[courtesy of Blog for America]

McClatchy takes a look at the way Americans are dealing with rising costs:

Whether it's fewer restaurant visits, shorter road trips or skipping a haircut here and there, more consumers are looking for ways to stretch their dollars.

And with good reason. The soaring cost of core essentials like gasoline, food and housing now account for 57 cents of each consumer dollar spent. That leaves Americans with a record-low 43 cents out of each dollar for discretionary spending, according to new figures from Wachovia Economics Group.

That helps explains why new vehicle sales in the U.S. are at a 10-year low and why consumers are buying less clothing, shoes and big-ticket items like furniture and computers.

Danny
Communications Director

[courtesy of Blog for America]

The State Department, today, issued its annual terrorism report and things are not going well in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region.  From McClatchy:

Terrorist attacks in Pakistan doubled last year and casualties there from terrorism quadrupled, as extremists reasserted their hold in tribal areas and attempted to extend their reach deep into the country, the State Department said in an annual report Wednesday.

There was also a 16 percent increase in terrorist attacks in neighboring Afghanistan in 2007, the report on global terrorism trends said.

Taken together, the findings confirm that the struggle against terrorism in the troubled Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, which many specialists consider the central battleground in the fight against al Qaida and its affiliates, was set back last year. The report said that al Qaida has proven “adaptable and resilient” and used a failed cease-fire agreement along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier to reconstitute its capabilities.

Click here to read the full State Department report.

Danny
Communications Director

[courtesy of Blog for America]

Evidently, our continued presence in Afghanistan hinges on the goodwill of one guy.  From McClatchy:

The only thing standing between Pakistan's Taliban and the lifeline for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan may be an Islamist warlord who controls the area near Pakistan's famed Khyber Pass.

In an interview with McClatchy, Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, voiced his disdain for America but said he's rebuffed an offer from the Taliban to join them.

Isn't that comforting.  It gets better:

However, he also called the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan "wrong" and said American troops must leave.

"While the Americans are in Afghanistan, there is no way to bring peace and prosperity, over there and here," Bagh said. "We do not want to kill Americans, we just want to make them Muslims."

Danny
Communications Director

by DFA Staff [courtesy of Blog for America]

Karl Rove could only dream of a 61-year lock on power, but that is exactly what the Colorado Party had been able to do in Paraguay...until now.  McClatchy reports:

A former Roman Catholic bishop scored a historic win Sunday in this country's presidential election, ending the 61-year reign of what had been the world's longest ruling party.

...

Sunday's election ends a Colorado lock on power in this 6.8 million-person country that began in 1947, when the party seized control after a bloody civil war. The Colorado period also included the 35-year regime of dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who was ousted in a 1989 coup.

Danny
Communications Director

by DFA Staff [courtesy of Blog for America]

McClatchy hosted an online Q&A with the authors of "The Three Trillion Dollar War" to dicuss the costs of the War in Iraq:

When the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Americans were told Iraqi oil would cover the costs of the war and rebuilding. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scoffed at estimates of $100 billion.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes raised a stir in 2006 by estimating the real cost of the war to be $1 trillion. That estimate has been tripled and the title of their new book is "The Three Trillion Dollar War."

Click here to read the session.

Danny
Communications Director

by DFA Staff [courtesy of Blog for America]

Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy has an article about the loss of the United States power and prestige as a result of the War in Iraq:

It was a decision that only President Bush had the power to make: At about 9 a.m. on March 19, 2003, in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, he gave the "execute order" to begin Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Now, five years later, the consequences of that act will soon be beyond Bush's grasp. In 10 months, they'll land on the desk of his successor.

Thanks in part to the Iraq war, the next U.S. president — Republican or Democrat, black or white, man or woman — will take office with America's power, prestige and popularity in decline, according to bipartisan reports, polls and foreign observers.

Danny
Communications Director

by DFA Staff [courtesy of Blog for America]

The Bush administration has blocked a planned web release of a Pentagon study that determined there was no pre-war link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.  Instead, they will mail a copy to reporters if it is requested.  Obviously, this is nothing more than a strange attempt at a delay because the study will no doubt be scanned and on the internet in no time.  More from McClatchy:

In making their case for invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003, President Bush and his top national security aides claimed that Saddam's regime had ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link.

Danny
Communications Director