Running for President without a brain or any common sense.

And some people think our current President is dumb. Read this quote from brand new Republican Presidential Candidate Fred Thompson as reported by the New York Daily News.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa - Freshly minted GOP White House hopeful Fred Thompson puzzled Iowans yesterday by insisting an Al Qaeda smoking ban was one reason freedom-loving Iraqis bolted to the U.S. side.

"They said, 'You gotta quit smoking,'" Thompson explained to a questioner asking about progress in Iraq during a town hall-style meeting.

Thompson said the smoking ban and terror tactics Al Qaeda used to oppress women and intimidate local leaders pushed tribes in western Anbar Province to support U.S. troops.

But Thompson's tale of a smokers' revolt baffled some in the audience of about 150 who came to decide whether the former Tennessee senator is ready for prime time.

"I don't know what that was about," said Jim Moran, 72, who had driven from nearby McCook Lake, S.D.

Edwards, Clinton, Obama, Biden, Richardson

I've gotten some feedback regarding my Obama post from the other day AND I watched the entire CNN - YouTube debate last night.

A couple of people took me to task saying that I mis-represnted Obama's position and that Obama thinks it's better for UN forces to deal with genocide than US forces and that he would not stand by twiddling his thumbs.

OK. Maybe I got a little carried away in my language as it applies to Obama. I still think he's wrong. When genocide happens, the United States shouldn't wait for someone else to act. The United States should lead and lead by example.

And that leads me to my next point, I thought Joe Biden was great at last night's debate. He was forceful and acted like a leader -- a bit of a goofy leader -- but a leader. Joe said we need boots on the ground in Darfur. The other candidates largely passed the buck to the UN or others, although Clinton deserves some credit for outlining how she would use US forces in the region.

I thought Biden and Richardson won the debate. Clinton and Edwards tied for second with Obama coming in next.

I thought the most remarkable moment of the debate happened when John Edwards was asked about gay marriage. You really could see him struggle with the question. He says he's against it but I think he's mostly confused and conflicted. It was almost painful to watch.

The best question of the night came from these two guys.




Finally, beacause Anne asked, I'm supporting Edwards. My second choice is Clinton and then it is either Obama or Richardson, I'm not sure which.

Obama is wrong

Senator Obama says that the U.S. military shouldn't be used to stop genocide.

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven't done," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea," he said.

I think he's wrong. And I'm not sure I want a President who is willing to stand by and watch genocide happen.

And what's up with the "which we haven't done" portion of his quote? Is he really going to base his foreign policy decisions on things that the current administration has or hasn't done? I thought part of the rationale for Obama's candidacy was that of change.

As the world's last remaining superpower I think stopping genocide ought to be a high priority for our country. Obama says if stopping genocide is a priority then we would need to be engaged in the Congo and in Sudan. I don't see anything wrong with being engaged in those countries.

I have no interest in supporting Obama in the primary.

Family Values and Iran

One of my concerns when we chose our house in the Denver suburbs was that we'd be moving into an all white neighborhood and that my kids only exposure to people of color would be when we hired someone to do work on our house, mow our lawn or clean our house. That's the way it was in Texas.

Thankfully that hasn't been the case in Colorado.

Our neighborhood is remarkably diverse. One family includes both a mom and dad who grew up in Iran, met here in the United States, got married and started a family. They now have a high school age daughter and an elementary school age son. Every couple of years they try to go back to Iran for an extended trip to visit the (now) grandparents and other relatives.

Today was the day one of those trips began. Mom, daughter and son boarded a plane at noon mountain time to fly to Frankfurt and then on to Tehran. They plan on being gone for nine weeks. Their Dad had to stay home to work.

I'm not entirely sure how they are feeling about the trip but I am nervous for them.

Have you heard what the Iranian government is up to? They are holding some Iranian-Americans against their will. The Associated Press reported this way.

An Iranian-American academic who works at a Washington-based institute is being held in a notorious prison after being prohibited from leaving Iran for more than four months, the institute and her husband said Wednesday.
Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, was sent Tuesday to Evin prison after she arrived at Iran's Intelligence Ministry for questioning, the center said.

The article went on to say,

Other Iranian-Americans have also been prohibited from leaving Iran in recent months including journalist Parnaz Azima, who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda. Another American, former FBI agent Robert Levinson, disappeared in March after going to Iran's resort island of Kish, and his whereabouts are unknown. Tehran says it's continuing to investigate.

More details were provided about what has happened to Haleh Esfandiari,

The Wilson Center said three masked men holding knives threatened to kill Esfandiari, who was in Tehran visiting her 93-year-old mother, on Dec. 30 as she was on her way to the airport. They took her baggage, including her U.S. and Iranian passports, the center said. For several weeks, she was interrogated by authorities for up to eight hours a day, according to the center. Most of the questioning focused on the activities of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. "Although Dr. Esfandiari went home every evening, the some 50 hours of questioning were unpleasant — to put it mildly — and not free from intimidation and threat," the center said.

Now it is very easy for me to sit here in Colorado and wonder if my neighbors should have simply stayed home. But they are going to see family and there really isn't much in the world that would keep me from wanting to see my family. What would you do? Your parents are getting older, so visits seem to be more valuable, you live 7,000 miles apart so visits don't happen all that often and you want your children to know and understand something of their heritage, you want them to understand something of the place where you grew up. What would you do?

I'd be nervous but I'd probably go.

And so, for the next nine weeks, I'll say a prayer for the safety of my neighbors, a prayer for those Americans already being held and a prayer for a more sane relationship between the United States and Iran.

Bring the troops home

I'm one of the few Democrats I know who thought invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam was the right course of action to take. I didn't come to that conclusion because I agreed with the President. Instead, I've come to believe that America must lead the world in eliminating genocidal dictators. Our ouster of Saddam was the right thing to do – it just happened 15 years too late.

Iraq was and is a killing field. Estimates are that Saddam executed more than 300,000 Iraqis during his reign. We let that happen. Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton lacked the moral fortitude to stand up to this murderer. It was more convenient for Americans to ignore what was happening on the other side of the globe than do what needed to be done and commit our military to getting rid of Saddam.

Unfortunately, the only President willing to take on Saddam is George W. Bush. While Bush should get a small amount of credit for getting rid of Saddam the fact is that Bush did it for the wrong reasons. And his management of the war effort has been absolutely incompetent.

America suffers today because the Republican leadership in Washington is more interested in the game of politics, gaining and keeping power, than in the art of leadership. George Bush, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich and Denny Hastert don't have a clue how to govern.

The leadership of the Republican Party consistently prioritizes partisan politics over public policy. As a result, our conduct of the war in Iraq has been a disaster. Tom Friedman has an excellent column on this subject in today's New York Times. Friedman writes,

One benchmark the Bush team has been urging the Iraqi government to meet is to rescind its broad “de-Baathification” program — the wholesale purging of Baathists after the fall of Saddam — which has alienated many Sunnis and hampered national reconciliation.

But while the Bush team has been lecturing the Iraqi Shiites to limit de-Baathification in Baghdad, it was carrying out its own de-Democratization in the Justice Department in Washington. We would feel that we had failed in Iraq if we read that Sunnis were being purged from Iraq’s Ministry of Justice by Shiite hard-liners loyal to Moktada al-Sadr — but the moral equivalent of that is exactly what the Bush administration was doing here. What kind of example does that set for Iraqis?

And this wasn’t only a Washington problem. Read Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s outstanding “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” which details the extent to which Americans recruited to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad were chosen, at times, for their loyalty toward Republicanism rather than expertise on Islamism. “Two C.P.A. staffers said that they were asked if they supported Roe v. Wade and if they had voted for George W. Bush,” he wrote.

But this degree of partisanship — loyalty over competence — was destructive in a much bigger way. It also deprived the Bush team of the support it needed when things in Iraq didn’t turn out to be as easy as it expected.

Only a united America could have the patience and fortitude to heal a divided Iraq — and we simply don’t have that today. Why? Because George Bush and Dick Cheney asked everyone to check their politics at the door when it came to Iraq, because victory there was so important — everyone but themselves. They argued that the war in Iraq was the central front of the central struggle of our age — an unusual war, a war against terrorism and the pathologies that produce it — but then they indulged in the most rancid politics as usual at home.

They actually thought they could unite Iraq, while dividing America.

As much as I would like our efforts in Iraq to succeed and as much as I would like to believe that we could leave Iraq united, free from terror and on the road to democracy, that just isn't going to happen. Why? Because George Bush and his advisors are incompetent. No matter what we do in Iraq, no matter how hard our troops fight and work to stabilize that country, we will lose because George Bush is President of the United States. It is time to end America's role in this disaster and bring the troops home. The Iraqi people ought to start praying for mercy. Things are going to get much worse for them. George Bush ought to start praying for forgiveness. He's responsible for the mess.

Iraq

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly told President Bush that if he invaded Iraq the "you break it, you buy it" theory would apply. This meant that once Bush invaded Iraq (broke it) it would be the responsibility of the United States to stabilize the country and restore order (buy it.)

But a funny thing happened. We went in and broke the country with remarkable speed and efficiency. Then, instead of working as hard as we could to put the pieces back together, we began making all kinds of excuses as to why we shouldn't be responsible for things over there.

These excuses and arguments continued for years. Our leaders claimed everything was fine and that we really shouldn't have to buy anything. Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney argued that the Iraqis needed to put their own country back together and that our claiming any responsibility was simply unnecessary coddling. In the meantime, while American troops died, the situation on the ground grew worse and worse. Iraq dissolved into civil war.

Now, the President is finally willing to admit that he broke Iraq. And he has asked for more troops to try to help end the civil war. But he waited too long and he no longer has the trust or support of the American people. To make a bad situation worse, the newly empowered Democrats, knowing a good political issue when they see one, are doing all they can to whip up opposition to the President and to our efforts in Iraq.

And to top it all off, the few allies President Bush had in his "coalition" have started announcing troop withdrawals from Iraq.

So while allies withdraw, Democrats rail and grandstand and an incompetent, befuddled President dithers, American troops die, Iraqis die and terrorists begin to win by creating anarchy in Iraq.

Iraq is broken and we broke it. And while we have paid a heavy price in both American lives and dollars, we have yet to complete the deal to buy it.

So what do we do now? I believe that in theory, John McCain and President Bush are right. We need to send more troops to Iraq to try to bring some stability to the country.

But here's the problem with that approach: This President and his advisors have absolutely no clue what to do with the troops once they get there. As a result, the new American troops will simply become additional targets for terrorist insurgents as they practice and hone their war-making skills.

The other option is to pull out. But if we leave, we provide the world with yet another example of failed imperialism, we increase instability in a part of the world that is already not at all stable, and we give the terrorists another place from which they may base their operations and train their followers.

Staying means we rely on the failed leadership of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Steven Hadley. And that is unacceptable. Leaving means even more chaos in the Middle East. And that is unacceptable.

My guess is we will stay. And Iraq will continue to get worse and worse until on a cold day in January, 2009, a new President will take over and be faced with an immediate decision as to what to do with Iraq.

Iraq has truly become one of the worst blunders of American foreign policy ever.

And in the end, my guess is that George W. Bush will be remembered in American history books as the President who failed in the war on terror because he refused to fight it, deciding instead to fight a war that had nothing to do with terror. In doing so, President Bush has simply increased anti-American fervor and in all likelihood handed the terrorists a victory over the United States. In Iraqi history books? Well, George W. Bush may just end up being more notorious and known as more destructive than the man he went to war against, Saddam Hussein.