Will one of the rides be called the Green Zone?

“The people need this kind of positive influence. It’s going to have a huge psychological impact,” Werner told The Times.

“There is a shortage of entertainment in the city. Cinemas can’t open. Playgrounds can’t open. The fun park is badly needed for Baghdad. Children don’t have any opportunities to enjoy their childhood,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for the Baghdad municipal government.

The project will cost $500 million and will be managed by Iraqis, The Times reports.

Under the terms of the lease, Werner will retain exclusive rights to housing and hotel developments, which he says will be both culturally sensitive and enormously profitable.

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t making money,” Werner said. “I also have this wonderful sense that we’re doing the right thing – we’re going to employ thousands of Iraqis. But mostly everything here is for profit.”

I guess they see what we saw:

“President Carter came to the region thinking he could achieve something. Unfortunately president Carter left without anything concrete,” he told a conference in the Spanish capital.

“The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else,” he said.

“Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions. There was no change on the part of Hamas,” Malki added.

Carter’s meetings with top Hamas leader Meshaal and his deputy in Syria angered Israel and the United States, which consider the movement a terror group despite its victory in 2006 elections.

He was unable to secure a ceasefire or a prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in 2006, but on Monday Carter said Hamas told him it would recognise Israel’s right to exist such a deal was approved by a Palestinian vote.

Oh yes she did!

Useful idiot?
Which is worse, his words or the comments to them?

This is the conflict Senator. We are at war with radical Islamic forces. Your party has proven itself to be rooting for defeat. There will be no next conflict if we walk away from this!

Some highlights of the monstrous radical ISLAMIC THREATS around the world in January 2008. That is just one month!

List of Thwarted Terror Attacks Since Sept. 11

The following is a list of known terror plots thwarted by the U.S. government since Sept. 11, 2001.

• December 2001, Richard Reid: British citizen attempted to ignite shoe bomb on flight from Paris to Miami.

• May 2002, Jose Padilla: American citizen accused of seeking “dirty bomb,” convicted of conspiracy.

• September 2002, Lackawanna Six: American citizens of Yemeni origin convicted of supporting Al Qaeda. Five of six were from Lackawanna, N.Y.

• May 2003, Iyman Faris: American citizen charged with trying to topple the Brooklyn Bridge.

Here is a link to his opening statement. After hearing the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, Levin proceeded to use the past ploys of the Democrats. In his Statement, the General said that “we undertake a 45-day period of consolidation and evaluation”, to which Levin tried, but failed to make it sound as if we are never leaving and we aren’t pressuring the Iraqis.

Crocker statements to note:

Ted Kennedy tries to blame Cheney:

The WSJ has this must read article, I will give you just a taste:

As General David Petraeus briefs Congress this week on Iraq, it’s clear his surge has achieved remarkable results. The most crucial is that the U.S. can no longer be defeated militarily in Iraq, which could not be said a year ago. The question now is whether Washington will squander these gains by withdrawing so quickly that we could still lose politically.

A political loss has always been a strong possibility given the fact that the majority of the Democrats in Congress have done everything in their power to lose this war militarily.

As we await General Petraeus’ testimony, take a look at this: Sadr calls off the Million Man March

I used that quote as an intro because David Stafford of the WaPo does a comparative analysis of Iraq and post-war Germany. The question asked:

So what did the United States do right 60 years ago that it has — so far — failed to accomplish in Iraq since the iconic toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad and Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” declaration aboard a U.S. carrier on May 1, 2003?

One thing to keep in mind is that we did not end the full military occupation in Germany until 10 years after we declared victory.

Think Progress is a site that dedicates itself to pointing an accusatory finger at all things Republican, while rarely, if ever, discussing Democratic talking points. It is a site that references itself as the source. Within the past 2 weeks, Amanda, an author at the site has been caught telling fibs. Fibs may be a strong word, so I will change that to, Amanda did not take the time to verify what she was writing about:

Last week Think Progress blogger Amanda accused John McCain of plagiarizing a speech from Admiral Timothy Ziemer only to retract the story hours later. Amanda, last name unknown, had failed to check with McCain’s office before running her “exclusive,” and she failed even to check McCain’s website to see if he had used similar language in the past. In fact, he had. In a 1995 speech to the VFW, a speech predating Ziemer’s, McCain had uttered the same phrases he was now alleged to have plagiarized. Amanda apologized for her sloppy reporting, but apparently she didn’t learn much from the episode.

Read Robert’s post to update yourself on what this idiot is talking about:

“I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,” said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.

Although powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a ceasefire after six days of fighting, Pelosi wondered why the U.S. was caught off guard by the offensive and questioned how the ceasefire was achieved, saying the terms were “probably dictated from Iran.”

“We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of a resolution that looks less violent when in fact it has been dictated by al-Sadr, who can grant or withhold that call for violence,” Pelosi said.

Above: MSM Darling of the Past

Earlier this week the MSM was reporting on the fighting in Basra between Iraqi security forces and elements of Muqtada (Mookie) Al Sadr’s Mahdi Militia. Except it wasn’t reporting; the reports invariably ended with editorials asserting Mookie was just flexing his muscle; demonstrating that by no means does the Gov’t have control in Iraq. When the cease-fire halted the fighting, the MSM “reporters” asserted Mookie had accomplished his objective and now wanted to demonstrate his control over events by halting the fighting, plus look like the benevolent power to the people. Prime Minister Al Maliki was only too glad to accept Mookie’s offer and have Iraqi forces retreat behind American protection.

Think I’m kidding?

More than three dozen Democratic congressional candidates banded together yesterday to promise that, if elected, they will push for legislation calling for an immediate drawdown of troops in Iraq that would leave only a security force in place to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad…

The starkest difference between the group’s proposal, dubbed a “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq,” and those embraced by many senior Democrats and the party’s presidential candidates is that it rejects the idea of leaving U.S. troops on the ground to train Iraqi security forces or engage in anti-terrorism operations. The group instead calls for a dramatic increase in regional diplomacy and the deployment of international peacekeeping forces, if necessary.

Brian Faughnan:

Probably because they know that what they are selling isn’t totally truthful?

Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion.

From a Weekly Standard article at the time:

The controversy ignited on September 29 when Bonior and McDermott appeared from Baghdad on ABC’s “This Week.” Host George Stephanopoulos asked McDermott about his recent comment that “the president of the United States will lie to the American people in order to get us into this war.”
McDermott didn’t backpedal at all: “I believe that sometimes they give out misinformation. . . . It would not surprise me if they came out with some information that is not provable, and they, they shift it. First they said it was al-Qaeda, then they said it was weapons of mass destruction. Now they’re going back to and saying it’s al Qaeda again.” When Stephanopoulos pressed McDermott about whether he had any evidence that Bush had lied, the congressman replied, “I think the president would mislead the American people.”
An American official floating unsubstantiated allegations against an American president during a visit to Baghdad would be troubling enough. But McDermott compounded his problem by insisting, despite its twelve years of verifiable prevarication, that the Iraqi regime should be given the benefit of the doubt on inspections and disarmament. Said McDermott on “This Week”: “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their face value.”

I really don’t think he is alive, but here is Allah’s take..I do agree that it does appear that the message is directed at the EU moreso than us

We marked the 5th year of the war in Iraq, not to mention the fact that he clinched the Republican nomination, therefore, I am not seeing how this trip comes as any surprise to the media:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain arrived in Iraq on Sunday to assess improved security attributed to a build-up of 30,000 extra troops of which he has been a strong supporter.
McCain arrived in Baghdad and was due to meet Iraqi government leaders and U.S. officials in the heavily fortified “Green Zone” diplomatic and government compound, U.S. embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said. …
Attacks across Iraq have fallen by 60 percent since last June, when extra troops were fully deployed. There has been a fall in violence since January but U.S. commanders in Iraq say this does not represent a trend.

Contrary to reports put out by ABC News, in their rush to put something up that wasn’t true or maybe ABC is just that stupid, the documents given to them by the Penagon shows that Saddam Hussein had plenty of ties to all sorts of terrorist groups, including radical Islamist jihadis. Ed explains what you will find in the report.

This is coming from The Crypt Blog:

Eight House Democrats were mailed a letter and photo of a Times Square recruiting station in Manhattan before it was bombed this morning, according to House insiders.

UPDATE 2: A senior House aide suggested many more members than the eight Democrats originally beliveved to have received them could have gotten copies and suggested law enforcement officials do not know the full scope of how many missives were actually sent at this time.

The letter did not contain any specific threats against the lawmakers or the site, but the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI are now investigating the matter.

It was unclear which lawmakers received the letters or their party affiliation. The letter was postmarked Feb. 28, a week before the explosion in New York.

The New York Times is reporting that the “improvised explosive device” used in the attack “was ‘roughly similar’ to the devices used in two earlier bombings at foreign consulates in Manhattan in 2005 and 2007.”

Obama tried to throw a verbal assault weapon at Hillary. Barack chose to condemn Hillary for her Iraq War vote by comparing her to Jay Rockefeller. It appears that there was blowback which caused damage to his reputation as a brilliant mind:

Obama criticized Clinton expressly for failing to read the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons capabilities, a report available at the time of her October 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. “She didn’t give diplomacy a chance. And to this day, she won’t even admit that her vote was a mistake - or even that it was a vote for war,” Obama said.