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What happened to the Texas swagger? Maybe it went the way of his poll numbers. Maybe this is a newly reflective President Bush. Or maybe the first lady had her say. Whatever the case, when Mr. Bush said at a news conference on Thursday night that he regretted some personal mistakes, like declaring "bring 'em on" in 2003, he seemed a little like the chastened husband who finally admitted he had done something wrong. Whether it worked or not depends on whom you ask. "Sad day in Crawford, they're hanging their heads," said William J. Bennett, the former education secretary...

Pelosi: 'Having Admitted Error of His Words, President Must Admit Error of His Ways' Fri Jan 14, 2:19 PM ET To: National Desk Contact: Brendan Daly or Jennifer Crider, 202-226-7616, both of the Office of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on remarks by President Bush in an interview with regional newspapers yesterday in which he said he regretted saying "bring 'em on" in reference to insurgents in Iraq who wanted to attack our troops: "The President has finally acknowledged that his taunting the Iraqi...

<p>SANAA, Yemen, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- A purported statement by al-Qaida in Yemen warned Saturday of a "major strike" soon in the United States.</p> <p>The statement, distributed by the Yemeni Tagamoo Party for Reforms, said: "A major strike, a big event will take place in America soon," reminiscent of the Sept. 11 attacks.</p>

LONDON - The retired American general who headed the first occupation government in Iraq (news - web sites) says the decision to disband the Iraqi army was one of several major mistakes Washington has made in Iraq. AP Photo Latest headlines: · Pentagon Sending More Marines to Iraq AP - 51 minutes ago · US readies extra marines for IraqAFP - 56 minutes ago · Iraq's Shiites Oppose U.S. Election Plan AP - 1 hour, 47 minutes ago Special Coverage   The United States should also have put more more troops into Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news...

LONDON, Oct. 31 — Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American-led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries. Advertisement The intelligence officials say that since late summer they have detected a growing stream of itinerant Muslim militants headed for Iraq. They estimate that hundreds of young men from an array of countries have now arrived in Iraq by crossing the Syrian or Iranian borders. But the officials say this influx...

TIKRIT, Iraq, (Agencies): Your average American soldier in post-war Iraq may want better food, more rest time and above all to go home, but the infantrymen out on night patrol in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit have only one wish - to get shot at. The soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Regiment swear they have divine protection and say the easiest place to be attacked is in what they call ‘RPG alley.’ The mile-long main street’s two-storey homes, cafes and furniture shops are daubed with ‘Saddam is our leader’ graffiti and the road is holed by grenades. But the...

Al-Qa'ida Supporters Arrive in Diyala Province In a special report, the independent Al-Yawm Al-Aakher quoted sources in the Diyala Province as stating that they have been witnessing the emergence of an "unusual organization in the province identifying itself as 'Ansar Al-Qa'ida' [Supporters of Al-Qa'ida], and that their numbers have been increasing daily… Citizens in Ba'qouba described the developments in the province as harbinger of an armed military eruption in the near future if the American forces in the area fail to curtail the activities of such armed organizations…" [21] [21] Al-Yawm Al-Aakher, August 18, 2003. [Emphasis in Original].

What are we doing in Iraq? The latest explanation is the so-called flypaper thesis. That is, it's a good thing that we have 140,000 troops in Iraq, because the terrorists are going after our men and women there, lured like flies to flypaper. As President George W. Bush said on Tuesday, "Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York, or St. Louis or Los Angeles." This argument is dubious, however, for three reasons.

Rumsfeld Says Country Faces Two Options in War on Terror By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2003 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told service members at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, today that only two options faced the United States in its war on terror: Fight the terrorists where they live today, or fight them in America tomorrow. Rumsfeld said the war on terrorism is unlike any war the United States fought in the past. Sept. 11 ushered in a new age of asymmetric warfare. "The threats we have faced have not been so much...

Rumsfeld Says Country Faces Two Options in War on Terror By Jim GaramoneAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2003 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told service members at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, today that only two options faced the United States in its war on terror: Fight the terrorists where they live today, or fight them in America tomorrow. Rumsfeld said the war on terrorism is unlike any war the United States fought in the past. Sept. 11 ushered in a new age of asymmetric warfare. "The threats we have faced have not been so much...

Some of the Nine Dwarves are trying to spice up their foundering presidential campaigns by blaming President Bush for the deadly bombing at the U.N.'s headquarters in Baghdad. "Had the president pursued the war on terrorism prior to initiating military action against Saddam Hussein, as I advocated last year, it is likely that al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks would not have been able to take advantage of the chaos that now exists in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. "It is becoming increasingly clear each day that the administration misread the situation on the ground...

Al Qaida operatives and their allies are flooding Iraq. Many of them are coming over unhampered from the border areas of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.More than 1,000 Al Qaida operatives have entered Iraq just in the last three months.Many other supporters have also entered Iraq.These are not the young and unemployed looking for action. These forces appear highly trained a disciplined.

First, the pertinent excerpt: ABC News' Raddatz reporting, "Last month, President Bush said the United States had the security situation under control, and enough forces to fight. "'There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there,' the president said on July 2. 'My answer is "Bring 'em on." We got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.' But officials may now have to look at adding troops to the nearly 150,000 already there." (ABC News, Raddatz, 8/18/03) Here's the rest of the article: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/unbombing030819.html New Fears U.N. Bombing Raises Concern in...

<p>August 20, 2003 -- THE first strategy employed by Iraqi dead- enders and their terror- tourist allies failed miserably: They attacked U.S. forces head-on - and paid a bitter price.</p> <p>With their comrades killed, wounded or captured, their leaders apprehended (another one yesterday), their bases of support whittled away and U.S. resolve only hardened, our enemies have turned to a new, desperate strategy.</p>

WASHINGTON The Bush team has now created the very monster that it conjured up to alarm Americans into backing a war on Iraq. Rushing to pummel Iraq after 9/11, Bush officials ginned up links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. They made it sound as if Islamic fighters on a jihad against America were slouching toward Baghdad to join forces with murderous Iraqis. There was scant evidence of it then, but it's coming true now. Since America began its occupation, Iraq has become the mecca for every angry, hate-crazed Arab extremist who wants to liberate the Middle East from the "despoiling"...

In the sizzling heat of an Iraqi summer, Saddam Hussein’s loyalist guerrillas cannily select targets that will make the life of the ordinary Iraqi unbearable, trusting in acute disruptions to provoke him to rise up en masse against the Americans. Their organization is Saboteurs are systematically disrupting oil, electricity and water supplies. There is efficient organization somewhere in the background. In ten days, guerrillas set two calamitous fires at key points on the 600-mile pipeline just when oil exports were due to resume from northern Iraq’s huge Kirkuk fields, source of 40 percent of country’s oil, to Turkey’s Ceyhan terminal...

By Mark Huband in London Published: August 18 2003 19:45 | Last Updated: August 18 2003 19:45 Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into Iraq in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against US and UK forces, security and Islamist sources have warned. A senior western counter-terrorism official on Monday said the presence of foreign fighters in Iraq was "extremely worrying". A statement purportedly from al-Qaeda was broadcast on Monday by the Arab satellite television channel al-Arabiya. It claimed the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the leader of the Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime Mullah...

Iraq becomes a battleground in war on infidels By Robin Gedye, Foreign Affairs Writer (Filed: 19/08/2003) Muslim fundamentalists from throughout the Middle East are being drawn to Iraq for a protracted guerrilla war, senior military officials said yesterday after a wave of weekend sabotage attacks. "Far from a new Vietnam, we appear to be heading for a new Afghanistan, Somalia or Chechnya as the next battleground between Islam and the infidels," said one official in Washington. As he spoke fires still raged on a broken oil pipeline in northern Iraqi and youths bathed in the water gushing from a sabotaged...

The US army is hoping to stick up posters of Saddam Hussein's face superimposed on Hollywood heroines and other stars in an attempt to enrage his followers and draw them out. In one called 'Zsa Zsa Saddam', he has his head tossed back, his blonde locks flowing and a filter-tipped cigarette dangling coquettishly between his delicate fingers. 'Zsa Zsa Saddam' is the US army's latest ploy in the four-month hunt for the fugitive dictator. In a campaign starting this week, US forces plan to put up the posters around Saddam's home town of Tikrit. As well as Saddam dolled up...

Inside the resistance August 16, 2003 Alert and alarmed ... patrolling the streets of Baghdad can never be considered routine. Photos: Jason South The United States likes to think that all it confronts in Iraq are a few die-hard Saddamists. But Paul McGeough meets a new guerilla movement with growing popular support. There's a knock on the door. Standing in the first-floor corridor of the Al Safeer Hotel are two men - Ahmed, a weapons dealer and group commander in the Iraqi resistance, and Haqi, one of his foot soldiers. They enter and take a seat on the sofa, edgy...

Analysis of US Casualties in Iraq by Week and Month - post Baghdad Liberation Day   April: Post- Baghdad Liberation Day - April 30   Week of Apr. 10 - Apr.16:   Apr.10: One Marine killed 22 wounded securing Baghdad Mosque:  Iraqi regime loyalists, terrorists and paramilitary forces engaged elements of Regimental Combat Team 5 (RCT-5) from the protection of an 8th century Shia Mosque. In over one hour of heavy gunfire exchange, the Marines of RCT-5 cleared the mosque for return to the Iraqi people....Marines quickly assessed the situation. After receiving permission to engage the enemy inside, Marines swiftly defeated the Iraqi...

If you haven’t caught the “pattern” of the Democrats, lately, then you haven’t been paying attention. Like the “gravitas” virus that infected everyone during the 2000 election cycle, the latest verbal tic is “pattern.” Bush’s inclusion of the now beaten-beyond-a-dead horse 16 words, which have been misrepresented by almost every liberal talking head in America, suddenly constitutes a “pattern” of deception. Oooh, I’m so alarmed. Thankfully, I have a working mind, a set of working eyes, and the ability to cruise the internet. With just these tools, I have been able to determine that the only pattern of deception here...

EDITOR'S NOTE: SOME OF THE LANGUAGE IN THIS COLUMN MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO READERS Frank Lautenberg, the senator and septuagenarian from New Jersey, was shocked, shocked. The president of the United States had said some disrespectful things about the enemy in Iraq, even taunted them. The commander-in-chief had dared them to try something. He had... well, listen: "There are some who feel they can attack us there," George W. Bush said of the suicide bombers and bushwhackers that have been attacking American troops. "My answer is: Bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."...

The Associated Press NEAR BAQUBA, Iraq July 9 — The sweat dripped from Lt. Kurt Chapman's face. The 4th Infantry Division platoon commander had just set a trap for a group of Iraqi ambushers and he was the bait.It was now a matter of watching and waiting. "They want to shoot at us. We'll see if they have the guts," said Sgt. Samuel Bailey, of Cedar Falls, Iowa. "When they started aggressively attacking us, we decided to take the fight to them. We own the night."When Chapman's men first ventured out of the base onto the road toward "RPG...

Bring 'em on. That's what the president said and that's what the Democrats hate. They say it makes him sound like a cowboy, that it is too beligerent a tone, that it shows he is not the statesman America needs. That he is some hothead rube sitting in the most powerful seat in the world. Well, they're full of crap. He's right and they're wrong and that's all there is to it. What am I talking about? A comment President Bush made last week at the White House. A reporter asked him about the terrible string of attacks on American...

Among the many Democrats complaining about President Bush's dare for Saddam's loyalists to "bring 'em on" is presidential candidate John Kerry, who called the remark "unwise (and) unworthy of the office." Kerry's complaint about Bush's expression of confidence in the U.S. fighting force is particularly ironic, however, given his own comments about American GI's in 1971, after he returned from combat duty in Vietnam. Talk about making things tough on our own. Here's what the White House-wannabe told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that April, while testifying as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War: Kerry accused U.S....

<p>N THE GOTHIC splendor of the National Cathedral, that liturgy of trauma, George W. Bush made the most stirring - and ominous - declaration of his presidency. It was Sept. 14, 2001. ''Just three days removed from these events,'' he said, ''Americans do not yet have ''the distance of history.'' But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.''</p>

Franks says There are Enough Coalition Forces in Iraq Sgt. 1st Class Doug SampleAmerican Force Press Service WASHINGTON, July 7, 2003 – Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who steps down as commander of U.S. Central Command today, said coalition forces will continue to move forward with establishing security in Iraq, by "working with Iraqis" despite an increasing number of U.S. casualties. Franks' comments, on ABC's "Good Morning America," came after reports of three more U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad. Despite the violence, he said that based on conversations he's had with Army Lt. Gen. Rick Sanchez, commanding Combined Joint Task...

General Tommy Franks leaves his top spot at United States Central Command repeating President Bush's taunt to Iraq militants: [on Good Morning America Live] 'Bring Em On.'On his last day of his command, Franks told ABC News Good Morning America that he agreed with the President's comments, and he doesn't think that more United States Troops are needed to deal with the recent spate of attacks against Amercian forces.'The fact is wherever we find criminals, death squads and so forth who are anxious to do damage to this country and to peace loving nations around the world, I absolutely agree...

"Bring 'em on!" With that one little phrase, President George W. Bush has set liberals clucking their tongues like they haven't clucked since Ronald Reagan called the former Soviet Union an evil empire. Was this really an appropriate remark for the leader of the free world? Didn't this amount to a taunt of America's enemies to attack our troops? One Democrat presidential candidate even said that it sounded more like a comment from a gang leader than the President of the United States. Of course, the term "cowboy" is again being heard across the land. Well, cowboys are quintessentially American,...

Retiring Iraq War commanding Gen. Tommy Franks echoed President Bush's controversial expression of confidence in U.S. troops Monday morning, daring Iraqi opposition forces to "bring 'em on." Asked about the recent spate of deadly attacks on U.S. troops, Franks said the notion American soldiers were "sitting back and waiting" to be hurt by criminals and supporters of Saddam Hussein was inaccurate. "This is all about offensive operations in Iraq. No one said this was going to be easy," the top military man explained, according to Reuters. Asked about Bush's comment last week, Franks said he agreed, telling GMA, "Absolutely,...

Shocked, shocked are the fainthearts that President Bush has openly double-dared Iraq's rogue troublemakers to come take a poke at our troops any time they feel like mixing it up. "Bring 'em on!" war-whoops the commander in chief, and you'd think this pack of Democratic presidential aspirants had never seen a John Wayne movie in their whole lives. "Phony macho rhetoric!" bawls candidate Rep. Dick Gephardt. "Unworthy of the office!" bleats Sen. John Kerry. "Tremendous insensitivity!" blubbers Gov. Howard Dean. Cripes. What a bunch of twinkies. "Tremendous insensitivity"? Find one warrior who thinks that. It's a fair guess that our...