WASHINGTON - Republican critics of the Democratic-backed landmark stimulus package are pointing out that its 800-billion-dollar-plus price tag would — “in one fell swoop,” as Republican Representative Todd Akin put it — consume more resources than have been laid out for two wars, so far.

The Pentagon says the United States has committed $524.6 billion to the nearly six-year-old conflict in Iraq and $120.9 billion to the fighting in Afghanistan since 2001.

“I almost have to pinch myself, gentlemen, to think that just standing here a couple of hours ago, we just voted to spend $800 billion, more than the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the Republican Akin declared Wednesday after the House of Representatives passed the stimulus without a single Republican vote in favor.

“Can our economy handle that?” he asked.

For years, Democratic opponents of the war in Iraq have questioned its cost and the fact that the 2003 invasion under the Republican Bush administration and the occupation that followed were done on borrowed money, adding to U.S. debt that ultimately must be paid by taxpayers.

Now Republicans, who largely supported the Iraq war, are trying to turn the tables on their Democratic critics and ask whether it is wise to borrow as much cash again all at once, taking on even more interest costs. “I know the Bush administration was savaged for the money that’s spent on the war in Iraq,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, said this week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, dismissed Republican criticism that the package was too big, saying he had also consulted with Republicans who said “the package was too small” to get the economy moving again.

But Sessions said: “We’re talking about the largest spending bill in the history of the republic.” He cited Congressional Budget Office estimates that the  stimulus could cost $347 billion in interest on the national debt over the next decade, if none of its costs are offset.

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing(House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer speaks next to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the economic stimulus package on Capitol Hill in Washington on January 28.

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The video of an agile U.S. President George W. Bush ducking two shoes thrown at him during a news conference in Baghdad has been fodder for jokes on late-night television and a big hit on the Internet.

Even Bush laughed off the Dec. 14 incident. But his wife was not amused by an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at Bush, narrowly missing the president.

“It was an assault,” Laura Bush said in a Fox news interview broadcast on Sunday. “And I think it should be treated that way.”

Iraqi TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi was tackled to the floor and arrested, and his lawyer said he was severely beaten in detention. He is to stand trial on Dec. 31 on charges of “assaulting a foreign head of state visiting Iraq,” a spokesman for Iraq’s High Judicial Council said.

But Zaidi has become a hero to Sunnis and Shi’ites alike, and clerics on both sides are demanding that he be freed.

Asked about demands for the reporter’s release, Laura Bush said that whatever happens with Zaidi is up to the Iraqis.

“But I know that if Saddam Hussein had been there, the man wouldn’t have been released. And he probably … you know, would have been executed,” she said. “As bad as the incident is, in my view, it is a sign that Iraqis feel a lot freer to express themselves.”

Many Iraqis blame Bush personally for the tens of thousands who have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush arrive in San Antonio, Texas, Oct. 6, 2008.

If you thought that shoe-throwing episode in Baghdad was odd, you’re not alone — President George W. Bush thought so too.
 
“It has got to be one of the most weird moments of my presidency,” he told CNN in an interview Tuesday. “Here I am getting ready to answer questions from a free press in a democratic Iraq and a guy stands up and throws a shoe.”
 
What was going through his mind? Not much it seems.
 
“I didn’t have much time to reflect on anything. I was ducking and dodging,” Bush said.
 
Throwing shoes at someone is considered a supreme insult in Iraq, a shoe being considered dirty. People whacked Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad with shoes after it was toppled during the U.S. invasion.
 
Bush says he doesn’t harbor any anger toward the Iraqi TV journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi for attacking him. Al-Zaidi has been cheered by some in the Arab world for his action, but he faces potential criminal charges in Baghdad.
 
“I’m not even sure what his status is,” Bush said. “They shouldn’t overreact.”
 
Bush told CNN the most important decision he made during his presidency was “sending troops into harm’s way,” and not once but twice — in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
“The reason it’s the most important is because it’s the most consequential,” he said
 
“It is a decision that no president should ever take lightly and every president should take a lot of time thinking about it because lives will be lost,” Bush added.
 
Asked if he ever revisited the decision, Bush said he sometimes thought about it but usually “with a concern about whether or not we would succeed.”
 
“In Iraq, I was deeply concerned about whether or not we would succeed,” he said, adding that was especially true in 2006. “A lot of people in Washington were saying, let’s get out now. And I obviously chose not to do that.  But, that was a very difficult period.”
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Reuters TV (Bush ducks a shoe during a news conference in Baghdad Dec. 14)

President George W. Bush, nearing the end of his final term in office, says he most wants to be remembered as someone who came to Washington and didn’t lose his values.
 
Someone who didn’t sell his soul to the political process.
 
Somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace.
 
So he told his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, in an interview for StoryCorps, the national oral history initiative. An excerpt of the interview aired on National Public Radio on Thanksgiving Day and the White House released excerpts on Friday. The entire interview will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

“I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process,” Bush said in the interview. “I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.  And I darn sure wasn’t going to sacrifice those values.”
 
“I’d like to be a president (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace; that focused on individuals rather than process; that rallied people to serve their neighbor,” the president added.
 
He mentions his HIV/AIDS and malaria initiatives in Africa, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit as two programs he is proud of.
 
Asked about his “No Child Left Behind” education law, Bush called it one of the “significant achievements of my administration.”
 
“We said loud and clear to educators, parents, and children that we expect the best for every child, that we believe every child can learn, and that in return for federal money we expect there to be an accountability system in place to determine whether every child is learning to read, write and add and subtract,” Bush said.

Bush hands over power to President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2009.
 
As he heads into the final weeks of his presidency, Bush’s job approval ratings remain low. Only about 26 percent approve of his performance, while some 70 percent disapprove.
 
Bush’s decision to take the United States to war in Iraq is widely unpopular. A Quinnipiac University poll in early November found that 58 percent disagreed with decision.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Ho New (Bush talks by phone to troops in remote locations on Thanksgiving); Reuters/Jason Reed (Bush pardons national Thanksgiving turkey, Pumpkin)

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush, who has stayed out of the public eye in the final days before the election to choose his successor, knows his popularity has suffered, but the White House insists he will have no problem looking in the mirror when he returns to Texas.

Bush spent the weekend at Camp David and has no public events on Monday or Tuesday. He last spoke with his preferred successor Republican John McCain on Sept. 25, the day of a White House meeting on the financial bailout.

McCain has actively campaigned to distance himself from the unpopular 43rd U.S. president, rarely appearing with Bush since capturing the Republican presidential nomination in March.

“Everybody would like to be popular. We can all remember that back in high school, everyone really wanted to be popular, and some of us just weren’t,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters on the eve of the election.

“But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have principles and values that you stayed true to. And that’s what this president has done, and that’s what he’s taught a lot of us, including me,” she said.

The Iraq war has been one of the key reasons for Bush’s unpopularity at home and overseas. However, Bush believes he made the right decision to order a U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Perino said.

“And when he goes home to Texas, President Bush will be able to look in the mirror and know that he was true to his values and true to his principles, and that’s what keeps him going,” she said.

Bush and his wife, Laura, plan to live in Dallas and at the Crawford, Texas, ranch after leaving the White House. Bush plans to create the “Freedom Institute” on the campus of Southern Methodist University which will also host his presidential library.

Bush will watch the election results from the White House, where a small private dinner is planned in the residence with senior aides.

“President Bush remains hopeful that John McCain will pull it out tomorrow night and will win the election,” Perino said. McCain has been trailing Democratic rival Barack Obama in most national opinion polls.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Bush leaves the Oval Office headed for his Marine One flight to Camp David)

BETHLEHEM, Pennsylvania - Republican John McCain’s military history is famous, but the service of his sons is less well known. And until recently, that’s exactly how the presidential candidate and his wife, Cindy, wanted it.
 
But on Wednesday, Mrs. McCain made a rare reference to her sons when criticizing the Illinois senator for his 2007 vote against a war funding bill. McCain has two sons in the military, and one has served in Iraq.  “The day that Sen. Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body,” McCain told a crowded rally in Pennsylvania, an electoral battleground state.
 
“I would suggest that Sen. Obama change shoes with me for just one day and see what it means … to have a loved one serving in the armed forces and more importantly, serving in harm’s way,” she said. “I suggest he take a day and go watch our fine young men…and women deploy, get on those buses and leave with a smile.”
 
McCain also invoked vice presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s son, who recently deployed to Iraq.
 ”We have a lot in common, the McCain family and the Palin family,” she said. “We represent between us the Army, the Navy and the United States Marine Corps.”
 
Obama voted against the funding bill in 2007 but supported a version that included a timetable for withdrawal for U.S. troops from Iraq.
 
The son of Obama’s vice presidential running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, has just been sent to Iraq with the Army National Guard, and will be there for about a year. Obama has two young daughters. 

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

DENVER - John Kerry, the failed 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, took the stage at this year’s party convention on Wednesday to praise Illinois Sen. Barack Obama – whose career he helped launch — and lambaste John McCain.

Kerry, who said he had been friends with McCain for nearly 22 years, used tough words to criticize the Arizona senator’s evolution from a maverick legislator to a presidential candidate.

“Before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself,” Kerry said, listing what he described as McCain’s shifts on tax cuts, immigration, and climate change.

“Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding?” Kerry said. “Talk about being for it before you’re against it!”

The last line was a send-up of a gaffe Kerry himself made about being in favor of funding for the Iraq war before he was against it.

Many felt the line, which Republicans used to mock him, helped cost the Massachusetts senator the election four years ago.

Kerry gave a big boost to Obama’s career by giving the then-state senator a prime-time speaking role at the ‘04 convention.

LYNCHBURG, Virginia - Democrat Barack Obama scolded Russia again on Wednesday for invading another country’s sovereign territory while adding a new twist: the United States, he said, should set a better example on that front, too.

The Illinois senator’s opposition to the Iraq war, which his comment clearly referenced, is well known. But this was the first time the Democratic presidential candidate has made a comparison between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Russia’s recent military activity in Georgia.

“We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies,” Obama told a crowd of supporters in Virginia. “They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.”

Foreign policy has become a dividing line in the race for the White House.

Obama favors a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq over 16 months, while John McCain, his Republican rival for president, opposes a timeline and says U.S. forces must stay to finish and win the war.

McCain, an Arizona senator, sought to highlight his foreign policy credentials during the Russia-Georgia crisis last week, giving a series of harsh statements directed at Moscow soon after the conflict began.

Obama, who was on vacation in Hawaii, followed suit with statements that became sharper over time.

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Republican presidential hopeful John McCain apparently feels just a little jilted by the media lately given all the attention being paid to the trip by Democratic White House rival Barack Obama to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe.

All three broadcast networks sent their anchors overseas to interview Obama during his travels. McCain has been maintaining his domestic campaign schedule, raising money and attending rallies in Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
 
McCain this week also tussled with the New York Times over an opinion piece he penned to respond to an op-ed Obama wrote about the Iraq war that ran in the newspaper. The Times sought revisions to his proposed piece, a request that McCain’s campaign rejected.

“The media is in love with Barack Obama,” the McCain campaign said in an e-mail to his supporters. “If it wasn’t so serious, it would be funny.”
 
To generate a little of his own buzz, the Arizona senator’s campaign pieced together clips of television news talking heads (lots of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews) professing how enamored they were of Obama and discussing the media’s purported love affair with the Democratic candidate.
 
They put the video to the music of two different love songs — Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” and “My Eyes Adored You.” They asked supporters to vote for their favorite, and the campaign said the winning one would be aired.
 
Is the media infatuated with Obama or covering a legitimate news story?

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Photo credit: Top: Reuters/Brian Snyder (McCain in Maine July 21); Bottom: Reuters/Ali Jarekji (Obama in Amman, Jordan, July 22)

OMAHA, Nebraska - U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain considers Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel a friend.

“A very dear, close friend of mine, and I’ve cherished his friendship for many, many years” is how McCain put it on Wednesday.

So what does he think about Hagel, an outspoken Iraq war opponent, going with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on a visit to Iraq and Afghanistan?

“I’m certainly pleased that Sen. Obama is being accompanied by Chuck Hagel, who has military experience, who has knowledge of these issues, even if we have some disagreements,” McCain told reporters.

Hagel, sometimes mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for Obama even though he is from the opposing party, has criticized McCain for supporting the Bush administration’s current Iraq war strategy.

What does McCain think about Hagel on Iraq?

“Sen. Hagel is wrong,” McCain said, while adding that at least Hagel had reached an informed conclusion based on visits to Iraq.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama mugs for the camera with Hagel and Sen. Richard Lugar at Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in January 2007)