Politics

Interesting… and what I said at the time, questioning why the UN wasn’t making the statement itself.

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.
He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally.
The UK government responded by saying the attorney-general made the “legal basis… clear at the time”.
Mr Annan also warned security in Iraq must considerably improve if credible elections are to be held in January.
The UN chief said in an interview with the BBC World Service that “painful lessons” had been learnt since the war in Iraq.
“Lessons for the US, the UN and other member states. I think in the end everybody’s concluded it’s best to work together with our allies and through the UN,” he said.

U.S. Lawmakers blasted the Bush administration Wednesday for its handling of the war in Iraq and said they were confounded only a fraction of $18.4 billion in U.S. rebuilding funds had been spent.
In an unusually nonpartisan hearing, Republican and Democratic senators urged senior State Department officials to try harder to speed up the reconstruction program, which lawmakers said could lead to a more stable environment in Iraq.
They also told officials to be more honest in their assessments of what was going on, with Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar taking aim at what he called the “dancing in the street crowd,” who painted an overly positive picture.
“The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning (for Iraq) is apparent,” said Lugar, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, said virtually every problem in Iraq was predicted by experts before the U.S. invasion, but no plan was in place.
“The ideologues were in control and in denial,” Biden said. “There is such a disconnect between what I hear (from Bush administration officials) and the reality of the situation on the ground.”
So far, just over $1 billion of the $18.4 billion has been spent. Lawmakers said they were perplexed why it was taking so long to spend that money when the administration had pressed Congress to rush the funds through last November.
“This is an extraordinarily ineffective administrative procedure and it is exasperating for anybody looking at this from any vantage point,” Lugar said.

COLORADO SPRINGS – Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum – re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.

Nothing to get excited about here, I’m sure there’s no nefarious purpose behind any of these strange convergences of events.

If you’ve never clicked through my links and read any of the Top 10 Conservative Idiot’s lists, please give it a shot in this extra funny, extra important week.
“Welcome to the Top Ten Conservative Idiots! We’ve changed things around a bit for this Republican National Convention Special. It was simply way too difficult to put the week’s idiocy into some kind of vague numerical order, so instead we’re doing a day-by-day, play-by-play of the Convention. Head honchos like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney, Zell Miller, and of course, George W. Bush will be making an appearance, and we’ve got various “Convention Week Idiots” scattered about the place.”

Texans for Truth, established by the 20,000-member Texas online activist group, DriveDemocracy.org, has produced a 0:30 second television advertisement, “AWOL.” The ad features Robert Mintz, one of many who served in Alabama’s 187th Air National Guard — when Bush claims to have been there — who have no memory of Bush on the base. In other words, Bush failed to fulfill his military duty while others were dying in Vietnam.