CBS: Military Tells Bush It Has Only 9,000 Troops Available For ‘Surge’

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A State Department official leaked word this week that President Bush is considering sending “no more than 15,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops” to Iraq. “Instead of a surge, it is a bump,” the official said.


This claim was bolstered last night by CBS’s David Martin, who reported that military commanders have told Bush they are prepared to execute a troop escalation of just 9,000 soldiers and Marines into Iraq, “with another 10,000 on alert in Kuwait and the U.S.”


Watch it:



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The Washington Post reports today that “deep divisions remain between the White House on one side and the Joint Chiefs and congressional leaders on the other about whether a surge of up to 20,000 troops will turn around the deteriorating situation.” The Post also provides more context about an administration official’s recent claim that the escalation is “more of a political decision than a military one.“:


The U.S. military is increasingly resigned to the probability that Bush will deploy a relatively small number of additional troops — between one and five brigades — in part because he has few other dramatic options available to signal U.S. determination in Iraq, officials said. But the Joint Chiefs have not given up making the case that the potential dangers outweigh the benefits for several reasons, officials said.


Escalation backers have already begun distancing themselves from this plan. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said yesterday that not sending enough troops would be “worse than doing nothing.”


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Full transcript:


REPORTER: The president is expected to give his speech on a new way forward in Iraq next week. CBS’s David Martin has learned military commanders told the President they could execute a ‘troop surge’ of 9,000 soldiers and Marines into Iraq, with another 10,000 on alert in Kuwait and the U.S. Two army brigades — about 7,500 troops — would go into Baghdad in an effort to control the violence, clearing neighborhoods and staying long enough for reconstruction projects to take effect. 1,500 Marines would go to the western province of al-Anbar, heartland of the Sunni insurgency. This, even though the Commandant of the Marine Corps was quoted as saying he did not see a need for more battalions. But aides say the President still hasn’t decided for sure on a plan.


TONY SNOW (CLIP): The President understands this is important and needs to be done right.


ANCHOR: And details for the President’s proposal on Iraq are still being hammered out, but Pentagon officials are sure the President will order more troops to Iraq.

(Via Think Progress.)

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warran

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‘President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant,’ the New York Daily News reports. ‘The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a ’signing statement’ that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.’


Neoconservatives ‘have found themselves under attack in Washington policy salons and, more important, within the Bush administration,’ over the Iraq war. But now, ‘a small but increasingly influential group of neocons are again helping steer Iraq policy.’ Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will press for escalation at an event tomorrow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute.


Energy giant ExxonMobil borrowed tactics from the tobacco industry to ‘manufacture uncertainty’ about climate change, spending $16 million on groups that question global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists documents in a new report.


The ‘surge’ becomes a ‘bump.’ A State Department official says that President Bush is considering sending ‘no more than 15,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops’ to Iraq. ‘Instead of a surge, it is a bump,’ said a State Department official.


‘A laboratory that has tested most of the nation’s electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.’


The Washington Post highlights the plight of pregnant women in Iraq, who are ‘forgoing prenatal visits to doctors as a result’ of the ongoing violence. ‘Fearful of going into labor during the nighttime curfew, they are having elective Caesarean sections.’ They also suffer from a shortage of doctors, many of whom have fled the country, been kidnapped or killed.


The AFL-CIO has sued the Department of Labor to compel it to issue a rule requiring employers to pay for protective equipment used by an estimated 20 million workers to protect them from job hazards. By the department’s own estimates, ‘400,000 workers have been injured and 50 have died due to the absence of this rule, since 1999 when the rule was first proposed.’


2007 is ‘set to be the hottest on record worldwide due to global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon,’ beating the last record set in 1998, the Britain Meteorological Office says today. ‘This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world,’ the office said.


The New York Times may eliminate the ‘public editor,’ an autonomous watchdog position created after controversies involving faulty Iraq war reporting and the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal. Executive editor Bill Keller says the position might be scrapped after the current public editor, Byron Calame, completes his term in May.


And finally: Paris Hilton and 89-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) have more in common than you thought, including ‘a penchant for wearing leopard print,’ spending a lot of time in front of cameras, and, The Hill reports, drinking Red Bull. ‘Although Byrd sometimes imbibes the hipster beverage, he’s not about to adopt a club-hopping lifestyle. ‘He likes Bob Evans and the Dairy Queen and Shoney’s,’’ a spokesman said.


What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.

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(Via Think Progress.)

Murtha Plans To Deny Bush Funding For Troop Escalation

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Murtha Plans To Deny Bush Funding For Troop Escalation:

Murtha and BushPresident Bush is widely expected to announce a plan next week to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by at least 20,000. Congress may not cooperate.


In an interview with Arianna Huffington, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Committee, said he intends to block funding for any escalation plan. An excerpt:


When we asked about the likelihood of the president sending additional troops to Iraq, Murtha was adamant. ‘The only way you can have a troop surge,’ he told us, ‘is to extend the tours of people whose tours have already been extended, or to send back people who have just gotten back home.’ He explained at length how our military forces are already stretched to the breaking point, with our strategic reserve so depleted we are unprepared to face any additional threats to the country. So does that mean there will be no surge? Murtha offered us a ‘with Bush anything is possible’ look, then said: ‘Money is the only way we can stop it for sure.’…


He says he wants to ‘fence the funding,’ denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq ‘as soon as we can.’


A memo from the Center for American Progress, released December 27, recommends ‘an amendment on the supplemental funding bill that states that if the administration wants to increase the number of troops in Iraq above 150,000, it must provide a plan for their purpose and require an up or down vote on exceeding that number.’


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(Via Think Progress.)

Stormtroopers crash the 2007 Pasadena Rose Parade

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Stormtroopers crash the 2007 Pasadena Rose Parade: "Xeni Jardin:

BB pal Bonnie Burton of Lucasfilm says,


Here's my behind-the-scenes look at the
Star Wars Spectacular at the 2007 Rose Parade: 200 stormtroopers,
Grambling State Marching Band, floats and Grand Marshal George Lucas. Lots
of great pics of troopers practicing on the field and having fun meeting
each other from 22 different countries!

Here are the images: Link.

I'm also blogging all about it here: Link.



Those float activities commemorate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. About a million people are expected at the parade today. A really loud, low-flying aircraft passed over my house in LA this morning -- shook the walls, scared the heck out of both me and my dog, and seemed to be flying from the direction of the parade. Maybe it was a Rebel Alliance ship heading out to kick some Empire butt.

Here's a related photoset of float prep, with closeups that show how they build these flower floats, from Lorelei: Link (via Wayne's List).

Update: About the low-flying, insanely loud aircraft that gave me instant 9/11 flashbacks and sent my golden retriever running for cover, Wil Wheaton says:

That was the stealth bomber and two stealth fighters. They fly over the
rose parade route every year, and scare the everlivingfuck out of a lot
of people who don't know what the hell is going on. They go right over my house, about 1200 feet above my bedroom.


Update: Wil's brother Jeremy captured the stealth crafts in flight as they flew away from the parade -- snapshot below. They look so small and distant in this photo, but trust me: they sure sounded like close-range whupass.

Brian Roller says,

In your section about the flyby before the Rose Bowl game, it was mentioned that 2 stealth fighters and a stealth bomber flew by, along with wikipedia links about them, one of which was wrong. The two aircraft following the B2 are F22s, which are stealth but are not the F117 you linked to. The B2 is actually VERY quiet... however I live near a base that operates F22s and can attest that they are not, which was likely the concern.



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(Via Boing Boing.)

Pictures of an eagle taking on a fox

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Pictures of an eagle taking on a fox: "the Golden eagle Aquila chrysaetos, are able to attack and kill mammals substantially bigger than they are. Some will attack and kill deer (including reindeer, roe deer and white-tailed deer) and pronghorn, and there are ridiculous, authenticated cases where Golden eagles have killed domestic calves exceeding 100 kg in weight."

(Via digg.)