This is an excellent article - thanks for posting

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(Also a good article by Howard Fineman in the same issue, giving some background on Rove).

Why The Leak Probe Matters
For all the complexities of the Valerie Plame case, this story is about how easy it was to get into Iraq, and how hard it will be to get out.

Excellent article by D. Morris (who used to be an adviser to Clinton). He hits it right on the head with his assessments. 1.) Obama's poll numbers are not changing but McCain is gaining. 2.) End of July voters trusted the dems to better handle the economy by 11%, now they only trust them by 4%. 3.) Before the convention voters trusted dems to achieve energy independence by 8 points, now it's only a 2 point lead. 4.) When asked who made the smarter VP choice voters said McCain did 50 - 40%.

Key to her popularity is that she understands the average persons problems. Of the question which of the 4 candidates understands the problems of day to day life in America Palin finished first with 33%, Obama second with 32%, McCain with 17, and Biden with 10.

Worst news for Obama is when voters asked who they would consult for advise with the "toughest decision of your life" voters chose McCain over Obama 50-34.

I've been saying all along the Republicans are sweeping the nation. People are seeing through Barack's lies and false hopes. Link to the article is below so you can read for yourselves.

When I read it, my first thought was "how fitting this would be for those to read who are firm in pro-life, pro-war and its contradiction".

Let�s Count the Ways We�ve Sacrificed for the Iraq War

As children, we learned about Santa Claus � a pleasant, harmless myth. As adults, we�re being taught another myth � that ordinary people haven�t sacrificed anything during the Iraq war.

But the sacrifice myth isn�t an innocent belief we shed before adolescence. And the more people accept it, the more dangerous it is.

So let�s count our sacrifices. One of our biggest came at the start of the war, when we gave up freedom of the press. Media outlets agreed they�d only send journalists who�d be embedded with the troops, so everything we�ve read or seen has been censored.

Worse yet, in 2006, new media rules from the Department of Defense stated, �Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without service members� prior written consent.� Just when should an embedded journalist hand out consent forms?

Photos of dead or wounded Americans in Vietnam swelled the number of anti-war protesters. Back then, we saw horrific images of GIs writhing in pain. We also saw dead GIs, not in coffins, but bloody and dismembered in the field.

Even before the new media rule began, embedded photographers rarely pictured dead or wounded GIs, according to Pat Arnow of Extra, a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Instead, most of our media�s coverage of Iraq has pictured the injured GIs who can sit up in bed without grimacing to receive a Purple Heart. The few pictures of dead GIs haven�t shown blood or gore; they�ve shown funerals.

Photographers get close to the soldiers they�re embedded with and self-censor pictures of them. If they send their editors explicit photos, the editors declare the images �too graphic to publish,� like the Washington Post did on Jan. 7, 2007.

Embedded journalists also censor pictures of dead Iraqis. �Those pictures overwhelmingly show only one kind of victim � people and things shattered by their fellow countrymen, not by U.S. troops,� Arnow says.

When we do see a photo of an Iraqi killed by U.S. troops, the media distances us by labeling the dead Iraqi �an al-Qaida-linked militant,� or �a militiaman loyal to Osama bin Laden.�

Remember that photo of a terrorized naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack? Today she would be called �a Vietcong guerilla� or �a Ho Chi Minh militant.�

But freedom of the press isn�t the only sacrifice we�ve made. Last month, Congress released �The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,� a report showing the war�s cost so far at $1.3 trillion. That figure includes direct costs plus interest on the money borrowed to wage the war.

The money we spend on Iraq in one day could fund 9,300 teachers for a year, or 14,200 police officers, or 163,700 college Pell Grants, or 58,000 children�s tuition for Head Start, or 513,000 children�s health insurance. We�ve sacrificed all of those and more.

Worst, we�ve sacrificed human life. In September, the Opinion Research Business firm�s study of Iraqi households found that 1 million Iraqis have died due to violence since the U.S. invasion. We know of 4,000 American military who�ve died, but rarely does anyone ask about American civilian death counts.

And we�ll never know what the world lost when each of those people died. Each life was full of possibility. Who knows what contributions each person could have made to the workplace and the world, to their friends and to their families?

Mary Conroy is a Madison-based freelance writer.

'Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.' Bruce Springsteen.

pinned him to the wall like a bug (no offense to bugs out there). Intersting also that he mentioned McCain's former policy chief (or something) Tori Clark wrote a book with the name. I love to see the hyocrites squirm. it sends a thrill up my leg.

You have taken a startle complex to a burning house. Talk about constantly overreacting, overblowing, and goin all histrionic over every little thing . . . burp.