caught up in Bush-Cheney efforts to smear former ambassador Joseph Wilson after he publicly debunked pre-war lies by the administration.

The truck bomb that exploded near the entrance to the base killed a South Korean soldier, a U.S. contractor and up to 20 Afghans.

It's the closest that Cheney, who fought hard to get five draft deferments during the Vietnam war, has ever come to experiencing combat.

Blair Pulls Out as Bush Digs In

Exit Strategy: Declare Victory and Leave


Prime Minister Tony Blair, who's being forced by his own party into early retirement, undercut Bush's surge suit by announcing that British troops are getting out of Iraq.

Unlike Bush -- who wants to send more U.S. soldiers to their deaths -- Blair announced that U.K. troops can leave because Iraqi soldiers have made significant progress preparing to defend their own country.

The Iraqis say they're actually pleased that the foreigners are getting the hell out.

UK troop reduction a welcome catalyst, says Iraqi president

Michael Howard, The Guardian

The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, today told the Guardian that Tony Blair's statement on phased troop withdrawal in the southern city of Basra was "a welcome catalyst for Iraqi security forces in the south and elsewhere to stand on their own feet".

Mr Talabani said Mr Blair's announcement to the Commons "had not come as a surprise to anyone".

His comments came as Iraq's political leaders, who have been pressing the Bush administration to allow Iraqi forces shoulder more of the security burden in the country, welcomed news of the troop reduction.

The deputy prime minister, Barham Salih said new funds for Basra would be spent "on improving power and water supplies to the city as well as health and sewage and tackling unemployment".

He added that there were also plans to develop Basra's moribund port into the largest and most profitable in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, civic leaders and residents in Basra expressed relief at what they saw as the first step toward the end of the difficult British presence there.

Hakim al-Mayyahi, an influential member of the city's provincial council, said Mr Blair's statement was long overdue.

"Lately, they [the British troops] were not helping the stability of the security situation in Basra," he added. "On the contrary, their constant conflicts with the anti-British groups here was simply contributing to a negative impact among the public."

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Bush’s Budget Priorities: Fund War, Provide Tax Breaks for the Rich, Deprive the Poor

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive

You can see Bush’s skewed priorities when you examine his proposed budget.

He wants to spend $481 billion on the Pentagon next year, and that doesn’t even include the $145 billion he is requesting for his little adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the objective of the Project for a New American Century to get Pentagon spending up to $500 billion a year. With this budget request, it now will stand at $626 billion. And that doesn’t even include the tens of billions of dollars that the Department of Energy spends on nuclear weapons.

Then there are the tax cuts to Bush and Cheney’s rich friends—you know, the people Bush called “his base” in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911.

Bush’s budget would give people with incomes of more than $1 million an average tax cut of $162,000 a year by 2012, while those in the middle fifth of the income scale would get a mere $840 a year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Here’s another way of looking at the lopsided distribution of tax benefits: The top 1 percent would enjoy 31 percent of the tax cuts, the bottom 40 percent just 4 percent, the center points out.

That’s redistribution of income, from bottom to top.

Meantime, Bush is proposing cutting aid to low-income people struggling to pay high winter heating bills.

Bush would also cut child-care assistance for 300,000 kids from poor families over the next three years, and he’s giving states an incentive to push these kids off the CHIP program that gives them insurance, the center says. Bush would also gouge Headstart by $100 million from the level in the continuing resolution passed by the House, the center notes. And the preventive health services block grant, which helps state and local agencies undertake efforts to prevent or reduce the incidence of various health problems such as obesity and lead poisoning, would be eliminated.

Wacky Bush Priorities

Junior: Cut Back on Medicare & Social Security, Spend More on Iraq

(AP) President Bush, poised to submit his new budget to Congress next week, warned that unless programs like Medicare and Social Security are changed, future generations will face tax hikes, government red ink or huge cuts in benefits.

Bush will ask for $100 billion more for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior Pentagon official said Friday. Those requests come on top of about $344 billion spent for Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.