Iraq death toll
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IRAQBush pleads for patience in Iraq war WASHINGTON - With Democrats pushing for an end to the Iraq war now entering its fifth year, President Bush pleaded for more patience Monday, saying success is possible but "will take months, not days or weeks." The war has stretched longer, with higher costs, than the White House ever predicted. On the fourth anniversary of the day Bush directed the invasion to begin, the president made a televised statement from the White House Roosevelt Room to defend continued U.S. involvement. He said his plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops to secure Baghdad and Iraq's troubled Anbar Province "will need more time to take effect," especially since fewer than half of the troop reinforcements have yet arrived in the capital. Bush added: "There will be good days and bad days ahead as the security plan unfolds." Democrats are bringing up this week in the House a war spending bill that would effectively require the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008, on top of providing funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the year. The White House has been pushing aggressively against this legislation, and Bush did so again on Monday. "It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home," he said. "That may be satisfying in the short run. But I believe the consequences for America's security would be devastating." Democrats blasted Bush's statement. They called it an an open-ended commitment to a losing strategy. "The American people have lost confidence in President Bush's plan for a war without end in Iraq," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) of California. "That failed approach has been rejected by the voters in our nation, and it will be rejected by the Congress." Democrats also sought to refute Bush's assertion that the House bill would reduce flexibility needed by the military to win the war.
"Our troops have not quit on us, and Republicans will not quit on them," said Boehner, R-Ohio, who has predicted "99 percent" of GOP lawmakers will vote against the Democratic proposal. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) of Nevada said Democrats in his chamber won't relent in trying to stop Bush's "flawed policy." Last week, Senate Republicans easily turned back Democratic legislation requiring a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days. "We will not stop until they listen to the American people and change course in Iraq," Reid said. Bush said he had received news of positive signs during a morning briefing on the war with his National Security Council, and during a closed-circuit television conference call with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki from Baghdad. Bush ridiculed House Democrats' legislation to remove troops, a measure he has promised to veto because it contains a timeline. He called it an abdication of U.S. commitments to Iraqis.
The House's war spending bill includes a troop withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008. The timeline would speed up if the Iraqi government cannot meet its own benchmarks for providing security, allocating oil revenues and other essential steps. Democrats "have a responsibility to ensure that this bill provides the funds and the flexibility that our troops need to accomplish their mission," the president said. "They have a responsibility to pass a clean bill that does not use funding for our troops as leverage to get special interest spending for their district. And they have a responsibility to get this bill to my desk without strings and without delay." But Democratic lawmakers argue that the public voted in November to place them in charge of Congress to demand more progress in Iraq — and to start getting the U.S. troops out. The House plan appears to have little chance of getting through the Senate, where Democrats have a slimmer majority. The White House wants to stop it anyway, fearful of the message the world will hear if the House approves a binding bill to end the war. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday the House bill could make it impossible for military commanders to do their work. Congressional Democrats, put in power in large part because of anti-war public sentiment, are trying to use their power of the purse to force action. So far, Iraq's leadership is struggling to meet the major benchmarks that it has pledged to the United States. The impending House vote concerns a $124 billion spending bill, $95.5 billion of which is targeted for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of the other money is for unrelated domestic programs, which also has angered the White House. Entering its fifth year, the war has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 members of the U.S. military. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier Monday staunchly defended going to war but acknowledged the administration should have sent more troops initially to quell the civil strife following the invasion. US & COMPUTER BLOWSMost computer attacks originate in U.S. SAN JOSE, Calif. - The United States generates more malicious computer activity than any other country, and sophisticated hackers worldwide are banding together in highly efficient crime rings, according to a new report. Researchers at Cupertino-based Symantec Corp. also found that fierce competition in the criminal underworld is driving down prices for stolen financial information. Criminals may purchase verified credit card numbers for as little as $1, and they can buy a complete identity — a date of birth and U.S. bank account, credit card and government-issued identification numbers — for $14, according to Symantec's twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report released Monday. Researchers at the security software company found that about a third of all computer attacks worldwide in the second half of 2006 originated from machines in the United States. That makes the United States the most fertile breeding ground for threats such as spam, phishing and malicious code — easily surpassing runners-up China, which generates 10 percent of attacks, and Germany, which generates 7 percent. The United States also leads in "bot network activity." Bots are compromised computers controlled remotely and operating in concert to pump out spam or perform other nefarious acts. The legitimate owner of the computer typically doesn't know the machine has been taken over — and the phenomenon is largely responsible for the palpable increase in junk e-mail in the past half year. Spam made up 59 percent of all e-mail traffic Symantec monitored. That's up 5 percentage points from the previous period. Much of the spam was related to stock picks and other financial scams. The United States is also home to more than half of the world's "underground economy servers" — typically corporate computers that have been commandeered to facilitate clandestine transactions involving stolen data and may be compromised for as little as two hours or as long as two weeks, according to the report. The study marks the first time Symantec researchers have studied the national origins of computer attacks. The report focused on attacks during the last half of 2006 on more than 120 million computers running Symantec antivirus software. The company operates more than 2 million decoy e-mail accounts designed to attract messages from around the world to identify spam and phishing activity.
"It's ruthless, highly organized and highly evolved," Huger said. One of the most startling findings: The worldwide number of bot-infected computers rose — an increase of about 29 percent from the previous six months, to more than 6 million computers total — while the number of servers controlling them plunged. The number of such "command-and-control" servers declined by about 25 percent to around 4,700.
According to Symantec, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer was the most-targeted Web browser, attracting 77 percent of all browser attacks. Symantec said it expects to see more threats begin to emerge against Microsoft's Vista operating system. It also expects multiplayer online games to be targeted by phishers, who fool users into divulging passwords or other personal information by creating fake Web sites that look like the real thing. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 1.35 Mb. Share with your friends:
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