...On Behalf Of Our Country...

International:
Rumsfeld To Iraq Critics: ‘This Is Complicated Stuff…So You Just Ought To Back Off,’ ‘Relax’
At his news conference yesterday, President Bush repeatedly mentioned “benchmarks” for progress in Iraq, using the word 13 times. But he did not discuss the consequences of the Iraqi government missing those targets. Such a question, he said, was ‘hypothetical.’

At the Pentagon press conference this afternoon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked what would happen if the Iraqi government failed to meet the “benchmarks.” Rumsfeld first responded that “it is not complicated,” but just seconds later said, “This is complicated stuff. It’s difficult. We’re looking out into the future. No one can predict the future with absolute certainty.” He added, “So you ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it’s complicated, it’s difficult.” See the video

National:
Council on Foreign Relations homeland security expert Stephen Flynn, a retired commander in the U.S. Coast Guard, issued a report card yesterday assessing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) five years after its creation. ABC News writes they're "not grades you'd want to bring home to your mother." Overall, the administration’s efforts receive two B’s, four C’s, two D’s, and one D-/F. While nuclear plant security and air defense rank among the best protected areas, chemical plant security rests at the bottom. For the first time, a recent budget appropriation distributed a small amount of money to help the department build a capacity to police what has been recognized as about 15,000 facilities that have the means to injure or threaten the lives of up to 100,000 people around them. Flynn writes, "This is totally unsatisfactory in light of the threat that some very deadly chemicals can pose." Flynn also ranks the DHS's public relations effort near the bottom, arguing that "the department has sort of oscillated back and forth between generating fear, as in raising alert systems... [and] giving recommendations about how to secure yourself that most people didn’t act on or didn’t think were very credible."

Snow: With Black Candidates, ‘There Is Always An Attempt…To Attribute Something To The Race Card’
A recent ad by the Republican National Committee targeting Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN) was criticized by various parties, including former Republican senator William Cohen, as a “very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.”

As Nitpicker noted, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked on Tuesday if he thought the ad was racist. Snow said no, then claimed: "I mean, maybe I’m just quaint in this day and age. But no, I think there is always an attempt when you have got an African-American candidate to try to attribute something to the race card." See the video

In Other News:
In a radio interview Tuesday, Vice President Cheney confirmed that detainees were subjected to water-boarding, the first such admission by a Bush administration official.

Exxon’s third-quarter profit WAS $10.49 billion, "its second highest total ever."

At a public signing ceremony today, President Bush signed a bill authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. The decision to have a public ceremony is a reversal for the Bush administration, which had appeared reluctant to tie itself so publicly to the enforcement-only measure.

According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its detained citizens in return for Berlin's assistance in silencing E.U. protests about the clandestine torture flights program. The classified documents make clear that the U.S. sought Morocco's participation in the rendition program.

In Baghdad's violent Washash neighborhood, which is predominantly Shiite with pockets of Sunni residents, U.S. troops suspect that Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army are conducting what amounts to an ethnic cleansing campaign.

A month after NATO forces claimed a major victory in fierce fighting in southern Afghanistan, large numbers of Taliban forces returned to the region Tuesday and battled NATO forces. The Taliban has regrouped, helped by a booming illegal opium trade and growing frustration at the slow pace of reconstruction and a lack of jobs or a real economy.

From The Right:
Roger Schlesinger: It's us versus them
Let me start this article by saying that there isn't a doubt in my mind that we are the good guys, wearing the white hats, and they are the scoundrels, aka the "bad guys".

From The Left:
Sherwood Ross: Bush Giving Up on Reconstructing Iraq
"Never before has so vast a reconstruction program been attempted in the face of enemy fire or managed in the shadow of geopolitics, where infrastructure itself became a battleground"

Thought To Ponder:
Saddam Hussein verdict postponed until two days before U.S. election: Will the media turn a skeptical eye? More info here

(Sources: TownHall, NY Times, FOXNews, ThinkProgress, NewsMax, TruthOut, Washington Post, Washington Times, WSJ, RealCities, ABCNews, UK Guardian, Time, AlertNet, Council on Foreign Relations, MediaMatters, US House of Representatives, Whitehouse website, MSNBC)