IRAQ - Everything is Going Fine! Everyone Else is Lying

"Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals" by Karen De Young & Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 8/30/2007

Excerpt

GAO Draft at Odds With White House

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

There's much more in the full article

Of course, IF this report went though the Whitehouse Propaganda Editors, it would come out saying just how rosie things are in Iraq today.

POLITICS - GOP "How Dare They Question Emperor Bush!"

"Lawmakers to Investigate Bush on Laws and Intent" by Carl Hulse, New York Times

Lawmakers say they plan to dig deeper into the Bush administration’s use of bill-signing statements as ways to circumvent Congressional intent.

In a limited examination of the administration’s practice of reserving the authority to interpret legislation, the Government Accountability Office determined that in 6 out of 19 cases it studied, the administration did not follow the law as written after President Bush expressed reservations about some legislative directives. By using signing statements, the president has reserved the right not to enforce any laws he thinks violate the Constitution or national security, or that impair foreign relations.

The accountability office, a watchdog agency, in a report issued Monday, did not pass judgment on whether the agencies were responding to the signing statements or whether the president had the constitutional authority not to comply. But Congressional officials said Tuesday that the findings were alarming since the administration had apparently not complied with the law in 30 percent of the cases scrutinized.

“Federal law is not some buffet line where the president can pick parts of some laws to follow and others to reject,” said Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, one of two senior lawmakers who sought the review.

Mr. Byrd and aides to Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and joined in seeking the study, said their next step would be to explore the signing statements to determine the broad extent of their impact. Mr. Byrd noted that another agency, the Congressional Research Service, had identified 700 provisions in law questioned by the administration.

“Moving forward, I plan to ask auditors to take a look at these provisions and determine what legal violations they find,” Mr. Byrd said. “Once we have the facts, we will be able to determine the next steps.”

The Bush administration’s frequent use of signing statements has been one front in the battle between the White House and some in Congress over the power of the executive branch.

Administration officials said that it was fully within the president’s power to interpret how laws should be carried out by the executive branch and that the White House had acted appropriately to keep Congress from overreaching and meddling too much in the independent executive branch of government.

“The executive branch has an obligation to remain within constitutional limits,” said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. “The point of the signing statement is to advise where the executive sees those limits.”

The accountability office said signing statements date back to the 19th century and might have started with President Andrew Jackson’s declaration that a road Congress wanted built from Detroit to Chicago would not extend beyond Michigan.

Mr. Byrd and Mr. Conyers cited a Congressional Research Service finding in April that the Bush administration had made use of the statements to raise objections to provisions of the laws he was signing to a much greater extent than any of his predecessors. Critics said Mr. Bush was relying on the statements to avoid veto fights with Congress, even when it was under Republican control, while still killing provisions he found objectionable.

Bold emphasis mine, and there's more in the full article

Interpretation of bold paragraph: Emperor Bush does not have to follow laws passed by Congress and, further, he is the only interpreter of Constitutionality, the Supreme Court be damned.