I like Bloomberg and predictions for the end of the war.

don't think he will run for president on any ticket. I like him because he chose to withdraw from both parties. He says he does not want to answer to a particular party's platform or mollycoddle special interests of that party (whichever it may be). I would LOVE it if this country had a truly feasible viable third party. I believe we need more choices, not less and not the same tired old candidates with their same tired old plans and policies. I don't suppose that will happen in my lifetime but there is always hope.

So we now have war from Palestine to Pakistan. I cannot keep the relgious sects, the insurgents, the terrorists apart any more. There are so many names and so much going on. This is quite a mess we have created; and I do not say that because I hate America or Bush. I say it because I do not believe that we would have this level of calamity throughout the entire region if we had not invaded Iraq (at this time). The region, as most of us know, has been in turmoil for thousands of years. There is nothing anyone can do about that but those who are involved themselves. They have to want it first and foremost. They have to want to live more than they want to be right or more than they want to be in power or more than they want a theocracy. People who are willing to go on suicide missions for a cause don't value life in the same way that I do.

I have a prediction as to how this all will end. Eventually, we will come home, meaning the majority of troops and surges and sorties et al will be over. Nothing will have changed in the Middle East other than it will have become more volatile than it was before we arrived in 2003. It has been this volatile before and it will be again, this particular time we played an active part but with or without the US, the Middle East will remain a volatile, recalcitrant area. The Middle East is a place you have to have been to, lived in or studied for a long time, to understand. I too have met **the enemy.** I lived there (in Bahrain) for a few years, and other places where Islam was alive and well (Korea, the Philippines, South Africa and the UK). So my prediction is that the last plane will be leaving the Green Zone and the surgents will be 5 minutes behind it and things will go on as they always have. I agree (in theory) that something had to be done after 9/11 and that we could not just suck it up and move on. The move on Afghanistan made sense to me. Iraq did not, does not and will not ever make sense to me. It is hard for me to see Saddam teaming up with Al-Que'da as he was a hedonistic  bacchanal who lived in a gold palace with heroin, diamonds and lots of women and the bin Laden's beliefs were quite the opposite. But, at any rate, my prediction is that this will end much like the conlict in you know where. Hundreds of thousands of lives will have been lost and nothing will change. As with the cold war and the conflict in you know where, manipulation through fear using that same old chestnut that the commies, the Russians, the Viet Cong and now the terrorists will be in our cities killing us is in full force. That scenario has not come to fruition yet and I don't believe it ever will. Crazy people possibly trying to carry out another attack somewhere here in the US is quite possible, another Oklahoma City is possible but in my opinion those possibilities are not worth the certainty of more US troop deaths and civilian deaths in a war without end. So while I grieve for those lives that will be lost between now and September, I pray that someone somehow will keep his word and get us out of there. Iraq is not ours to win or lose; it is theirs.

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I'm past convinced but time will tell just how politically motivated *Iraqi freedom* is to this administration.  How much you want to bet nobody gets it? 

I agree with Murtha, now that we have relieved Iraq of the Saddam regime the mission sould be getting our soldiers home safely.  But its not that easy with the new wave of terrorism that replaced Saddam's regime as a result of the war.

I still say though we have our own battles to fight at home and need to accelerate training what Iraqi men are willing to fight for democracy and do what we can to restore their infrastructure and get out.  With the right enthusiasm (or upcoming congress elections) it can be done.  ~Democrat

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Murtha Details His Exit Strategy

Jan. 13, 2006

CBS) Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., believes the vast majority of U.S. troops in Iraq will be out by the end of the year and maybe even sooner. In his boldest words yet on the subject, the outspoken critic of the war predicts the withdrawal and tells 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace why he thinks the Bush administration will do it

“I think the vast majority will be out by the end of the year and I’m hopeful it will be sooner than that,” Murtha tells Wallace, this Sunday, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

“You’re going to see a plan for withdrawal,” says Murtha. He believes Congress will pass it because of mounting pressure from constituents tired of the war that could affect the upcoming midterm elections.

The political situation will force President Bush to accede to Congress, he says. “I think the political people who give [the president] advice will say to him, ‘You don’t want a democratic Congress. You want to keep a Republican majority, and the only way you’re going to keep it is by reducing substantially the troops in Iraq,’” Murtha says.

The president has said publicly that any decision regarding Iraq would be based on the situation there and not on Washington politics.

Murtha rejects the president’s argument that the war on terror is being fought in Iraq. “The insurgents are Iraqis – 93 percent of the insurgents are Iraqis. A very small percentage are foreign fighters….Once we’re out of there, [Iraqis] will eliminate [foreign fighters],” says Murtha.

“[President Bush] is trying to fight this war with rhetoric. Iraq is not where the center of terrorism is,” he says. “We’re inciting terrorism there....We’re destabilizing the area by being over there because we’re the targets,” Murtha says.

When Wallace challenges him by saying, “General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says your comments are damaging recruiting and hurting the troops,” Murtha responds by saying it’s the military’s own fault. “[Troops] are rotated [into Iraq] four and five times. They have no clear mission,” says Murtha. “One of the problems they have with recruitment is [that] they continually say how well things are going and the troops on the ground know better.”

President Bush has said there are only two choices in Iraq: victory and defeat. And he has implied that Murtha is a defeatist. Murtha, of course, disputes that.

There have been 13 servicemen from his Congressional district killed in Iraq. Could the families of those dead be offended? Wallace asks.

“Well, I hope [those families] understand,” says the Vietnam combat veteran. “It’s my job, my responsibility, to speak out when I disagree with the policy of the president of the United States,” says Murtha. “All of us want this president to succeed…I feel a mission here, with my experience, that I have to help the president find a way out of this thing.”

and all others show obama steadily rising due to mcCain's inept performance this week with crisis and temper tantrum he threw over NYT.

U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailouts as Senate Votes.
By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged to provide up to $5.7 trillion more if needed. The total already tapped has decreased about 1 percent since November, mostly because foreign central banks are using fewer dollars in currency-exchange agreements called swaps. The Senate is to vote early this week on a stimulus package totaling at least $780 billion that President Barack Obama says is needed to avert a deeper recession. That measure would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus package to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates approved in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion in commitments are lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the authority of the Fed and the FDIC. The recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

Financial Rescue

The pledges, amounting to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the U.S. last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up about 18 months ago. The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid.

Federal Reserve lending to banks peaked at a record $2.3 trillion in December, dropping to $1.83 trillion by last week. The Fed balance sheet is still more than double the $880 billion it was in the week before Sept. 17 when it agreed to accept lower-quality collateral.

The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $14.5 trillion, or 33 percent, of the value of the world’s companies since Sept. 15; brought down Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.; and led to the takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. by Bank of America Corp.

The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

‘All the Stops’

“The Fed, Treasury and FDIC are pulling out all the stops to stop any widespread systemic damage to the economy,” said Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Inc. in Dallas and a former senior economist at the central bank. “The federal government is on the hook for an awful lot of money but I think it’s needed to help the financial system recover.”

Bloomberg News tabulated data from the Fed, Treasury and FDIC and interviewed regulators, economists and academic researchers to gauge the full extent of the government’s rescue effort.

Commitments may expand again soon. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner postponed an announcement scheduled for today that was to focus on new guarantees for illiquid assets to insure against losses without taking them off banks’ balance sheets. The Treasury said it would delay the announcement until after the Senate votes on the stimulus package.

Program Delay

The government is already backing $301 billion of Citigroup Inc. securities and another $118 billion from Bank of America. The government hasn’t yet paid out on any of the guarantees.

The Fed said Friday that it is delaying the start a $200 billion program called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, to revive the market for securities based on consumer loans such as credit-card, auto and student borrowings.

Most of the spending programs are run out of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where Geithner served as president. He was sworn in as Treasury secretary on Jan. 26.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. The Federal Reserve so far is refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return. Collateral is an asset pledged by a borrower in the event a loan payment isn’t made.