Via Kevin Drum:

The Pentagon budget signed a couple of weeks ago includes a hard date for putting Stuart Bowen, the Inspector General for Iraq, out of business:

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

That's a real shocker, isn't it? The official excuse from Duncan Hunter (R–Running For President), who inserted the provision, is that he wanted to return to a "non-wartime footing" for all this inspection stuff.

I'll make a deal with the Republicans, you can fire the Inspector General when the troops are out of Iraq. You know, when we are no longer on a "war-time footing."

I remember when the Government complained about the Anarchist's Cookbook website with instructions for building a bomb, among other nefarious items. But how does that compare to this:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

The Government shut down the web site last night.

The UK's Timesonline reports:

A diary that appeared to catalogue violent attacks against Iraqi detainees was read out at the court martial of seven British soldiers accused of inhumane treatment towards prisoners today.

The journal was maintained by a former private, Stuart Mackenzie.

... Mr Mackenzie described attacks on Iraqi prisoners, some of whom were dubbed "Ali Babas" in the accounts. The court was told that Mr Mackenzie's unit of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment became known as "the grim reapers", because it was the first to kill an Iraqi. Julian Knowles, defending Corporal Payne, read sections of the diary to the court.

How bad are some of the entries? Read on.

I thought Bush went to war in Iraq to destroy its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, bring democracy to Iraq and dethrone Saddam.

The Pentagon, in releasing the names today of the latest U.S. troops to die in Iraq, says they died while supporting the "global war on terror."

Marine Sgt. Luke J. Zimmerman, 24, of Luxemburg, Wis., died Oct. 27 from injuries suffered while conducting combat operations in Iraq’s Anbar province. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Army 1st Sgt. Ricky L. McGinnis, 42, of Hamilton, Ohio, died Oct. 26 in Balad, Iraq, when a roadside bomb detonated near his dismounted patrol in Muqdadiyah, Iraq. McGinnis was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

How transparent. Now that there's no support for the war in Iraq and civil war is rampant, Bush thinks he can change the name and fool us into thinking we're fighting in Iraq to destroy amorphous terrorists.

Who cares what John Kerry said? The issue is Iraq.

Guantanamo

Torture

John Kerry flubbed a live statement on Iraq. Here's the video.

What Kerry meant to say:

"I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just Ask President Bush." - Senator John Kerry.

What Kerry said:

If you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well, if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Here's Kerry's official statement castigating those who are castigating him.

Of all people it would be wrong to accuse of not supporting the troops, John Kerry is at the top of the list. It's a side issue people, a distraction, let's move on.

Republicans and their supporters will jump at anything this last week to mitigate their upcoming losses. Balloon Juice explains how it works.

The Bush administration hasn't worried about congressional oversight for the last six years. Now it expects to be free from scrutiny by the special inspector general for Iraq. The special IG recently reported that the military hasn't kept track of hundreds of thousands of weapons meant for Iraqi security forces. That's the sort of embarassing news that Republicans are hoping to silence.

The special IG office, which since 2004 has kept watch over how U.S. taxpayers' funds are being spent rebuilding Iraq, is scheduled to close at the end of fiscal year 2007, next Sept. 30. Its expiration has prompted concerns that new and continuing investigations into waste, fraud and abuse by Iraqis and American contractors will recede into the shadows of the federal bureaucracy.

About a hundred investigations are underway, and there's no sensible reason to think that waste and fraud in Iraqi expenditures will end soon. Republican support for closing the office can only be based on a desire to conceal malfeasance.

One hundred deaths made October the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq since January 2005.

Update: 101.

Via Susie at Suburban Guerilla:

In the past, Democrats and other critics of the war who talked about benchmarks and timetables were labeled as defeatists, defeatocrats or people who wanted to cut and run. So why shouldn’t American people conclude that this is nothing from you other than semantic, rhetorical games and all politics two weeks before an election?”

- David Gregory at today’s press conference.

This is hilarious:

America’s top military and civilian officials in Iraq said today that the Baghdad government has agreed to a timetable for a series of milestones to be pursued in the coming year, including cracking down on Shiite militias, completing a “national compact” between competing political groups, persuading Sunni insurgents to lay down their arms and settling contentious issues like the division of oil revenues. . . . “Iraqi officials have agreed to a timeline for making these difficult decisions,” Ambassador Khalilzad said.

But but but our enemies, they now know to lie low until we leave and we can't have a set timeline and . . .

Worst Administration in history.

In the course of a long editorial on Iraq, the NYTimes says:

While the strategy described above seems the best bet to us, the odds are still very much against it working. At this point, all plans to avoid disaster involve the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. In America, almost no one — even the administration’s harshest critics — wants to tell people the bitter truth about how few options remain on the table, and about the mayhem that will almost certainly follow an American withdrawal unless more is done.

Truth will only take us so far, but it is the right way to begin. Americans will probably spend the next generation debating whether the Iraq invasion would have worked under a competent administration. Right now, the best place to express bitterness about what may become the worst foreign policy debacle in American history is at the polls. But anger at a president is not a plan for what happens next.

I don't know. Read the Times plan, if you have faith in their Hail Mary, then by all means embrace it. But frankly, WITHOUT anger at this incompetent President, the worst in history, that pass won't even be thrown.

Let's hope this report isn't true.

A U.S. soldier in Baghdad was reported missing late Monday, and residents said American forces sealed the central Karadah district and were conducting door-to-door searches. Other reports claimed he was an Army translator of Iraqi descent and was abducted.

A military official in Washington said the missing service member was a translator and that the initial report was he may have been abducted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not cleared for release.