Military Times writes that CentCom Commander Adm. William Fallon is calling reports of a sour relationship with Gen. Petraeus “just absurd”:

“I agree with what’s going on,” said Fallon, who spoke with the Military Times newspapers Sept. 14 just prior to a flight to the Middle East. “The thing that’s important right now is that we’re on the right glide slope.” [...]

Fallon was clearly irked by the stories about his supposed disagreements with Petraeus over the pace of that withdrawal and all-around disdain for the Army general published in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to various blogs.

Fallon did acknowledge, however, an internal military debate on Iraq. “Everybody’s going to have a difference of opinion,” Fallon said. “We are where we want to be right now. How we got there is our business.”

In April, the Office of Special Counsel launched a six-member task force examining “the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities.” The task force is in now jeopardy. “Without a last-minute infusion of nearly $3 million, the special task force may be unable to pay its staff and buy the kind of technical equipment it needs” for the investigation, according to Jim Mitchell, the office’s spokesman. But the funds may be hard to come by:

The cost of the task force for 2008 would be $2.89 million, according to OSC estimates. But Bloch started the probe long after he submitted his 2008 budget request. And now he’s having a hard time convincing those holding the nation’s purse strings to loosen up and give him some last-minute extra funding.

Although Fox censored actress Sally Field from finishing her anti-war sentence — “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no god-damned wars in the first place” — at the Emmy Awards last night, Canadian television allowed her remarks to air. Watch them HERE.

On Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke in Grand Rapids, MI to pay tribute to his former boss, President Gerald Ford, telling the audience that he learned “early on” how to evade oversight:

This Museum, and the Ford Library in Ann Arbor, mean a great deal to me — not just personally but from the standpoint of history, because I was chief of staff in the Ford White House.

I’m told researchers like to come and dig through my files, to see if anything interesting turns up. I want to wish them luck — (laughter) — but the files are pretty thin. I learned early on that if you don’t want your memos to get you in trouble some day, just don’t write any.

Watch it:

Cheney was referring to attempts to gather information using the Presidential Records Act (PRA), passed in 1978 after Watergate “to underscore the fact that presidential records belong to the American people, not to the president.” His admission on Friday reflects the great lengths he has gone to under President Bush to avoid record-keeping and deflect oversight:

Cheney lawyer told Secret Service not to keep visitor logs: A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September 2006 “to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence.”

Exempted himself from executive order protecting classified information: Since 2003, Cheney’s office has failed to provide data on its classification and declassification activities as required by Executive Order 12958, which President Bush has endorsed. “Cheney’s office provided the information in 2001 and 2002, then stopped.”

Attempted to dodge Information Security Oversight Office: In 2004, Cheney’s office specifically intervened to block an on-site inspection by the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which is a requirement of an executive order from the President.

Sidestepped travel disclosure rules. Cheney and “his staff have been unilaterally exempting themselves from long-standing travel disclosure rules followed by the rest of the executive branch, including the Office of the President,” reported the Center for Public Integrity in 2005.

Ditching the rule of law is no joking matter, despite what Cheney would like to think.

The National Climatic Data Center, a division of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, reports that last month was the second warmest August on record. Moreover, at the end of August, drought affected approximately 83% of the Southeast and 46% of the contiguous US. Climate Progress breaks down the key facts.

Last week, controversy erupted when the University of California at Irvine fired the inaugural Dean of its new law school, constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, because his “political views would make him a target for criticism from conservatives.” This morning, Chemerinsky and UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake announced that they had reached an agreement enabling Chemerinsky to return to his previous position.

Yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about Maj. Gen. James Jones’s report to Congress, which concluded that the U.S. presence in Iraq currently is conveying the impression of being an “occupying force.” It also questioned the administration’s approach of trying to achieve security before political progress:

RUSSERT: [Gen. Jones] said the current administration’s thinking is that you cannot have political reconciliation without first having security. He says it’s the opposite, that you cannot have security…

McCAIN: He doesn’t say it’s the opposite.

RUSSERT: …unless you have political reconciliation.

McCAIN: Tim, I’ve known Jim Jones for 30 years. It’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying is we have to have now political progress; and he, like all of us, are very frustrated by the lack of political progress, that the Maliki government has not done the things we want them to do.

Watch it:

McCain may have a long relationship with Jones, but apparently he didn’t bother to read Jones’s report, which found:

Political reconciliation is the key to ending sectarian violence in Iraq. … [T]he single most important event that could immediately and favorably affect Iraq’s direction and security is political reconciliation focused on ending sectarian violence and hatred. Sustained progress within the Iraqi Security Forces depends on such a political agreement.

Additionally, on last week’s edition of Meet the Press, Jones stated that while “both” security and political gains are important, “reconciliation” is “more critical” and “absolutely the key to measurable and rapid progress.”

The White House and its right-wing allies have recently attempted to dismiss attempts to evaluate progress based on political benchmarks. Last week, outgoing White House Press Secretary Tony Snow claimed that they were “something that Congress wanted to use as a metric.” Actually, as The New York Times noted, it was “the White House and the Iraqi government, not Congress, that first proposed the benchmarks for Iraq that are now producing failing grades.”

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