One of the police chiefs

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Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went unarmed into his first meeting with the new commander in chief -- no aides, no PowerPoint presentation, no briefing books. Summoned nine days ago to President-elect Barack Obama's Chicago transition office, Mullen showed up with just a pad, a pen and a desire to take the measure of his incoming boss.

There was little talk of exiting Iraq or beefing up the U.S. force in Afghanistan; the one-on-one, 45-minute conversation ranged from the personal to the philosophical. Mullen came away with what he wanted: a view of the next president as a non-ideological pragmatist who was willing to both listen and lead. After the meeting, the chairman "felt very good, very positive," according to Mullen spokesman Capt. John Kirby.

As Obama prepares to announce his national security team tomorrow, he faces a military that has long mistrusted Democrats and is particularly wary of a young, intellectual leader with no experience in uniform, who once called Iraq a "dumb" war. Military leaders have all heard his pledge to withdraw most combat forces from Iraq within 16 months -- sooner than commanders on the ground have recommended -- and his implied criticism of the Afghanistan war effort during the Bush administration.

But so far, Obama appears to be going out of his way to reassure them that he will do nothing rash and will seek their advice, even while making clear that he may not always take it. He has demonstrated an ability to speak the lingo, talk about "mission plans" and "tasking," and to differentiate between strategy and tactics, a distinction Republican nominee John McCain accused him of misunderstanding during the campaign.

Obama has been careful to separate his criticism of Bush policy from his praise of the military's valor and performance, while Michelle Obama's public expressions of concern for military families have gone over well. But most important, according to several senior officers and civilian Pentagon officials who would speak about their incoming leader only on the condition of anonymity, is the expectation of renewed respect for the chain of command and greater realism about U.S. military goals and capabilities, which many found lacking during the Bush years.

"Open and serious debate versus ideological certitude will be a great relief to the military leaders," said retired Maj. Gen. William L. Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations. Senior officers are aware that few in their ranks voiced misgivings over the Iraq war, but they counter that they were not encouraged to do so by the Bush White House or the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"The joke was that when you leave a meeting, everybody is supposed to drink the Kool-Aid," Nash said. "In the Bush administration, you had to drink the Kool-Aid before you got to go to the meeting."

Obama's expected retention of Robert M. Gates as defense secretary and expected appointment of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser have been greeted with relief at the Pentagon.

Clinton is respected at the Pentagon and is considered a defense moderate, at times bordering on hawkish. Through her membership on the Senate Armed Services Committee -- sought early in her congressional career to add gravitas to her presidential aspirations -- she has developed close ties with senior military figures.

Some in the military are suspicious of "flagpole" officers such as Jones, whose assignments included Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, Marine commandant and other headquarters service, and who grew up in France and is a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. But Jones also saw combat in Vietnam and served in Bosnia.

"His reputation is pretty good," one Pentagon official said. "He's savvy about Washington, worked the Hill," and at a lean 6-foot-4, the former Georgetown basketball player "looks great in a suit."

Although Jones occasionally and privately briefed candidate Obama on foreign policy matters -- on Afghanistan, in particular, as did current deputy NATO commander Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry -- he is not considered an intimate of the president-elect.

But as Obama's closest national security adviser, or at least the one who will spend the most time with him, Jones is expected to follow the pattern of two military predecessors in the job, Brent Scowcroft and Colin L. Powell, who injected order and discipline to a National Security Council full of strong personalities with independent power bases.

Although exit polls did not break out active-duty voters, it is virtually certain that McCain won the military vote.

In an October survey by the Military Times, nearly 70 percent of more than 4,000 officers and enlisted respondents said they favored McCain, while about 23 percent preferred Obama. Only African American service members gave Obama a majority.

In exit polls, those who said they had "ever served in the U.S. military" made up 15 percent of voters and broke 54 percent for McCain to 44 percent for Obama. "As a culture, we are more conservative and Republican," a senior officer said.

Obama has said he will meet with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs as well as the service chiefs during his first week in office. At the top of his agenda for that meeting will be what he has called the military's "new mission" of planning the 16-month withdrawal timeline for Iraq. Senior officers have publicly grumbled about the risk involved.

"Moving forward in a measured way, tied to conditions as they continue to evolve, over time, is important," Mullen said at a media briefing four days before his Nov. 21 meeting with Obama. "I'm certainly aware of what has been said" prior to the election, he said.

The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, clashed with the chiefs during his first sit-down with them when they opposed his campaign pledge to end the ban on gays in the military. The chiefs, some of whom held the commander in chief in thinly veiled contempt as a supposed Vietnam draft dodger, won the battle, and Clinton spent much of his two terms seen as an adversary.

But Mullen came away from the Chicago talk reassured that Obama will engage in a discussion with them, balancing risks and "asking tough questions . . . but not in a combative, finger-pointing way," one official said.

The president-elect's invitation to Mullen, whom Obama previously had met only in passing on Capitol Hill and whose first two-year term as chairman does not expire until the end of September, was seen as an attempt to establish a relationship and avoid early conflict. While some Pentagon officials believe an Iraq withdrawal order could become Obama's equivalent of the Clinton controversy over gays, several senior Defense Department sources said that Gates, Mullen and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the military's Central Command, are untroubled by the 16-month plan and feel it can be accomplished with a month or two of wiggle room.

These sources noted that Obama himself has said he would not be "careless" about withdrawal and would retain a "residual" force of unspecified size to fight terrorists and protect U.S. diplomats and civilians. The officer most concerned about untimely withdrawal, sources said, is the Iraq commander, Gen. Ray Odierno.

Even as the Iraq war continues, defense officials are far more worried about Afghanistan, where they see policy drift and an unfocused mission. With strategy reviews now being completed at the White House and by the chairman's office, an internal Pentagon debate is well underway over whether goals should be lowered.

Although Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has requested four more U.S. combat brigades, some Pentagon strategists believe a smaller presence of Special Forces and trainers for Afghan forces -- and more attention to Pakistan -- is advisable.

Bush's ideological objective of a modern Afghan democracy, several officials said, is unattainable with current U.S. resources, and there is optimism that Obama will have a more realistic view.

A number of senior officers also look with favor on Obama's call for talks with Iran over Iraq and Afghanistan, separating those issues from U.S. demands over Tehran's nuclear program.

One of the biggest long-term military issues on Obama's plate will be the defense budget, currently topping 4.3 percent of gross domestic product once war expenditures are included.

Obama has said he will increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, finding savings in the Iraq drawdown and in new scrutiny of spending, including on contractors, weapons programs and missile defense.

"They know the money is coming down," a Pentagon official said of the uniformed services, and many welcome increased discipline.

But it's neither the military's nature nor its role to volunteer the cuts, the official said. "It's for Congress and the administration to say 'Stop it.' "

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta and research Editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Because if you had you'd definitely be able to see the VAST difference between a police state and the American state.

Also, your one-world government theory about the Bush's doesn't sync with your view that Bush is alienating the rest of the world, but I guess you think because Bush wants democracy for the world he somehow is planning to take over the world.

The intent of the post was not to compare an embryo to a turkey, but rather simply a joke saying that she would take up one cause but not the other. If you read the posts below you might understand the joke.

However, since you mentioned it, I'm sure I could make that comparrison. Our ideas of when life begins are obviously not the same.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Insurgents have infiltrated Iraq's security forces, a senior Iraqi official said, as the fallout continued over British forces' use of armed vehicles to smash their way into a police station to rescue two undercover soldiers.

The British government said it would not pull troops out of Iraq after the fury over the controversial rescue of two special forces soldiers arrested in Basra and allegedly handed over to local militia.

Iraq's National Security Adviser, Dr Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said he did not know how far security forces had been undermined by insurgents.

He told the BBC: Our Iraqi security forces in general, police in particular, in many parts of Iraq, I have to admit, have been penetrated by some of the insurgents, some of the terrorists as well.

I can't deny this. We are putting in place a very scrupulous, very meticulous vetting procedure in the process of recruiting a new batch of police and Iraqi army, which will, if you like, clean our security forces as well as stop any penetration in future from the insurgents and terrorists.

Al-Rubaie added: I can't give you a percentage of the extent of the penetration, but I have to admit that the Iraqi security forces are penetrated, to what extent I don't know.

Meanwhile U.S. officials revealed that nine Americans, including five soldiers, were killed by bombs in Iraq during Monday and Tuesday.

Four troops, assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, were killed Monday in Ramadi, the U.S. military said. The deaths brought to 1,904 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. (Full story)

In Basra Wednesday the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior said it was looking into what led to UK armored fighting vehicles bulldozing the wall of a Basra police station jail in a bid to free the special forces soldiers.

Inside, troops discovered that the two men had been handed over to the militia by Iraqi police and freed them.

The men's capture Monday came just a day after British forces in Basra arrested two leading members of the outlawed Mahdi Army which is loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and is widely believed to have heavily infiltrated the local Iraqi police, the UK's Press Association reported.

The two arrested men from the Mahdi Army were the group's Basra area commander, Sheikh Ahmad Majid al-Fartusi, and his aide Sajjat al-Basri, PA said.

According to PA, the two British men detained by police were members of the Special Air Service and appeared to have been quickly handed over to militiamen by police.

The mission to rescue them, which was condemned by many Iraqis, was launched amid fears they could face summary execution, PA said.

One Iraqi member of parliament said that following the arrest of the SAS men, the Mahdi Army had tried to take them hostage to exchange them for its two leaders.

Four tanks invaded the area. A tank cannon struck a room where a policeman was praying, policeman Abbas Hassan told Reuters.

Standing next to mangled cars outside the police station and jail that he said were crushed by British military vehicles, he added: This is terrorism. All we had was rifles.

A spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the British operation against the jail had been a very unfortunate development but his office later released a statement saying there was no crisis in relations with the British.

Iraqi policemen at the jail Tuesday surveyed a mass of rubble, broken plywood and air conditioning units where their perimeter wall and a number of prefabricated structures once stood.

A number of flattened cars appeared to have been run over by British Warrior armored fighting vehicles.

The two special forces soldiers, who were travelling undercover, were arrested after allegedly becoming involved in a firefight with Iraqi police at a checkpoint. Iraqi officials claimed they had shot dead a local policeman and wounded at least one other.

The British soldiers are believed to have feared the men were really insurgents dressed in police uniforms, PA said.

British Defence Secretary John Reid defended the subsequent action by British troops against the Jamiat police station jail, saying it was absolutely right.

We do not have designs to stay (in Iraq) as an occupying imperial power. Nor are we going to cut and run because of terrorists, Reid was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The paper said that Reid and British defense chiefs would meet Iraqi PM al-Jaafari Wednesday in London to discuss security issues.

In dramatic scenes outside the jail Monday, British troops were confronted by an angry mob, hundreds strong, throwing stones and petrol bombs and several soldiers suffered minor injuries.

After they discovered the two SAS men were not in the jail, Iraqi police were confronted with a 30mm cannon and revealed they had been given to the militia.

Brigadier John Lorimer, commanding officer of 12 Mechanised Brigade in Basra, said: We will be following up with the authorities in Basra why the soldiers were not immediately handed over to the multinational forces as Iraqi law shows that they should have been.

It is of deep concern that British soldiers held by the police should then end up being held by militia, he added.

NBC: Charges against Sheehan to be dropped
Antiwar mom removed from State of the Union for wearing protest shirt

WASHINGTON - Charges against antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan, who was arrested after an incident involving a T-shirt she wore to the State of the Union address, will be dropped, officials told NBC News Wednesday.

U.S. Capitol Police took Sheehan away in handcuffs and charged her with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor, when she showed up to President Bush�s address Tuesday night wearing a shirt that read, �2245 Dead. How many more?� � a reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq.

But Capitol Police will ask the U.S. attorney's office to drop the charges, NBC News� Mike Viqueira reported Wednesday.

�We screwed up,� a top Capitol Police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He said Sheehan didn't violate any rules or laws.

Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq, was not the only one ejected from the House gallery. The wife of a powerful Republican congressman was also asked to leave, but she was not arrested.

Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida � chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee � was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, �Support the Troops � Defending Our Freedom.�

The Capitol Police official said officers never should have approached Young.

Criticism from Rep. Young
Holding up the shirt his wife wore, Rep. Young said on the House floor Wednesday morning: �Because she had on a shirt that someone didn�t like that said support our troops, she was kicked out of this gallery.�

�Shame, shame,� he scolded.

Beverly Young was sitting about six rows from first lady Laura Bush and was asked to leave. She argued with police in the hallway outside the House chamber.

�They said I was protesting,� she told the St. Petersburg Times. �I said, �Read my shirt, it is not a protest.� They said, �We consider that a protest.� I said, �Then you are an idiot.��

They told her she was being treated the same as Sheehan, who was ejected before the speech. Sheehan wrote in her blog Wednesday that she intended to file a First Amendment lawsuit.

She did not issue an immediate response to the charges being dropped.

�I don�t want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government,� Sheehan wrote in her blog.

Sheehan was invited as a guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif. She later was released on her own recognizance.

Told she could not wear shirt?
Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said police warned Sheehan that such displays were not allowed in the House chamber, but Sheehan did not respond, she said.

Sheehan, however, told a different story in her blog.

�I was never told that I couldn�t wear that shirt into the Congress,� Sheehan wrote. �I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things, ... I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later.�

She said she felt uncomfortable about attending the speech.

�I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn�t disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket,� Sheehan wrote. �I didn�t want to be disruptive out of respect for her.�

She said she had one arm out of her coat when an officer yelled, �Protester.�

�He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs,� she wrote in her blog. She was then cuffed and driven to police headquarters a few blocks away.

Sheehan was arrested in September with about 300 other anti-war activists in front of the White House after a weekend of protests against the war in Iraq. In August, she spent 26 days camped near Bush�s ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was spending a working vacation.