two things you can disagree with on one post. a daily double.
Al Qaida - Moving on Up
How’s the war against terrorism going? Fine. In fact, if you’re a terrorist, times have never been better. While al Qaida sprouted in Taliban-run Afghanistan, it now flourishes in Iraq. A new study just released by CIA think tank National Intelligence Council says Iraq has become the West Point of terrorism.
“Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists,” the NIC report said.
“Iraq provides terrorists with a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and disperse to various other countries."
The NIC report was no slapdash deal. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 U.S. and foreign experts.
"The al-Qaida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," the report says.
So, the next time the President brags to reporters that Iraq is better off today than it was under Saddam, one of them might want to ask him if the world is better off. The CIA clearly seems to thing not.
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Compassionate Conservative Update
What’s a President to do when he wakes up and discovers that he broke the bank when he wrote all those tax rebate checks to the already rich? Well, he could ask the rich to relinquish some of those tax breaks. But no, that would be wrong. Instead the best place to begin tightening the fiscal belt is where the belt is already about a tight as it gets – squeeze the poor one more time. Balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
So yesterday the compassionate White House announced it would slash the budget of Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD.) They figure they can “save” about $8 billion by killing dozens of economic development projects, scrapping a rural housing program and folding high-profile anti-poverty efforts into the Labor and Commerce departments, administration officials said yesterday. It’s all part of Bush “lean and mean” 2006 budget – with apparent emphasis on “mean.”
Among the programs to be cut, Youthbuild USA, a $62 million program to teach teens from poor families home-construction skills, the $24 million rural housing and economic development program will be eliminated as will be the $260 million in economic development projects in poor areas. In all HUD would ultimately lose a quarter of its $31 billion budget.
At the other end of the economic scale Bush $1.6 trillion in tax cuts, which most benefited the rich, go untouched. Yo, George. Where’s the trickle down? So far the only thing rolling down hill is … well you know.
