From this morning's White House press conference:
Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there ...
Bush: I've been planning that myself.
Turkey's parliament has given permission for the government to launch military operations into Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels.The vote was taken in defiance of pressure from the US and Iraq, which have called on Turkey for restraint.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the motion does not mean a military operation is imminent.
But he said Turkey needed to be able to respond to a recent rise in bomb attacks blamed on PKK rebels from Iraq.
Turkish MPs backed him overwhelmingly, by 507 votes to 19.
As the vote was being counted, US President George W Bush strongly urged Turkey, a key ally, not to carry out the threatened action.
The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.
"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.
Now, Bush is trying to reach out to the party's base and re-establish his credentials as a fiscal conservative, beginning with his veto of a bill that would boost federal spending for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $35 billion over five years. Bush called the legislation part of an effort to "federalize health care."
Bush also has threatened to veto nine of the 12 appropriations bills that make up the federal budget.
"One of the big lessons from the 2006 election loss was that Republicans have let spending get out of control," said GOP consultant Scott Reed. "I think the White House is focused on a Bush legacy that includes getting spending back under control."
Still, said Reed, "In some states, especially in the Senate races, running against the president on specific issues like this will help the Republican candidate."
Economic and libertarian-minded Republican conservatives suggest Bush's overtures are too little too late to help a despondent Republican party bracing for the possibility that the White House will end up in Democratic hands.
Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion and other veto threats ring hollow because of Bush's past support for expensive programs like the Medicare prescription drug benefit and his failure to wield his veto pen, said Bruce Bartlett, an economist who was an adviser to Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official during the elder George Bush's presidency.
"Because he was so lax earlier in his term, he has no choice but to overcompensate," said Bartlett. "At the White House, they understand belatedly that they have destroyed the Republican party's reputation for fiscal responsibility. And they are trying to play catch-up."
