On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol recounts that in a 90-minute, mostly off-the-record meeting with a small group of journalists last week, President Bush "conveyed the following impression, that he thought the next president's biggest challenge would not be Iraq, which he thinks he'll leave in pretty good shape, and would not be Afghanistan, which is manageable by itself. ... It's Pakistan." We have "a sort of friendly government that sort of cooperates and sort of doesn't. It's really a complicated and difficult situation."
Time reports counterterrorism officials "say the best hope for nabbing No. 1 and No. 2," Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, "may lie in the capture of second-tier al-Qaeda commanders who know where their bosses are hiding." A recent CIA report "speculates that bin Laden has long-term kidney disease and may have only months to live, two U.S. officials familiar with the report told TIME. (A CIA spokesman denied the report exists.)" The Pentagon has "requested that Bush sign an 'execute order' expanding its authority to go after these commanders in Pakistani territory." But some in the Administration are reluctant to cross that line for fear of destabilizing Pakistan's recently elected government." The New York Times, meanwhile, says in an editorial that the "alarming resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes it even more imperative for the United States to begin planning for a swift and orderly withdrawal from Iraq."
These reports circulated as trouble continues to brew both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, NBC Nightly News reported last night, "a devastating suicide bomb attack" in the country's capital killed at least 15 people, "most of them police. Dozens more were wounded. The attack followed recent threats for revenge for a Pakistani military operation against militants." The AP, New York Times, AFP, McClatchy, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times were among other media outlets reporting on the attack.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile, ABC World News reported that "local officials say an American air strike accidentally killed up to 27 Afghans walking to a wedding ceremony. This was the second US attack in three days that allegedly killed civilians. US military says it has been investigating both of these incidents, and that only militants were killed." The AP reports, "The US military blamed the claims on militant propaganda and said its missiles only struck insurgents." AFP and the New York Times run similar reports.
USA Today reports security in Iraq "continues to improve even after the withdrawal of nearly 25% of US combat brigades, increasing the prospects of further cuts in American forces." US commanders "are cautious about predicting further withdrawals," but "interviews with military experts and recent official statements indicate growing optimism about the potential to pull out more forces."
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports a "wave of attacks in Baghdad and areas north of the capital Sunday shattered a relative lull in violence, killing 16 people and injuring 15 a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared that Iraq's government had defeated terrorism." In Diyala province "northeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a high-ranking member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, along with seven other people, said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Rubaie, Diyala military operations commander." The AP reports "Iraqi police and medical officials say a bomb has killed the head of a US-allied Sunni group south of Baghdad."
The New York Times reports from Babqua, in Diyala province, that the area, "once the garden of Iraq, known for its date and orange orchards, its rice and its barley farms," has been "more recently...known as one of Iraq's worst killing fields." While "military operations here over the past 12 months have curbed the worst of the province's violence," the situation "defines the word 'fragile' -- a description often pressed into service by American generals and diplomats to describe all of Iraq."
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The Wall Street Journal reports "a partisan standoff in the Senate blocked a bill that would prevent a cut in doctors' Medicare fees." President Bush "has threatened to veto the bill, largely over new limits it would impose on one particular type of Medicare Advantage plan known as private fee-for-service. Despite that "veto threat, the House passed the bill last month, 355-59," which then "fell one vote short of the 60 needed to move forward in the Senate." With Senate Democrats vowing "to bring the bill up again this week...the spotlight will be on a handful of Republican senators who could potentially switch votes."
The New York Times reports Senate Republicans are "under pressure after a barrage of radio and television advertisements blamed them for a 10.6 percent cut in payments to doctors who care for millions of older Americans. The advertisements, by the American Medical Association, urge Senate Republicans to reverse themselves and help pass legislation to fend off the cut."
The New York Times reports, "As a Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi batted a thousand in murder cases: 21 trials, 21 convictions, including the Charles Manson case in 1971." So Bugliosi "could be forgiven for perhaps thinking that a new book would generate considerable interest, among reviewers and on the broadcast talk-show circuit." But "his latest, a polemic with the provocative title 'The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,' has risen to best-seller status with nary a peep from the usual outlets that help sell books: cable television and book reviews in major daily newspapers." The book "lays a legal case for holding President Bush 'criminally responsible' for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq."
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On CBS' Face the Nation yesterday, Sen. John Kerry (D) said that Sen. John McCain lacks the judgment to be president and that he "has proven that he has been wrong about every judgment he's made about the war. Wrong about the Iraqis paying for the reconstruction, wrong about whether or not the oil would pay for it, wrong about Sunni and Shia violence through the years, wrong about the willingness of the Iraqis to stand up for themselves." The AP notes that "if that's the case, then it's probably a good thing McCain rejected overtures from Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, to form a bipartisan ticket and run with Kerry as his candidate for vice president." The Wall Street Journal reports that South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) "brushed off" Kerry's "criticism. 'You know, I don't think John [McCain] is going to be asked to run as Sen. Kerry's vice president anymore,' he said, while also on 'Face the Nation.'"
The Washington Post reports that in response, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds "said that Kerry was ignoring the facts on the ground in Iraq. 'The truth is Barack Obama buckled to liberal supporters and opposed the McCain-backed 'surge' strategy that's working today, and despite our troops' gains in Iraq, he still maintains his partisan commitment to begin immediate withdrawal of American forces if he's elected,' Bounds wrote in an e-mail. 'Only John Kerry would think that demonstrates good judgment.'"
Sen. Barack Obama's statement last Thursday -- indicating that when he goes to Iraq and has "a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I'm sure I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies" -- was one of the main topics of discussion in some of the Sunday television talk shows. As The Politico puts it, the controversy animated "an otherwise quiet Sunday on the talk-show circuit" with "sharp exchanges between senatorial backers of John McCain and Barack Obama over what the candidates would do about the war in Iraq."
For example, on ABC's "This Week", Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats but is backing McCain, said, "I think what's significant about what's happened in the last week -- frankly, in the last month, since Senator Obama clinched the nomination -- is how many big positions -- Iraq, Iran, free trade, the death penalty -- that Senator Obama has moved, altered his position on." On CBS' "Face The Nation", Sen. John Kerry by contrast saw it as a McCain distortion, saying, "What the McCain campaign is trying to do is take the normal statement of anybody smart enough to be president of the United States and ready to be president, who says he may refine, tactically, what you might decide to do over the course of that withdrawal and how you protect American troops and how you, in fact, get the Iraqi army to stand up faster."
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An independent arm of the Republican National Committee has launched a 30-second TV ad contrasting Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama on energy and the environment, The Politico reports this morning, paying $3 million to run the ad for 10 days in a group of swing states. The Washington Times reports an Obama campaign spokesman "labeled the ad an 'attack' and said the energy crisis can be solved only through honest debate."
The Wall Street Journal describes the ad campaign as the "latest effort to step around federal campaign spending limits." OnMessage Inc., "a Virginia-based company with Republican ties, rolled out television ads in the battleground states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, touting Sen. McCain's backing of a gasoline-tax holiday and expanded oil drilling off the U.S. coast." Sen. McCain's campaign "had nothing do with the ads. Similarly, while the RNC paid for the ads and vetted their content, they were otherwise independently produced. They were reviewed only by a single RNC lawyer for broadcast suitability."
The New York Times reports that as the economy's struggles deepen and it becomes the pre-eminent issue in the presidential race, both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are refining their economic messages to deal with problems they have on the issue. The Times notes that Obama "has had difficulty connecting with working-class voters, and his more ambitious responses to economic problems like expanding access to health insurance would be paid for in part by tax increases, always a risky proposition." McCain, for his part, "has been shadowed by his statements earlier in the campaign that he is not expert in the subject of the economy and by the likelihood that voters will associate him with the economic policies of the Bush administration."
The Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post both report this morning that Barack Obama's campaign is expected to announce the location of his nomination speech today and the leading contender is the home of the NFL's Denver Broncos, Invesco Field at Mile High. The stadium, which seats 76,000, would provide a much larger arena than the Pepsi Center, which is hosting most of the Democratic National Convention events, but seats only 20,000. The move to an outdoor stadium is not without precedent, the Rocky Mountain News notes, as JFK gave his acceptance speech as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1960.
The Politico reports that Sen. John McCain "plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico." The promise "to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term."
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The late-night shows were reruns on Friday.
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