Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace “is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half,” citing concerns by the Joint Chiefs that “keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military.”
“The United States’ largest and costliest embassy, a heavily fortified compound in Baghdad with its own power plant and lighted softball field, is on track to be completed next month, on time and within budget.”
Escalation doubles number of internally displaced Iraqis. Recent studies “indicate that the total number of internally displaced Iraqis has more than doubled, to 1.1 million from 499,000,” since the escalation started in February.
Wan Kim, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, announced that he is resigning. “Kim is set to join nearly a dozen other senior Justice Department officials and aides who have resigned this year.” He pursued causes favored by conservatives to the detriment of the Division’s traditional emphasis, such as protecting African-Americans from discrimination.
After long denying retirement rumors, Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) said yesterday he would not seek reelection. “Renzi has been under an ethical cloud ever since a family business was raided earlier this year by the FBI, which is investigating whether he used his federal office for personal gain.”
A Pentagon effort to reopen Iraqi factories “has largely failed because American retailers have shown little interest in buying products made in Iraq.” The enterprise is overseen by deputy undersecretary of defense Paul Brinkley, who is being investigated for engaging in public drunkenness, waste of funds, and sexual harassment.
Karl Rove’s “disastrous” legacy. ThinkProgress’s Amanda Terkel writes, “The one area in which Rove succeeded was the politicization of the government’s response to national tragedies.”
Lawyers for Jose Padilla, who was convicted last week on terrorism charges, disclosed this week that they had filed a civil lawsuit “seeking to hold former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 59 other US officials responsible” for allegedly “abusive and unconstitutional tactics” used against Padilla while he was held “as an enemy combatant from 2002 to 2006.”
The world is facing an “unprecedented number of emerging diseases,” in part because of a “ballooning world population, intensive farming practices and changes in sexual behavior,” according to the World Health Organization.
And finally: A picture of French president Nicholas Sarkozy bare-chested, while vacationing in New Hampshire, has allegedly been airbrushed by a French magazine to remove the “unsightly bulges of fat around his waist.” The magazine, Paris Match, is run by a friend of Sarkozy’s. A presidential spokesman denied that Sarkozy instructed the magazine to edit the photograph: “We really are not that good at working with Photoshop.”
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