Letters to the Editor

The Times Editor,  

We're winning but the other side makes all the points.

The number of US soldiers to die in Iraq has reached 4000, the US military said on Monday, just days after the fifth anniversary of a war that President George Bush says the United States is on track to win. 

The US military said in a statement four soldiers were killed late on Sunday when a roadside bomb, the biggest killer of American soldiers in Iraq, exploded near their vehicle in southern Baghdad. One soldier was wounded in the attack. 

Dick Cheney, the US vice president, has met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with the soaring price of oil and instability in the region expected to be on the agenda. 

However, it is unclear whether Cheney will urge the leader of the world's largest oil exporter to increase output during the talks at the monarch's horse farm in Riyadh. 

Credit Suisse faced a double whammy of bad news yesterday, revealing it is almost certain to plunge into loss during the first quarter of this year and admitting a group of rogue traders in its London office had forced it to write down the value of its assets by SFr2.86bn (£1.43bn). 

When confronted this week with news that the latest CNN Poll had found 61 per cent of Americans want out of Iraq, war criminal, serial draft dodger & all-round crook, Dick ‘Strangelove’ Cheney said: ‘So?’ 

When then asked specifically if he cared what the American people think, the representative from the dark side said: ‘No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls’. 

Even as America sinks deeper and deeper into a recession, we can also continue to count the incredible cost of this war.  

Former foreign minister Alexander Downer has criticised the United States' strategy in the Iraq war, saying more troops should have been deployed in the early stages of the conflict. 

Mr Downer says getting rid of Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do but the Americans failed to back up their gains with sufficient troop numbers after the initial invasion. 

President Bush used the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq on Wednesday to make the case for persevering in a conflict that will in all likelihood have many more anniversaries. 

Mr Bush, speaking before troops, officers and defense officials at the Pentagon, acknowledged in some of his bluntest language yet that the costs of the war, in lives and money, had been higher than he had anticipated — and longer. 

Obama's speech on race 

Tuesday, March 18 at 8:27 AM 

from the Center for American Progress  

Casting aside any hesitation about an aggressive interest rate cut, investors sent stocks soaring to their highest gains in five years on Tuesday as shares of financial firms surged in the hopes that the Federal Reserve has finally taken hold of the credit crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 420 points. 

Adding to the litany of complaints about one of the nation's primary counter-terrorism safety nets, a Justice Department audit has concluded that the FBI provided the government-wide terrorism watch list with incomplete, inaccurate and outdated information about suspects for almost three years. 

Florida's Democratic Party chairwoman on Monday officially buried the possibility of redoing the state's disputed January presidential primary, saying there was no practical or affordable way to conduct a new election. 

US Vice-President Dick Cheney declared the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq a 'successful endeavour' during a visit to Baghdad, on the same day a woman suicide bomber killed 40 people. 

'If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavour ... and it has been well worth the effort,' Cheney, an architect of the invasion, said after meeting Iraqi leaders. 

America’s days as the world economic hegemon are winding down.  

The sad thing about this mess is that it was completely avoidable.