The capitulation and cowardice of the Democrats eerily resemle that of Israel's Labor party. Always fearing they would be labled as "soft on terror" and "Arab Lovers" by the Likud and other right wing parties, they have abandoned their principles and capitulated to the righ wing so o, that are constantly brought up a example of a party without principles, backbone and convictions. As a result, Labor has been abandoned by its core constituency, yet, after all the capitulation to the right wing and steadily shrinking in size, it's still persistently labeled as "lefty", "soft on terror" and "a bunch of Arab lovers". Are the Democrats ever going to learn that capitulation to Bush/Cheney and lack of principles will not save them from being blamed by the right for the next terror attack and that their cowardice and lack of a backbone is driving their core away and not attracting new voters?

If anything, the Democrats now seem more terrified of Bush and far more willing to capitulate to his demands to his demands then before their 2006 so called win. It also seems like they would do anything to keep Joe Klein from writing a column titled:"Why the Democrats are so soft on national security and hate America so much".

I keep harping back to Israel's Labor party eperience. The more it tried to become Likud Lite, the more it capitulated to the right wing and adopted their policies and attitudes, the weaker and more despised it became. When it lost its way and principles, it also lost most of its core constituency and the respect of the public. It is still blamed by the Right for every terror attack and is still labeled by the Right wing as soft and weak on natural security. What would it take for the Democratic leadership to realize that capitulation and abandonment of principles(or do they have any?) is the surest way to defeat?

Obviously, the various truthful and candid performances by Fredo Gonzales have convinced the senate Democrats that there was an urgent need to bestow on him extraordinary and unprecedented powers of unwarrented spying on us.

As for 9/11, as time goes by, I'm having a harder and harder time convincing myself and others that Bush/Cheney were not involved in either planning the attack or deliberately failing to prevent it. As conspiratorial as it seems, 9/11 was extraordinarily serendipitous in giving those people the excuse and rational forputting their grand scheme into action and I just don't believe in coincidences.

I think I understand the Democrats logic-Fredo Gonzales had to be punished for the outrageous lies and deceptions he produced while testifying before the senate judiciary committee. His punishment is that he now has an unchecked authority to spy on us. Makes sense.

I'd like to challenge the conventional wisdom that electronic surveillances is helpful in the prevention of future terror attacks. Terrorists are smart enough not to discuss anything of operational value via cell phones or e-mail. If anything, they use them as red herrings to fool the other side and divert attention from their actual plans. This warrantless eavesdropping is nothing but a method this fascist regime is using to create a huge electronic data bank on USA and non-US residents as an important component in the march toward the establishment of a totalitarian corporatist police state.

The shameful capitulation of congressional D's in the face of fascism, was a prelude to their conduct next month, when the General comes to submit his Report. Who has any doubt that they will never challenge one word of his propaganda fantasy report on how the situation in Iraq has improved dramatically and the Surge is working oh so fine and all we need is some additional time, maybe 25 years or so and maybe another 5 trillion dollars for a Glorious victory.

The only thing that rivals your profound and pathetic ignorance is your poor English. Your inability to construct a coherent sentence reminds one of your Great Leader.

Here we go again. A Bush/Cheney lackey tells outrageous lies on a mainstream media platform, which now includes PBS and NPR, being extremely confident that the interviewer/anchor will not call him on it and not challenge the damn lies.`

As a lifelong fan of Brazilian football, I used to despise American football, with its smash-mouth brutality and raw machoism. Then came Bill Walsh, and for 10 beautiful years, I wouldn't miss a 49rs game for anything. His style reflected our Bay area so incredibly well- sophistication, precision, flair, forward looking, thinking outside the box. Montana was the Pele of American football, truly incomparable, and Rice was the Garrincha, unstopable. Thanks for the memories.

General Petraeus has said himself that there's no military solution to Iraq. He said that the surge was meant to reduce the violence to a level that would enable the Maliki government to bring political stability and ethnic and religious conciliation. Based on his own guidelines, the surge has been a miserable failure. The political situation has never been worse-the government is hopelessly fractured and very near collapse, Basra is nearing chaos, violence is up despite the extremely scorching heat. We are losing as many soldiers as ever, huge amounts of weapons we gave to Iraqis are missing and some are probably killing our own soldiers. The only "good" news are manufactured by the Bush propaganda machine and have no ties to reality. This is the worst catastroph in our history and the good general should admit the truth so we can get the hell out of that hellhole.