Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe...

International:
Redeploy or Cut-n-Run?
Growing numbers of American military officers have begun to privately question the administration's resistance to redeploying U.S. troops out of Iraq. "There is a new belief that the biggest problem that we face is that our forces are the sand in the gears creating problems," said one former Pentagon official. "We are making things worse by giving the Iraqis a false sense of security at the governing level." "We keep hearing from people who say the American military is turning against the war," CBS' Bob Schieffer said Sunday to guest Rep. John Murtha (R-PA). "Do you think there is anything at all to that?"

"Well, there is no question about it. They're frustrated" Murtha responded.

Pentagon Says It’s Progress…
Last week, the Pentagon sent out a public e-mail newsletter with headlines touting the good news in Iraq, such as "Iraqi Government makes progress, security improves" and "Iraqi Soldiers, Police score victories." But just days earlier, the Pentagon admitted that Iraq has moved closer to "chaos," according to a slide from a classified briefing prepared by U.S. Central Command obtained by the New York Times. The slide, which tracks "Indicators and Warnings of Civil Conflict," shows politicians losing moderating influence, significant police ineffectiveness, population displacement, strengthened militias, increasing violence among Iraqi Security Forces, and "critical" amounts of low-level violence motivated by sectarian differences. The slide also notes that violence is "at an all time high" and "spreading geographically," with many cities subjected to "ethnic cleansing campaigns to consolidate control."

"NATO has insufficient troops in Afghanistan to secure a victory over Taliban fighters in the coming months,” NATO’s top commander, British Gen. David Richards, has told the Financial Times.

National:
At the end of next month, Donald Rumsfeld will become the longest-serving Secretary of Defense, beating the record currently held by Robert McNamara. Some conservatives do not want to see this happen, and have called for Rumsfeld's resignation because of his mishandling of Iraq. "The president refused [to accept Rumsfeld's resignation]," Sen. Olympia Snow (R-ME) said last week. "If I had been in his place I would have accepted it." Others, such as House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), argue that Rumsfeld is the "best thing that's happened to the Pentagon in 25 years." "This Pentagon and our military needs a transformation," Boehner said last weekend, "and I think Donald Rumsfeld is the only man in America who knows where the bodies are buried at the Pentagon, has enough experience to help transform that institution." But Rumsfeld's continued support for a "transformation" strategy to make the Army smaller and more agile ignores a clear lesson from Iraq: "the Army is suffering more from manpower deficiencies than from the absence of high-tech weaponry." In addition, by removing himself from a recent budget dispute over the Army's inadequate funding, Rumsfeld "effectively washed his hands of his duty to reconcile the competing budget demands of the respective services."

In the meantime, President Bush gave Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld an unequivocal vote of confidence Wednesday, saying he would remain in the job until the end of Bush's presidency, a pointed response to Democrats — and Republicans — who have called for Rumsfeld's resignation.

Kerry apologizes to military
Thrust into the midst of the midterm election campaign, Sen. John Kerry apologized today to "any service member, family member or American who was offended" by remarks deemed by Republicans and Democrats alike to be insulting to U.S. forces in Iraq.

In Other News:
The U.S. Air Force has requested a staggering $50 billion in emergency funding for fiscal 2007 -- an amount equal to nearly half its annual budget -- in part to help cover costs for transporting the “growing numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

P. W. Botha, the South African leader who struggled vainly to preserve apartheid rule in a tide of domestic racial violence and global condemnation, died yesterday at age 90. Botha was in power when conservatives, including Vice President Cheney, voted to block apartheid sanctions.

North Korea announced it will return to the six-nation nuclear disarmament talks. David Straub, a former State Department official, said that unless both the U.S. and North Korea “bring significantly different approaches to the talks, the talks will again amount to nothing.” He added, “Indeed, both will almost certainly take even tougher lines.”

After three years, $2.3 billion in government contracts, and 52 company contractors killed, Bechtel Corp. is leaving Iraq. “Did Iraq come out the way you hoped it would?” asked Cliff Mumm, Bechtel’s president for infrastructure work. “I would say, emphatically, no.”

The number of Americans who disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war is up to 63 percent, up from 61 percent in June, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll.

From The Right:
Michael Medved: Why Kerry's crack matters
The day after his breathtakingly clumsy remarks at Pasadena City College suggesting that the uneducated and unsuccessful got "stuck in Iraq," he made a laughable attempt to clarify his sentiments by insisting he meant to insult President Bush, not the troops in the field

From The Left:
Michael R. Gordon (NYT): Classified Briefing Illustrates Growing Chaos in IraqA classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

Thought To Ponder:
“I think we have an administration today that is dysfunctional,”
“And if it can’t get itself together to organize a serious program for finding nuclear material on its way to the United States, then it ought to be replaced by an administration that can.”
Neoconservative Richard Perle, a leading proponent for the war in Iraq. Perle also emphasized that President Bush is not to blame.

(Sources: WSJ, TownHall, TruthOut, The New Republic, Center For American Progress, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Times, Washington Post, FOXNews, NY Times, CNN, LA Times, USA Today, PolitiCalcartoons.com)