Defense

The Government Accountability Office Wednesday released the full report of its decision to sustain Boeing's protest over the Air Force's refueling award to Northrop Grumman

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), on the dais at AIPAC, again pressed the case that United States must stay in Iraq if it wants to keep Iran from taking over the country.

Boehner said it would be "a mistake of historic proportions" to retreat from Iraq. He added that Democrats were wrong to think that the military surge wouldn't work.
"If we lose Iraq we lose the region and we make it far more dangerous for Israel to exist," he said.

Boehner then turned to the specific dangers that Iran presents.

"If we do not stop Iran from devleoping nuclear weapons, we will lose Israel, and if we do not take seriously the words and attentions of Islamic militants, we lose Israel," he said.

His Democratic counterpart, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), is about to take the stage.

The Hill's Roxana Tiron has the story.

During a Senate hearing Tuesday with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) chided President Bush for using the term "appeasement" to describe talking with Iran.

"It

A report from Media Matters claims that the retired officers being used by the Pentagon to promote U.S. military policy as media analysts made more than 4,500 appearances on the major television networks, cable news and radio from January 2002 until an April New York Times story exposed the program.

Three of the retired officers named in the Times story made more than 500 appearances each.

President Bush said on Thursday that he will stop troop withdrawals from Iraq after July, following recommendations made this week by Gen. David Petraeus.

"Fifteen months ago, Americans were worried about the prospect of failure in Iraq," said Bush in remarks at the White House. "Today, thanks to the surge, we've renewed and revived the prospect of success."

Bush added that he agreed to go ahead with the removal of five brigades this spring and summer, something his administration had long planned. Responding to Petraeus's call this week for any more troop reductions to be "conditions-based," Bush said "he'll have all the time he needs."

Bush again called on Congress to pass a war spending bill without any timetables for troop withdrawals, and he said the bill should be no greater than $108 million.

He then tied the effort in Iraq to other anti-terrorist operations against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East.

"If we fail [in Iraq], al Qaida would claim a propaganda victory of colossal proportions and they could gain safe havens in Iraq from which to attack the United States, our friends and our allies," Bush said. "Iran would work to fill the vacuum in Iraq... The Taliban in Afghanistan and al Qaeda in Pakistan would grow in confidence and boldness. And violent extremists around the world would draw the same dangerous lesson they did from our retreats in Somalia and Vietnam."

UPDATE 4:45 p.m.: The Hill's Mike Soraghan reports that Senate Majority Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected Bush's demand that Congress pass the war funding bill he wants.

"We

VoteVets.org continued to criticize Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) this afternoon over a video of McHenry in the Green Zone in Baghdad that McHenry pulled from his website Monday.

The Charlotte Observer reported today that the Pentagon advised McHenry to take the video down, as it posed a security risk.

The Pentagon has told North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry (R) not to re-post video on his website that the lawmaker shot in Iraq during a March trip, the Charlotte Observer reported.

McHenry is accused by the veterans group Vote Vets of breaching operational security by videotaping and posting video from an enemy rocket attack. On the video McHenry says a rocket "hit just over my head" and mentions two other locations struck by rockets. Following the complaint, McHenry's office took down the video.

From the Charlotte Observer:

On Friday, his Web site featured a video shot in the fortified section of Baghdad known as the Green Zone. McHenry could be seen gesturing to a building behind him and saying that one of 11 rockets "hit just over my head." Then he named two other places struck by the rockets.

On Monday, a veterans group called VoteVets.org accused McHenry of giving away intelligence information that could have aided terrorist organizations in targeting the Green Zone.

"The bottom line is that whoever launched that strike could take the information McHenry provided and use it to kill Americans in the Green Zone," wrote Brandon Friedman, vice chairman of VoteVets.org, a veterans advocacy group that has called for troop withdrawal and promoted veterans for political office.

A Pentagon spokesman told the Observer visitors are "routinely briefed" on operational rules. "We do not as a matter of policy discuss attacks in a way that would provide the enemy any better understanding of the effectiveness of their attacks," the spokesman told the paper.