From Yahoo News
By Robert Burns

At a key juncture in the Iraq war, the military chiefs conveyed to President Bush on Friday their concern about a growing strain on troops and their families from long and repeated combat tours.

Bush met privately at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in preparation for decisions about how long to sustain the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, whether to change course this fall and how to save the health of a heavily stressed Army and Marines Corps.

Indications are that Bush intends to stick with his current approach, at least into 2008, despite persistent pressure from the Democrat-led Congress — including some prominent Republicans — to find a new course.

Still to be heard is the long-awaited assessment of Gen. David Petraeus, Bush’s choice to execute the new strategy he announced in January to improve security in Baghdad.

Petraeus did not participate in Friday’s session but one U.S. senior official said the general, along with Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, would likely tell Bush and Congress in mid-September that the buildup had succeeded in making slow but sure progress on both the military and political fronts.

Petraeus and Crocker also will argue for a continuation of the current policy with some adjustments, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal deliberations.

Read more Strain

From The Boston Globe
By Ellen Goodman

I’m willing to bet that Judd Apatow didn’t read “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” or at least not the chapter on “Girls.” The advice includes such tidbits as “be careful with humor,” “avoid being vulgar,” and “make sure you are well-scrubbed.”

If he had followed this, Apatow might never have produced “Superbad,” let alone “Knocked Up,” two films that have provided boffo box-office bookends to a summer of boytalk. Both star spectacularly vulgar and unscrubbed males of adolescent age or mentality who incredibly win over sane, attractive women.

The remarkable thing is that the best-selling book and the number-one movie are out there offering the most opposite and fanciful revised images of boyness since the culture became obsessed with the “boy crisis,” the “boy trouble,” and assorted imaginary “wars against boys.”

“The Dangerous Book for Boys” presents a Masterpiece Theatre version of a boy’s world. It’s a nostalgic compendium that ranges from instructions on how to make a tree house and a paper airplane to which lines of Shakespeare you should know and which stories of ancient battles you should remember.

Conn Iggulden, one of the two British brothers who compiled this book, promotes it by saying that boys are hardwired to seek danger and “need to learn about risk.” But the only danger in the book is in the title. The rest is tame stuff fit for an era when kids wear helmets to ride tricycles and parents worry about everything from online predators to toys made in China.

Read more Boyhood

From The Nation
By John Nichols

Iowa will in all likelihood remain the state that opens the process of nominating the Democratic and Republican candidates for president in 2008. As such, it is a “must visit” and “must impress” state for contenders in both parties.

Iowa is now something else, however.

With the decision of a county judge to strike down Iowa’s law banning same-sex marriages, the state becomes a front-line battleground in America’s ongoing political wrestling match over gay and lesbian rights.

When Polk County Judge Robert Hanson concluded that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and ordered the county recorder in Des Moines to issue marriage licenses to six gay couples, he did not merely give an unexpected courtroom victory to plaintiffs likes Iowa City’s Jen BarbouRoske, who declared Thursday, “This is kind of the American Dream.”

Hanson also reshaped the presidential races of both parties.

Democratic and Republicans candidates will not be able to campaign in Iowa — as all will be doing in coming days and weeks — without addressing the ruling and the broader issue of same-sex marriage.

Read more Frontburner

From New West
By Jessica Peck Corry

I don’t know Larry Craig personally. I’ve never met the guy. Before yesterday, he was just another U.S. Senator. Today, he is just another sad example of what has become of my political party’s tragic relationship with sexuality.

As everyone from Boise to Buffalo knows by now, Craig – a Republican from Idaho – recently pled guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct stemming from an encounter he had with an undercover police officer in the Minneapolis airport bathroom.

According to the government, Craig’s behavior signaled “a desire to engage in sexual contact” with the man in the bathroom stall next to him. Craig claims he has a wide stance and that is why his foot was underneath the stall next to him. Police say Craig was tapping his foot, using a well known tactic in a bathroom infamous for lewd conduct.

While Craig is saying that he hasn’t done anything wrong and is suggesting that he only pled guilty to a lesser charge in an effort to keep the story quiet, some in the GOP are seeking to force his resignation.

Read More Secret Lives

From Reuters

Long-serving Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, embroiled in a sex scandal and finding little support from his party, will announce on Saturday he will resign from the Senate, CNN reported on Friday.

Quoting a Republican source in Idaho, CNN said Craig would leave office on Sept. 30.

Republican Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter would pick a successor to complete Craig’s term, which runs through next year. It is expected he would choose a Republican, thus maintaining the current 51-49 Democratic control of the Senate.

From CounterPunch
By Jeff Gibbs

I am not going to the protest. I am tired of protests: they don’t stop wars. Not protests that are mostly about sign waving and hooking up with friends and strangers and feeling the solidarity and then going back to work or school on Monday. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Sure it FEELS rebellious, these government-permitted, media-ignored, totally predictable rituals-but come on, going to an anti-war protest hasn’t been rebellious since Abbie Hoffman coughed up a fur ball at one in 1968. And in the context of the war on our civil liberties envisioned by Clinton/Reno and executed by your nemesis George W. Bush, they are very, very happy to have you protest and take your name and number. Or force you into a field, or a waiting pen to be locked away until they decide to let you out.

Personally I am tired of marching alongside people wearing masks and carrying signs about stupid Bush when we and everyone we know put together have not been smart enough to stop him. And the Bush bashing only makes the whole parade, err, protest look juvenile to the rest of the world.

Here is what I propose: let’s stop messing around. No more anti-war. Let’s stop the war. No more protest, unless it is part of some huge thing that doesn’t involve business as usual the next day. How do you stop the war? Shut ‘er down. No more business as usual. The target audience: the Democrats, and the presidential candidates who can’t fall over each other fast enough rattling their little Democrat saberettes. (”Bomb Iran? I can top that, let’s bomb PAKISTAN! Take THAT, cowboy!”)

Read more Protest

From The Progressive
By Matthew Rothschild

I’d been waiting for the old John Conyers to reappear.

Conyers rightfully brags about being a leader in the movement to impeach Richard Nixon back in the day.

And in the last Congressional term, before the Democrats took over, Conyers introduced a bill to explore grounds for impeaching Bush. He explained to Lewis Lapham of Harper’s in early 2006 why he was doing so:

“ ‘To take away the excuse,’ he said, ‘that we didn’t know.’ So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, ‘Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?’ when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that ‘somehow it escaped our notice’ that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.”

Well, this old John Conyers made a cameo on Tuesday at a town hall meeting in Detroit.

Now the head of the House Judiciary Committee, he finally declared his independence from Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the urgent question of impeachment.

According to rawstory.com, Conyers said: “Nancy Pelosi has impeachment ‘off the table,’ but that’s off her table. It is not off John Conyers’s table.”

That’s a relief, since I thought Pelosi had permanently gagged Conyers on the subject.

Not anymore.

Read more Conyers

From The Hill
By Brent Budowsky

Gen. David Petraeus is a good man and a great soldier with a track record of almost complete failure in his previous tours of duty in Iraq.

Let this be said up front: While the president and Petraeus maneuver for him to testify on the anniversary of Sept. 11, the Speaker and majority leader should hold firm and say that this matter is not subject to discussion and the general will not testify on this date.

The fact that Petraeus would allow himself to be used in this attempt at shameful exploitation of the one day on our calendar that should be above exploitation, speaks for itself.

My views on the futility of the surge, which in fact is not a surge but a long-term escalation, have been stated before and will be stated again. The truth is, the majority of generals and admirals in the American military do not agree with the views advocated by Petraeus, Gen. Odierno, and Gen. Lynch, who most recently violated the military protocol for active duty commanders by criticizing and debating against Sen. John Warner’s call for some troop withdrawals by Christmas.

To lay the foundation for the historic debate that will begin as Labor Day ends, the point of this note is to highlight how wrong Petraeus has been in his previous tours of duty in Iraq.

Fact: After the initial phase of fighting, in the areas under his command, sectarian warfare ultimately escalated and his efforts for political agreements, while worthy, failed.

Read more Bad Judgement

From Alive in Baghdad

While US officials on all sides criticize the Iraqi Parliament’s failure to pass an oil law, no one is asking a more critical question to the government’s local credibility and functionality, where is all the gas?

Recently many officials in the US have been criticizing the Iraqi Government’s failure to meet certain benchmarks imposed by US officials. One such benchmark has been the passage of a National Oil Law. Although Parliament went into recess without passing such a law, it is not necessarily the most important issue for Iraqis when considering the strength or weakness, and failure or success of their government.

These days much of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq is lucky to have even a few hours of electricity per day. Our sources tell us 1 hour per day is the average norm around the country, particularly Baghdad, where the large population center has greatly overstretched its resources and infrastructure are degrading rapidly.

Iraqis are now left wondering not just about the daily violence and whether they will survive until tomorrow, they also wonder why they elected a government that seems powerless except in the area of internal squabbling. Over a year ago we produced a short piece about the gasoline shortages in Iraq at the end of 2005. As we near the end of 2007, those same problems still grip Baghdad, and as we’ve shown in recent videos, in the case of electricity and social services, many consider them worse than ever.

Although we offer our work free to viewers, we have begun offering the opportunity for you the viewer to support our work by voluntarily subscribing at five, ten, or twenty-five dollars. Thanks for your continuing support and we hope you will return for more news about life in Iraq each week!

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From The Washington Post
By Dan Froomkin

A new national intelligence estimate concludes that President Bush’s troop surge shows no signs of accomplishing its goal of encouraging political reconciliation in Iraq.

An influential Republican senator and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff now favor a troop withdrawal. (Sen. John Warner wants Bush to demonstrate that the commitment in Iraq is not open-ended; Marine Gen. Peter Pace argues that the military simply can’t keep this up.)

These and other developments take us back in some ways to December 2006. It was then, in the wake of the November election and the report of the Iraq Study Group, that the debate in Washington finally appeared to be shifting away from how to achieve victory and toward how to cut our losses.

Instead, Bush ignored public sentiment, overruled his military commanders and opted for escalation.

And now it appears that the only thing the surge has bought him is time — nine months or maybe a year, during which he was able to postpone the inevitable.

Read more Lost Year