If Saddam Hussein was alive and kicking today, he may be laughing his heads off seeing the US government fighting among themselves. Ironically, the issue for their squabbles is about the continuing issue of the war in Iraq. US government officials including President Bush should be ashamed at their acts and get themselves back in composure.

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For weeks now, the headlines have been all about the elections and the war in Iraq. The issue? When will the Iraq war end and when will there be a definite picture of the overall security of the nation? These are the questions that are surely in the minds of US citizens which are not being answered as their continuous arguments seem to be never ending.

As it stands now, the US is in disarray because of it and such has been making the nation divided. Unless something concrete or a resolution is agreed on, it seems hopeless to read the papers on the latest developments of the controversies in the area of politics today.

[tags]saddam hussein, president bush, iraq, war, whitehouse, senate, congress, democrats[/tags]

It was only a matter of time before Bush had it coming. Seeing that Bush has slowly been getting out of hand with his obvious hunger for power, the Senate Democrats are busy drafting a legislative resolution to revoke the broad authority of power granted to the US president. Incidentally, it was the same group that granted President Bush full authority, stemming from the Saddam Hussein issue which has obviously died down ever since he was executed some months back.

Despite the evident elimination of Hussein from the picture, Bush has still chosen to go on the offensive by moving to send additional troops to Iraq and seek total domination for a vendetta that has obviously become a personal grudge. This move has drawn the ire of his supporting nation, clamoring for the end of the loss of innocent lives and opting for a more peaceful resolution of the matter. Sad to note, such has not been heeded and the evident offensive towards war is still wandering in the air over the United States of America.

[tags]George Bush, iraq, democrats, senate[/tags]

Among the usual headlines that leading newspapers would offer are about the current economic situation and the world order. The struggles for power in both the local and international aspect are what make the world both interesting and pathetic in the eyes of people today.

Hunger for power and world domination starting from their homelands can be attributed to the fact that country officials have a high degree of satisfaction with regards to how a country is run, most of which would draw the usual comments and reactions on how to establish better economies and sound social functions.

But the most talked about issue today would have to deal with the constant bickering for the right to power and control. The United States and most of the allied nations of the U.N. would attest to the fact that this is the issue that everyone would want to address and put to rest. While all nations are seen to be at peace, internal shortcomings and ideas are kept in cold storage until the time comes for them to be put into discussion.

It is not feasible to become courageous enough and start a panic when it comes to the overall peace and order of the world and its composing nations. Conservative overviews on how to go about the situation must be exercised if people would want to hold back their plans for the meantime.

[tags]world peace, allied nations, united nations[/tags]

The famous Saddam Hussein is no longer around, more US troops have been sent to reinforce the current number of soldiers battling the Iraqis and the allied nations have expressed dismay and pulled out their troops to spare lives from being taken. The call for peace has been expressed by the allied nations, but it seems that US President Bush is not biting on it, citing security reasons as his main forte for bolstering the current number of troops who are in Iraq.

The order has been criticized to being outrageous if not practical. Aside from claiming the innocent lives of the war plagued country, soldiers’ casualties from the United States have also been escalating and putting lives in jeopardy for the sake of their homeland.

Regardless, the directives being issued by President Bush has been deemed personal and no longer for national concern. Security has become a lame excuse and from all indications, Bush will no longer be able to gain the full blessings of his countrymen. From all indications, Bush couldn’t care less.

[tags]middle east, iraq war, bush, iraq crisis, world peace[/tags]

In the murky world of Hillary Clinton’s undeclared run for the White House, official denials and bland statements are ubiquitous. But, as Kremlinologists did in the Cold War, it pays to monitor the guests shuttling in and out of her townhouse in Washington DC. Last week that list revealed a campaign moving rapidly into top gear, spurred into action by the meteoric rise of Barack Obama.

Last Sunday Clinton hosted a dinner with key officials from New Hampshire. On Tuesday she held one with figures from Iowa. Both states are vital first battlegrounds in any nomination campaign. Then last Wednesday Clinton had a private party with old hands from her husband’s two presidential campaigns, including James ‘The Raging Cajun’ Carville, who masterminded Bill’s rise.

The race is on. Senator Obama of Illinois has electrified the Democratic party like no other figure in recent political memory and the shock is being felt most in Clinton’s campaign. ‘I think they have suddenly sat up and taken notice of this - they have to,’ said a Democratic strategist close to Clinton’s campaign.

Obama is aggressively exploring a presidential run, scuppering Clinton’s carefully laid plans and threatening her grip on the party’s power structure. Her march to power, years in the making, is being speeded into action by Obama’s unexpected emergence, which has blind-sided her close advisers. For the past two years Clinton has deliberately stayed out of New Hampshire and Iowa for fear of stoking up presidential speculation too early. But now the gloves are off. Aside from the dinner parties, Clinton has been hitting the phones to key players in these and other early primary states such as Nevada and South Carolina. In an America caught in the throes of Obama-mania, Clinton is suddenly having to seek publicity. Last week she re-released her best-selling book, It Takes A Village, and is planning some book-signing appearances.

Obama is a real threat. His first rally last week in New Hampshire drew screaming crowds. The week before he had been in Clinton’s home turf of New York City, speaking at a fashion industry dinner, where he pitched himself as a viable alternative to Clinton, saying that the country was keen to move on from the political battles of the 1980s and 1990s. ‘The country is waiting for the next thing,’ he told an admiring audience. It was clear whom he thought that next thing was. In New Hampshire, TV adverts supporting Obama are already running. They beat out the same message - Obama is a fresh face. ‘Believe again!’ the advert exhorts. Obama is becoming a huge symbol of change. ‘People are projecting on him whatever they want to see,’ said Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.

It is easy to see why Obama is such a threat. His liberal politics appeal to many of Clinton’s base supporters. He has been consistently anti-war and was not even in the Senate when Clinton voted for invading Iraq. Her hawkish support of the war has been a millstone around her neck in courting the Democratic base.

Obama has a charisma that has many experts reminiscing about the natural gifts of Bill Clinton. Like Bill, he has also positioned himself as someone keen to capture the middle ground. His speaking ability is similarly impressive and he is likely to be a ferocious campaigner. Finally, as a black American, Obama threatens one of the strongest areas of Clinton’s support, especially in South Carolina, which is a vital early primary state and has a large black population. If Obama can mop up that black support, he could deal a blow to Clinton, who is not popular with white southerners.

It all looks like a perfect storm for Clinton’s ambitions. In contrast to Obama, she is seen as a poor public speaker who comes across as cold and calculating. She is also a divisive figure, unlikely to attract many Republican voters. Instead of Bill Clinton’s legacy of charm and inspiration, she drags along his baggage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and her failed attempts at healthcare reform. She is also seen as a name from the past who symbolises the drama of the Bushes vs the Clintons in a country that - mired in the Iraq war - is looking for a fresh start.

But few would dare to write Clinton off. She has spent years and millions of dollars cultivating a powerful political machine which is not easily knocked off course. She has powerful allies in the party across the country and has assembled a loyal, committed campaign team second to none. She also has more money than any other Democrat. Recent filings show she has $14m in campaign cash, compared with Obama’s less than $2m. Clinton’s campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, has amassed a database of hundreds of thousands of small donors that will kick into action as soon as she declares her ambition to run.

Some experts believe Obama’s emergence may help Clinton. It is taking away the media heat from her, and they believe that it is more advantageous for her to enter the race late. When she does move, Obama’s flaws may quickly be exposed. He is likely to be attacked for his inexperience and lack of political achievements. He will be painted as the darling of a fawning media without the real credentials for the most powerful job in the world. It’s a contest some see Clinton as easily winning with her greater experience and huge funds. Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist, portrayed it scathingly as ‘Hillzilla vs Obambi’.

But whoever prevails, the real fight will still lie ahead. A poll last week showed that Republican veteran John McCain remains the most likely winner of the 2008 presidential election. The maverick war hero appeals to many independents and is widely seen as being a critic of President George Bush. Whether Obama wins the nomination, or Clinton, or someone else, the White House may remain a distant dream.

c/o-: The Guardian

George Bush yesterday rejected key recommendations made by the Iraq Study Group, revealing important differences with Tony Blair, who embraced the proposals put forward by the US bipartisan commission.

Those differences became clear after the two leaders met at the White House.

President Bush flatly contradicted the ISG’s proposal that Iran and Syria be included in regional talks aimed at ending Iraq’s worsening civil war. He restated the White House position that talks with Tehran were conditional on the Iranians stopping uranium enrichment, while contacts with Damascus would depend on an end to Syrian destabilisation of Lebanon and a cessation of arms and money flows over the border to Iraqi insurgents.

“We’ve made that position very clear. And the truth of the matter is that these countries have now got the choice to make,” the president said.

“If they want to sit down at the table with the United States, it’s easy. Just make some decisions that’ll lead to peace, not to conflict.”

Mr Blair, by contrast, welcomed the regional peace initiative put forward by the ISG, saying only that the basis for those discussions should be acceptance of UN resolutions on Iraq.

A Downing Street spokesman confirmed the British position of demanding a halt to uranium enrichment while continuing to talk to Iran on other issues. “In terms of our position, we continue to have diplomatic relations with Iran and have always done so,” the spokesman said.

The difference in tone between the two leaders was also evident when they talked more generally about the report, which also called for a withdrawal of combat troops by early 2008, a switch in the use of US troops to an advisory role, in tandem with a comprehensive Middle East peace conference.

Mr Blair enthusiastically embraced the ISG’s regional approach and the link it made between resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bringing peace to Iraq. “There is a kind of whole vision about how we need to proceed that links what happens inside Iraq with what happens outside Iraq. And the report put this very simply and very clearly,” he said. “I think the report is practical, it’s clear, and it offers also the way of bringing people together.”

President Bush praised the commission, headed by the retired politicians James Baker and Lee Hamilton, for its bipartisan approach, but appeared to put more emphasis on a separate assessment of the situation in Iraq expected in the next few days from the joint chiefs of staff.

“Baker-Hamilton is a really important part of our considerations,” the president said. “But we want to make sure the military gets their point of view in. After all, a lot of what we’re doing is a military operation.”

The military report is not expected to propose substantial troop withdrawals and may even advocate a brief surge in the US military presence in Iraq. President Bush yesterday made it clear he was more likely to listen to that kind of advice. He said: “Our commanders will be making recommendations based upon whether or not we’re achieving our stated objective.”

He added that another political assessment was being readied by the state department and that after he had absorbed all the reports he would make a major policy speech announcing a new strategic direction.

Mr Bush has been under rising pressure since last week when the incoming defence secretary, Robert Gates, contradicted his assertion that the US was winning the war. Pressed by journalists, the president yesterday admitted “it’s bad in Iraq”, adding: “I do know that we have not succeeded as fast as we wanted to succeed. I do understand that process is not as rapid as I had hoped.” But his rhetoric otherwise remained defiantly unchanged, and he continued to talk of eventual “victory”.

The ISG members appeared before the Senate yesterday in an attempt to increase pressure on the president to accept the group’s proposals.

Mr Baker, a close adviser and friend of the president’s father, said that the ISG report “is probably the only bipartisan report [the president is] going to get and it’s extremely important that we approach this issue in a bipartisan way”.

“If the Congress could come together behind supporting - let’s say, utopianly - all of the recommendations in this report, that would do a lot toward moving things downtown,” he added, referring to the White House at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr Baker also flatly contradicted the president’s claim that the ISG authors did not expect him to accept every recommendation. “I hope we don’t treat this like a fruit salad, saying, ‘I like this, but I don’t like that,’” he said. “It’s a comprehensive strategy designed to deal with the problems in Iraq, but also to deal with other problems in the region. These are interdependent recommendations.”

In his remarks yesterday, the president did appear to give some hints on future military strategy, suggesting that the initial emphasis would be on a final effort to contain the sectarian violence centred in Baghdad, which may allow US troops then to concentrate on al-Qaida groups, which would be more palatable to US public opinion.

“We’ll continue after al-Qaida. Al-Qaida will not have safe haven in Iraq. And that’s important for the American people to know. We got special operators. We’ve got, you know, better intelligence,” he said.

“The strategy now is how to make sure that we’ve got the security situation in place such that the Iraqi government’s capable of dealing with the sectarian violence, as well as the political and economic strategies as well.”

Despite divisions among Democrats over how far to go in revising ethics rules, House leaders plan a major rollout of an ethics reform bill early next year to demonstrate concern about an issue that helped defeat the Republicans in the midterm elections.

But they will do it with a twist: Instead of forwarding one big bill, Democrats will put together an ethics package on the House floor piece by piece, allowing incoming freshmen to take charge of high-profile issues and lengthening the time spent on the debate. The approach will ensure that each proposal — including banning gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists as well as imposing new controls on the budget deficit — is debated on its own and receives its own vote. That should garner far more media attention for the bill’s components before a final vote on the entire package.

The approach may be the first indication of how the Democrats plan to use their ability to control the House agenda as the majority power, setting the terms of debate while lifting the strict rules that Republicans used to curtail dissent.

And Democrats hope to show that they are attentive to issues of corruption that, according to exit polling, proved to be of major concern to voters on Nov. 7. House and Senate GOP leaders pledged early this year to pass major lobbying reforms in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal but never delivered on their promise.

Democratic leaders are still putting the finishing touches on the floor schedule and some of the components of the ethics package, said Jennifer Crider, spokeswoman for incoming House speaker. But other Democratic leadership aides said the proposal to break up the package and reassemble it is virtually a done deal.

While there is broad support for reform, Democrats face divisions on how far to go on some issues, such as whether to establish an independent board to enforce ethics rules. But leaders are eager to show that they are serious about tackling the corrosive influence of lobbyists and money, so much so that they are willing to spend days working on the issue. They may even let the divisions play out in public, with amendments allowed that may or may not pass, on issues from campaign finance to independent oversight.

c/o-: Jonathan Weisman; Washington Post 

The weekend after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, Kenneth Adelman and a couple of other promoters of the Iraq war gathered at Vice President Cheney’s residence to celebrate. The invasion had been the “cakewalk” Adelman predicted. Cheney and his guests raised their glasses, toasting President Bush and victory. “It was a euphoric moment,” Adelman recalled.

Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling-out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that “the president is ultimately responsible” for what Adelman now calls “the debacle that was Iraq.”

Adelman, a former Reagan administration official and onetime member of the Iraq war brain trust, is only the latest voice from inside the Bush circle to speak out against the president or his policies. Heading into the final chapter of his presidency, fresh from the sting of a midterm election defeat, Bush finds himself with fewer and fewer friends. Some of the strongest supporters of the war have grown disenchanted, former insiders are registering public dissent and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame him for losing Congress.

A certain weary crankiness sets in with any administration after six years. By this point in Bill Clinton’s tenure, bitter Democrats were competing to denounce his behavior with an intern even as they were trying to fight off his impeachment. Ronald Reagan was deep in the throes of the Iran-contra scandal. But Bush’s strained relations with erstwhile friends and allies take on an extra edge of bitterness amid the dashed hopes of the Iraq venture.

“There are a lot of lives that are lost,” Adelman said in an interview last week. “A country’s at stake. A region’s at stake. This is a gigantic situation. . . . This didn’t have to be managed this bad. It’s just awful.”

The sense of Bush abandonment accelerated during the final weeks of the campaign with the publication of a former aide’s book accusing the White House of moral hypocrisy and with Vanity Fair quoting Adelman, Richard N. Perle and other neoconservatives assailing White House leadership of the war.

Since the Nov. 7 elections, Republicans have pinned their woes on the president.

“People expect a level of performance they are not getting,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in a speech. Many were livid that Bush waited until after the elections to oust Rumsfeld.

c/o-: Peter Baker; Washington Post

Office politics will always be present in any organization that most of us work for. The choice? Well, you can either avoid it or play along. In such working environments, being in this bind is really frustrating and can really get on your nerves. Most of the time, these contribute in bringing the morale of any person down. Something like locating for a need to be able push them to work hard or finding ways to fit in so that they can grow with the company as well.

No question about it, people cannot avoid this. Culture, nature, clans, you name it; there will always be some type of politics in the work place. This is to be expected at any moment, and while the duties for any employee to undertake is very much just the tip of the iceberg. Trying to co-exist to an extent and earn a decent living with these factors around, will truly make life miserable and stressful for any person caught up in this scenario.

Culture shock may be the best way to call it, especially for people who are entering a company for the very first time. However, it has been said that most companies count the working experience as well. Maybe along with these outside the professional aspect, human relationships and ability to work with the peers are among the things that are expected for a person to be cost-effective and considered an asset for any company.