“Behind the Pentagon’s closed doors, U.S. military leaders told President Bush they are worried about the Iraq war’s mounting strain on troops and their families.” In the meeting, the Joint Chiefs of Staff also said “senior commanders in Iraq should make more frequent assessments of security conditions, an idea that appeared aimed at increasing pressure for more rapid troop reductions.”
New GDP numbers out this morning show that the economy grew by just 0.6 percent in the fourth-quarter of last year. The numbers “confirm the slump” the economy has entered and matched the expectations of weak growth predicted by many economists.
“A sweeping five-month investigation into the collapse of one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders points a finger at a possible new culprit in the mortgage mess: the accountants.” New Century Financial, whose failure came at the start of the credit crisis, “engaged in ‘significant improper and imprudent practices’ that were condoned and enabled by auditors at the accounting firm KPMG.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey “to explain the decision to eliminate the public corruption unit in Los Angeles” that has been investigating Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-CA) “connection to a lobbying firm and the earmarks its clients received.” The closure decision has “raised questions about whether pending and future public corruption cases will be rigorously pursued.”
Shiite militants “are hammering the U.S.-protected Green Zone with rockets and mortars for the fourth day this week. … American military officials say the attacks are coming from breakaway factions of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.”
The Bush administration is taking credit for the Iraqi government’s offensive against Shiite militias “calling it a ‘byproduct of the success’ of the U.S. troop surge that showed that Iraqi forces are capable of assaulting Shiite extremists.
Responding to the Iraqi government’s recent crackdown on Shiite militias, anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr ordered a nationwide strike yesterday partially paralyzing the government and “prompting fears that basic services such as hospitals and schools could be crippled.”
“President Bush announced yesterday that he will make an unexpected trip to Russia after a NATO summit next week to meet with President Vladimir Putin in hopes of repairing relations that have grown strained over missile defense, Kosovo independence and NATO expansion.”
And finally: On Tuesday, the USO of Metropolitan Washington awarded comedian Jon Stewart its Merit Award for his strong support of U.S. troops. A USO spokeswoman said that Stewart regularly comes from New York and visits with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed, but “up until now he’s done it for no public recognition; he just did it out of the goodness of his heart.” Stewart cracked few jokes on Tuesday, “speaking instead about how he’s been touched by his time with the wounded.”
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