At the bottom of the leaflet was a tear sheet that students could sign and later hand to teachers, to request that students' personal contact information not be released to the U.S. Defense Department or to anyone involved in military recruiting.

....As a result, 57 percent of Puerto Rico's 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders, or their parents, have signed forms over the past year withholding contact information from the Pentagon -- effectively barring U.S. recruiters from reaching out to an estimated 65,000 high school students.

The requirement of providing information to the Pentagon is part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, all schools receiving U.S. federal funding must provide their students' names, addresses and phone numbers to the military unless the child or parents sign an opt-out form.

....Juan Dalmau, secretary general of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) [says]his efforts are saving the island's children from becoming "colonial cannon meat."

Here's an idea that needs to spread to the mainland U.S:

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A lot of pixels have been devoted to the fact that the Bush Administration will be writing the September report, as "opposed" to just General Petraeus. The problem with this logic is that General Petraeus is part of the Bush Administration too. So how is this different? The Left blogs seem to have bought into the notion of Petraeus as honest broker. He is not. Matt Yglesias gets it right:

But as we read yesterday, the [September] reports are being written by the White House. This is, in my view, appropriate. Petraeus and Crocker work for Bush and it's always been silly to portray them as independent actors. But the point is that there's no independent assessment here -- the White House is going to make an official statement of the White House's assessment of the situation and why the White House believes its official assessment supports the policies the White House favors. All that's fine, and insofar as the White House is persuasive it should sway people. But we've already seen what the White House talking points on the surge are . . . -- there's no particular reason to wait with baited breath to see how they format the official document.

Zactly. BTW, what happens if the Bush Administration allows Petraeus to "write" the report on his own? It is suddenly now the Holy Grail again?

A Pentagon report to be released tomorrow discloses there were 99 suicides in the military last year. One-fourth of those who took their own lives had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. That's more suicides than the military has had in the past 26 years.

I blame President Bush. Every day he keeps our soldiers in this war, more of them are going to die. The ones that survive will come back with post-traumatic stress disorders that will take years if not decades to overcome. Some of them are bound to take their own lives as well.

This war was not worth the price. We have a President who is unable or unwilling to acknowledge his mistakes. Experts agree the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily. So why are the troops still there? Let's stop the funding and bring them home now.

Link:

Four suicide bombers hit a Kurdish Yazidi community in northwest Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 others, the Iraqi military said.

The bombs tore through communities near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, according to Iraq Army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed and Abdul-Rahman al-Shimiri, the top government official in the area.

The attack was the deadliest in Iraq since 215 people were killed Nov. 23 when mortar rounds and five car bombs devastated a Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. Dhakil Qassim, mayor of Sinjar, a town near where the attacks occurred, said al-Qaida in Iraq was behind the attack, citing what he said were Kurdish government intelligence reports.

In September, General David Petraeus will report to Congress that we are making real progress in Iraq and that Surge is producing evidence of success but that, of course, the jury is still out and that "it is up to the Iraqis." And Petraeus will cite evidence like this, via John Cole. But John's cite to Michael Ware makes those politicians, Republican and Democrat who buy this line, vulnerable at the end of that F.U., in March 2008:

What the U.S. troops are doing is giving a set of numbers, a series of data, a number of lowered attack figures that may give the military the political cover it needs in Washington. But at the end of the day, by cutting these deals the seeds are being sown for a much broader, more entrenched civil war that America will leave behind.

Will America be leaving it behind? Not before November 2008 if Bush and Petraeus have their way. There is something politicans always seem to forget - that elections are on Election Day. Worrying about polls or how something looks more than a year before the election is just plain stupid politics. Why do they never consider how something is going to look on Election Day. Mark my words, those pols. GOP or Dem, who support continung the Iraq Debacle on Petraeus' say so in September 2007, will pay a steep price in November 2008.

Some of Dick Cheney's neighbors are unhappy to have him vacationing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in part because it's just annoying.

Since his arrival here earlier this week, Cheney has come under fire from locals complaining about black helicopters, presumably part of the vice president’s security detail, flying overhead and disturbing their peace.

The helicopters may be keeping an eye on protesters who, unlike the vice president, have a sense of humor.

During the pre-march rally, a towering effigy of the vice president, carrying a fishing pole and squirting oil derrick, and smaller bust of President Bush, with red devil’s horns, was unveiled to hoots, hollers and other expressions of approval prior to performances by musicians and speakers. ...

Upon rolling the wobbly, 11-foot tall effigy over a mile to the front gate of Cheney’s residence, shouting protesters waved anti-war signs at passing and honking motorists, as U.S. Secret Service officers sitting in a black truck and sheriff’s deputies looked on, while Stanford hung a lasso around the effigy’s neck.

To the chants of “No more war,” Stanford, Spence and others toppled the Cheney effigy a second time, knocking the head off as it smashed into the pavement. The delighted crowd applauded and hollered in mock victory as a man draped in a white beach towel, waving an American flag, kicked the effigy’s head toward the busy street.

During the early days of the Iraq war, American soldiers and Iraqis memorably toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein that had stood in Baghdad.

When we last reported on Robert Pennington, he was serving 8 years for his part in the murder of Iraqi Hashim Ibrahim Awad. He's just been freed, following a grant of clemency.

Of the eight members of the squad involved only one remains in prison. In making the decision, Lt Gen James Mattis considered the defendants' ages, military experience, rank and involvement in the death, the marines said in a statement. He reduced the sentences of Pennington and others to ensure fair treatment, the marines said.

How did Awad die?

Mr Awad, a police officer, was taken from his home, put in a hole and shot in the head 10 times.
A gun and a shovel were then placed by his body to make it look as if he were an insurgent planting a roadside bomb.

Pennington's role:

Pennington, the squad's radio operator, told the court martial that he did not shoot Mr Awad but that he helped to force him into the hole and held his hand over his mouth.

This is Pennington's second break. When he agreed to plead guilty, his sentence was reduced from 14 years to 8 years. Another marine, Trent Thomas, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served.

Via Yglesias, Iran on Maliki's visit to Teheran:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said Baghdad in its ties with other countries only acts based on the interests and demands of the Iraqi nation. The office of the Iraqi Prime Minister on Saturday in response to a warning by the US President George W. Bush against Baghdad’s development of ties with Tehran announced in a statement: The groundless warning was issued with the aim of overshadowing the successful achievements of Mr Al-Maliki in his recent visit to Tehran.The Iraqi Prime Minister’s office further announced: If the US President assumes that the level of Iraq’s ties with other countries would be determined according to his views, then he is wrong.George W. Bush on Thursday on the second day of Maliki's visit to Iran repeated his baseless claims that Iran interferes in the internal affairs of Iraq. This is while Nuri Al-Maliki on the same day appreciated Iran for helping Iraq establish security and stability, calling for expansion of ties with Iran.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is in Baghdad.

The Justice Department said that Gonzales arrived in Baghdad on Saturday for his third trip to Iraq to meet with department officials who have been there to help fashion the country's legal system.

Just what does the Department of Justice do in Baghdad? Here's the DOJ's 2006 press release outlining its role:

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David Sirota is thinking creatively about how to end the Iraq Debgacle. Unfortunately, David does not deal with the reality that the possibility of achieving a veto-proof majority is a myth. David proposes:

So here's the concept (which, though I'm not 100 percent sure, I don't think has been tried yet in Congress): How about when Congress reconvenes in September, Democrats bring a bill to the floor of the House and Senate mandating that, say, 25,000 National Guardsmen be taken out of combat in Iraq and be immediately redeployed to guard America's porous domestic borders - both southern and northern? If Democrats wanted to get even more creative, they could additionally mandate that some of these National Guardsmen being redeployed be immediately sent to forest fire emergency zones - many of which are in Republican states right now. Think this through for a moment. All of a sudden, the illegal-immigration-obsessed Tom Tancredo wing of the Republican Party, which also happens to be the most reflexively pro-war wing of the GOP, would be forced to choose either the Iraq War or beefed up border security. All of a sudden, we would be having a debate about two very real, very pressing priorities, rather than theoreticals and hypotheticals, and we would be discussing exactly how the misuse of our National Guard as a wing of the regular Army harms our ability to deal with the domestic challenges the National Guard was originally established to deal with.

This is imaginative thinking, and I'll even give David a pass on the militarization of the borders. The trouble is it will not work. Bush will oppose it, call it an end run to surrender in Iraq and Republicans ion Congress will fall in line. See, David's problem is he is not dealing with the central reality here, not enough Republicans will ever break with the President to make a strategy requiring a veto proof majority work. This is simply the way it is. It is why I have always urged an approach that does not require Republican votes - the NOT funding after a date certain approach:

Iraq Debacle and Surge supporter Ken Pollack, author of the 2002 book "The Case For Invading Iraq," not surprisingly wants Democrats to keep quiet about Iraq "until 2008":

[Q:] The Democratic candidates have been fighting among themselves over what to do. Your advice to the Democrats is what, to cool it until the election?

POLLACK: Certainly to cool it until early 2008. . . . We found the surge was definitely making some progress and in some areas it was making quite good progress.

But we’re also saying, “Look, it is very late in the day; Iraq is a deeply troubled country and dealing with its problems is going to take, not just a lot of savvy and a lot of resources, but also a lot of luck.” And therefore you can’t just simply say, “The surge is working, we’re done, we’re just going to let it continue on until it produces inevitable victory.” Because there’s no guarantee it’s going to produce inevitable victory. Therefore, you have to keep reassessing, and it may be that in early 2008, the progress we saw on this trip peters out. If it peters out, that’s important and that means you’re going to have to reassess.

Uh huh. How about we do this - how about Ken Pollack keeps quiet for about 6 months and then we can reassess that strategy in early 2008? If ANYTHING Ken Pollock has said proves true then he can talk some more. If instead, as has been the case for the past 5 years, everything he says is wrong again, then he keeps quiet for another 6 months. When we reassess.

These folks really have no sense of shame do they?

Via Kevin Drum:

Tuesday night Sanchez said she could not support the [anti-Iraq Debacle] protesters because the $145 billion in Iraq war funding was in the same bill that would provide money to build the C-17 aircraft in California. "I never voted for this war," she said. But "I'm not going to vote against $2.1 billion for C-17 production, which is in California. That is just not going to happen."

Rep. Sanchez, you just said you were going to vote for the war, so that a California company will get a defense contract. 395 Californians have died in Iraq. Loretta Sanchez can put a price on their lives - 2 billion dollars. Not to mention the damage to the interests of the nation.

But I have a solution for Rep. Sanchez, maybe she has not thought about it - how about NOT putting Iraq appropriations in the bill?

What a disgusting thing to say. I have much more respect for Republicans who support the war than for this drivel from Sanchez. Outrageous.