TownHall.com mass-mailed their readers this morning, urging them to celebrate July 4th by donating to a cause they said would “show our troops that you appreciate their work to promote freedom and democracy” and that you “value their outstanding service to our country.”

You’ll never guess the noble cause that TownHall is supporting. It isn’t helping our soldiers pay for armor and supplies. It’s not sending troops in Iraq spare clothing or phone cards or even toys for them to hand out. No, TownHall.com is raising $25,000 for the vital cause of mailing U.S. forces thousands of copies of Confronting Iraq, a deceptive film produced by the right-wing watchdog group Accuracy in Media.

According to its website, Confronting Iraq apparently shows that the Iraq war was “just and necessary,” part of the larger war “against the unrelenting forces of radical Islam” (wasn’t Saddam a committed secularist?), and that Iraq had “ongoing relations with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al Qaeda, among others.” It features upstanding luminaries like Bernie Kerik, who loved Iraq so much he decided to leave 9 months early.

And if those facts sound specious, it’s hardly surprising: the film’s director, Roger Aronoff, is an acclaimed “investigative journalist” whose previous films include TWA Flight 800: The Search for the Truth, a conspiracy epic that explains how the 1996 flight was actually shot from the air by Muslim terrorists, a fact hidden by President Clinton to ensure his re-election (and other such gems). Read more

A newly-released Zogby poll indicates that 42 percent of voters say that “if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should hold him accountable through impeachment.”

That is a stunningly high number when you consider that only 41 percent of the American public supported Congress proceeding with impeachment hearings against President Clinton in late September 1998. This was after President Clinton’s grand jury testimony was made public and just before the House Judiciary Committee approved a resolution recommending an impeachment inquiry.

In the past week conservatives have floated several contradictory Social Security reform proposals, making it difficult to discern their true intentions.

Luckily, there have been a few moments of clarity in the debate that cut through the rhetorical clutter and get to the core goal of the conservative’s fight: the abolishment of the principle of shared responsibility and sacrifice that Social Security embodies.

The most recent example came yesterday when Republican Rep. Jack Kingston (GA) explicitly stated the Republican strategy — get any Social Security bill through the House and Senate and then add private accounts in a conference committee:

“Anything they can get passed out of the Senate we should consider a major victory,” Mr. Kingston said, adding that if the Senate can pass any sort of Social Security bill — even without personal accounts — the House would “meet them in conference committee with personal accounts.”

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White House rule: When faced with a public relations debacle, blame the advance staff. Apparently, they have no bosses.

White House reaction to the soldiers’ silence at Ft. Bragg speech:

Capt. Tom Earnhardt, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg who participated in the planning for the president’s trip, said that from the first meetings with White House officials there was agreement that a hall full of wildly cheering troops would not create the right atmosphere for a speech devoted to policy and strategy.

“The guy from White House advance, during the initial meetings, said, ‘Be careful not to let this become a pep rally,’” Captain Earnhardt recalled in a telephone interview. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, confirmed that account.

Bush’s reaction to Mission Accomplished uproar:

Attention turned Tuesday to a giant “Mission Accomplished” sign that stood behind Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln when he gave the speech May 1. The president told reporters the sign was put up by the Navy, not the White House. “I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff — they weren’t that ingenious, by the way,” the president said Tuesday.

After it was discovered that 42 people were put on a black list and not allowed to attend a Bush event:

The White House later said that the list was a mistake and may have been generated by its advance team — a mix of White House staffers and state and local volunteers.

As insurgent violence spiked in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney was widely criticized for saying the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes.”

Now, as Taliban violence spikes in Afghanistan, National Security advisor Stephen Hadley says the Taliban is making “one last stand.” Here’s Hadley on PBS NewsHour last night:

[W]hat we know and what we believe is that the Taliban forces in Afghanistan were really set back by the presidential election that occurred and are trying to regroup and trying to stay relevant and trying to derail the elections that are now scheduled for September. So, regrettably, we’re going to probably see continuation of violence as they try and make one last stand to try and derail the progress of democracy there.

A State Department release from Monday doctored remarks from U2′s Bono, twisting his quote to mean the very opposite of what he apparently believes. Here’s the State Department paragraph, two graphs below the lede [besides underlining, excerpt appears exactly as published]:

Bono, lead singer of the Irish band U2 and longtime activist for aid to Africa, echoed Geldof’s praise for President Bush as he told an American television interviewer June 26, “[Bush] has already doubled and tripled aid to Africa . I think he has done an incredible job, his administration, on AIDS. 250,000 Africans are on anti-viral drugs; they literally owe their lives to America.”

In fact, Bono only said the latter half of that quote during his appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday. The first part — “[Bush] has already doubled and tripled aid to Africa” — is deceptively transplanted from an interview Bono did with Time magazine that Tim Russert quoted on the show, and the State Department has taken it entirely out of context. Here’s the full quote:

Question: Which of the G8 leaders do you think remains the toughest nut to crack?

Bono: The most important and toughest nut is still President Bush. He feels he’s already doubled and tripled aid to Africa, which he started from far too low a place. He can stand there and say he paid at the office already. He shouldn’t because he’ll be left out of the history books. But it’s hard for him because of the expense of the war and the debts.

In other words, Bono was relaying President Bush’s claim (which he repeated during his press conference with Tony Blair this month) that his administration has tripled aid to Africa. Yet we know Bono does not believe that Bush has tripled aid to Africa. On Meet the Press, Bono said that while Bush has made a commitment to triple aid, that will only be the case “if he follows through” on that pledge.

This blatant dishonesty is even more relevant in light of the study by Susan Rice that Brookings released this week. Rice’s analysis showed that…

…U.S. aid to Africa from FY 2000 (the last full budget year of the Clinton Administration) to FY2004 (the last completed fiscal year of the Bush Administration) has not “tripled” or even doubled. Rather, in real dollars, it has increased 56% (or 67% in nominal dollar terms). The majority of that increase consists of emergency food aid, rather than assistance for sustainable development of the sort Africa needs to achieve lasting poverty reduction.

President Bush has repeatedly offered differing reasons for why we went to war in Iraq. Last night, we heard the latest and most egregious explanation — that we had to go to war in Iraq as a direct result of 9/11. Here is a list of a few of Bush’s reasons for going into Iraq:

Reason #1) Went to War As a Direct Result of 9/11

Bush: “The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001 Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.” [Bush, 6/28/05]

Bush: “We went to war because we were attacked.” [Bush, 6/18/05]

Reason #2) WMD

Bush: “This is not about inspectors; this is about a disarmed Iraq. He has weapons of mass destruction — the world’s deadliest weapons — which pose a direct threat to the United States, our citizens and our friends and allies. He has been told to disarm for 11 long years. He’s not disarming.” [Bush, 1/21/03]

Reason #3) Links to Al Qaeda

Bush: “This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaeda as a forward army.” [Bush, 10/14/02]

Reason #4) Reform the Greater Middle East

Bush: “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all of the Middle East. Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both. [Bush, 2/20/03]

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Maybe you noticed: ThinkProgress got a makeover.

No major changes — mostly a sharper, simpler interface, more web-friendly colors, and some new java components — although we’ll be debuting a few more new features in the days to come.

Thoughts? Additions? Bugs? Drop us a comment.