The Dixie Chicks have released the first single from their new album and it packs quite a wallop. The song, "Not Ready To Make Nice" directly confronts those who criticized the Chicks for their statement that they were "ashamed" to be from the same state as President Bush. After making the statement, the Dixie Chicks found themselves insulted, boycotted and even threatened. While the incident has clearly affected them, it has not dulled their talent. In the most powerful passage, they sing:

"And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, today we learn via Sy Hersh's latest article in The New Yorker that the Bush administration is quietly briefing selected members of the House and Senate on its plans for Iran. Those plans are said to include the possiblity of employing tactical nuclear weapons against Iranian targets. The planners are quoted as saying "It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

The administration has clearly lost its last shred of sanity. As if the folly of the Iraq war weren't enough, they're now set on compounding the error. According to Hersh:

The big news yesterday was about Scooter Libby having implicated George W. Bush in the Valerie Plame leak trial... but at the Tasini For New York headquarters, someone passed along another story that took up most of our attention.

We've been out in the streets, all over the blogs and the web, and working the phones, proving to her constituents that the incumbent is a right-wing conservative who does not represent the interests of the American people, let alone New Yorkers.

This front-page story in American Conservative magazine will hopefully dispel those silly rumors that Senator Clinton is a "liberal" or "left-wing." The article doesn't even doubt Clinton's support of the Bush administration's positions, all but mocking her phony "regretful" e-mails to supporters expressing disappointment with the Iraq War. Read more at the following link:

It appears that we can add “spreading democracy in the Middle East” to the list of reasons for going to war that the Bush administration gave that have proved false. It joins an illustrious list, with weapons of mass destruction, Sadaam’s ties to Al Qaeda, and the claim that attacking them there, before they could attack us here, would make America safer.

As Stephanie noted yesterday, according to a front page article in yesterday’s Washington Post, in the most recent budget the Bush administration has scaled back funding for groups charged with helping build democracy in Iraq through the creation of civil groups and political parties. The article notes, “The president's supplemental Iraq spending request includes just $10 million for democracy promotion, and his proposed budget for fiscal 2007 asks for $63 million, a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars spent each year on Iraq.”

After the WMD rationale fell apart, George Bush declared that the real reason for invading Iraq was to "spread freedom" and democratize the region. While the Bush administration is big on rhetoric they consistently fall short on action. Today we learn in the Washington Post that the Bush administration is "scaling back funding for the main organizations trying to carry out his vision by building democratic institutions such as political parties and civil society groups."

By cutting funding to these organizations the administration reneges on its obligation to building democratic institutions at a crucial moment in Iraq's history. As Senator Kennedy said yesterday, ""The solution to Iraq lies in the political process, and it's reckless for the White House to cut funds to strengthen democracy in Iraq at this time."