Bush likes dressing-up in military garb (remember the laughable flight suit he wore on 1st May-- when he pretended to land the jet on the USS Abraham Lincoln?) ...
Bush likes dressing-up as a regular guy, when visiting workers in cities and towns, where he's wiped out their jobs ...
Bush likes dressing-up as a cowboy, when he's eating bar-b-que and thinking-up macho-man idiocies ...
We don't know what other fetishes Bush dons, when alone with Condi Rice, and they're watching football???
(The old Adolf Hitler costume has already been submitted by ME!!! And, of course, I have already disqualified myself as a contestant!!!)
I'LL AWARD 100 TBUCKS FOR THE BEST IDEA SUBMITTED BEFORE THE WITCHING HOUR, 12:00 A.M. PST, MIDNIGHT TONIGHT-- AND ANNOUNCE THE WINNER & RUNNERS-UP TOMORROW!!!
GOOD LUCK!!!
The Mess on Bush's Hands ... U.S. Corporate Theft of Iraq
One could be forgiven for surmising that the tragic, bloody-war-turned-guerril la quagmire in Iraq, was devised to enrich the Bush Regime's corporate cronies (and campaign contributors) ... payback to war-profiteers and "corporate-take-all" robber-barons, for buying the mechanisms of election rigging, resulting in the banana republican coup d'etat in 2000. The Bushies had to steal the highest offices in the land, because the majority of Americans didn't want these corrupt and incompetent "crazies", as the Pentagon referred to "Cheney, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz". Bush is just an ignorant, insensitive buffoon.
The corporate rape of America is an on-going scandal, as the corrupt Bush & Cheney Inc. Regime awarded these thugs & goons, massive boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts-- to make the rich, richer-- and the rest of us, much poorer. Americans are saddled with the horrifying consequences (financially & socially) of their obscene "corporate" rape. ["Biggest reconstruction contractors are GOP donors" on http://www.govexec.com/dailyf... , " , "Bush Got $500,000 From Companies That Got Contracts, Study Finds" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... ]
Bush & Cheney Inc.'s enrichment of their corrupt corporate cronies, who have immorally and traitorously profiteered from the Bloody Guerrilla Quagmire in Iraq, has resulted in:
1) Over 355 US Soldiers & 15,000 Iraqis slaughtered, and countless thousands injured, wounded & maimed for life-- all used as cannon-fodder by the neo-fascist Bushies, to bolster their popularity; [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... , http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1073070,00.html ]
2) Over $166 Billion swindled from Americans, comprising: $82.3 Billion American taxpayer dollars squandered to-date, at $1 Billion per week funnelled from our nation's treasury into the Iraqi "black hole" (i.e. to Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, etc.)-- with an additional obscene $87 Billion authorised by a corrupt "rubber-stamp" Congress, genuflecting before Emperor Caligula Bush-- instead of demanding that the funds be a combination of loans & over-turning (recuperating) immoral and illegal tax cuts, tax loopholes & boondoggles for the wealthy oligarchy who are Bush's pimps; [ http://www.costofwar.com/ , http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPO... ]
3) Bush & Cheney show contempt for the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, American people & the Military ... As our boys & girls who are slaughtered in Bush's war, are brought home, the insane Bushies have banned all media coverage ... Bush is the only war-time president to have refused to attend a single funeral of a US soldier (probably because Mr. AWOL Bush-- would have to hang his imbecilic head in shame, having run-away, like a coward & spent his tour-of-duty in a drunken stupor)-- Party-boy Bush doesn't want to be seen to associate himself with the deaths in Iraq, and is a despicable excuse for a "human being (sic)" ... Bush is a bum. [ http://www.alternet.org/story... ]
Please write to your Congressmen to express your outrage at the Bush Regime's lies, deceptions, falsehoods and criminal acts, and demand that they repeal the corrupt boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts for the richest, [as they are burdening the lower-income, average and fixed-income retireers with a $560 Billion deficit in 2003 alone, and $1.9 Trillion Deficit for Bush's disastrous term], and no end in sight to the highest "borrow & spend" pork (for the corporate pigs) in our nation's history. Let Congress know that "rubber-stampers" will be voted out, when they're up for re-election. [ Congress: http://www.congress.org ]
In "The Mess on Bush's Hands" by Matthew Rothschild, on http://www.progressive.org/we... :, the rape of Iraq's industries and businesses is reported:
"George Bush has created an enormous mess in Iraq, and he continues to underestimate the difficulties ahead.
Unlike Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who at least acknowledged that the United States is in for "a long, hard slog," Bush keeps putting a happy face on the picture.
Even after Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was almost killed in Baghdad on Sunday, and even after 35 people were killed in Baghdad on Monday, Bush kept spinning a fairy tale: "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," he said.
But how successful is the United States "on the ground"?
Yes, the U.S. occupation has been opening schools and hospitals, restoring electricity, allowing more political and religious freedoms.
But militarily, it's having a nightmare. On Tuesday, there was yet another suicide bombing, this time in Fallujah. Since May 1, when Bush foolishly and now infamously said that major combat operations had ended, "113 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, and about 1,675 have been injured in hostilities," AP reports.
Politically, the legitimacy of the Iraqi governing council is shaky, since U.S. viceroy Paul Bremer appointed it and hoards the power. Democratic candidate General Wesley Clark, to his credit, said on Monday that the United States should immediately hand over the job of reconstruction to the U.N., and tell Paul Bremer, "Thanks for your service."
Economically, Bremer has outlawed strikes and he's pushing the privatization of Iraq so fast that even members of the governing council are aghast, recognizing that the sell-off of Iraqi industry to U.S. companies will hardly be a popular development.
In September, Bremer "issued new rules giving foreign investors carte blanche to open businesses in Iraq in every sector except the oil and gas industries," The Wall Street Journal reports on Oct. 28. "The investment law, which allows for 100 percent foreign ownership and full rights to repatriate profits, is far more liberal than laws in all but a few other Arab countries."
One Iraqi-American businessman told The Wall Street Journal: "This gives ammunition to the extremists who say the war was all about U.S. companies taking over Iraq."
The war wasn't only about letting U.S. companies grab Iraq. But that was part of it.
U.S. soldiers today are putting their bodies on the line for Halliburton and Bechtel and ExxonMobil.
Bush may view that as a success, but the rest of us sure don't have to."
The Bush Regime is truly neo-orwellian in their attempt to label black-as-white, war-as-peace, and scam us with their neo-con-artist's shell game of betting on their neo-con-con that 2 + 2 = 5!
More evidence is being exposed on a daily basis, demonstrating the outright lies, falsehoods & scapegoating, by the corrupt Bush Regime, in the aftermath of Bush's most recent failed and ludicrous attempts to justify the carnage in Iraq is a sign of "success" ... huh? ... (More US combat deaths, since Bush's bombastic "Mission Accomplished" circus act, than during the so-called "war"), [ http://www.tblog.com/template... , http://nytimes.com/2003/10/30... ]-- as well as his cowardly and laughable "pass-the-buck" deception that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was not his neo-con propaganda team's ghoulish idea, [ http://www.tblog.com/template... , http://www.commondreams.org/h... ].
The Bushies are desperate since, in their arrogance, corruption and incompetence, they have bungled their illegal and immoral incursion-turned-bloody-g uerrilla-quagmire, with 354 US Soldiers and nearly 15,000 Iraqis massacred to-date in this so-called "liberation". [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... , http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1073070,00.html ]-- with countless thousands wounded, injured and maimed for life ... and, no end in sight.
A corrupt and rubber-stamp Republican Congress just awarded Bushy-boy his $87 Billion swindle (in addition to the $82 Billion squandered to-date), with no strings attached ... In other words, the obscene war-profiteers, "corporate-take-all" robber-barons, richest-of-the-rich, and Bush campaign contributors, get to keep their immoral (and possibly illegal) "welfare-for-the-rich" ill-gotten gains, stolen from America, resulting in the outrageous national debt of over $6.85 Trillion (of which $1.9 Trillion, the Mad King Bush, embezzelled on behalf of the wealthy oligarchy).
The other nations which the Bushies have unsuccessfully tried to pressure have more or less refused to send their own citizens to be slaughtered as cannon fodder, to save Bush's "poxxy-butt" ... and the $13 Billion raised is principally loans (not grants & gifts, that the callous Bushies swindled from US)-- and only awarded if managed by the U.N. & World Bank. Other nations have observed our U.S. treasury plundered and looted to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, and other Bush & Cheney corporate cronies-- and aren't about to allow the Bush Regime to do the same to their treasuries.
Please contact Congress to express your outrage at their insane and corrupt decision to award obscene funds ($87 Billion) that the majority of American citizens were opposed to squandering, to save Bush's "skin", and demand that the immoral tax cuts for the rich be repealed now ... otherwise, the "rubber-stampers" should be ousted in 2004. [ Congress : http://www.congress.org ]
"We the People" are being asked to bear the unconcionable heart-breaking loss of our loved ones, and the back-breaking burden of historical record-level deficits, while Bush & Cheney Inc. and their despicable regime of thugs & "corporate-take-all" rapists, "take-the-money-and-run" ... Meanwhile, our infrastructure is crumbling and badly needed services for the vulnerable, lower-income, middle-class & fixed-income retirees are ignored or slashed, in order that the Bushies' top-dogs and fat-cats can live like neo-Emperors! The rest of us are being turned into their neo-slaves! It is outrageous!
"Analysts are available to scrutinize some of President Bush's claims, including those from Tuesday's news conference, focusing on Iraq and the recent attacks there:
BUSH: "I would assume that they're [the suicide bombers] either, or, and probably both Ba'athists and foreign terrorists."
FACT: "There are a growing number of interviews with Iraqi resistance fighters that establish that many, perhaps most, of them are not Ba'athists and not foreigners. One interviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle said that he took up arms after the Fallujah massacre, in which U.S. troops fired into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing 15," said Rahul Mahajan, author of the book "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond." [Contact information: rahul@tao.ca, http://www.rahulmahajan.com]
BUSH: "The best way to deal with them [terrorists] is to harden targets, harden assets as best as you can."
FACT: "Historically, there is no technological fix for terrorism. You have to deal with the complex sources of terrorism.... If you harden targets, then there are the vulnerable points, and even hardened targets are vulnerable; if you harden an entire society, what do you get?" said Beau Grosscup, author of "The Newest Explosions of Terrorism" and professor of international relations at California State University in Chico. [Contact information: bgrosscup@csuchico.edu]
BUSH: "It's the same mentality, by the way, that attacked us in -- on September the 11th, 2001. 'We'll just destroy innocent life and watch the great United States and their friends and allies, you know, crater in the face of hardship.' It's the exact same mentality. And Iraq is a part of the war on terror. I said it's a central front, a new front in the war on terror."
FACT: "Bush is attempting to link the September 11 atrocities to the Iraq war in the public mind -- without asserting the link outright. Administration officials, including Bush, have employed this rhetorical tactic, an 'enthymematic argument,' time and time again before and since the war. There is still no evidence whatsoever that the former Iraqi regime, or any Iraqi, had anything to do with the September 11 attacks, but as many as 69 percent of Americans still believe there is a link. [See: http://www.washingtonpost.com...] Bush achieves this rhetorical trick without telling an outright lie," said Chris Toensing, editor of Middle East Report. [Contact information: ctoensing@merip.org, http://www.merip.org]
BUSH: "And so this nation is very reluctant to use military force.... Military action is the very last resort for us."
FACT: "The Library of Congress has catalogued over 200 uses of American military force abroad in the country's short history. Since 9/11, we have fought two full-scale wars, attempted a military coup in Venezuela, extended counterinsurgency operations in Colombia and the Philippines, and created a permanent or semi-permanent military presence in a host of new countries, particularly in Central Asia," said Mahajan.
BUSH: "And a reminder, when you mention Saddam Hussein, I just want to remind you that the Saddam Hussein military action took place after innumerable United Security Council resolutions were passed. Not one, two or three, but a lot."
FACT: "But of course, since 1990, not one of those UN resolutions authorized the use of military force against Saddam Hussein's regime," said Toensing.
BUSH: "You asked about the [Israeli] fence [in the West Bank]. I have said the fence is a problem to the extent that the fence is an opportunity to make it difficult for a Palestinian state to emerge. There is a difference between security and land acquisition, and we have made our views clear on that issue."
FACT: "Apparently not clear enough, since the Israeli cabinet is proceeding with construction of the illegal wall-and-fence complex, which bites deep into the territory that would constitute a future Palestinian state. Israel has also instituted a special permit system for Palestinians living 'behind' the wall -- giving them the 'right' to live in their own homes. [See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/isr...,2763,1071768,00.html]," said Toensing.
BUSH: "I have also spoken to Prime Minister Sharon in the past about settlement activities. And the reason why that we have expressed concern about settlement activities is because we want the conditions for a Palestinian state on the ground to be positive..."
FACT: "Apparently not often enough, because Israel has just undertaken yet more expansion of settlements, in direct violation of the U.S.-sponsored 'road map,'" said Toensing.
BUSH: "First step was to remove Saddam Hussein because he was a threat -- a gathering threat, as I think I put it."
FACT: "Of course, the 'threat' allegedly posed by Saddam Hussein was related to his alleged weapons of mass destruction. U.S. officials now believe that Iraq did not attempt to reconstitute its nuclear program after 1991 -- no 'gathering threat' there. [See: http://www.washingtonpost.com... ] Nor have any chemical or biological weapons been found. The administration is now reduced to arguing that, left to its own devices, the Iraqi regime might have restarted active programs on weapons of mass destruction because it retained the know-how. But before the war, the debate was not about whether Iraq might have such weapons, or might rebuild them, but about whether war was the only way to avert that possibility. The U.S. has been proven conclusively wrong on that score," said Toensing.
BUSH: "I said right after September the 11th, this would be a different kind of war. Sometimes you'd see action and sometimes you wouldn't. But it's a different kind of war than what we're used to. And Iraq is a front on the war on terror. And we will win this particular battle in the war on terror."
FACT: "Again, Bush mentions September 11 and skips to Iraq being 'a front in the war on terror.' The middle link in the syllogism -- the argument that Iraq and September 11 were related -- is missing. So Bush gets the misleading message across without telling an outright lie," said Toensing.
BUSH: "[Saddam Hussein] just destroyed their economy and destroyed their infrastructure, destroyed their education system, destroyed their medical system, all to keep himself in power."
FACT: "While few would dispute that the former regime's policies exacerbated Iraqi economic woes, the bulk of the damage to Iraqi infrastructure was done by U.S. bombs in the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions of the ensuing decade. In U.S. pronouncements, it's as if the sanctions never happened. The U.S. must share the blame for the dilapidation of Iraq's electrical, educational and medical systems, and that's why it should also share the expense of fixing it," said Toensing.
BUSH: "The electricity -- the capacity to deliver electricity to the Iraqi people is back up to pre-war levels."
FACT: "Six months into the occupation, Bush is boasting about having electrical power up to prewar levels -- a prewar situation where Iraq had been under the most stringent economic sanctions in modern history for over 12 years and where the United States systematically undermined Iraqi efforts to rebuild infrastructure [see: [ http://harpers.org/online/coo...]," said Mahajan.
BUSH: "We want to work with Chairman Kean and Vice-Chairman Hamilton [of the 9/11 commission].
FACT: "The administration has repeatedly put roadblocks in the way of the 9/11 commission's investigation, from severe underfunding (it balked at a request from Kean for $11 million, whereas the Challenger commission got $50 million) to denial of necessary documents -- in fact, Kean has had to threaten to sue to get documents," said Mahajan. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/int...,3604,1071711,00.html"
Bush Lies Again About "Mission Accomplished" Since Instead It's "Mission F*cked-Up!"
Bush is again lying (since it works with the neo-con attack-dogs and court-jesters who spout their nonsensical propaganda to poor, brain-dead suckers, who lap up their garbage like sheep) ... Today's "lie exposed" is about the "Mission Accomplished" banner behind Bush, when he made his foolishly bombastic, idiotic photo-op appearance on 1st May 2003 (at an exorbitant cost to the taxpayer) aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as he smirked that the "major combat operations are over" in Iraq ... Ha ha ha ha ha!
Today, Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) Rove's ugly, militaristic photo-op looks like a neo-hiterlian joke, perpetrated as a fraud on the American people, and has a sickening, tinny ring leaving a bad taste in the mouths of those who care about the hundreds of US service men and women, and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians being slaughtered by the neo-con "corporate-take-all" Bush cabal.
In fact, we've reached another ghoulish milestone under the Bush rapists: Bush's Death Toll for US soldiers killed in combat, following Bush's bombastic "Mission Accomplished" circus act, exceeds those massacred by Bush in the so-called "war":
[b]Total Deaths Since 1st May ("Mission Accomplished") in Iraq:[/b]
214 Americans killed in Iraq 114 Americans killed in Combat
[b]Grand Total Deaths in Iraq:[/b]
352 Americans killed in Iraq 224 Americans killed in Combat
2076 Reported Wounded (Bush Regime lies about numbers of US Soldiers Wounded in Action)
When questioned in Bush's rare and panic-stricken press conference yesterday, Bush lied about the "Mission Accomplished!" banner being put-up by the US Soldiers. Many US Soldiers would have preferred to place a banner reading: "[i]We're Not Cannon-Fodder To Enrich Halliburton ... Why Don't You Go Fight, Mr. AWOL Bush[/i]?"
The Bushies are scrambling to lie, deceive & falsify the "Mission Accomplished" buffoonery (just as they've perpetrated lies, deceptions & falsehoods regarding the phony WMDs fraud), since instead the bloody, war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire is a "Mission F*cked-Up" ... In fact, the Bush Regime requested that the U.S. Military hang-up that neo-hitlerian propaganda banner, in order to re-play the despicable scene over-and-over-again, in their corrupt campaign (i.e. banana republican coup d'etat of 2004).
[i]"Media strategists noted afterward that Mr. Sforza and his aides had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the "Mission Accomplished" banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot. The speech was specifically timed for what image makers call "magic hour light," which cast a golden glow on Mr. Bush."[/i] [Source: "Keepers of Bush image lift stagecraft to new heights" on http://edition.cnn.com/2003/U... ]
[b]One can only surmise that Bush is a congenital LIAR as well as a congential IDIOT![/b]
"KIRKUK, Iraq -- When you journey abroad, news from home tends to arrive in disjointed snippets. But rarely has such a tidbit seemed as unrooted in reality as the comment of President Bush that reached here a day after a series of devastating bombings in Baghdad. The attacks, Bush said, resulted from the progress of the occupation and the desperation of the insurgents.
Bush is right that progress is occurring in some places, including this city north of Baghdad. But even here progress is fitful, and dependent on Iraqi confidence that the Americans will not bail out anytime soon. The president's implication that the latest well-coordinated attacks are a last gasp of a desperate opposition seems so much a product of wishful thinking that it can only undermine that confidence, even as it continues to mislead Americans about the difficulty of defeating a ruthless insurgency.
Here's the reality: Insurgents are waging a strategic and malevolently clever campaign that is achieving, in its terms, considerable success. The kind of progress that Bush seeks cannot be accomplished under current conditions of danger and uncertainty. What Iraqis need as they emerge from decades of stifling repression is a richness of contact with the world and a faith that change -- true, structural change -- is possible. Both of those -- the contact and the faith -- are undermined, deliberately and successfully, by terrorism aimed at any vulnerable point of intersection between cooperating Iraqis and well-wishing foreigners.
Saddam Hussein isolated his people in a prison of secret-police-enforced fear. Now fear of terrorism is isolating them in a different way. The charitable, human rights and democracy-building volunteers who should be streaming into the country are for the most part staying away. That further exposes the official occupiers, who in turn are forced to distance themselves from the people they are here to help.
Nothing symbolizes that distance more sadly than the Baghdad presidential palace-turned-occupation headquarters. Inside the vast complex, once-echoing hallways teem with soldiers and civilians dedicated to the noble job of reconstruction. But they work behind so many layers of security -- behind walls and tanks and signs threatening "DEADLY FORCE" and approach roads turned into slaloms of concrete barriers -- that the palace must seem to ordinary Iraqis, if not as frightening as in the past, certainly as remote. When senior occupation officials do venture out, it is often in convoys bristling with armed guards.
The mood in this city of 800,000 is far less tense. A representative council, chosen by elites of each ethnic group, meets on Mondays to debate and make policy. Mayor Abdul Rahman Mustafa, who was elected by the council, lavishly praises the work of U.S. troops and insists they must remain.
And when you meet Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, who commands 27,000 troops in a vast area of Iraq, including this city, it is easy to understand the mayor's confidence. Troops of the 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade are constantly out and about, averaging 10 raids a day against insurgents and almost as many meetings with religious, political, civic and tribal leaders. More Iraqis are coming forward with useful tips about bad guys, the general says, and his troops are drying up the flows of money used to finance attacks on Americans. Meeting with a small group of journalists and academics yesterday, the general echoed Bush's assessment of overall progress and agreed that the Baghdad attacks may be "a sign of a little bit of desperation." Yet here, too, the picture is mixed. The number of attacks against Americans is up this month over last. Translators working for the occupiers receive threats, oil workers are shot at. The resisters' organization "has gotten a little bit better," the general says, though still locally, not as a national network. And Saddam Hussein continues to evade capture, quite likely in this sector, because too many people still fear him -- and question the staying power of the United States.
How long will that stay have to be? "It could be six months, it could be six years," Odierno says. "If the progress continues at a slow pace, it's going to be years. If it picks up -- then maybe months." Odierno says he remains optimistic about Iraq's future, because most Iraqis want this project to succeed. And Bush, yesterday offering a somewhat more realistic assessment of the challenges, vowed that "we're not leaving." But such vows are not sufficient. There is a danger that slow progress will shift into reverse as Iraqis grow impatient and the insurgency becomes more skilled. The occupiers would have to isolate themselves further, while American clamoring for an "exit strategy" would further erode Iraqi confidence. There is a danger, in other words, of defeat -- one that would be devastating both for the vast majority of Iraqis, who do not want Saddam Hussein's henchmen to return, and for America's safety and well-being. "
New Bush Big Lie: "Violence, Massacre, Misery & Mayham Means We're 'Winning' in Iraq" Ha Ha Ha!
Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) Rove, Dick (Anal-Retentive) Cheney, and Condi (Mother Hen) Rice, may be spending too many hours popping the same hallucinogenic pills, as their neo-con attack-dog, Rush Limbaugh. Their [b]neo-con propaganda screed [/b]that all is rosy in Iraq and the Iraqi people are tickled-pink at being raped senseless by Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group-- and the other Bush war-profiteers, robber-barons, and swindlers, thieves and con-artists-- [b]simply isn't working [/b]... Even the American public aren't that stupid!
In the past few days, as "Dummy" Rummy leaks the ugly reality that the bungled Iraq & Afghanistan guerrilla quagmires are going to be a "long, hard slog" ... and his ghoulish side-kick "Wolfy" Wolfowitz got a wee too close for comfort in Baghdad, where a bomb exploded (and "Wolfy" high-tailed it out of Iraq so fast, that Lt. Gen. Sanchez must have suffered whip-flash) ... It is becoming increasingly obvious to all (including neo-con court-jesters) that everybody in Iraq is not singing "Kumbaya" and worshipping at the Altar of the Mad King George.
Thus, the new big lie, vomited by the smirky Bush: [b]Violence, Massacre, Misery & Mayhem means that we're "winning" in Iraq[/b] ... Since we are losing our boys & girs, and innocent Iraqis are slaughtered because the Iraqi people don't want an aggressor country occupying their nation; we must really be doing a good job. Ha ha ha ha ha!
One can only wonder how stupid someone must be to repeat this imbecilic, idiot crap! If all is well-- we're "winning' ... If all is chaos-- we're "winning" ... Irrespective of the events that occur in Iraq (death, mayhem, misery), we're "winning". Ha ha ha ha ha!
Luckily, not all Americans are brain-dead sheep lapping up whatever garbage the corrupt Bushies are throwing our way. Even Emperor Bush can't fool all of the people, all of the time:
"President Bush yesterday put the best face on a new surge of violence in Iraq as his top defense aides huddled to discuss additional ways of thwarting the anti-American rebellion there before it becomes more widespread.
"The president, speaking after attacks on police stations and a Red Cross facility in Iraq killed at least 35 people, said such attacks should be seen as a sign of progress because they show the desperation of those who oppose the U.S.-led occupation.
"The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," Bush said as he sat in the Oval Office with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq. He added: "The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can't stand the thought of a free society."
While Bush argued that the latest violence -- attackers also hit the Baghdad hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying Sunday -- was vindication of the administration's approach, Pentagon officials conferred about how to prevent such attacks from foiling its plan to transfer power to Iraqi police and security forces.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meeting with Bremer, and senior military officials including Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, brainstormed about how to stop the attacks on the very institutions that are needed to advance the U.S. occupation force.
The U.S. strategy is to turn over security missions to Iraqi soldiers and police forces as quickly as possible. "We're all doing a lot of thinking about it," said one official involved in the discussions. But, he said, no clear answers have emerged yet. In a sign of the matter's urgency, Rumsfeld scheduled another meeting for today with Abizaid, Myers and Bremer.
The deliberations are taking on increased urgency because U.S. intelligence and military officials are saying U.S. forces in Iraq have a limited time to break the resistance before the general population joins it.
A senior intelligence official told The Washington Post that the United States has a window of three to six months to put down the resistance. Iraqis generally are not aiding or abetting groups believed to be responsible for the violence. But, the official said, the anti-U.S. groups are trying to form a coordinated campaign across Iraq.
If successful, "they would be more effective and harder to prevent," the official said. "They would send a signal to the populace" that they are an alternative to the occupation.
Another senior intelligence official said the United States has not devoted enough attention to understanding the anti-American groups in Iraq because intelligence resources have been devoted to locating weapons of mass destruction. As a result, the intelligence community and the military have little precise information about the resistance. "I am not happy with the kind of information we are getting," the official said.
The military also believes that insurgencies like the one in Iraq coalesce into larger rebellions if allowed to fester. Adding to the need for rapid action, a senior U.S. military official involved in Iraq strategy said yesterday that the Pentagon expects to significantly pare its presence in Iraq when major troop rotations come in February. "The feeling is, get it done while we have the assets available," the official said.
Bush gave no hint of such backroom deliberations as he argued that the recent attacks only demonstrated foes' desperation. It was an amplification of a theme he struck after terrorists attacked the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, when he said, "Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime."
Democrats reacted with ridicule. Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a presidential candidate, likened Bush's statement to the "light at the end of the tunnel" claims during the Vietnam War. "Does the president really believe that suicide bombers are willing to strap explosives to their bodies because we're restoring electricity and creating jobs for Iraqis?" Kerry asked in a statement.
Bush got a similar reprimand earlier from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has supported the president on Iraq. "This is the first time that I have seen a parallel to Vietnam, in terms of information that the administration is putting out versus the actual situation on the ground," he told Newsweek. White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended Bush's assertion, saying: "Our military leaders have said that some of these attacks have become more sophisticated, but what you're really seeing is that the more progress we make, the more desperate these killers become."
Bush's senior diplomats were somewhat more measured than their boss in their assessments of the Iraq situation. Bremer, at the meeting with Bush, said: "We'll have rough days, such as we've had the last couple of days. But the overall thrust is in the right direction, and the good days outnumber the bad days." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell later told reporters "it's been a bad 24 hours" in Iraq.
Powell expressed concern that contractors, aid groups and the United Nations will withdraw in significant numbers. "Their work is needed," he said. "And if they are driven out, then the terrorists win." As the Red Cross assessed its future, Doctors Without Borders said it would reduce its presence in Baghdad.
Though Bush's argument that the violence indicated progress struck some as counterintuitive, those sympathetic to the administration said there was logic to the claim. Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute said that by attacking "soft targets" such as the Red Cross and the Iraqi police, the foes are demonstrating that "they don't have the strength" to inflict major losses on U.S. troops.
Experts in public opinion said it would be difficult for Bush to convince Americans that the violence was a byproduct of success. Jeremy Rosner, a Democratic pollster, said the public is "more and more worried as the drumbeat of casualties continues and the administration constantly shifts rationale and tactics." Frank Luntz, who has advised Republicans on use of language, said Bush's upbeat argument is "better than saying nothing, but it's not enough to say it. You've got to show the evidence."
Bush pronounced last week'sdonors conference in Madrid a success. Foreign governments offered about &dol;13 billion in a combination of loans and grants toward the more than &dol;50 billion the administration projects will be needed for Iraq's reconstruction. He did not repeat a veto threat, made by an aide, if Congress does not provide the &dol;20 billion Bush requested entirely in grants rather than loans. "My attitude has been, and still is, that the money we provide Iraq ought to be in the form of a grant," Bush said.
The president linked the attacks on the Red Cross and the police stations to a toughening of targets involving U.S. personnel. He said the occupation authority is countering the attacks by training Iraqi security workers -- McClellan said there are 85,000 -- and "working hard with freedom-loving Iraqis to help ferret these people out before they attack and strike."
But several security experts said the latest round of attacks raises questions about the U.S. plan for an expeditious transfer of power to these Iraqi authorities.
"The attacks focus attention on our inability to provide security or prevent devastating attacks, and possibly deter collaboration by Iraqis and cooperation by outside actors," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst of Iraqi affairs who teaches at the National Defense University. "They strike with impunity -- and there seems to be little we can do to prevent them."
This nettlesome issue was on the agenda yesterday as Rumsfeld met with top defense officials. According to an official involved, the tone of the meeting was similar to that of the Rumsfeld memo that leaked last week. In it, the defense secretary called for bolder ways to counter terrorism and predicted that the U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan would be "a long, hard slog."
But, this official added, "there's no sense of panic." Mainly, he said, the top officials were reviewing the state of Iraqi security forces, including the timetable for their development and the quality of different institutions, such as civil defense units, police forces and the slowly emerging new Iraqi army.
Some specialists said they fear the Bush administration, lacking many fresh troops, is trying to turn over security tasks to Iraqis too quickly. "The strategy of trying to rush in newly trained Iraqi military and police isn't necessarily an adequate and sufficient response," said Robert Gelbard, a retired U.S. diplomat.
Expressing a sentiment held by many, Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, a former head of U.S. Central Command, said, "Everyone knows you need more troops over there."
The National Intelligence Council, through which the CIA's 12 national intelligence officers provide analysis to the government's intelligence community, has been assessing the security situation in Iraq."
Neo-Con Buffoons Divert Blame for Arms Sales to Iraq from Biggest Culprit: U.S.A.
The neo-con attack-dogs and court-jesters are diverting the blame for arms sales to Iraq, onto France, Russia & China ... from the biggest culprit: the good ole' USA, who sold Iraq the largest cache of armaments, weapons, chemical & biological, etc ... These same hypocritical neo-cons defend Rumsfeld by crying that when he sold WMDs to Saddam Hussein, that Iraq was our ally. Well then, these "dumb-bunnies" can't condemn Hussein for gassing his own people in the 1990s, when his good buddy, Daddy Bush 41 instructed him to go-ahead and massacre thousands using USA-made weapons, while the Bushies & neo-cons stood-by & watched gleefully ...
France, Russia, China & the U.K. were also allies when they sold relatively small quantities of weapons to Iraq, as compared to the massive weapons sales conducted by the Reagan and Daddy Bush 41 Regimes to their bon-ami, Saddam Hussein! Indeed, these goons sold more weaponry to other rogue nations than any presidents in US history. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
Veep Cheney was also involved in the squalid weapons sales to Iraq, when he was CEO of the war-profiteer, Halliburton, and conducted illegal oil deals with Saddam Hussein ... and Iraq was able to obtain its' largest arsenal of weapons, armaments and WMDs, from the USA. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
Those who worship at the altar of the corrupt Emperor Bush Regime should start doing their homework! They might find that the truth doesn't render their Bush idols as the saintly, godlike figures that they foolishly fantasize in their drug-induced imaginations.
"Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein. But thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an oil tanker through, Halliburton profited big-time from deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power while lining the pockets of Cheney and company.
According to the Financial Times of London, between September 1998 and last winter, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure. The combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any other U.S. company doing business with Baghdad."
"This is my last ditch effort to show the hypocrisy within President Bush's administration regarding its policies toward Iraq and its President, Saddam Hussein, just as the United States and Britain prepares to invade the country.
It was only five years ago when Vice President Dick Cheney, as chief executive of the oil-field supply corporation, Halliburton Co., was engaged in secret business dealings with Saddam's regime by selling Iraq oil production equipment and spare parts to get the Iraqi oil fields up and running, according to confidential United Nations records.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Cheney adamantly denied such dealings. While he acknowledged that his company did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries, Cheney said, "Iraq's different." He claimed that he imposed a "firm policy" prohibiting any unit of Halliburton against trading with Iraq.
"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," Cheney said on the ABC-TV news program "This Week" on July 30, 2000. "We've not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that."
But it turns out that Cheney was lying. It's only through the sale of Iraqi oil that Saddam would be able to afford to obtain such weapons. If Saddam was in fact building nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, which some news reports allege could be used against American and British troops, Cheney is partially responsible.
The Washington Post first reported Halliburton's trade with Iraq in February 2000. But U.N. records obtained by The Post two years ago showed that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged.
As secretary of defense in the first Bush administration, Cheney helped to lead a multinational coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and to devise a comprehensive economic embargo to isolate Saddam Hussein's government. After Cheney was named chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, he promised to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.
But his stance changed when it appeared that Halliburton was headed for financial disaster in the mid-1990s.
Cheney said sanctions against countries such as Iraq were hurting corporations such as Halliburton.
"We seem to be sanction-happy as a government," Cheney said at an energy conference in April 1996, reported in the oil industry publication Petroleum Finance Week. "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments," he observed during his conference presentation.
Sanctions make U.S. businesses "the bystander who gets hit when a train wreck occurs," Cheney told Petroleum Finance Week. "While virtually every other country sees the need for sanctions against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's regime there, Cheney sees general agreement that the measures have not been very effective despite their having most of the international community's support. An individual country's embargo, such as that of the United States against Iran, has virtually no effect since the target country simply signs a contract with a non- U.S. business," the publication reported
"That's exactly what happened when the government told Conoco Inc. that it could not develop an oil field there," Cheney told Petroleum Finance Week. Total S.A. "simply took it over."
In 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., the unit that sold oil equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.
The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the GGulf War, the Post reported in a June 2001 story.
The Halliburton subsidiaries and several other American and foreign oil supply companies helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than $40 billion.
U.S. and European officials have argued that the increase in production also expanded Saddam's ability to use some of that money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq may be skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program, according to the Post.
During his tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Cheney pushed the U.N. Security Council, after he became vice president; to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods, including oil related equipment, to Iraq. Cheney has said sanctions against countries like Iraq unfairly punish U.S. companies.
Earlier this year, Halliburton was chosen as one of the companies to rebuild Iraq's dilapidated oil fields following a U.S. led attack on the country.
U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had controversial, dealings with the Iraqi regime during Cheney's tenure at the company. The Clinton administration blocked one of the deals Halliburton was trying to push through. That deal, between Halliburton subsidiary Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq, included agreements by the firm to sell $760,000 in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya.
The Clinton administration blocked the sale because it was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. Under the oil-for-food program, Iraq is allowed to export crude oil and the money is supposed to be used to help remove some of the hardships on Iraqi civilians affected by the U.N. sanctions.
Jason Leopold broke the story (later taken up by the LA Times, Nightline and the Sunday Herald without credit) for CounterPunch on the Project for a New American Century's push for war with Iraq."
The World's War Lord? Cheney & Rummy Sold Iraq's Hussein Nasty WMDs ... Not Just France, Russia & UK
Perhaps those who would now wage war on France & Russia (oh, and please don't forget that Iraq is also using rockets sold by our allies, the British http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/... ) for having sold rockets to Iraq, should sign-up for their patriotic tour of duty ... These hypocritical arm-chair chicken-hawks lust for war from the comfort of their lazy-boy-recliners where they park their fatt asses, while watching TV and choking on pretzels & swilling their beer.
Better yet, perhaps Cheney & Rummy should be frog-marched off to jail-- since there are photographs of these goons shaking Saddam Hussein's hand, while selling Iraq massive WMDs and other nasty armaments (far more destructive than rockets) ... and urging Hussein to use them on his own people. No wonder Cheney & Rummy were so cock-sure about Hussein having had WMDs. Sadly, these crazy buffoons slept through the 1990s, when Saddam's arsenal of WMDs supplied by Daddy Bush 41, Cheney & Rummy, were destroyed by U.N. Inspection teams.
The USA sells more armaments, weapons, rockets and lethal WMDs overseas (as we did to Iraq during the Reagan & Bush 41 years) than any other nation in the entire world: (From 1985 onwards the USA Overseas Arms sales skyrocketed ... Traitorous Reagan & Bush 41 authorised more sales of arms to foreign nations including dictators, than any other presidents in US history.)
The Pentagon's portion of the fiscal year 1998 "Section 655" report lists $13.9 billion worth of arms and training delivered through the government-negotiated Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The following top ten recipients represent nearly 80% of that total:
Is there a prison with a cell that Daddy Bush 41, Baby Bush 43, Cheney, Rummy & Wolfowitz could fit snugly into, to avoid perpetrating further misery upon the world?
Sources:
"Governmental Report to Congress Highlights U.S. Arms Exports: U.S. Weapons Sales Fuel Conflicts and Arms Races Worldwide" on http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat...
"The U.S. Department of Commerce licensed more than $1.5 billion worth of sensitive U.S. exports to Iraq from 1985 to 1990./1 Most were "dual-use" items, capable of making nuclear weapons or long-range missiles if diverted from their claimed civilian purposes."
With wide-eyed wonder, Rummy poses (in his infamous memo leaked to the press), the following question:
"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog. ... What else should we be considering?" [Source: http://www.townhall.com/news/... ]
It seems pretty obvious to me, that one of the answers to his imbecilic question (given the bloody mess and fiasco, that he & Wolfy, created in their hubris)-- is to resign and check himself & Wolfy into the Funny Farm. Actually, the rest of the Bushies ought to join him in their insane asylum along with the loon Poindexter and the rest of the neo-con, neo-fascist cabal.
This weekend, "Poodle" Powell admitted that the resistance is lasting longer than they expected. [ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... ]. Yeah, right ... what a perceptive observation!
"Wolfy" Wolfowitz "sees" a mixed picture in Iraq? [ http://www.csmonitor.com/2003... ]. 50% of Iraqis are disgusted with the US Occupation ...
Condi "Mother Hen" Rice squawks about "generational commitment" (i.e. No Exit Strategy). [ http://www.washingtonpost.com... ] This panic-stricken rhetoric was fabricated after the Bush "Mission Accomplished" amorphized into a Bloody Fiasco & Guerrilla Quagmire.
... and the rest of the Bush Circus Freaks sing "Kumbaya" Happy Talk one day, and/or "Long, Hard Slog" the next ... They're only fit for the Funny Farm, where they may be provided toy soldiers to play their childish games, and can't hurt anyone else.
"The troubles besetting Donald Rumsfeld, who is still the US secretary of defence, continue to grow. The blundering Pentagon chief was in hot water again last week over a series of church and prayer breakfast speeches made by his deputy under-secretary for intelligence, Lieutenant-General William Boykin. Among other things, Gen Boykin, an evangelical Christian, said that the US "war on terror" was a "spiritual battle" between a Christian nation and Satan and that God picked George Bush to be president.
Talking about a Muslim militant in Somalia who had claimed Allah's protection, Gen Boykin said he knew that would not work because "I knew my god was bigger than his. I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol." In the ensuing furore, Mr Rumsfeld declined to repudiate Gen Boykin's remarks, let alone sack him. Mr Bush, tackled on the issue by irate Muslim clerics in Bali, was obliged to state that the US was not fighting a war against Islam and that Gen Boykin's views did not reflect his administration's policy. Embarrassing the president in front of foreigners is considered a cardinal sin in Washington. Mr Rumsfeld may yet repent it at leisure.
Troubles rarely arrive singly. The Pentagon was sent to battle stations again after being accused of ignoring a pre-war state department study of Iraq. The study warned that US troops would not be seen as liberators, that serious security problems would ensue and that Iraq's reconstruction needs were being underestimated. Many of the study's predictions have turned out to be only too accurate, unlike the overly optimistic pre-war analysis peddled by Mr Rumsfeld. But he would brook no opposition then, as now. The experienced army chief, Gen Eric Shinseki, was ridiculed for claiming that too few troops were being sent to Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld sacked another dissident, army secretary Thomas White, who has since effectively accused him and his officials of misleading the nation about Iraq and failing to get a grip there. He has minimised the concerns of serving US soldiers and reservists. Little wonder a nervous White House has moved to curb Mr Rumsfeld's powers.
A newly leaked Rumsfeld memo suggests the beleaguered defence secretary may be finally coming round to the notion of his own fallibility. He now admits Iraq will be a "long, hard slog" and wonders whether the "war on terror" is being lost. He now suspects, belatedly, that a long-term, non-military strategy is lacking. And he asks his top advisers to suggest what he should do. Given his record of blunders, the answer is obvious."
Right On!
Arm-Chair Chicken-Hawk "Wolfy" Flees Iraq - Not Our US Soldiers Used As Cannon-Fodder!
The cowardly, arm-chair chicken-hawk, "Wolfy" Wolfowitz, was "visibly shaken", according to the CBS Sunday Morning News, in the aftermath of the bombing of his hotel, although he emerged without a scratch. During his very short trip, "Wolfy" paraded himself in Tikrit where he was cheered, as the citizens cheer Saddam Hussein or any tyrant upon whom they depend for food and resources to survive. ["Explosions rock hotel in Baghdad - Al-Rasheed used by U.S. forces" on http://www.charleston.net/sto... ]
"Wolfy" lost no time in fleeing Iraq-- he doesn't like the "unpleasant reality" and is tickled-pink to be back in Washington DC, safe and sound in the bosom of his plush office at the Pentagon. Tragically, our US Soldiers, used by the corrupt and cowardly Bushies, are their cannon-fodder ("collateral damage"), exploited to fight their battles for them (the battle of enriching Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Shell Oil, etc.)-- Our US Soldiers don't have the luxury of fast-get-aways enjoyed by "Wolfy"; and, our boys and girls can't flee at a moment's notice from their daily encounter with death, mayhem, chaos and tragedy. ["Official shaken by Iraq attacks", on http://onenews.nzoom.com/onen...,1227,231304-1-9,00.html , "A few hours later Wolfowitz returned to the Baghdad airport for the long flight back to Washington ... " http://www.gopusa.com/news/20... ]
The Bush Regime are ruthless thugs, responsible for the massacre of thousands, and as such, should be tried for Crimes Against Humanity. The arrogant Rummy & Wolfy brag about their so-called "genius" (sic) ... It is outrageous that our boys and girls are being slaughtered because these stupid freaks failed to plan the "post-war" occupation. Bush's Death Toll in his bloody guerrilla quagmire stands at over 345 American soldiers, and 7768-9578 innocent Iraqi civilians. [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ]
Please write to your Congress on http://www.congress.org , and ask them to pose the following question to the Bush Regime: "What Was That 'Mission Accomplished', Again?"
"Car bombers struck the international Red Cross headquarters and four police stations across Baghdad on Monday, killing about 40 people in a spree of destruction that terrorized the Iraqi capital on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to police and Red Cross reports.
THE RED CROSS said 12 were killed there, and police said 27 were killed in the police station bombings, most of them Iraqis. The U.S. military confirmed that among the dead was one American soldier killed at a Baghdad police station.
The bombings came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three U.S. soldiers overnight, and a day after insurgents devastated a hotel full of U.S. occupation officials with a rocket barrage, killing a U.S. colonel and wounding 18 other people. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was in the hotel, but was unhurt.
It was two days of violence unprecedented in this city of 5 million people since the end of the U.S.-Iraq war last April, attacks aimed at the American-led occupation and those perceived as working with it.
“We feel helpless when see this,” a distraught Iraqi doctor said at the devastated Red Cross offices.
In Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, witnesses said U.S. troops opened fire, killing at least four Iraqi civilians, after a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. military convoy passed. The U.S. command did not immediately confirm the incident or any U.S. casualties.
CAR BOMB
At the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in central Baghdad, witnesses said a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed vehicle, apparently an ambulance, right up to security barriers outside the building at about 8:30 a.m. and detonated it, blowing down the Red Cross’s front wall, devastating the interior and blowing shrapnel and debris over a wide area.
The ICRC said at its headquarters in Geneva that 12 people were killed, including two of its Iraqi employees. Baghdad ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani said she believed the employees were security guards.
Then, through the morning, four other vehicles exploded at police stations in the Baghdad area. Ambulances, sirens wailing, crisscrossed the city all morning.
“From what our indications are, none of those bombers got close to the target,” Hertling said. But the explosions outside police stations left streetscapes of broken, bloody bodies and twisted, burning automobiles. Iraqi police reported some 27 people killed in those attacks, including 15 Iraqis at the ad-Doura station in southern Baghdad.
One U.S. soldier was among them, and other Americans were wounded, said Lt. Sarmad al-Hakim, an ad-Doura officer. The U.S. command did not immediately confirm those American casualties. Teams of U.S. military police have been stationed at Baghdad police stations in recent months.
At a fifth police station in central Baghdad, officers stopped a suicide bomber before he could detonate his Land Cruiser. “He was shouting, ‘Death to the Iraqi police! You’re collaborators!”’ said police Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar.
Hertling said he believed the attacks may have been timed with the start of Ramadan in order to heighten tensions during the fasting month, when Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours and religious feelings run high.
Near the three-story ICRC building, cigarette vendor Ghani Khadim, 50, said he saw an Iraqi ambulance pass by his stand and approach the small compound some 100 yards away. It suddenly exploded, he said, and the blast blew out windows and injured his wife and daughter in his house behind his stand.
The vehicle had stopped some 60 feet in front of the Red Cross headquarters, “at a line of barrels we have had in front to protect the building,” one Red Cross employee, who would not give his name.
The blast blew down a 40-foot section of the ICRC front wall, demolished a dozen cars in the area and apparently broke a water main, flooding the streets. The inside of the building was heavily damaged, littered with shattered glass, doors blown off their hinges, toppled bookcases and collapsed ceilings. A gaping crack had opened in a back wall, some 100 yards from the blast site, where a crater some five yards across quickly filled with water.
The Red Cross staff member said someone began firing off an automatic weapon immediately after the explosion — “100 bullets or more.” He said he believed it was a gunmen somehow associated with the bomber “who wanted to scare people more.”
Red Cross spokeswoman Nada Doumani said more than 100 workers would normally be at ICRC after 9 a.m., but staffers said only about one-quarter that number were present at 8:30 a.m.
“Of course we don’t understand why somebody would attack the Red Cross,” she said. “The Red Cross has operated in this country since 1980, and we have not been involved in politics.” Asked whether the organization would remain in Iraq, she replied: “I don’t even know what we’re going to do.”
FEELING HELPLESS
Two buildings away, the explosion devastated the interior of the Al-Nawal private polyclinic operated by Dr. Jamal F. Massa, 53, who had been planning to open it as a full-fledged hospital next month.
"We feel helpless when we see this,” he said. He said he couldn’t understand why the Red Cross would be attacked, since it had even reduced its foreign staff recently. “This only hurts guards and other Iraqis.”
The Red Cross and other international aid organizations had reduced their Baghdad staffs after the car bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, in which 23 people died in what appeared to be a warning against international support for the U.S. occupation.
The U.S. general Hertling said Monday was “a great day for the Iraqi police” because security controls prevented the bombers from reaching their targets.
But Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite Muslim member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, said the United States must speed up the training of Iraqi police and soldiers and employ ruthless measures to crush the insurgency.
“There is no doubt about it that we need to change the rules of engagement with these people,” al-Rabii told CNN. “The rules of engagement now are too lenient.”
TOP OFFICIAL IN HOTEL
The rocket attack Sunday struck the Al-Rasheed Hotel, where Wolfowitz was staying at the end of a three-day Iraq visit. The deputy defense secretary said afterward that attack “will not deter us from completing our mission” in Iraq.
But the bold blow at the heart of the U.S. presence here clearly rattled U.S. confidence that it is defeating Iraq’s shadowy insurgents.
“We’ll have to get the security situation under control,” Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
• A look at the United Nations
The concrete western face of the 18-story hotel, located more than two miles west of the international Red Cross building, was pockmarked with a half-dozen or more blast holes. Windows shattered in at least two dozen rooms. The U.S. command said the wounded included seven American civilians, four U.S. military personnel and five non-U.S. civilians working for the coalition.
Two Iraqi security guards also were hurt. The command did not immediately identify the dead American, but Wolfowitz said he was a U.S. colonel."
According to Bush, You Are Guilty of "Thought-Crime" - What Happened to the Rule of Law?
According to the neo-orwellian Bushies, you are guilty for "wrong" thinking ... "bad" thought ... or indulging in "fantasies" even if you have no intention of carrying out your private imaginings!!! George Orwell in [b]1984[/b], called it "THOUGHT-CRIME".
The laws of our land (and internationally) are based upon actions, not fantasies ... because every human being who has ever lived (including Jesus Christ, who admitted he sometimes had very, very human temptations http://www.carm.org/doctrine/...) has imaged doing things that he/she would never actually do, for whatever reason. In fact, in the doctrine according to the sordid, imbecilic Bush, if your spouse ever "lusted" after somebody else, they are guilty of the act of adultery!
In fact, you may fantasize of retaliating against someone who has done you wrong, but unless you actually threaten or harm that person, you may not be charged with a crime (under the current law), for your private thoughts ... Not so, under the insane neo-con doctrine according to the Mad King George. For the Bushies, your actions don't matter ... Orwell's [b]1984[/b] "thought-crime" has burst in upon us ... both in the Bush "crazies'" Patriot Act and in their insane desire to rule the world. Now, the Bushies have decided that they will illegally & immorally invade other soverign nations, based upon an "evil" tyrant's "fantasies" of obtaining WMDs (Even if said tyrant, will not, has not or cannot!!! Even if said tyrant has never threatened us!!!).
In today's Washington Post article entitled "Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat - No Evidence Uncovered Of Reconstituted Program" on http://www.washingtonpost.com... , Barton Gellman reports that David Kay has misled the public [David Kay maintains unsavory ties to the arms industry ... and is so biased and un-objective, that his $600 million recently awarded, in addition to the $300 million already squandered, with a team of over 1200 inspectors, over 5-6 times as large as Hans Blix's (220 inspectors) and will have over 3 times as long "searching" for WMDs as Hans Blix was permitted ... will probably "find" (ooopppsss ... plant) whatever it is the Bushies tell him to plant] ...
Barton Gellman reports that David Kay found, but didn't make public, that Saddam Hussein conducted no research or activities to obtain nuclear weapons after 1991 ... indeed, most of Saddam Hussein's WMDs were destroyed in the 1990s inspections. Cheney lied to the public on "Meet the Press", prior to waging the Bushies' illegal and immoral incursion into Iraq-- and said that Saddam Hussein was (in the present tense) re-constituting his nuclear programme. Veep Cheney should be charged with fraud and marched-off to jail.
The truth doesn't matter to the corrupt Bush regime or their neo-con attack-dogs and court jesters -- only "winning" ... "winning" in swindling and raping the American and Iraqi peoples. The Bush thugs have committed Crimes Against Humanity-- and deserve the same fate as the Nazi war criminals.
For an eye-popping story regarding the lack of morality, integrity and honor, in this squalid Bush Regime, read http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
"In their march to Baghdad on April 8, U.S. Marines charged past a row of eucalyptus trees that lined the boneyard of Iraq's thwarted nuclear dream. Sixty acres of warehouses behind the tree line, held under United Nations seal at Ash Shaykhili, stored machine tools, consoles and instruments from the nuclear weapons program cut short by the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Thirty miles to the north and west, Army troops were rolling through the precincts of the Nasr munitions plant. Inside, stacked in oblong wooden crates, were thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes.
That equipment, and Iraq's effort to buy more of it overseas, were central to the Bush administration's charge that President Saddam Hussein had resumed long-dormant efforts to build a nuclear weapon. The lead combat units had more urgent priorities that day, but they were not alone in passing the stockpiles by. Participants in the subsequent hunt for illegal arms said months elapsed without a visit to Nasr and many other sites of activity that President Bush had called "a grave and gathering danger."
According to records made available to The Washington Post and interviews with arms investigators from the United States, Britain and Australia, it did not require a comprehensive survey to find the central assertions of the Bush administration's prewar nuclear case to be insubstantial or untrue. Although Hussein did not relinquish his nuclear ambitions or technical records, investigators said, it is now clear he had no active program to build a weapon, produce its key materials or obtain the technology he needed for either.
Among the closely held internal judgments of the Iraq Survey Group, overseen by David Kay as special representative of CIA Director George J. Tenet, are that Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use.
Most notably, investigators have judged the aluminum tubes to be "innocuous," according to Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Meekin, who commands the Joint Captured Enemy Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to Kay. That finding is pivotal, because the Bush administration built its case on the proposition that Iraq aimed to use those tubes as centrifuge rotors to enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear warhead.
Administration officials interviewed for this report defended the integrity of the government's prewar intelligence and public statements. None agreed to be interviewed on the record. Vice President Cheney, in a televised interview last month, referred to a National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which said among other things that there was "compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort." Cheney said investigators searching for confirmation of those judgments "will find in fact that they are valid." His office did not respond to questions on Friday.
'Drain Pipe' No evidence mattered more to the nuclear debate than Iraq's attempt to buy aluminum tubes overseas. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, among many others, scorned the Baghdad government's explanation that it sought the tubes as artillery rocket casings. By August, news accounts made clear that the U.S. government's top nuclear centrifuge experts dissented strongly from the claim that the tubes were meant for uranium enrichment.
Meekin, whose remarks were supported by other investigators who said they feared the consequences of being quoted by name, is the first to describe the results of postwar analysis.
"They were rockets," said Meekin, 48, director general of scientific and technical assessment for Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation, speaking by satellite telephone from Baghdad. "The tubes were used for rockets."
A U.S. government official, who was unwilling to be identified by name or agency, said Meekin is not qualified to make that judgment. The official did not elaborate. Kay's interim report this month said the question remains open.
Participants in the Pentagon-directed special weapons teams, interviewed repeatedly since late last spring, noted that Kay's operation has taken no steps to collect the estimated 20,000 tubes in Iraq's inventory -- some badly corroded, but others of higher quality than the ones the U.S. government intercepted in Jordan three years ago and described as dangerous technology.
"If you told me they had access to these tubes and have chosen not to seize and destroy them, it undermines the judgment that these tubes are usable for, if not intended for, centrifuge development," said Robert Gallucci, dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, who retains his classified clearances and still consults with government analysts on Iraq.
Meekin said he no longer knows the whereabouts of the tubes once stacked at Nasr. "They weren't our highest priority," he said. "The thing's innocuous." Unguarded, the tubes "could be in arms plants, scattered around, being grabbed by looters, perhaps in scrap metal yards."
Scavengers, he said, most likely have "sold them as drain pipe."
Three Fates The day Marines and Army mechanized troops marched past the remnants of Iraq's nuclear past, Baghdad's three most important nuclear weapons scientists met three distinct fates.
Mahdi Obeidi, chief of the pre-1991 centrifuge program to enrich uranium, sat anxiously at home awaiting U.S. investigators. Jaffar Dhai Jaffar, who directed alternative enrichment efforts and other component designs under the code name Petrochemical Three, watched the U.S.-led coalition's invasion from the United Arab Emirates, to which he had decamped before fighting began. Khalid Ibrahim Said, the principal overseer of Iraq's nuclear warhead designs, drove incautiously through a newly established U.S. checkpoint. He died in a burst of gunfire from Marines.
A short and pugnacious man, unpopular among his Iraqi contemporaries, Said had been less forthcoming than the other two men in contacts with U.N. inspectors from 1991 to 1998. His loss struck a blow to U.S. occupation authorities, because there were unanswered questions about his portion of the 1991 "crash program" to build a bomb.
Said was believed to have kept comprehensive records of his work, including design details and assembly diagrams, on optical disks. Iraq delivered much of its information to inspectors in electronic form, and it did so again in its seven-volume report of Dec. 3, 2002, titled "Currently Accurate, Full and Complete Declaration of the Past Nuclear Program." That report, a copy of which has been made available to The Washington Post, was not thought to include all the technical details in Iraq's possession.
Kay said this month that Iraq took "steps to preserve some technological capability from the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program." If true, that would represent a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, but would fall far short of a resumption of illegal development.
"Everybody, including Donald Rumsfeld, agrees the program was destroyed 12 years ago," said one U.S. expert with long experience on Iraq. "The question for David [Kay] is whether it restarted."
Jaffar, who remains under the protection of the UAE government, agreed to voluntary interviews with U.S. and British investigators. Those familiar with his statements said he was combative, telling the Americans -- as he did during years of U.N. inspections -- that there was no hidden nuclear weapons program. Iraq, he said, never resumed the effort after U.S. bombs destroyed the Tuwaitha reactors during the Gulf War, and the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled enrichment and design facilities over the next five years.
The Rose Garden It was Obeidi's former program -- the use of centrifuges to enrich uranium -- that the Bush administration maintained had been resurrected. Obeidi had heard the public statements, according to two close associates, and he waited with growing anxiety for arriving troops to knock at his door.
Anxiety turned to puzzlement when they did not. After two weeks, the Iraqi scientist turned to an unlikely source of help: David Albright, a U.S. nuclear expert and cordial antagonist during Albright's years as a consultant to the IAEA. One of the first things Obeidi told Albright, by the American's account, was that he had read Albright's published writings closely in the mid-1990s to learn which of Iraq's cover stories was working.
On May 1, Albright began looking for someone in the Defense Department or U.S. Central Command who would talk to Obeidi, "but I was rebuffed." Six days later, he reached a contact in the CIA. Obeidi had important information, Albright said, and wanted to come clean.
The first meeting with the CIA, on May 17, did not go well. Obeidi wanted assurance of asylum in the United States. The interviewers were noncommittal and appeared to know little about Obeidi or the centrifuge program, according to interviews with Albright and contemporaneous notes he provided in July.
On June 2, Obeidi led investigators to his rose garden. There they dug up a cache he had buried 12 years before and kept from U.N. inspectors: about 200 blueprints of gas centrifuge components, 180 documents describing their use and samples of a few sensitive parts. The parts amounted to far less than one complete centrifuge, and nothing like the thousands required for a cascade of the spinning devices to enrich uranium, but the material showed what nearly all outside experts believed -- that Iraq had preserved its nuclear knowledge base.
The next day, U.S. Special Forces burst into Obeidi's home and arrested him -- a misunderstanding, the CIA later explained. Shortly after Obeidi's release, on June 17, the CIA made public his identity and described the rose garden cache as proof that Iraq had the secret nuclear program that the Bush administration alleged.
But that, according to sources familiar with Obeidi's account in detail, is not quite what he told his interviewers.
Joe's Return According to close associates, Obeidi expected to speak to a peer among U.S. centrifuge physicists. He was dismayed, they said, to find that his principal interrogator lacked those credentials.
The man's name was Joe. An engineer with expertise in export controls, Joe made his reputation at the CIA as the strongest proponent of the theory that Iraq's controversial aluminum tubes were part of a resurgent centrifuge program. The CIA asked that Joe's last name be withheld to protect his safety.
In his interviews, Obeidi did not tell Joe what he wanted to hear, U.S. government officials said. Instead, Obeidi confirmed the account laid out in Volume 7 of Iraq's December nuclear disclosure, which said there had been "no nuclear activity since 1991" at seven of the program's previous sites and only "medical, agricultural and industrial" activities at the others.
The centrifuge program died in 1991, Obeidi said, and never resumed. He had buried the documents to prepare for resumption orders that never came. He had nothing to do with the aluminum tubes, he said, and a centrifuge program would have no use for them.
Obeidi's account corresponded closely with the history laid out in Volume 3 of Iraq's official history, which covered enrichment. The program began in 1988, under the designation Al Furat or 1200C, with a design based on rotors made of maraging steel. The following year Obeidi added an alternative design, using a more sophisticated rotor made of carbon fiber. In July 1990, a prototype system succeeded for the first time in separating the desired isotope of uranium from the gas uranium hexafluoride.
If Iraq had in fact revived its enrichment program, it would have needed a fluorine plant to convert uranium ore to that gaseous form and an intricate system of magnets, bearings and pipes to connect thousands of rotors in cascades. Kay's investigators, allied officials said, have found none of those things.
The physics of a centrifuge would not permit a simple substitution of aluminum tubes for the maraging steel and carbon fiber designs used by Obeidi. The tubes in Obeidi's design were also specified at 145mm in diameter; the aluminum tubes measured 81mm.
Joe sent dispatches to Washington over the summer accusing Obeidi of holding back the truth, according to a U.S. official who read one. The Iraqi scientist, fearful of his safety after being named in public, moved with his family to a CIA safe house in Kuwait. For months, he remained in limbo.
"They're just in a conflict of interest," Albright said in a July interview, speaking of Joe and other CIA analysts. "Their bosses are [still] saying the tubes are for centrifuges."
By summer's end, under unknown circumstances, Obeidi received permission to bring his family to an East Coast suburb in the United States. He declined through intermediaries to be interviewed, and a government official asked that his location not be published. Albright, who hopes to employ Obeidi at his Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, is no longer willing to discuss the case.
Book of the Month Club At Hussein's former palace complex in Abu Ghurayb, lush by Baghdad standards with two small artificial lakes, frustrated members of the nuclear search team by late spring began calling themselves the "book of the month club."
"There's a lot of guys over there read more novels than they will the rest of their lives," said a recently returned investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You've got some bored people over there, big time."
Nuclear investigators had come with expectations set by Bush and Cheney, who gave rhetorical emphasis to Iraq's nuclear threat in their most compelling arguments for war. At least four times in the fall of 2002, the president and his advisers invoked the specter of a "mushroom cloud," and some of them, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, described Iraq's nuclear ambitions as a threat to the American homeland.
On the ground in Iraq, one investigator said, the nuclear investigation began as and remained "the least significant of the missions." The resources, personnel and operational pace of the nuclear team, he said, "were minuscule compared to chem and bio," a reference to chemical and biological weapons probes.
Fewer than one-tenth of 1 percent of the search personnel had nuclear assignments, about a dozen out of 1,500 at the peak strength of the Iraq Survey Group. In the immediate postwar period, investigators had about 600 leads in an "integrated master site list," of which the U.S. Central Command identified a "Top 19 WMD," for weapons of mass destruction. Only three of those were nuclear-related: Ash Shaykhili Nuclear Facility, the Baghdad New Nuclear Design Center and the Tahadi Nuclear Establishment.
"There really wasn't a need for our specialized area of work," Navy Cmdr. David Beckett said in a recent interview. In Iraq, Beckett commanded a group of nuclear-trained Special Forces known as the Direct Support Team. Now program manager for special nuclear programs at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Beckett said the aluminum tubes and machine tools cited in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate -- vacuum tubes, industrial magnets and balancing machines -- were "not a big focus" of his work in Iraq. He added, "To be honest, I've read more about that since I got back."
An administration official, defending the CIA's prewar analysis, said its message had been widely misunderstood. "The term 'reconstituting' means restoring to a former condition, a process often inferred to be short term," he said. "Based on reporting, however, Saddam clearly viewed it as a long-term process. So did the NIE."
Fertile Ground Meekin, the Australian general who had principal responsibility for collecting Iraqi military technology, said his 500-member unit is disbanding, its work largely done. According to U.S. government officials, some of Kay's leading nuclear investigators have already left Iraq. Nuclear physicist William Domke, who ran the centrifuge investigation, returned last month to his intelligence post at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Jeffrey Bedell, Domke's counterpart at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has also come home.
Domke and Bedell, according to people who know their work, confirmed their prewar analysis that the tubes were not suited for centrifuges and that Iraq had no program to use them as such. They had seen the tubes in December and January, on temporary assignment for the IAEA in Iraq. They were also principal authors of the Energy Department's dissent from the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002.
Neither man replied to messages left by voice mail and e-mail. Steve Wampler, a spokesman at Livermore, said, "They really don't talk about their work." A U.S. government official, speaking for the administration but declining to be named, denied that the two physicists had reached final conclusions. "Domke may be coming back soon," the official said. "Their work is not completed."
Tim McCarthy, an experienced U.N. inspector who returned to Iraq late last month to join Kay's team, said in an interview before departing that the Iraqi rocket program based on 81mm tubes had been known to Western analysts "well before 1996." McCarthy said inspectors gave the tubes "maybe three minutes out of 100 hours" of attention because they did not appear to be important.
Meekin said the Nasr 81 rocket "appeared in a public arms show in 1999" at which Iraqi munitions were displayed for sale. Such sales would have been illegal under U.N. Security Council sanctions, but hardly secret. Meekin said trade magazines covered the show.
Partly for those reasons, the American-led search teams did not even visit Nasr until July. Iraqi Brig. Gen. Shehab Haythem showed them around, the tubes laid out in neat rows. Investigators sent samples to the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and left the rest.
Today, Ash Shaykhili is a hulk. What it contained, apart from demolished remnants of the 1991 program, was exactly the kind of equipment that the CIA cited as part of its compelling case for Iraq's nuclear threat: "magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools."
"They're not acting as if they take their own analysis seriously," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "If they were so worried about these tubes, that would be the kind of sensitive equipment you'd think the administration would want to seize, to prevent it from going somewhere else -- Iran, Syria, Egypt."
The investigation to date, Meekin said, suggests that Iraqi efforts to obtain dangerous technology since 1991 met with modest success at best.
"By and large, our judgment is that sanctions have been pretty good, or the sanctions effort, to prevent the import of components," he said. In the realm of nuclear proliferation, he said, "I guess there's more fertile ground in North Korea or Iran." "
Bush's Neo-Hitlerian "Happy Talk" Versus Rumsfeld's Neo-Fascist "Long, Hard Slog"
How much American taxpayer money did Rumsfeld waste in having his lap-dog staff search through dictionaries for obscure meanings of the the word "slog", in order to dig himself out of another hole? This self-proclaimed "genius (sic)" is not so much a "genius", as a screw-ball who is responsible for the massacre and misery of thousands because: Instead of planning for the aftermath of the "Mission Accomplished (sic) [What was it again?]", he & Wolfy have bungled the post-war occupation with their arrogant "Stuff Happens" juvenile game-playing ...
The despicable power-games and power-struggles between the "Kumbaya" [b]Happy Talk crooks [/b]in the White House in their failed neo-hitlerian propaganda campaign; and, the [b]Long, Hard "Slog" buffoons[/b] in the blood-thirsty, neo-fascist Pentagon-- are consuming the expensive time and resources of our so-called "leaders (sic)" ... but meanwhile, Bush's Death Toll Mounts, as more US Soldiers were killed yesterday. Bush's Death Toll stands at 343 Americans, 53 Brits, 17 Journalists, and between 7757-9565 innocent Iraqi civilians, and over 1947 American wounded, injured & maimed. [Source: http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ]
The entire corrupt Bush cabal, having highjacked our nation and waged war (based upon lies, deceit & falsehoods), deserve to be frog-marched in handcuffs off to jail, instead of crookedly wasting our time raising money from greedy campaign contributors (war-profiteers & corporate robber-barons who have been awarded obscene (& possibly illegal) "welfare-for-the-rich" gifts) ... and fighting with each other over how many lies, deceptions & frauds to perpetrate upon the American public. The Bush gang have taken their "eye-off-the-ball", and it is taking a tragic toll on American lives and treasure.
[b]Who is running this country??? Bushy-boy can't seem to control his own cabinet of power-hungry thugs!!! The Bush gang are in disarray because their leader (Bush) is a weak & petty man, in "way-over-his-head"; the Secretary of Defense (Rumsfeld) is fighting to "stay-alive" -- and, the rest of Bush's cabinet are self-interested ghouls with loyalty to special interests, instead of, to the American people!!![/b]
"The ``long, hard slog'' foreseen by Donald H. Rumsfeld is already playing out in Iraq - in the tallies of attacks, in the toll of American dead, in the cold eyes of many Iraqis.
Statistics tell one story: In recent weeks, the daily average of attacks on U.S. forces has stepped up to 25 or 26, and even to 35 on one day, from around 20.
Those Iraqi eyes tell a deeper one, in such places as Fallujah, where 82nd Airborne Division troops came under attack every day this week, and where the main crossroads is adorned with graffiti proclaiming, ``Fallujah will be the graveyard of Americans.''"
``It's difficult work,'' Rumsfeld said of Iraq. ``It won't be over anytime soon.'' " - [i]Excerpt [/i]-
[b]Here's news for your Rummy ... In the "Standard American Encyclopedic Dictionary", the definition of "slog" is: "To plod (one's way), as through deep mud." ... Yes, that is a very apt description of the squalid fiasco in Iraq, created by the insane neo-con, neo-fascist Bush cabal, all of whom have proved incompetent.[/b]
Road to Ruin - Bush Regime's Track-Record on Environment is a "Disaster" for Our Planet
Recently, Jane Goodall, the respected naturalist, condemned the Bush Regime's track-record on the environment as a "diasaster" for our planet. [ "Primate Expert Jane Goodall Assails Bush on Environment" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... ]
The Bushies' track-record for covering-up and censoring reports, and lying to the public about the environment, is no different than their mendacious behaviour regarding Iraq. [ "With White House Approval, E.P.A. Pollution Report Omits Global Warming Section" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... : "White House censors may have made global warming disappear from this report, but that won't make it disappear as a serious threat to our environment." ]
In "The UnGreening of America: How the Bush Administration is Rolling Back 30 Years of Environmental Progress" on http://www.motherjones.com/ne... , you can scroll through the often over-looked changes the Bush regime is using to roll-back protections.
"Tons of additional air pollutants permitted to be released by 2020 under Bush's "Clear Skies" plan: [b]42 MILLION [/b]
Estimated number of premature deaths that will result: [b]100,000[/b]"
Today, the Guardian UK reports "Road to ruin: America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the planet" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa...,12271,1069883,00.html :
"On the map of the United States, just below halfway down the east coast, you can see a series of islets, in the shape of a hooked nose. These are the Outer Banks, barrier islands - sun-kissed in summer, storm-tossed in winter - that stretch for 100 miles and more, protecting the main coastline of the state of North Carolina. They are built, quite literally, on shifting sands.
Twenty years ago, these were, by all accounts, magical places, hard to reach and discovered only by the adventurous and discerning. They are still fairly magical, at least the seemingly endless stretch of unspoiled beach is. It is the lure of that which causes the traffic jams on the only two bridges every Saturday throughout the summer. The narrow strip of land behind the beach, however, has been built up with enormous holiday homes, costing up to $2m (£1.2m) each. And prices rose by 15-20% (25% for those on the ocean front) in 2002 alone, according to one agent.
This is what local agents call "a very nice market", and last month their area had a week of free worldwide publicity. Hurricane Isabel swept in, washing out much of the islands' only road and picking up motels from their foundations and tossing them, according to one report, "like cigarette butts". One island was turned into several islets, with a whole town, Hatteras Village, being cut off from the rest of the US - for ever, if nature has its way.
Residents, journalists reported, were in shock. Many scientists were not. Speaking well before Isabel, Dr Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology at Duke University in North Carolina, described the Outer Banks property boom to me as "a form of societal madness". "I wouldn't buy a house on the front row of the Outer Banks. Or the second," agreed Dr Stephen Leatherman, who is such a connoisseur of American coastlines that he is known as Dr Beach.
For the market is not the only thing that has been rising round here. Like other experts, Pilkey expects the Atlantic to inundate the existing beaches "within two to four generations". Normally, that would be no problem for the sands, which would simply regroup and re-form further back. Unfortunately, that is no longer possible: the $2m houses are in the way. According to Pilkey, the government will either have to build millions of dollars worth of seawall, which will destroy the beach anyway, or demolish the houses. "Coastal scientists from abroad come here and just shake their heads in disbelief," he says.
The madness of the Outer Banks seems like a symptom of, and a metaphor for, something far broader: the US is in denial about what is, beyond any question, potentially its most dangerous enemy. While millions of words have been written every day for the past two years about the threat from vengeful Islamic terrorists, the threat from a vengeful Nature has been almost wholly ignored. Yet the likelihood of multiple attacks in the future is far more certain.
Earlier this year, just before he was fired as environment minister, Michael Meacher gave a speech in Newcastle, saying: "There is a lot wrong with our world. But it is not as bad as people think. It is actually worse." He listed five threats to the survival of the planet: lack of fresh water, destruction of forest and crop land, global warming, overuse of natural resources and the continuing rise in the population. What Meacher could not say, or he would have been booted out more quickly, was that the US is a world leader in hastening each of these five crises, bringing its gargantuan appetite to the business of ravaging the planet. American politicians do not talk this way. Even Al Gore, supposedly the most committed environmentalist in world politics, kept quiet about the subject when chasing the presidency in 2000.
Those of us without a degree in climatology can have no sensible opinion on the truth about climate change, except to sense that the weather does seem to have become a little weird lately. Yet in America the subject has become politicised, with rightwing commentators decrying global warming as "bogus science". They gloated when it snowed unusually hard in Washington last winter (failing to notice the absence of snow in Alaska). When the dissident "good news" scientist Bjorn Lomborg spoke to a conservative Washington thinktank he was applauded not merely rapturously, but fawningly.
While newspapers report that Kilimanjaro's icecap is melting and Greenland's glaciers are crumbling, the US government has been telling its scientific advisers to do more research before it can consider any action to restrict greenhouse gases; the scientists reported back that they had done all the research. The attitude of the White House to global warming was summed up by the online journalist Mickey Kaus as: "It's not true! It's not true! And we can't do anything about it!" What terrifies all American politicians, deep down, is that it is true and that they could do something about it, but at horrendous cost to American industry and lifestyle.
In the meantime, all American consumers have been asked to do is to buy Ben & Jerry's One Sweet Whirled ice cream, ensuring that a portion of Unilever's profits go towards "global warming initiatives". Wow!
Potential Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination have been testing environmental issues a little in the past few weeks. Some activists are hopeful that the newly elected Governor Schwarzenegger of California is genuinely interested. But, in truth, despite the Soviet-style politicisation of science, serious national debate on the issue ceased years ago.
Of course, nimbyism is alive and well. And, sure, there are localised battles between greens and their corporate enemies: towns in Alabama try to resist corporate poisoning; contests go on to preserve the habitats of everything from the grizzly bear to rare types of fly; Californians hug trees to stop new housing estates. Sometimes the greenies win, though they have been losing with increasing frequency, especially if Washington happens to be involved. These fights, even in agglomeration, are not the real issue. Day after day across America the green agenda is being lost - and then, usually, being buried under concrete.
"We're waging a war on the environment, a very successful one," says Paul Ehrlich, professor of population studies at Stanford University. "This nation is devouring itself," according to Phil Clapp of the National Environmental Trust. These are voices that have almost ceased to be heard in the US. Yet with each passing day, the gap between the US and the rest of the planet widens. To take the figure most often trotted out: Americans contribute a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. To meet the seemingly modest Kyoto objective of reducing emissions to 7% below their 1990 levels by 2012, they would actually (due to growth) have to cut back by a third. For the Bush White House, this is not even on the horizon, never mind the agenda.
Why has the leader of the free world opted out? The first reason lies deep in the national psyche. The old world developed on the basis of a coalition - uneasy but understood - between humanity and its surroundings. The settlement of the US was based on conquest, not just of the indigenous peoples, but also of the terrain. It appears to be, thus far, one of the great success stories of modern history.
"Remember, this country is built very heavily on the frontier ethic," says Clapp. "How America moved west was to exhaust the land and move on. The original settlers, such as the Jefferson family, moved westward because families like theirs planted tobacco in tidewater Virginia and exhausted the soil. My own ancestors did the same in Indiana."
Americans made crops grow in places that are entirely arid. They built dams - about 250,000 of them. They built great cities, with skyscrapers and symphony orchestras, in places that appeared barely habitable. They shifted rivers, even reversed their flow. "It's the American belief that with enough hard work and perseverance anything - be it a force of nature, a country or a disease - can be vanquished," says Clapp. "It's a country founded on the idea of no limits. The essence of environmentalism is that there are indeed limits. It's one of the reasons environmentalism is a stronger ethic in Europe than in the US."
There is a second reason: the staggering population growth of the US. It is approaching 300 million, having gone up from 200 million in 1970, which was around the time President Nixon set up a commission to consider the issue, the last time any US administration has dared think about it. A million new legal migrants are coming in every year (never mind illegals), and the US Census Bureau projections for 2050, merely half a lifetime away, is 420 million. This is a rate of increase far beyond anything else in the developed world, and not far behind Brazil, India, or indeed Mexico.
This issue is political dynamite, although not for quite the same reasons as in Britain. Almost every political group is split on the issue, including the far right (torn between overt xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan and the free marketeers), the labour movement and the environmentalists. The belief that the US is the best country in the world is a cornerstone of national self-belief, and many Americans still, wholeheartedly, want others to share it. They also want cheap labour to cut the sugar cane, pluck the chickens, pick the oranges, mow the lawns and make the beds.
But the dynamite is most potent among the Hispanic community, the group who will probably decide the destiny of future presidential elections and who do not wish to be told their relatives will not be allowed in or, if illegal, seriously harassed. "Neither party wants to say we should change immigration policy," says John Haaga of the independent Population Reference Bureau. "The phrase being used is 'Hispandering'". Yet extra Americans are not just a problem for the US: they are, in the eyes of many environmentalists, a problem for the world because migrants, in a short span of time, take on American consumption patterns. "Not only don't we have a population policy," says Ehrlich, "we don't have a consumption policy either. We are the most overpopulated country in the world. It's not the number of people. It's their consumption." Ehrlich may be wrong. It is, though. somewhat surprising that the federal government's four million employees do not appear to include anyone charged with even thinking about this issue.
This brings us to the third factor: the Bush administration, the first government in modern history which has systematically disavowed the systems of checks and controls that have governed environmental policy since it burst into western political consciousness a generation ago. It would be ludicrous to suggest that Bush is responsible for what is happening to the American environment. The crisis is far more deep-seated than that, and the federal government is too far removed from the minutiae of daily life.
But the Bushies have perfected a technique of announcing regular edicts (often late on a Friday afternoon) rolling back environmental control, usually while pretending to do the opposite. Morale among civil servants at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington was already close to rock-bottom even before its moderate leader, Christine Todd Whitman, finally threw in her hand in May. Gossip round town was that she had endured two years of private humiliation at the hands of the White House. Few environmentalists have great hopes for her announced successor, the governor of Utah, Mike Leavitt.
What is really alarming is the intellectual atmosphere in Washington. You can attend seminars debunking scientific eco-orthodoxy almost every week. Early in the year, there was much favourable publicity for a new work Global Warming and Other Eco-myths, produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organisation reputedly funded by multinational corporations. Outside Washington, it can be far nastier. "I've never threatened anyone in my life," a conservation activist in Montana complained to the Guardian. "I do know, though, that I have gotten very ugly threats left on my telephone answering machine over the past year, and twice had to scour my sidewalk in front of the building to erase the dead body chalk outlines."
Out in the west, words such as enviro-whackos are popularised by rightwing radio hosts such as the ex-Watergate conspirator Gordon Liddy, who passes on to his millions of listeners the message that global warming is a lie. "I commute in a three-quarter-tonne capacity Chevrolet Silverado HD," he swanked in his latest book. "Four-wheel drive, off-road equipped, extended curb pickup truck, powered by a 300hp, overhead valve, turbo supercharged diesel engine with 520lb-feet of torque... It has lights all over it so everyone can see me coming and get out of the way. If someone in a little government-mandated car hits me, it is all over - for him." Fuel economy in American vehicles hit a 22-year low in 2002.
In this country, green-minded people can't even trust the good guys. The Nature Conservancy, the US's largest environmental group with a million members - with a role not unlike Britain's National Trust - was the subject of an exhaustive exposé in the Washington Post in May, accusing it of sanctioning deals to build "opulent houses on fragile grasslands" and drilling for gas under the last breeding ground of the Attwater's Prairie Chicken, whose numbers have dwindled to just dozens.
On April 22, 1970 more than 20 million people attended the first-ever Earth Day. In New York, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic and 100,000 people attended an ecology fair in Central Park. The Republican governor of New York wore a Save the Earth button, and Senator John Tower, another Republican, told an audience of Texan oilmen: "Recent efforts on the part of the private sector show promise for pollution abatement and control. Such efforts are in our own best interests..."
So what happened next? The problem for the green movement was not what went wrong, but what went right. Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, said: "In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programmes embarked on now." The famine never came. And after the oil crisis came and went, and Americans began to tire of the gloom-filled, eco-oriented presidency of Jimmy Carter, they turned instead to Ronald Reagan, who proposed simple solutions of tax cuts and deregulation and, lo, the world got more cheerful. With doomsday postponed indefinitely, the politics of the Reagan years have lingered.
Some activists remain bitter about the Clinton White House, which was only patchily interested in green issues. "It left a bad taste in the mouth of the environmental community," says Tim Wirth, a former senator and one-time Clinton official. "They trimmed their sails over and over again. The old House speaker, Tip O'Neill, had a very important political aphorism: 'Yer dance with the person who brung yer.' They never did." This bitterness was one of the factors that led to the hefty third-party vote for Ralph Nader in 2000, which proved disastrous for Al Gore, the inhibited environmentalist.
In the three years since then, Bush has danced like a dervish with the folks who brung him. Yet, even now, no one dare say out loud that they are against environmentalism: the political wisdom is that the subject can be a voting issue among the suburban moms, ferrying the kids around to baseball practice in their own Chevrolet Silverados. Instead, the big corporations and their political allies have - brilliantly - manipulated the forces that the eco-warriors themselves unleashed and turned them back on their creators. "In the 80s they took all the techniques of citizen advocacy groups and professionalised them," explains Phil Clapp. "That's when you saw the proliferation of lobbyists in Washington. The environmental community never retooled to meet the challenge. They had developed the techniques, but were still doing them in a PTA bake-sale kind of way."
Thus every new measure passed to favour business interests and ease up on pollution regulations is presented in an eco-friendly, sugar-coated, summer's morning kind of way, such as Clear Skies, the weakening of the Clean Air Act. The House of Representatives has just passed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, presented by the president as an anti-forest fire measure. Opponents say it is simply a gift to the timber industry that will make it extremely difficult to stop the felling of old-growth trees. Another technique is to announce, with great fanfare, initiatives that everyone can applaud, such as a recent one for hydrogen-based cars. We can expect more of these as November 2004 draws closer. When they are scaled back, or delayed, or dropped, there is less publicity. It is a habit that runs in the family. Governor Jeb Bush's grand scheme to save the Florida Everglades was much applauded; the delay from 2006 to 2016 was little noticed.
Even now the White House does not win all its battles. In the Senate, where a small group of greenish New England Republicans has a potential blocking veto, there are moves to compromise on the forests bill. The New England Republicans were largely responsible for Bush's inability to push through his plan to allow oil drilling in the Alaskan wildlife reserve. Occasionally, there is good news: some of the small dams that have impeded the life-cycle of Pacific salmon and steelhead trout are being demolished; there are reports of a new alliance between the old enemies, ranchers and greenies, in New Mexico; renewable energy is under discussion. But some of their policies are already having their effect. Carol Browner, Clinton's head of the EPA, claims the Bush administration has set back the campaign to cut industrial pollution in ways that will last for decades.
"This administration has sent a signal to the polluting community, 'You can get away with bad habits'," says Browner. "State governments in the north-east were much tougher, so the north-eastern power stations upgraded their emissions standards in the 90s whereas the mid-west guys, who are their competitors, didn't. Now they're not enforcing the law."
"So what they're saying to the companies is: 'Don't go early, don't comply with the law first. The rules might change.' Even a company that wants to do the right thing has to look at its bottom line. If they get into a situation like this, they think: 'We spent $1bn to meet the requirements and our competitors didn't. Yeah, great. We're not going to do that again.'"
Under Bush, the lack of interest at every level has at last come into balance. The US is equally unconcerned globally, federally, statewide and locally. The environmentalists' macro-gloom has been off-beam before, of course. Perhaps global warming is a myth; perhaps the CEI is right and there will be a blue revolution in water use to complement the green revolution. There is probably just as much as chance that the next big surprise will be a thrilling one - the arrival of nuclear cold fusion to solve the energy dilemma, say - as a disaster. Maybe biotechnology, pesticides, natural gas and American ingenuity and optimism will indeed see everything right. It does seem like a curiously reckless gamble for the US to be taking, though, staking the future of the planet on the spin of nature's roulette wheel.
But it is only a bigger version of the bet being taken by the home-buyers of North Carolina. In a country supposedly distrustful of government, the Outer Bankers have remarkable faith in their leaders' ability to see them seem right. Post-Isabel, a group of residents there wrote a letter demanding government action so they can protect their livelihoods and families "without the fear of every hurricane or nor'easter cutting us off from the rest of the world". Quite. Who would imagine that in the 21st century the most powerful empire the world has ever known could still be threatened by enemies as pathetically old-fashioned as wind and tide?
Orrin Pilkey thinks it quite possible that sea levels might rise to the point where the Outer Banks will be a minor detail. "We're not going to be worried about North Carolina. We're going to be worrying about Manhattan." Still, macro-catastrophe may never happen. The micro-catastrophe, however, already has: the US is an aesthetic disaster area.
If you fly from Washington to Boston, there are now almost no open spaces below. This is increasingly true in a big U covering both coasts and the sunbelt. In the south-west, the main growth area, bungalows spread for miles over what a decade ago was virgin desert. The population of Arizona increased 40% in the 1990s, that of next-door Nevada 66%. That's, as Natalie Merchant sang, "...the sprawl that keeps crawling its way, 'bout a thousand miles a day", which is not much of an exaggeration.
Every day 5,000 new houses go up in America. Many of these fit the American appetite for size, however small the plot: "McMansions", as they are known. The very word suburb is now old-hat. The reality of life for many people now is the "exurb", which can be dozens of miles from the city on which it depends. In places such as California, exurban life is the only affordable option for most young couples and recent migrants.
These communities are rarely gated but often walled, creating a vague illusion of security and ensuring that the residents have to drive to a shop, even if there happens to be one 50 yards away. Naturally, they have to drive everywhere else. In August it was announced that the number of cars in the US (1.9 per household) now actually exceeded the number of drivers (1.75).
In many places - especially those growing the fastest - developers have to deal only with the little councils in the towns they are taking over. There are often minimal requirements to provide any kind of infrastructure, such as sewage or schools, to service these new communities. The rules for building houses in the computer game Sim City are stricter than those that apply in most areas of the Sun Belt. Too late, some parts of the country have concluded that this is untenable. The buzz-phrase is "smart growth", which means no more than the kind of forethought before building that has been routine in Europe for half a century. Even the Environmental Protection Agency is not above being helpful: its policies for making use of brownfield sites have seen people moving, improbably, back into the centre of cities such as Pittsburgh.
But where it matters, no one is talking strategy. "In the really fast-growing states, the pace of development is such that they can build huge numbers of houses without anyone considering what it means for the infrastructure," says Marya Morris of the American Planning Association. In California, more than perhaps any other state, there is a debate. But while people talk, developers act: a city catering for up to 70,000 people will soon arise at the foot of the Tehachapi Mountains. According to the Los Angeles Times, it would effectively close the gap between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, theoretically 111 miles away. "Southern California is coming over the hill," said one resident.
Americans still have a presumption of infinite space. But I have made a curious and mildly embarrassing discovery. In states such as Maryland and Ohio, the pattern of settlement in supposedly rural areas is such that it can actually be quite difficult to find a discreet spot away from housing to stop the car and have a pee. Amid the wide-open spaces of Texas, it can be worse: the gap between Dallas and Waco is a 100-mile strip mall. The concepts of townscape and landscape seem non-existent: there is land that has been developed and land that hasn't - yet.
And yet. Time and again, around the US, one is struck by the stunning beauty of the landscape, not in the obvious places, but in corners that few Americans will have heard of: amazing rivers such as the Pearl in Louisiana, or the Choptank in Maryland or the Lost River in West Virginia; the Chocolate Mountains and the San Diego back country in California; the bits that are left of the Outer Banks...
And equally one is struck by the sheer horrendousness of what man has done in the century or so since he seriously got to work over here. In the context of ages, the white man is merely a hotel guest in this continent: he has smashed the furniture and smeared excrement on the walls. He appears to be looking forward to his next night's stay with relish.
Of course, there are still huge tracts of untouched and largely unpopulated land: in the Great Plains, where people are leaving, in the mountains, deserts and Arctic tundra. But last spring, in another of Washington's Friday night announcements, the Department of the Interior announced - no, whispered - that it was removing more than 200m acres that it owned from "further wilderness study", enabling those areas to be opened for mining, drilling, logging or road-building. That's an area three times the size of Britain. The New York Times did write a trenchant editorial; otherwise the response was minimal.
Not long ago I went for a walk in the Vallecito Mountains in California. After a while, I got myself into a position where the contours of the land blotted out everything and, after the noise of a plane had died away, there was no sight or sound at all that was not produced by nature. This lasted about a minute. Then, from somewhere, a motorcycle roared into earshot.
Sure, there are still places in this vast country where it is possible to escape, but they get harder and harder to find except for the fit, the adventurous and those unencumbered by children or jobs. Most Americans don't live that way. And nowhere now is entirely safe from being ravaged, sometimes in ways that prejudice the future of the whole planet. Al-Qaida and the Iraqi bombers have no need to bother. America is destroying itself."
Bush's Neo-Con Court Jesters in Media Underreport Wounded in Iraq
Bush's neo-con court jesters in the right-winged media are underreporting the number of wounded in Iraq. Bush has asked Condi (Mother Hen) Rice to work with Veep (Anal-Retentive) Cheney and Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) to make-over their neo-propaganda campaign designed to continue their corrupt regime's tradition of lies, deceit, and outright falsehoods ... Why change a winning formula???
Firstly, the neo-hitlerian regime uses nazi tactics to refuse media permission to cover the deaths of our soldiers: [ http://www.alternet.org ]
[b]Bush bans coverage of dead soldiers[/b]
"As if it isn't scandalous enough that president Bush has not attended a single memorial or funeral for soldiers killed in Iraq, his administration has banned all media coverage and photography of the returning remains of dead soldiers. The directive was issued in March, on the eve of the Iraq war.
While the Pentagon has been quick to point out that the policy was instituted by Clinton toward the end of his second term, the fact remains that it was never enforced until this year."
"When newspapers reported this week on poor medical and living conditions for Americans injured in Iraq, it might have come as a shock for some readers. For months, the press has barely mentioned non-fatal casualties or the severity of their wounds.
E&P reported in July that while deaths in combat are often tallied by newspapers, the many non-combat troop deaths in Iraq are virtually ignored. It turns out that newspaper readers have also been shortchanged in getting a sense of the number of troops injured, in and out of battle.
"There could be some inattention to [the number of injured troops]," said Philip Bennett, Washington Post assistant managing editor of the foreign desk. "And obviously if there is, it should be corrected. Soldiers getting wounded is part of the reality of conflict on the ground. I think if you were to find or discover that those figures are being overlooked, that would be something we'd want to correct."
Few newspapers routinely report injuries in Iraq, beyond references to specific incidents. Since the war began in March, 1,927 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, many quite severely. (The tally is current as of Oct. 20.) Of this number, 1,590 were wounded in hostile action, and 337 from other causes. About 20% of the injured in Iraq have suffered severe brain injuries, and as many as 70% "had the potential for resulting in brain injury," according to an Oct. 16 article in The Boston Globe.
Current injury statistics were easily obtained by E&P through U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon, so getting the numbers is no longer a problem. According to Lawrence F. Kaplan, author of an article on injured troops in the Oct. 13 issue of The New Republic, this information has only recently been readily accessible. "Pentagon officials have rebuked public affairs officers who release casualty figures, and, until recently, U.S. Central Command did not regularly publicize the injured tally either," Kaplan wrote.
The difference between "hostile" and other injuries, according to Army spokesman Maj. Steven Stover at the Pentagon, is that "one is gonna get you a Purple Heart, and one's not. One's for wounds inflicted by the enemy. It could be any type of injury inflicted by someone who intends you harm."
A United Press International investigation, published Oct. 20, revealed that many wounded veterans from Iraq, under care at places such as the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia, must wait "weeks and months for proper medical help" and are being kept in living conditions that are "unacceptable for sick and injured soldiers." One officer was quoted as saying, "They're being treated like dogs." The Army has said it is attempting to remedy the situation.
In The New Republic, Kaplan reported on the state of many injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. According to Kaplan, modern medicine and rapid response techniques allow many wounded soldiers to survive injuries that would have killed them in previous wars. Many of these wounded soldiers are left with debilitating injury or loss of limb. Newspapers that only track hostile combat deaths fail to capture the human toll of thousands of troops left injured and crippled, he wrote.
"The near-invisibility of the wounded has several sources," Kaplan wrote. "The media has always treated combat deaths as the most reliable measure of battlefield progress, while for its part the administration has been reluctant to divulge the full number of wounded."
Even now, when the injury information is easily available, many newspapers neglect to report or keep a tally, as an informal survey of some top papers has shown. This comes on the heels of reports Wednesday that attacks on American troops in Iraq had increased in recent weeks from an average of 15 to 20 attacks per day to about 20 to 25 attacks a day, with a peak at about 35 attacks in one day, according to the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
According to an Oct. 3 report by UPI, nearly 4,000 soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for non-combat reasons.
As for the tally of total deaths in Iraq, most of the media continues to only cite those killed in hostile action. On Oct. 20, for example, The New York Times reported: "Since President Bush declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq on May 1, 106 American soldiers have been killed." But this number represents only those killed in combat by hostile fire. A total of 200 American troops have been killed in this time period from all causes, such as vehicle accidents, drowning, and suicides, a figure that is rarely mentioned in the press."
[b]This neo-fascist censorship is hardly surprising coming from the Bush Regime, who trample on the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, and treat the American People, and the entire World Community, with contempt.[/b]
European Nations Care About Investment in Public Education for All & Out-Perform the U.S.A.
The European Union takes better care of their citizens that we do in the United States of America. The U.S.A. is the richest country in the world, but tragically more of our wealth is concentrated in the hands of the minority of our ruling oligarchy including rich robber-barons and corporate thieves, who under Bush simply choose not to pay their fair share in taxes. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
The consequences are devastating both for our health (the Europeans live longer and support National Health Care, which they would never replace with our callous corrupt system benefiting corporate crooks-- and leaving over 45 million of us behind), and furthermore, their educational system is superior to our own. Our people have the same inherent qualities and capabilites as the Europeans, but our corrupt "corporate-take-all" regimes deny us the services and support needed to ensure a healthy, well-educated and informed population: [i]All the better to rule you with[/i], says Karl (Bush's Brain) Rove ... and the neo-con goons who will transform us into a 3rd world country in order to maintain their ill-gotten riches and supremacy.
An example of the [b]investment in education[/b], compare the following nations, funding for education (public & private) as a percentage of the total government expenditure:
United States of America 14.4% Switzerland 15.4% France 10.9% United Kingdom 11.6%
In the U.S.A. our expenditure is inflated due to higher costs of private education and bloated administrative and overhead costs that surpass other nations, who maintain a lower class size per teacher ratio, than in the U.S.A. We should target between 15-20 students per teacher (and not include the principal, vice-principal, counselors and others in administration-- not in the classroom, in the calculation).
Compare our respective [b]GDP (gross domestic product) per capita[/b]:
United States of America $34,142 Switzerland $28,769 France $24,223 United Kingdom $23,509
The U.S.A. has the highest GDP per capita by far, than any other country in the world, and yet the inequity in our investment between the rich and the poor is outrageous-- far less is invested in education for the lower-income and middle-class than other nations. We could do more to provide a better educational opportunity for all. Instead, our nation's treasure is being swindled by the corporate rapists and robber-barons.
The performance of our students who must struggle to learn in sub-standard and appalling conditions (unless they're the off-spring of the rich who can afford to attend schools in wealthy districts or private institutions), is simply not good enough to prepare them for good jobs and to be knowledgable citizens.
Compare the [b]performance[/b] of citizens from the U.S.A. and these same indicative European nations:
Youth reading literacy rates (15 years old):
United States of America 82.1% Switzerland 79.6% France 84.8% United Kingdom 87.1%
Youth mathematical literacy rates (15 years old): Score in 25th to 95th percentile:
United States of America 2261 Switzerland 2402 France 2323 United Kingdom 2384
Our nation has become a country of greedy and foolhardy people, and we face devolving into a 3rd world country. It is time to take our nation back, and demand progressive taxation that is right and proper to ensure that all citizens have opportunities and basic services.
Bill Gates Sr and Warren Buffet have called for progressive taxation, because they believe that those who have benefited from all that this nation offers (e.g. police, military, system of laws, sewer systems, garbage collection, education, health care?, etc.) have an obligation to contribute to improve the society. "No man is an island" ... no man "makes it on his own" ... a man is part of a society that either deprives him of opportunity (e.g. 3rd world countries) or lifts him up (e.g. European Union)!
Please contact our Congress on http://www.congress.org , and demand that Bush's insane tax cuts, tax loopholes, and boondoggles for the rich and corporations (legalized embezzlement), be repealed. Please demand that Congress revisit our national program for education and provide the funding needed with reforms to reduce class sizes and improve the infrastructure for teachers and students. Our citizens deserve the highest quality education for all (as it was in the 1950s and 1960s) ... to deliver upon the promise of life, liberty and happiness for all ... and not only the rich and powerful oligarchy.
The EU is embarking upon a brand new military strategy to build-up their forces (independent of NATO), in defiance of the Bushies' hope to keep them "under-their-thumb" ... So are Russia and China ... Naturally, like India, North Korea and Iran want to obtain nukes ASAP, in order to counter Mad-Dog Dubya's insane neo-con "pre-emptive" doctrine!
It is tragic for our world to witness a neo-arms race in the aftermath of the Mad King George's illegal and immoral incursion into another country (Iraq) in order to enrich his corrupt war-profiteers, blood-thirsty robber-barons, and gluttonous cronies-- but what do you expect? Other nations have always pursued the acquisition of arms, but this new sense-of-urgency is in response to the world's revulsion at the neo-con's hitlerian-style aggression. The Bush Regime's contempt for international law and other nations has indeed given rise to a faster and more threatening neo-arms race.
Instead of joining forces in new projects to aide humanity and eliminate hunger, fight disease and raise the fortunes of all human beings-- Dubya has terrified the rest of the world, who see him for the neo-hitlerian thug that he is ... Perhaps, this new arms race, and a balance of power between nations is ultimately better (though an enlightened vision for the world would be better-- but alas, Dubya is too dim-witted, greedy & power-hungry to think deeper than his cronies' fat bank accounts). Dubya has proved that neo-tyrants can highjack democracies, abuse and rape other countries.
Sadly, I don't blame them all for defending themselves. Wouldn't you?
(3) "Russia opens first military base abroad - The Kyrgyzstan airbase is seen as a response to US military presence in the strategic former Soviet Central Asia" on http://straitstimes.asia1.com...,4386,216302,00.html
Dubya smirks the most imbecilic screed, largely consumed without thinking by the neo-con attack-dogs and brain-dead sheep, here in America. But overseas, where their federally funded educational systems are superior to ours, citizens in Europe, Canada and Australia (the Commonwealth), are actually taught history, civics, literature-- oh ... and how to think!
Yesterday, Dubya gave his imperial-style "address", refusing to meet for the customary press-conference, standard in state visits-- where both the foreign and visiting leaders answer a few questions from the local press. Dubya can't think on his feet-- and his press conferences are such an embarrassment, that Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) is cancelling all press conferences (that aren't staged with neo-con court-jesters from the right-winged media asking prepared & vetted questions), to avoid adding to the long, long list of idiotic mis-statements, i.e. "Bushisms". [Source: "No chance for media to grill Bush" on http://www.theage.com.au/arti... : "Australian officials had pushed strongly for a news conference to be included in the pair's schedule this afternoon, but were overruled by the White House."]
During his neo-hitlerian propaganda "address", Bush was heckled and jeered by the Australian Members of Paliament, unused to pandering like our "rubber-stamp" Congress to a neo-Emperor with No Clothes.
"President George W. Bush was heckled on Thursday in the Australian parliament and responded to his rare encounter with dissent by declaring: "I love free speech."
For a president who typically speaks to controlled crowds of Republican supporters at home and is shielded abroad from protesters who tend to be kept a safe distance from the motorcade, the two Green party members of parliament who stood up and barracked Mr Bush made for one of the president's very few head-on confrontations with public criticism.
As well as the separate interruptions by Bob Brown, a Green party senator from Tasmania, and Kerry Nettle, a fellow Green from New South Wales, a third member of parliament presented Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, with a petition by 41 MPs protesting the war in Iraq. Outside the parliament building there was a crowd of demonstrators, which the Australian police estimated numbered 5,000.
Mr Bush paused mid-speech and smiled at the first barrage of criticism from Mr Brown. When Ms Nettle intervened, he opened his arms to the assembly and said he loved free speech. The chamber erupted in applause.
Speaking on the phone after his interruption, Mr Brown said: "Bush's reaction was far more savvy than the howling members of the government party."
Mr Brown had stood up in parliament and said: "Mr Bush ... Respect the world's laws and the world will respect you." Mr Brown also called for the release of two Australians detained at the US military camp in Guantanamo Bay.
As punishment for their outbursts, Mr Brown and Ms Nettle were expelled from the chamber for 24 hours by the speaker, Mr Brown said, adding this would mean Chinese president Hu Jintao would be spared the kind of barracking Mr Bush faced when the Chinese president addresses the Australian parliament on Friday.
Liberty was Mr Bush's theme in an address which embroidered on the standard call to action against terrorists with an argument for the spread of democracy across the Middle East and the rest of the world.
"Freedom has always had skeptics," Mr Bush said, noting that some doubted Japan, Germany and other countries could adopt self-government. "At the time of the Magna Carta, the English were not considered the most promising recuits for democracy," Mr Bush said, raising a chuckle in parliament. "Sophisticated observers had serious reservations about the scruffy travelers who founded our two countries."
But Mr Bush's point was to make an unapologetic case for US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan as an agent for democratic change. "We must decide our own belief. Either freedom is the privilege of an elite few or it is the right and capacity of all humanity," Mr Bush said to members of parliament who had been deeply divided about Australia's support for the US-led war in Iraq.
Mr Bush also reaffirmed his commitment to creating a US-Australian free-trade area, setting a deadline of the end of the year. "What I'm committed to is seeing that we can get this free trade agreement done by the end of December," he said following a meeting with prime minister John Howard in Parliament House.
The US president's commitment to free speech was, in fact, tested on his 20-hour stop in Australia by the competitive pressures caused by the concurrent visit from Hu Jintao, the Chinese president.
Mr Hu had planned a joint press conference with Mr Howard on Friday, following his speech to the Australian parliament. Until Thursday, Mr Bush was not scheduled to take any questions from the press, but the White House squeezed in a couple of questions between the president's meeting with the prime minister and his parliamentary address.
Mr Bush said the US and Australia were discussing the treatment of two Australians held at the US military camp in Guantanamo Bay as captives in the war on terrorism. The allegations of torture are "ridiculous, utterly ridiculous," he said.
Both Mr Brown and Mr Nettle, the president's hecklers in parliament, were wearing badges showing pictures of the two Australian detainees.
Mr Bush also tried to explain his description of Australia as a "sheriff" when asked before he left Washington whether he considered the country a "deputy sheriff" - a term with a loaded political history in Australia and across the Asia-Pacific. Mr Bush explained that what he meant was that the US and Australia were "equal partners."
In his speech, he repeated his description of Mr Howard as a "man of steel," saying that phrase was "Texan for 'fair dinkum'." Australians in the press gallery suggested something had been lost in translation."
Such idiocies as "I love free speech" ... except when the media has to be "filtered" by Bush for reporting the truth about the outrageous bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq, or except when whistle-blowers loyal to the United States, instead of the imperial Bush Regime, must be severely punished! Or another classic Bush smirk "Aren't we better off without Saddam Hussein?" (since they can't find the WMDs posing an imminent threat!) ... yes, Dubya, and we'll be better off without you too!
Dubya Should Provide His AWOL Refuge to US Soldiers Who Missed Flights Back to Iraq
Over 30 US Soldiers have missed their flights to return back to Iraq. I don't blame them ... these poor slobs are asked to risk their lives or be maimed for life, by the corrupt Bush Regime of cowardly "arm-chair" chicken-hawks, none of whom served or did their duty, when it was their turn. Moreover, why should our men and women return to Iraq, which was ruthlessly invaded by the U.S.A., based upon a pack of lies? No one should die to enrich the traitorous Bushies' greedy war-profiteers Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Shell Oil, etc. in order to fulfill the ghoulish fantasies of the neo-con, neo-fascist Project for the New American Century (PNAC) groupies.
Perhaps, Dubya can provide refuge (in Florida?) to these soldiers, at his hide-a-way site, where he was AWOL in a druken stupor, instead of showing-up at his champagne brigade unit (a treasonous unit that was set-up for the rich ne'er-do-well's spoiled off-spring, to avoid service, far, far away from any danger ...). There was a time that Dubya's desertion would be considered a shameful act of treason. Now, Bushy-boy can't condemn these US Soldiers' flight, when he did worse ... or can he? ... Bushy-boy and his gang of thugs are not only liars, but hypocritical goons, and since most Americans seem to lap-up their lies & propaganda from the neo-fascist Fox News cheer-leaders-- who knows what bull-sh*t we'll be fed by the blood-thirsty Bush Regime.
Why don't the Bushies, their rich campaign contributors, and their war-profiteers & corporate robber-barons, all send their own kids to Iraq? Aren't they supposed to be patriotic? Yup ... blah ... blah ... blah ... patriotic? ... Ha Ha Ha!
Source: "Soldiers Miss Flights Back to Iraq - Few of More Than 30 Absent Troops Offer Explanation" on http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
"More than 30 soldiers who came home from Iraq for two weeks of leave have failed to show up for their flights back to the combat zone, military officials said yesterday.
The soldiers, among more than 1,300 troops so far in the first large-scale home leave program since Vietnam, have yet to be declared absent without leave -- a violation of military law, said Army Col. Paris Mack, the Pentagon official overseeing the program.
A week after return flights began, 28 soldiers had not made it to Baltimore-Washington International Airport for the journey back to Iraq, said Air Force Maj. Mike Escudie, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa. Six others did not make yesterday evening's flight out of BWI for unknown reasons, said Lt. Col. Robert Hagen, an Army spokesman.
Escudie said "a small number" have been granted emergency extensions by military commanders because of extenuating circumstances, including deaths in the family. Military officials could not say how many presented valid reasons or how many others had failed to contact authorities.
"Many of them are understandable due to illnesses or canceled airline flights," Escudie said. One soldier was unable to board his flight to BWI because he lost his wallet, while another had a sick baby, Hagen said.
But a military advocacy group cited two cases in which service members called to say they do not want to return to the long and difficult mission in Iraq.
"Ultimately, every one of these cases will be looked into and there will be a determination if there are any mitigating circumstances," said Marine Maj. Pete Mitchell, a Central Command spokesman.
Mack said the soldiers who have missed their flights are "definitely a concern," but she added that the Army had anticipated that some soldiers would not return, and that the numbers thus far are small.
"If you put it into the context of the 1,200-plus who have returned, it's not a large number," Escudie said.
Mack said no consideration is being given to curtailing or canceling the leave program because of the absent soldiers. "The program is going very well," she said.
A survey of 1,935 soldiers in Iraq published last week by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes found that 49 percent rated morale in their unit as low or very low.
Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center in Silver Spring, said the absences demonstrate that "there is a morale problem." Robinson said he had been contacted by two soldiers home on leave who do not want to return to their units
One of the soldiers, a National Guardsman from Florida, missed his scheduled flight back to Iraq three days ago, Robinson said. "I told him he needs to get his [rear end] back to Iraq," Robinson said.
"I definitely don't want to go back there," the guardsman told a reporter for CBS News. "I think most people -- if not all people who are there -- don't want to be there."
The soldier did not return a message left on his cell phone yesterday. "He's on the run," Robinson said.
Soldiers failing to return from leave on schedule is an old story for the military, but nonetheless potentially a significant problem for commanders. Soldiers could face demotion or jail time for the offense.
"We had the same problem in Vietnam," said retired Marine officer Gary Solis, who commanded a company in Vietnam and later wrote a history on military law during that war.
Solis, of Alexandria, said the combination of "Australian women and Australian beer" kept several of his Marines from returning from leave on time.
The leave program from Iraq, which unlike in Vietnam is bringing soldiers home to the continental United States to reunite with their families, may make it even more difficult for soldiers to return, Solis said.
"It's a lonely thing to do, but then that's the soldier's duty," he said."
No British Parade for Bush as Blair is Urged to Distance Himself from Corruption
There will be no parade for Bush next month during his state visit to Great Britain. British Prime Minister is being urged to keep his distance from the corrupt Bush Regime who is responsible for his dramatic downward slide in the polls. [Source: "Blair loyalists urge PM to distance himself from Bush and right wing" by Andrew Grice on http://www.aljazeerah.info/Ne...%20archives/2003%20News%2 0archives/September/29%20 n/Blair%20loyalists%20urg e%20PM%20to%20distance%20 himself%20from%20Bush%20a nd%20right%20wing.htm : In a warning shot from inside the Cabinet, Peter Hain urges Mr Blair not to support American neo-Conservatives in future conflicts and makes a coded attack on President Bush for his "axis of evil" speech. -[i] Excerpt[/i]]
The White House is angry and upset because they saw another opportunity for a foolishly bombastic photo-op, with Bush riding side-by-side with the Queen through the Mall-- but even the British MI5 & MI6 cannot ensure the security needed to protect the bumbling and unpopular Bush in a country whose population sees him for the liar, and "corporate-take-all" warmonger that the Emperor (Bush) with No Clothes really is!
"Plans for the Queen and George W Bush to make a triumphant procession along the Mall during the president's state visit next month have been abandoned because of fears of anti-war protests.
The decision, taken by Downing Street after consultations with Buckingham Palace, the White House and Scotland Yard, has disappointed the president and his senior aides.
The procession is traditionally the public high point of a state visit. A senior Palace official said yesterday that detailed plans had been made. "But Downing Street, anxious about possible anti-war protests from the start, has now decided to pull the plug on it," said the official.
"We are liaising with the White House and they have made no attempt to hide their disappointment. They saw it, obviously, as a great photo opportunity."
President Bush's trip is the first full state visit of an American president since the Queen came to the throne 52 years ago. He will travel by helicopter to avoid protesters who line road routes. Other proposed events have also been curtailed or cancelled, and he will not address Parliament because of fears of a boycott by MPs.
With anti-war campaigners, including militant Muslims, determined to make a protest during the visit, Downing Street has decided to stage photo events that they can control. The President and the Queen are expected to be photographed together during tea at Buckingham Palace and inspecting the guard."
Bush Spin-Meisters Skew Poll Results to Mislead American Public
The Bushies are known for their gross exaggerations, outrights lies, deceptions and falsehoods. The three stooges: Cheney, Rove & Rice are all spin-meisters who twist information in order to fabricate propaganda to mislead the American public. [It doesn't work elsewhere in the world, where the Bush Regime's reputation for lying it well understood ... and their rhetorical screed is carefully scrutinized!]
James J. Zogby reports on the Veep Cheney's recent [i]double-speak[/i], purposely skewing poll results, in "US bends statistical data on Iraqi surveys" on http://www.aljazeerah.info/Op...%20editorials/2003%20Opin ion%20Editorials/October/ 20%20o/US%20bends%20stati stical%20data%20on%20Iraq i%20surveys%20James%20J.%20Zogby.htm :
"Early in President Bush's recent public relations campaign to rebuild support for the US war effort in Iraq, Vice-President Cheney appeared on "Meet the Press." Attempting to make the case that the US was winning in Iraq, Cheney made the following observation:
There was a poll done, just random in the last week, first one I've seen carefully done; admittedly, it's a difficult area to poll in. Zogby International did it with American Enterprise magazine. But that's got very positive news in it in terms of the numbers it shows with respect to the attitudes to what Americans have done.
One of the questions it asked is: "If you could have any model for the kind of government you'd like to have" - and they were given five choices - "which would it be?" The US wins hands down. If you want to ask them do they want an Islamic government established, by 2:1 margins they say no, including the Shia population.
If you ask how long they want Americans to stay, over 60 per cent of the people polled said they want the US to stay for at least another year.
Problems exist
So admittedly there are problems, especially in that area where Saddam Hussein was from, where people have benefited most from his regime and who've got the most to lose if we're successful in our enterprise, and continuing attacks from terror.
But to suggest somehow that that's representative of the country at large or the Iraqi people are opposed to what we've done in Iraq or are actively and aggressively trying to undermine it, I just think that's not true. In fact, Zogby International, ZI, in Iraq had conducted the poll, and the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, did publish their interpretation of the findings.
But the AEI's "spin" and the Vice-President's use of their "spin" created a faulty impression of the poll's results and, therefore, of the attitudes of the Iraqi people.
For example, while Cheney noted that when asked what kind of government they would like, Iraqis chose "the US … hands down," in fact, the results of the poll are actually quite different.
Twenty-three per cent of Iraqis say that they would like to model their new government after the US; 17.5 per cent would like their model to be Saudi Arabia; 12 per cent say Syria, 7 per cent say Egypt and 37 per cent say "none of the above." That's hardly "winning hands down."
When given the choice as to whether they "would like to see the American and British forces leave Iraq in six months, one year, or two years," 31.5 per cent of Iraqis say these forces should leave in six months; 34 per cent say a year, and only 25 per cent say two or more years.
So while technically Cheney might say that "over 60 per cent (actually it's 59 per cent) … want the US to stay at least another year," an equally correct observation would be that 65.5 per cent want the US and Britain to leave in one year or less.
Other numbers found in the poll go further to dampen the vice-president's and the AEI's rosy interpretations. For example, when asked if "democracy can work well in Iraq," 51 per cent said "no; it is a Western way of doing things and will not work here."
And attitudes toward the US were not positive. When asked whether over the next five years, they felt that the "US would help or hurt Iraq," 50 per cent said that the US would hurt Iraq, while only 35.5 per cent felt the US would help the country. On the other hand, 61 per cent of Iraqis felt that Saudi Arabia would help Iraq in the next five years, as opposed to only 7.5 per cent, who felt Saudi Arabia would hurt their country.
50.5 per cent felt that the United Nations would help Iraq, while 18.5 per cent felt it would hurt. Iran's rating was very close to the US's, with 53.5 per cent of Iraqis saying Iran would hurt them in the next five years, while only 21.5 per cent felt that Iran might help them.
It is disturbing that the AEI and the vice-president could get it so wrong. Their misuse of the polling numbers to make the point that they wanted to make, resembles the way critics have noted that the Administration used "intelligence data" to make their case to justify the war.
The danger, of course, is that painting a rosy picture that doesn't exist is a recipe for a failed policy. Wishing something to be can't make it so.
At some point, reality intervenes. It's a hard lesson to learn, but it is dangerous to ignore its importance.
For the Administration to continue to tell itself and the American people that "all is well," only means that needed changes in policy will not be made.
Consider some of the other poll findings:
Over 55 per cent give a negative rating to "how the US military is dealing with Iraqi civilians. Only 20 per cent gave the US military a positive rating.
By a margin of 57 per cent to 38.5 per cent, Iraqis indicate that they would support "Arab forces" providing security in their country.
Ba'ath loyalists
When asked how they would describe the attacks on the US military, 49 per cent described them as "resistance operations." Only 29 per cent saw them as attacks by "Ba'ath loyalists."
When asked whom they preferred to "provide security and restore order in their country, only 6.5 per cent said the US, 27 per cent said the US and the UN together. While 14.5 per cent preferred only the UN and the largest group, 45 per cent, said they would prefer the "Iraqi military" to do the job alone.
There are important lessons in all of this. Lessons policy makers ought to heed if they are to help Iraq move forward. What the Iraqi people appear to be telling us is that they have hope for the future, but they want the help of their neighbours more than that of the US. That may not be what Washington wants to hear, but it ought to listen nevertheless.
Because if policy makers continue to bend the data to meet their desired policy, then this hole they are digging will only get deeper."
The writer, president of the Arab American Institute and a Democratic political lobbyist, hosts the weekly radio and television programme 'A Capital View' on the Arab Network of America which is also aired live in the Middle East on MBC. He also writes a weekly column that appears regularly in Gulf News. He can be contacted at jzogby@gulfnews.com
The Bush Regime has a track-record for influencing their Republican Congressmen to vote in support of their agenda, using strong-arm tactics including coercion, bribes, and other neo-fascist forms of punishment:
[b]Rhetoric[/b]
“Our whole nation has been reminded that we can never take our military for granted. I will keep our military strong… America counts on the men and women who have stepped forward as volunteers in the cause of freedom. I want to thank you all for your good service. Thank you for the credit and honor you bring to our country every day.”
By a recorded vote of 213 ayes to 213 noes http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bi... the House rejected an amendment to increase the basic rate of pay to all military services by $265 million - the amount needed to provide a $1,500 bonus to each person serving in operations in Iraq or Afghanistan for FY 2004. The $265 million is roughly equal to what many suspect Halliburton is overcharging the U.S. government in Iraq.
Newly unclassified documents demonstrate that Prescott Bush (Baby Bush 43's grand-daddy) was a traitor who collaborated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, while we were at war with that blood-thirsty regime. The history of the Bush family shows a greedy, all-for-me, group of thugs, willing to betray their country and massacre thousands to enrich themselves and their corrupt cronies. Bushy-boy 43 has massacred thousands of innocents in Iraq to enrich his corporate war-profiteers and cronies, and making millions for his poisonous family in the bargain.
In "Newly Unclassified US Documents: Bush Ancestor's Bank Seized by Gov't" by Jonathan D. Salant on http://www.commondreams.org/h... :
"WASHINGTON - President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism ...
Reports of Bush's involvement with the seized bank have been circulating on the Internet for years and have been reported by some mainstream media. The newly declassified documents provide additional details about the Union Banking-Thyssen connection.
No charges were brought against Union Banking's American directors. The federal government was too busy trying to fight the war, said Donald Goldstein, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh." - [i]Excerpt[/i]
"George W. Bush's grandfather helped finance the Nazi Party. Karl Rove's grandfather allegedly helped run the Nazi Party, and helped build the Birkenau Death Camp. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian father volunteered for the infamous Nazi SA and became a ranking officer.
Together, they have destabilized California and are on the brink of bringing it a new Reich. With the Schwarzenegger candidacy they have laid siege to America's largest state, lining it up for the 2004 election.
The Bush family ties to the Nazi party are well known. In their 1994 Secret War Against the Jews, Mark Aarons and John Loftus use official US documents to establish that George Herbert Walker, George W. Bush's maternal great-grandfather, was one of Hitler's most important early backers. He funneled money to the rising young fascist through the Union Banking Corporation.
In 1926, Walker arranged to have his new son-in-law, Prescott Bush---father of President George Bush I, grandfather of George Bush II---hired as Vice President at W.A. Harriman and Company. Prescott became a senior partner when Harriman merged with a British-American investment company to become Brown Brothers Harriman. In 1934 Prescott Bush joined the Board of Directors of Union Banking.
The bank helped Hitler rise to power. It also helped him wage war. As late as July 31, 1941---well after the Nazi invasion of Poland---the U.S. government froze $3 million in Union Banking assets linked to Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen was noted in the American press as a "German industrialist and original backer of Adolph Hitler."
Loftus writes that Thyssen's "American friends in New York Cityâ¤|[were] Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker, the father and father-in-law of a future President of the United States." That would be the current president's father, George Herbert Walker Bush, also the former CIA director.
On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi Germany's banking operations in New York City, which were under the direction of Prescott Bush. The government seized control of Union Banking Corporation under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The liquidation yielded a reported $750,000 apiece for Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker. The book, The Splendid Blonde Beast: Money, Law and Genocide, goes into exhaustive detail on Bush-Harriman Nazi money laundering. More recently, Michael Kranish covers the same Bush-Nazi relationships in The Rise of the Bush Family Dynasty published in the Boston Globe. Loftus documents that "Prescott Bush knowingly served as a money launderer for the Nazis. Remember that Union Bank's books and accounts were frozen by the U.S. Alien Property Custodian in 1942 and not released back to the Bush family until 1951."
Often ignored are the Bush family's post-World War II dealings with former Nazis. John Foster Dulles, who had worked with the Bush family in the Harriman Company in laundering money for Nazi Germany, was Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State. His brother Allen became CIA director.
As Martin Lee documents in The Beast Reawakens, American intelligence recruited numerous top Nazis to spy on the Soviets during the Cold War. Many established connections to the Bush family that had helped finance their original rise to power. In 1988 Project Censored, in its top award, noted "how the major mass media ignored, overlooked or undercovered at least ten critical stories reported in America's alternative press that raised serious questions about the Republican candidate, George Bush, dating from his reported role as a CIA 'asset' in 1963 to his presidential campaign's connection with a network of anti-Semites with Nazi and fascist affiliations in 1988." Investigative reporter Russ Bellant established ties between the Republican Party and former Axis Nazis and fascists.
In 2000 and 2001 the Columbus Alive published a series of articles documenting further links between Bush, Sr. and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his own fascist networks in Japan and Korea.
Karl Rove has parallel ties. The shadowy Rove serves as "Bush's Brain" in the current White House. He is the political mastermind behind the California coup, and is now in the headlines for outing Valerie Plame, the CIA wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. A consummate strategist, Rove may have outed Plame in retaliation for Wilson's failure to back up the Bush claim that Saddam Hussein was buying nuclear weapons materials in Africa. According to some published reports, as many as seventy CIA operatives have been put at risk by Rove's retaliatory strike.
According to Wilson, and to Retired U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Al Martin (www.almartinraw.com), Rove's grandfather was Karl Heinz Roverer, the Gauleiter of Oldenburg. Roverer was Reich-Statthalter---Nazi State Party Chairman---for his region. He was also a partner and senior engineer in the Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurburo A. G. engineering firm, which built the Birkenau death camp, at which tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, dissidents and other were slaughtered en masse.
Rove, who has been based in Utah and associated with the Mormon Church, is widely viewed as the chief engineer of the current Bush administration. He and Tom DeLay are attempting to force the Texas legislature to redistrict its Congressional delegations, adding seven sure seats to the Republican column. By controlling the state houses in New York, Florida, Texas and California, the GOP would have a lock on the four largest states in the union, and thus the ability to manipulate vote counts and strip voter registration rolls in the run-up to the 2004 election.
Rove is a prime behind-the-scenes mover in the Schwarzenegger campaign. On May 1, 1939, a year after the Nazis took control of Schwarzenegger's native Austria, his father Gustav, voluntarily joined Hilter's infamous Strumabteilung (SA), "brown shirt" stormtroopers. This was just six months after the brown shirts played a key role in the bloody Kristallnacht attacks on Germany's Jewish community.
The Vienna daily Der Standard noted recently that "Gustav, a high-ranking Nazi, brought up the bespectacled, rather frail boy with an iron fist and quite a few slaps in the face." Arnold's father favored a Hitler-style mustache in photos.
On October 3, ABC News broke the story of Schwarzenegger's 1977 interview in which he was asked whom he admired. Schwarzenegger replied, "I admire Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."
To cover himself, Schwarzenegger has made substantial donations to the Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center, which tracks down ex-Nazis. Arnold has also renounced Hitler.
But he has not renounced his friendship with fellow Austrian Kurt Waldheim, the one-time head of the United Nations with known Nazi ties. The book Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography, documents Arnold toasting Waldheim, who had participated in Nazi atrocities during World War II, at his wedding to Maria Shriver. "My friends don't want me to mention Kurt's name, because of all the recent Nazi stuff and the U.N. controversy," Arnold said. "But I love him and Maria does to, and so thank you, Kurt."
On May 17, 2001, Schwarzenegger also met with Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay of Enron at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles. Through the utility deregulation plan signed into law by Pete Wilson, Schwarzenegger's chief advisor, California was destabilized, bankrupting the state government and opening the door for Tuesday's recall election. Lay has been George W. Bush's chief financial backer, and a close associate of Karl Rove's.
According to Bob Woodward's Bush at War, Bush attended a New York Yankees game soon after the September 11 World Trade Center disaster. He wore a fireman's jacket. As he threw out the first pitch, the crowd roared. Thousands of fans stuck out their arms with thumbs up. Karl Rove, sitting in the box of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, likened the roar of the crowd to "a Nazi rally."
He would know."
New Poll Confirms That Majority of Americans Want Universal Health Care for All Citizens
Over 62% of Americans are dissatisfied with the current scandal of the lack of health care for all citizens in the United States of America. America is the only 1st-tier country that denies its' own citizens some form of national health care-- the USA treats its' citizenry like 3rd world dictators who exploit and abuse their populations to enrich their blood-thirsty oligarchy.
Indeed, even Saddam Hussein provided health care for all of his citizens, and recently the Bushies' neo-hitlerian propaganda tour bragged that they had opened many hospitals throughout Iraq and provided all Iraqis health care-- something these neo-fascist hypocrites deny their own citizens.
The Europeans are shocked by the callousness, greed and crazed corruption of American Big Insurance Corporations, Health Care Conglomerates and the Pharmaceutical Robber-barons, who bribe the Bushies and corrupt Congressmen, to keep our citizens from obtaining the health care they need. These right-winged hypocrites claim to "love life", but once "life" is post-womb-- they cry: To Hell With You ... If You're Sick, Tough Sh*t!.
It's time we demand that the Mad King George, and his corrupt regime, including a "corporate-take-all" Republican Congress, make changes to provide over 45 million citizens (now without health care insurance) with the means to obtain health care. The Europeans provide National Health Care, which is an excellent system, and if a European leader proposed replacing their own form of Universal Health Care, with our corrupt "corporate-take-all" shell-game, their peoples would rise-up enmasse and throw-them-out-of-office so fast it would make your head spin!
A new poll confirms that the majority of Americans want Universal Health Care for all of our citizens. In "Poll: Public Supports Health Care for All" on http://www.newsday.com/news/h...,0,5929743.story?coll=sns-ap-health- headlines :
"WASHINGTON -- The public's growing unease with the current health care system has built support for a new approach that would mean care for all Americans and changes in laws governing prescription drugs, a poll suggests.
A sizable majority, 70 percent, said it should be legal for Americans to buy prescription drugs outside the United States, according to the ABC News-Washington Post poll. One in eight respondents said they or someone in their home has done just that. Such purchases can save money but they violate the law.
The poll released Sunday found that more than half of Americans, 54 percent, are dissatisfied with the overall quality of health care in the United States while 44 percent are satisfied. That dissatisfaction is 10 percentage points higher than in 2000 and higher than it has been in the past decade when compared with earlier surveys.
While a solid majority of people tended to be happy with their own quality of health care, the poll found "significant concern with the system more broadly," said ABC pollster Gary Langer, who directed the extensive survey.
Those concerns included worries about future costs, declining coverage and the problems of people who lack insurance.
The poll found that six in 10 people surveyed say they are worried about being able to afford health insurance in the future. More than one in six said they have no insurance. The government says there were 43.6 million uninsured U.S. residents at some point during 2002, accounting for 15.2 percent of the population.
The poll found that 53 percent of those who are insured say they are worried about losing their insurance because of loss of a job. The percentage of those who have health insurance and are satisfied with the cost, 64 percent, has dropped by 9 percentage points since 1997.
By almost a 2-1 margin in this poll, 62 percent to 32 percent, Americans said they preferred a universal system that would provide coverage to everyone under a government program, as opposed to the current employer-based system.
That support drops significantly, however, if universal coverage would mean a limited choice of doctors or longer waits for nonemergency treatment.
When people were asked the question slightly differently in a poll a year ago, they were less enthusiastic. Asked if they wanted a taxpayer-funded, health care system run by the government, fewer than half said yes.
Robert Blendon, a specialist on health care public opinion at Harvard University, said the public's worries about health care have increased this year.
"Health care is really rising as a political issue," Blendon said. "When the economy gets bad and health care costs continue to rise, this becomes an economic issue."
The Democratic presidential candidates are offering various proposals for broadening health care coverage.
President Bush and congressional leaders from both parties have made proposals this year to provide help paying for prescription drugs.
Congress is debating changes in Medicare that would include a prescription drug benefit; lawmakers are divided over the best way to do that.
"I really still feel confident," said Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., who is leading the Medicare talks. "We've never been this close before. And people of good will should not let us fall short," he told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
A proposal to allow Americans to buy prescription drugs from foreign suppliers at a fraction of the U.S. cost passed the House in July over the objection of the White House, some GOP leaders and pharmaceutical companies. Backers of that measure hope the proposal or one like it will be agreed to in current congressional negotiations over changes in Medicare.
"The high cost of prescription drugs ends up being just as harmful as the diseases people are fighting," said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., a co-sponsor of the prescription drug reimportation measure.
Among the poll's other findings:
* Eight in 10 in the poll said it is more important to provide health care coverage for all Americans even if it means higher taxes, than to hold down taxes but leave some people uncovered.
* Almost two-thirds said they think the country is headed toward rationing of health care so that some medical procedures are no longer covered by insurance.
* Almost one-third of those who make less than $20,000 a year were uninsured, compared with 8 percent of those who make more than $50,000 a year.
The poll of 1,000 adults was taken Oct. 9-13 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points."
The Insane Costs of Bloated Spending on the Military Industrial Complex in the U.S.A.!!!
The insane costs of our bloated spending on the military industrial complex in the U.S.A., is very similar to the bankrupt philosophy of the old-U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. collapsed, having ignored the needs of their people and instead attempted to scare the rest of the world by over-spending on their own military industrial complex.
Under the corrupt Bush Regime, we now spend more than all other countries combined in the world, on the military industrial complex-- much of which are exorbitant price-gouging boondoggles, enriching the Bushies' corporate cronies, who rape and swindle Americans out of billions each year to live like Feudal Lords, while the rest of us watch our infrastructure crumbling around us-- protections being destroyed-- lack of adequate health care for over 45 Million-- insufficient funding of education to ensure our youth are prepared for the challenges of the future ... The Bushies are corrupt AND short-sighted.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." was one of the warnings by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on April 16, 1953, against the onslaught of the self-propelling military industrial complex.
To protect oneself & one's family, it is understandable that one may purchase a gun or two ... but amassing hundreds/thousands of guns and starving your kids to do so, isn't smart-- it's paranoid, dangerous and stupid. This is just what Bushy-boy and his regime of thugs are doing on a massive scale. Our countrymen are being starved to enrich the "Defense Industry" ... and we are no safer for doing so ... just poorer while a few get rich on this ghoulish scheme.
"Inside the 'Bowels' of the Pentagon" on http://www.tblog.com/template... , addresses the scandal of our treasure being squandered, as we are scammed in order to funnel massive profits to the so-called "Defense Industry" at the price of programs that would otherwise, improve our citizen's lives ... much as Bush & Rice have criticized Saddam Hussein's regime for doing in Iraq.
"Halliburton, Brown and Root's parent company, is a Fortune 500 construction corporation working primarily for the oil industry. From 1962 to 1972 the Pentagon paid the company tens of millions of dollars to work in South Vietnam, where they built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases from the demilitarized zone to the Mekong Delta. The company was one of the main contractors hired to construct the Diego Garcia air base in the Indian Ocean, according to Pentagon military histories.
In the early 1990s the company was awarded the job to study and then implement the privatization of routine army functions under then-secretary of defense Dick Cheney.
When Cheney quit his Pentagon job, he landed the job of Halliburton's CEO, bringing with him his trusted deputy David Gribbin. The two substantially increased Halliburton's government business until they quit in 2000, once Cheney was elected vice president. This included a $2.2 billion bill for a Brown and Root contract to support US soldiers in Operation Just Endeavor in the Balkans.
After Cheney and Gribbin departed, another confidante of Cheney, Admiral Joe Lopez, former commander in chief for U.S. forces in southern Europe, took over Gribbin's old job of go-between for the government and the company, according to Brown and Root's own press releases.
In 2001 the company took in $13 billion in revenues, according to its latest annual report. Currently, Brown and Root estimates it has $740 million in existing U.S. government contracts (approximately 37 percent of its global business).
For example, in mid November 2001, Brown and Root was paid $2 million to reinforce the U.S. embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under contract with the State Department, according to the New York Times. More recently Brown and Root was paid $16 million by the federal government to go to Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, to build a 408-person prison for captured Taliban fighters, according to Pentagon press releases.
That's by no means all: Brown and Root employees can be found back home running support operations from Fort Knox, Kentucky, to a naval base in El Centro, California, according to company press releases.
In December 2001, Brown and Root secured a 10-year deal named the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), from the Pentagon, which has already been estimated at $830 million.
Jennifer Millerwise, a spokesperson for Cheney's office, denies that there was any contact help from the White House.
"The vice president did not discuss this with anybody from Halliburton or any subsidiary of Halliburton. Nor does he comment on Halliburton's policies, since he doesn't work there any more" she told CorpWatch.
Meanwhile independent agencies are still skeptical about claimed financial savings from contracting out military support operations. According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO), a February 1997 study showed that a Brown and Root operation in Bosnia estimated at $191.6 million when presented to Congress in 1996 had ballooned to $461.5 million a year later. All told this former Yugoslavia contract has now cost the taxpayer $2.2 billion over the last several years.
Examples of overspending by contractors include flying plywood from the United States to the Balkans at $85.98 a sheet and billing the army to pay its employees' income taxes in Hungary.
A subsequent GAO report, issued September 2000, showed that Brown and Root was still taking advantage of the contract in the Balkans. Army commanders were unable to keep track of the contract because they were typically rotated out of camps after a six-month duration, erasing institutional memory, according to the report.
The GAO painted a picture of Brown and Root contract employees sitting idly most of the time. The report also noted that a lot of staff time was spent doing unnecessary tasks, such as cleaning offices four times a day.
Pentagon officials were able to identify $72 million in cost savings on the Brown and Root contract simply by eliminating excess power generation equipment that the company had purchased for the operation.
Brown and Root has been also been investigated for over billing the government in its domestic operations. In February 2002, Brown and Root paid out $2 million to settle a suit with the Justice Department that alleged the company defrauded the government during the mid-1990s closure of Fort Ord in Monterey, California.
The allegations in the case surfaced several years ago when Dammen Gant Campbell, a former contracts manager for Brown and Root turned whistle-blower, charged that between 1994 and 1998 the company fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting the quantities, quality, and types of materials required for 224 projects. Campbell said the company submitted a detailed "contractors pricing proposal" from an army manual containing fixed prices for some 30,000 line items.
Once the proposal was approved, the company submitted a more general "statement of work," which did not contain a breakdown of items to be purchased. Campbell maintained the company intentionally did not deliver many items listed in the original proposal. The company defended this practice by claiming the statement of work was the legally binding document, not the original contractors pricing proposal.
"Whether you characterize it as fraud or sharp business practices, the bottom line is the same: the government was not getting what it paid for," says Michael Hirst, of the United States Attorney's Office in Sacramento, who litigated the suit on behalf of the government. "We alleged that they exploited the contracting process and increased their profits at the governments expense.""
Bush's Death Toll Passes 100 in Combat Since Declaring "Mission Accomplished!"
Bush's Death Toll has passed 100 in combat, since his obscene photo-op on the USS Abraham Lincoln bombastically declaring "Mission Accomplished" on 1st May 2003!
The "Mission" is clearly NOT "Accomplished" unless you are a corporate robber-baron-turned-war-p rofiteer (i.e. Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, etc.) who are living the high-life as our men and women in the military are slaughtered. Moreover, none of the Bushies' loved-ones are at risk -- nor are their pocket-books, as they are making millions, billions, and enjoying the power and riches to be gained by waging warfare and looting & plundering Americans and Iraqis. [Sources: http://www.alternet.org/story... , http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... , http://www.newbridgestrategie... ]
"Another four US soldiers have been killed in Iraq - bringing to more than 100 the number of US personnel who have died in attacks since major hostilities ended.
In one incident on Thursday night, three US military police officers and at least two Iraqi police officers were killed when they clashed with supporters of a Shia cleric in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala, the US military says.
A number of the attackers were also killed in the gun battle. Seven Americans and five Iraqis were injured.
In the capital Baghdad, a military police officer - died on Friday in a roadside bomb attack, marking the 101st death since the end of hostilities was declared on 1 May.
The violence came hours after the United States won unanimous backing at the United Nations Security Council for its plans for reconstruction in Iraq." - [i]Excerpt[/i]
American deaths since the war began: -- Total: 333 -- In Combat: 215
American deaths since Bush's "Mission Accomplished": -- Total: 195 -- In Combat: 100
Total Americans Reported as Injured: 1946
UK deaths deaths: 53
Journalists deaths: 17
Innocent Iraqi civilian deaths: 7390-9193
It must be obvious to all people around the world, that the corrupt Bush Regime's Iraq war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire is a fiasco -- maybe not for the Bushies', who are callous and oblivious to the heart-breaking lives lost and back-breaking debts incurred by the American workers, middle-class and lower-income families-- and not the war-profiteers, corporate robber-barons & richest-of-the-rich, who have received immoral massive tax cuts, tax loopholes and boondoggles in this insane "pre-emptive" neo-hitlerian aggression.
Given the controversy surrounding a comatose woman whom doctors say was permanently brain-dead with no chance of recovery [ http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/1... ], what do you think:
1) Was her husband right in terminating her bodily functions?
2) Were her parents right in wanting her to die a "natural" death?
3) Does a person have a right to decide to terminate their own life if they are terminally ill?
4) Would you want to be kept alive if you were brain-dead?
5) What are your general thoughts on mercy killing and/or assisted suicide?
I look forward to your opinions and comments on this very difficult question. Thank you very much.
US Soldiers On-the-Ground in Iraq Disagree with Corrupt Bushies' "All is Rosy" Propaganda Campaign
Apparently the US Soldiers on-the-ground in Iraq, who actually come face-to-face with the unpleasant [b]reality [/b](as opposed to the ivory towered "arm-chair" chicken-hawks, ensconced in the bosoms of their families & armed-guards, in palaces) -- disagree with the corrupt Bush Regime's "all is rosy" propaganda campaign.
As usual, the reality, truth and facts are diametrically opposed to the lies, deceptions and falsehoods that the neo-con neo-fascist Bushies are desperately attempting to shove down our throats. The Bush Regime's neo-hitlerian propaganda campaign is reminiscent of Joseph Goebbles' campaign in the early 1930s to convince the Germans in dire economic circumstances, that it was their destiny to spread their culture across Eastern Europe -- sound familiar? Ask Herrs Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz & Perle.
"A broad survey of U.S. troops in Iraq by a Pentagon-funded newspaper found that half of those questioned described their unit's morale as low and their training as insufficient, and said they do not plan to reenlist.
The survey, conducted by the Stars and Stripes newspaper, also recorded about a third of the respondents complaining that their mission lacks clear definition and characterizing the war in Iraq as of little or no value. Fully 40 percent said the jobs they were doing had little or nothing to do with their training.
The findings, drawn from 1,935 questionnaires presented to U.S. service members throughout Iraq, conflict with statements by military commanders and Bush administration officials that portray the deployed troops as high-spirited and generally well-prepared. Though not obtained through scientific methods, the survey results suggest that a combination of difficult conditions, complex missions and prolonged tours in Iraq is wearing down a significant portion of the U.S. force and threatening to provoke a sizable exodus from military service.
In the first of a week-long series of articles, Stars and Stripes said yesterday that it undertook the survey in August after receiving scores of letters from troops who were upset with one aspect or another of the Iraq operation. The newspaper, which receives some funding from the Defense Department but functions without editorial control by the Pentagon, prepared 17 questions and sent three teams of reporters to Iraq to conduct the survey and related interviews at nearly 50 camps.
"We conducted a 'convenience survey,' meaning we gave it to those who happened to be available at the time rather than to a randomly selected cross section, so the results cannot necessarily be projected as representing the whole population," said David Mazzarella, the paper's editorial director here. "But we still think the findings are significant and make clear that the troops have a different idea of things than what their leaders have been saying."
Experts in public opinion and the military concurred that the poll was not necessarily representative, but they characterized it as a useful gauge of troop sentiment. "The numbers are consistent with what I suspect is going on there," said David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland at College Park. "I am getting a sense that there is a high and increasing level of demoralization and a growing sense of being in something they don't understand and aren't sure the American people understand."
The paper quoted Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, saying in a Sept. 9 interview for the series that "there is no morale problem." He said complaints among troops are "expected" and part of "the Army's normal posture," whether the soldiers are deployed or not.
"We haven't had time to study the survey, but we take all indicators of morale seriously," said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman. "It's the reason we've instituted several programs to address morale and welfare issues." A White House spokesman had no comment.
Some military experts pointed to good news for the administration in the survey. Military historian Eliot Cohen, who serves on a Pentagon advisory panel, noted that the proportion that said the war was worthwhile -- 67 percent -- and the proportion of troops that said they have a clearly defined mission -- 64 percent -- are "amazingly high." He added that complaints are typical. "American troops have a God-given right and tradition of grumbling," he said.
In the survey, 34 percent described their morale as low, compared with 27 percent who described it as high and 37 percent who said it was average; 49 percent described their unit's morale as low, while 16 percent called it high.
In recent days, the Bush administration has launched a campaign to blame the news media for portraying the situation in Iraq in a negative light. Last week, Bush described the military spirit as high and said that life in Iraq is "a lot better than you probably think. Just ask people who have been there."
But Stars and Stripes raised questions about what those visiting dignitaries saw in Iraq. "Many soldiers -- including several officers -- allege that VIP visits from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill are only given hand-picked troops to meet with during their tours of Iraq," the newspaper said in its interview with Sanchez. "The phrase 'Dog and Pony Show' is usually used. Some troops even go so far as to say they've been ordered not to talk to VIPs because leaders are afraid of what they might say."
The newspaper also noted in that interview that its reporters were told that some soldiers who had complained of morale problems had faced disciplinary actions known as Article 15s, which can result in reprimand, extra duties and forfeiture of pay. Sanchez said he did not know of any such punishments, but he added that they would have been handled at a lower level.
The paper's project recorded significant differences in the morale of various units, but overall found that Army troops tended to sound more dissatisfied than Air Force personnel and Marines, and that reservists were the most troubled.
Uncertainty about when they are returning home was a major factor in dampening morale, according to the newspaper. The interviews were conducted at a time when some reserve and regular Army units were learning that their tours had been extended. The Pentagon has since sought to provide a clearer rotation plan and has begun granting troops two-week home leaves.
Although Pentagon officials say they have seen no sign yet of a rise in the number of troops deciding against reenlisting, the survey suggested that such a surge may be coming soon. A total of 49 percent of those questioned said it was "very unlikely" or "not likely" that they would remain in the military after they complete their current obligations. In the past, enlistment rates tended to drop after conflicts, but many defense experts and noncommissioned officers have warned of the potential for a historically high exodus, particularly of reservists. "
Over the past few days, eminent economists representing both sides of the political spectrum, concur that Bush's economic policies have not spurred the economy. Bush has destroyed 3 million jobs, resulting in an unemployment of 9 million Americans. Bush's disastrous track-record is a squalid $560 Billion deficit and the highest debt in our nation's history.
Most respected economists don't believe that the corrupt Bush Regime's obscene tax cuts for the rich and tax loopholes for their greedy corporate cronies & robber-barons, will work. Moreover, the criminal war-profiteers swilling the blood of US & British Soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians, awarded immoral (and possibly illegal) boondoggles in Iraq, aren't producing jobs either (not for Americans, and not for Iraqis).
I urge you to read the following two articles by Paul Krugman (liberal) and Robert Samuelson (conservative):
[b]Don't Look Down[/b], by Paul Krugman on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%2 0and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd% 2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Kru gman :
"During the 1990's I spent much of my time focusing on economic crises around the world — in particular, on currency crises like those that struck Southeast Asia in 1997 and Argentina in 2001. The timing of such crises is hard to predict. But there are warning signs, like big trade and budget deficits and rising debt burdens.
And there's one thing I can't help noticing: a third world country with America's recent numbers — its huge budget and trade deficits, its growing reliance on short-term borrowing from the rest of the world — would definitely be on the watch list.
I'm not the only one thinking that. Lehman Brothers has a mathematical model known as Damocles that it calls "an early warning system to identify the likelihood of countries entering into financial crises." Developing nations are looking pretty safe these days. But applying the same model to some advanced countries "would set Damocles' alarm bells ringing." Lehman's press release adds, "Most conspicuous of these threats is the United States."
O.K., let's run through some reassuring counterarguments.
First, economists are very good at devising models that would have predicted past crises, but each new crisis tends to happen where and when they didn't expect it. So even though our budget deficit is bigger relative to the economy than Argentina's in 2000, and our trade deficit is bigger relative to the economy than Indonesia's in 1996, our experience needn't be the same.
Second, nasty crises in third world countries have a lot to do with the fact that their debt is in foreign currency, usually dollars. As a result, when the peso or the rupiah plunges, debts explode while assets don't, and balance sheets collapse. By contrast, thanks to the special international role of the dollar, America's burgeoning foreign debt is in our own currency.
Finally, financial markets are generally willing to give advanced countries the benefit of the doubt. Even when an advanced country seems to be deep in a financial hole, lenders usually assume that it will somehow find the resources and political will to climb back out.
So is America safe, despite its scary numbers?
Third world countries typically suffer from institutional weaknesses. They have poor corporate governance: you can't trust business accounting, and insiders often enrich themselves at stockholders' expense. Meanwhile, cronyism is rampant, with close personal and financial links between powerful politicians and the very companies that benefit from public largesse. Luckily, in America we don't have any of these weaknesses. Oh, wait. . . . (Isn't that all history? No. According to The Wall Street Journal, we are again hearing warnings that "optimism is based on massaged earnings.")
Still, there's no question that the U.S. has the resources to climb out of its financial hole. The question is whether it has the political will.
There is now a huge structural gap — that is, a gap that won't go away even if the economy recovers — between U.S. spending and revenue. For the time being, borrowing can fill that gap. But eventually there must be either a large tax increase or major cuts in popular programs. If our political system can't bring itself to choose one alternative or the other — and so far the commander in chief refuses even to admit that we have a problem — we will eventually face a nasty financial crisis.
The crisis won't come immediately. For a few years, America will still be able to borrow freely, simply because lenders assume that things will somehow work out.
But at a certain point we'll have a Wile E. Coyote moment. For those not familiar with the Road Runner cartoons, Mr. Coyote had a habit of running off cliffs and taking several steps on thin air before noticing that there was nothing underneath his feet. Only then would he plunge.
What will that plunge look like? It will certainly involve a sharp fall in the dollar and a sharp rise in interest rates. In the worst-case scenario, the government's access to borrowing will be cut off, creating a cash crisis that throws the nation into chaos.
I know: it all sounds unbelievable. But would you have believed, three years ago, that the U.S. budget would plunge so quickly from a record surplus to a record deficit? And would you have believed that, confronted with that plunge, our leaders would offer excuses rather than solutions?"
"George W. Bush's quest to overcome a weak economy and win a second term offers some interesting parallels with previous presidents. The most obvious is with his father, who lost reelection in 1992 because he seemed indifferent to a stumbling economy. The son resolved to avoid that fate, raising a more intriguing presidential parallel: Richard Nixon.
To win in 1972, Nixon revved the economy. All presidents would like to do this, because all know they'll be judged -- rightly or wrongly -- on the economy's performance. Few succeed, because the economy is so big and unruly. Nixon beat the odds. Facing stubborn inflation, he embraced wage and price controls in August 1971. With inflation suppressed, easy money and a big deficit stimulated demand. Unemployment fell from 6.1 percent in August to 5.5 percent by the next fall. In November Nixon trounced George McGovern, who won 37.5 percent of the vote.
Could Bush -- in different times and using different tools -- repeat Nixon's feat? Let's survey the evidence.
Everyone knows that this year's tax cut plays to two core Bush constituencies: the "investor class" (because it cuts rates on dividends and capital gains) and supply-side enthusiasts (because it cuts top rates). Less appreciated is the tax cut's timing. From 2003 to 2013, the tax cut totals an estimated $350 billion. Fully 60 percent ($210 billion) is crammed into the 15 months before the election. This was no accident. Some tax cuts (the higher child credit, the bigger 10 percent bracket, marriage-penalty relief) expire after the election. In 2003 and 2004, the child credit is $1,000; from 2005 to 2008, it's $700.
Jobs are Bush's biggest economic worry. So here's Treasury Secretary John Snow seeming to nudge down the dollar on foreign exchange markets. A cheaper dollar -- making U.S. exports less expensive and U.S. imports more expensive -- could aid hard-hit manufacturers, the major source of lost jobs (2.8 million since mid-2000).
Elsewhere, policies aim to please specific groups. In 2002, the White House and Congress renewed lavish farm subsidies. The Agriculture Department now estimates that farm profits will jump 49 percent in 2003 to $53 billion, in part because subsidies ($19.6 billion) nearly doubled. And then there's Bush's support for a Medicare drug benefit -- a pitch to old folks. All this seems a well-crafted electoral strategy.
Now, it's not exactly news that politicians always prospect for votes. Even Jimmy Carter engaged in desperate maneuvers to improve the economy before the 1980 campaign. (Unlike Nixon, he failed.)
Examining Bush's record, his critics may see unsurpassed cynicism, while his supporters find a shrewd marriage of good policy and politics. The White House view is that policy considerations dominate its decisions: This year's tax cut was needed to dispel growing pessimism and fears of deflation (a general fall in prices); a lower dollar mainly reflects "market forces" and will strengthen public support for free trade; and the president's backing of a Medicare drug benefit dates to the 2000 campaign. As for the farm bill, it had strong bipartisan support in Congress.
Only after Bush has left office -- and historians interview insiders and read memos -- will a clearer view of the administration's motives emerge. The resulting picture may defy all stereotypes.
Consider Nixon. His embrace of wage-price controls now seems utterly cynical. But then "he was following a large part of elite opinion," says historian Allen J. Matusow of Rice University, author of "Nixon's Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, & Votes." Many economists advocated wage-price controls to restrain inflation in a tight job market. Over Nixon's objections, the Democratic Congress passed legislation authorizing controls. Once he used it, the reaction was giddy. A poll six weeks later found the public supported Nixon by 53 percent to 23 percent.
Bush's immediate political prospects depend on two questions. Will the economy improve? Will people think it's improving? On the first, recent indicators favor Bush. Unemployment insurance claims are down; the stock market is up; GDP growth is increasing. On the second, the evidence is mixed. Bush's approval ratings have dropped. In the National Journal, William Schneider notes that the largest decline (17 percentage points since August) has occurred among men, who may be worried about jobs. Still, Bush's approval ratings equal Reagan's and are higher than Clinton's at comparable stages.
History's final verdict on Bush will depend less on election returns than on whether his policies ultimately succeed. We can't know that yet. But Nixon does offer a cautionary lesson, because wage-price controls proved calamitous. Once they ended, inflation exploded (12.3 percent in 1974) and a harsh recession followed. "The tragedy was that they didn't have to do anything," says Matusow. "The economy was on schedule to deliver by 1972. They panicked." Such a judgment is surely one Nixon parallel that Bush doesn't covet. "
A Rational Opinion on Bush's War by a Conservative with Integrity
It isn't often that I agree with a conservative point of view ... After all, the GOP represents corporate interests and are the party of Big Spenders (Tax the Workers & Spend on Big Business ... Welfare for the Rich to live like Neo-Emperors ... Indeed, Bush has spent more [for his rich pals & cronies] than any Prez & has created the largest deficit in history: $560 Billion!) ... but in his column today, Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan, eloquently expresses a rational opinion on Bush's War shared by a lot of Republicans with integrity.
Mr. Buchanan's thought-provoking article is well-worth reading. In "The end of the imperial project" on http://www.wnd.com/news/artic... :
"Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is bitter over the way Condi Rice leaked word the National Security Council would be big-footing his Pentagon to take over the management of Iraq.
The State Department is having a hellish time persuading the United Nations to support a U.S. resolution that might bring in U.N. troops and aid.
Republicans are balking at the White House request for $20 billion for reconstruction. Democrats are painting Iraq as a disaster bred of White House hubris and Bush unilateralism. U.S. forces are being daily hit with mining, bombing and sniping attacks. And half the nation is now dissatisfied with President Bush's handling of Iraq.
In Baghdad, radical Shiites appear to be edging toward a clash with U.S. occupation forces. And at the Islamic summit in Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad has called on Muslim countries to evict the United States from Iraq.
So, the neoconservatives who rhapsodized about American soldiers being hailed as liberators in Baghdad as they were in Paris in 1944, and democracy sweeping the Middle East, have been exposed as naifs whose knowledge is as small as their egos are large.
But that does not mean Baghdad is Stalingrad or U.S. forces on the Tigris face what U.S. forces did on the Yalu in 1950.
For the president is also right. Heartening progress is being made in restoring basic services such as water and electricity, and in recruiting and training police and soldiers. Schools are open, and Iraq is moving toward self-determination. It may thus yet be said: The ultimate outcome of the Iraqi war remains in doubt.
As to whether the war was wise, however, the returns are tilting heavily against the president. On the credit side of the ledger, Saddam has been overthrown, his murderous regime removed and the Iraqi people given a chance to be independent and free.
On the debit side, our failure to unearth any hard evidence that Iraq had chemical or bio weapons ready for use, or was working on nuclear weapons, or had ties to al-Qaida or a role in 9-11 has been ruinous to the nation's and president's reputation for truth.
And the White House's stubborn refusal to admit that prewar intelligence was faulty has enabled critics to claim the president's men deceived the country. And that is what the world believes.
Our alliances have been strained. The rift with Old Europe is unrepaired. Our Arab friends are putting distance between us. And the president's coalition partners are embattled. Prime Minister John Howard of Australia has been censured by his senate for misleading the country on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and British belief in the integrity of Tony Blair has sunk with his approval rating.
As for neoconservative predictions that democracy would break out in the Arab world and Mideast peace would be at hand after Baghdad, the less said the better. The "roadmap," smeared with the blood of Jewish victims of Hamas terror and Palestinian victims of Sharonite reprisals, is crumpled up in the back seat.
As for the salutary effect of "shock and awe" on Axis of Evil nations, where is it? Iran and North Korea appear undeterred by our smashing of Iraq and even more resolved to acquire atomic weapons to defend themselves against U.S. air, sea and ground forces that are otherwise irresistible.
Has our victory in Iraq been a triumph in the war on terror?
How? Before the invasion, not one U.S. civilian or soldier had died in a terror attack plotted by Saddam in a decade. Since we went to war, 330 Americans have died, 1,500 more have been wounded, and Iraqi guerrillas are killing three to six soldiers a week and wounding scores. According to the administration itself, Iraq has become "a haven for terrorists." Before the invasion, all was quiet on what is now called "the central front" in the war on terror.
One thing, however, seems certain. With Americans balking at paying the cost in blood of occupying Iraq, and Congress balking at voting even 1 percent of GDP to hold Iraq, the imperial project of the neocons – to erect an American empire in Arabia and impose democracy on reluctant Muslims – is dead.
Only Mahatir thinks not. Pointing to the Israeli air strike near Damascus, he told the Islamic summit, "Israel has been urging America to invade Syria, and Americans seemed to be reluctant, so in order to force the hand of America, Israel invades Syria."
Will Bush allow Sharon and his neocon auxiliary to drag us into another war, against Syria or Iran, or will he see his country's interests more clearly now?"
Chicken-Hawk Bushies Abuse Military for Coup d'Etat as They Cut Funds for Military Families
The Bushies are truly shameless and corrupt, and this nation should be very, very worried, indeed. During the Bush Regime's rule, Emperor Bush has cynically used (abused) the US Military ... flattered them ... forced them to sit behind him in his bizarre, cartoonish photo-ops and applaud his imbecilic, neo-hitlerian screed ... and is perverting their role and duties, to forge a banana republican coup d'etat in 2004.
At the same time, as the Bushies ruthlessly exploit the US Military to retain power and bolster their sagging popularity (and cover-up their crimes), they are cynically cutting funds for the families of military personnel. In AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org , they cite the following:
[b]Bush Tries to Cut Funds for Military School Kids[/b]
"President Bush needs $87 billion to fund his campaign in Iraq. And he is even willing to cut funding for programs supporting the education of "our men and women in uniform" to do it. As the Daily Mis-Lead reports http://www.misleader.com/dail... , "At the same time the President lauded the 'great courage' of the soldiers he sent to Iraq, he requested major cuts in the Impact Aid program that provides funds for the schooling of the 900,000 children of military families. Bush tried to take $172 million from Impact Aid and shortchange its funding by $583 million under the No Child Left Behind Act. The cutbacks would have directly affected children of troops currently deployed in Iraq."
The eminent historian and writer, George Monbiot, describes the terrifying phenomena of the "use" (or abuse) of the military by the Bush Regime, that is an anathema to our democracy, freedom of government, and the U.S. Constitution. In "[b]Back to Front Coup: The military is being invited into the heart of politics in the US[/b]" on http://www.monbiot.com :
"The relationship between governments and those who seek favours from them has changed. Not long ago, lobbyists would visit politicians and bribe or threaten them until they got what they wanted. Today, ministers lobby the lobbyists. Whenever a big business pressure group holds its annual conference or dinner, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or another senior minister will come and beg it not to persecute the government. George Bush flies around the United States, flattering the companies which might support his re-election, offering tax-breaks and subsidies even before they ask.
But while we are slowly becoming aware of the corporate capture of our governments, we appear to have overlooked the growing power of another recipient of this back-to-front lobbying. In the United States a sort of reverse military coup appears to be taking place. Both the president and the opposition seem to be offering the armed forces, though they do not appear to have requested it, an ever greater share of the business of government.
Every week, the State Department makes a list of Mr Bush's most important speeches and visits, to distribute to its embassies around the world. The embassy in London has a public archive dating from June last year. During this period, Bush has made 41 major speeches to live audiences. Of these, 14 -- just over a third -- were delivered to military personnel or veterans.1
Now Bush, of course, is commander-in-chief as well as president, and he has every right to address the troops. But this commander-in-chief goes far beyond the patriotic blandishments of previous leaders. He sometimes dresses up in the uniform of the troops he is meeting. He quotes their mottos and songs, retells their internal jokes, mimics their slang. He informs the "dog-faced soldiers" that they are "the rock of Marne",2 or asks naval cadets whether they give "the left-handed salute to Tecumseh, the God of 2.0".3 The television audience is mystified, but the men love him for it. He is, or so his speeches suggest, one of them.
He starts by leading them in chants of "Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!", then plasters them with praise, then reminds them that (unlike those of any other workers in America) their pay, healthcare and housing are being upgraded. After this, they will cheer everything he says. So he uses these occasions to attack his opponents and announce new and often controversial policies. The Marines were the first to be told about his interstate electricity grid;4 he instructed the American Legion about the reform of the Medicare programme;5 last week he explained his plans for the taxation of small businesses to the National Guard.6 The troops may not have the faintest idea what he's talking about, but they cheer him to the rafters anyway. After that, implementing these policies looks like a patriotic duty.
This strikes me as an abuse of his position as commander-in-chief, rather like the use of Air Force One (the presidential aeroplane) for political fundraising tours. The war against terror is a feeble excuse. Indeed, all this began long before September 2001: between February and August of that year he gave eight major speeches to the military, some of which were stuffed with policy announcements.7
But there is a lot more at stake than merely casting the cloak of patriotism over his corporate welfare programmes. Appeasing the armed forces has become, for President Bush, a political necessity. He cannot win the next election without them. Unless he can destroy the resistance in Iraq, the resistance will destroy his political career. But crushing it requires the continuous presence of a vast professional army and tens of thousands of reservists. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the troops do not want to be there, and that at least some of their generals regard the invasion as poorly planned. At the moment, Bush is using Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as his lightning conductor, just as Blair is using Geoff Hoon. But if he is to continue to deflect the anger of the troops, the president must give them everything they might want, whether or not they have asked for it.
This is one of the reasons for a military budget which is now entirely detached from any possible strategic reality. As the website http://www.wsws.org has pointed out, when you add together the $368 billion for routine spending, the $19 billion assigned to the department of energy for new nuclear weapons, the $79 billion already passed by Congress to fund the war in Iraq and the $87 billion that Bush has just requested to sustain it, you find that the federal government is now spending as much on war as it is on education, public health, housing, employment, pensions, food aid and welfare put together.8 This is the sort of allocation you would expect in a third world military dictatorship. But all this has come from the civilian leadership. It is not just Bush. Such is the success of his re-ordering of national priorities that not a single Democrat on the congressional appropriations panel dared to challenge the government's latest request.9
Bush's other big problem, which has quietly tracked him ever since he declared his candidacy, is that he is a draft-dodger who failed even to discharge his duties as a national guardsman,10 while some of his most prominent political opponents are war heroes and generals. To win the Republican nomination, he had to beat John McCain, the fighter pilot and prisoner of war who won the silver star, bronze star, purple heart, legion of merit and distinguished flying cross for his bravery in Vietnam. To go to war with Iraq, Bush had to overcome the resistance of his Secretary of State Colin Powell, the general who was formerly chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. To win the next election, he may have to beat Wesley Clark, commander of Nato forces during the war in Yugoslavia and currently the Democrats' favoured candidate. Bush's reverse coup has meant that the Democrats must suck up to the armed forces as well, in order to be seen as a patriotic party. Wesley Clark's campaigning slogan is "a new American patriotism".11
The last general to have been appointed president, though as belligerent as any other, understood that there was a potential conflict between his two public roles. As a result, Dwight Eisenhower never wore a uniform while in office, or engaged in the hooting and chest-thumping with which George Bush greets his troops. His warning about the dangers of failing to contain "the military-industrial complex" has been forgotten.12
Tony Blair has also played the tin soldier, but with less success. He was the first western leader to arrive in Iraq after George Bush prematurely announced victory there. But when he addressed the troops, they remained silent. I am told by a good source that the generals are furious with him for sending them to war on false pretences.
But in America, the armed forces, whether they want it or not, are being dragged into the heart of political life. A mature democracy is in danger of turning itself into a military state."
Bushies' Despicable Felony Exposing Valerie Plame Wilson Leaves Trail of Damage
The vengeful felony and act of treason by the Bushies' White House leaves a trail of damage to this nation. John (Robespierre) Ashcroft has an unsavory relationship with Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) and has arrogantly refused to appoint an independent Special Counsel despite calls by leading Senators and the public who overwhelmingly have expressed outrage http://www.tblog.com/template... . For more on the Ashcroft-Rove "relationship (sic)", refer to "The Ashcroft-Rove Connection: The Ties That Blind" on http://www.democracynow.org/s... and "Ashcroft wrong for investigation" on http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/... . Also, refer to "The Most Insidious of Traitors: A Mean, Petty and Corrupt Bush White House" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
Weakling-turned-bully-boy , Bushy-boy, http://www.tblog.com/template... , has done nothing to catch the traitorous felons (but then Bushy-boy was going to get Osama bin Forgotten "dead or alive" ... ha ha ha) in the White House who illegally revealed the identity of CIA operative, Valerie Plame, to "get-back" at her husband ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth about Bush's lies and deceptions regarding the phony Niger uranium yellow-cake sale to Iraq-- and to scare other "whistle-blowers" who could expose a plethora of lies, by this corrupt neo-con, neo-hitlerian Bush Regime.
The criminals in the Bush Regime, have also placed the life of Plame's associates at risk, and undermined her work to discover (real, not the phony "cooked-up" Bush crap) WMDs and those who traffic them. The Bushies have increased the danger of terrorist attacks upon the USA-- both by betraying those who safeguard this country's security and in their insane "pre-emptive" (neo-hitlerian aggression) wars.
Please contact Congress to express your outrage at the Bush Regime's criminal act damaging the United States of America, and support a Congressman's call for Rove to resign (or be fired) http://www.tblog.com/template... . Contact Congress on http://www.congress.org .
For more information regarding the damage done by the despicable Bushies, refer to "Leak of CIA Officers Leaves Trail of Damage" by Warren P. Strobel on http://www.commondreams.org/h... .
"WASHINGTON – It’s just a 12-letter name – Valerie Plame – but the leak by Bush administration officials of that CIA officer’s identity may have damaged U.S. national security to a much greater extent than generally realized, current and former agency officials say.
Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush critic Joseph Wilson, was a member of a small elite-within-an-elite, a CIA employee operating under “nonofficial cover,” in her case as an energy analyst, with little or no protection from the U.S. government if she got caught.
Training agents such as Plame, 40, costs millions of dollars and requires the time-consuming establishment of elaborate fictions, called “legends,” including in this case the creation of a CIA front company that helped lend plausibility to her trips overseas.
Compounding the damage, the front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, whose name has been reported previously, apparently also was used by other CIA officers whose work now could be at risk, according to Vince Cannistraro, formerly the agency’s chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis.
Now, Plame’s career as a covert operations officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations is over. Those she dealt with – whether on business or not – may be in danger. The DO is conducting an extensive damage assessment.
And Plame’s exposure may make it harder for American spies to convince foreigners to share important secrets with them, U.S. intelligence officials said.
Bush partisans tend to downplay the leak’s damage, saying Plame’s true job was widely known in Washington, if unspoken. And, they say, she had moved from the DO, the CIA’s covert arm, to an analysis job.
But intelligence professionals, infuriated over the breach and what they see as the Bush administration’s misuse of intelligence on Iraq, vehemently disagree.
Larry Johnson – a former CIA and State Department official who was a 1985 classmate of Plame’s in the CIA’s case officer-training program at Camp Peary, Va., known as “the Farm" – predicted that when the CIA’s internal damage assessment is finished, “at the end of the day, (the harm) will be huge and some people potentially may have lost their lives.”
“This is not just another leak. This is an unprecedented exposing of an agent’s identity,” said former CIA officer Jim Marcinkowski, who’s now a prosecutor in Royal Oak, Mich., and who also did CIA training with Plame.
The leak of Plame’s identity to syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other journalists is the subject of a Justice Department investigation that has rattled President Bush’s White House. Knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is a crime.
Critics say the leak was meant to intimidate critics such as Wilson, a former ambassador who traveled to the African country of Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking uranium ore for nuclear weapons. Wilson found no basis for the claims and later publicly criticized Bush’s description of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
One mystery is how one or more officials at the White House knew of Plame’s work, since the CIA and other intelligence agencies guard the identities of their covert officers, often even from their political masters.
“The background on an agent typically is not common knowledge,” said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Whoever leaked (the information) probably wasn’t supposed to have access to it.”
Intelligence officials said Plame worked on an issue high on Bush’s list of priorities: the spread of missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical arms, collectively known as weapons of mass destruction.
Human intelligence – as opposed to electronic surveillance – about WMD development and weapons transfers is hard to come by, especially in “hard target” countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Much about Plame’s career remains a mystery, and probably will stay that way. The CIA refuses to acknowledge her employment or anything else associated with the case.
Born in 1963, she graduated from Pennsylvania State University and was recruited quickly by the CIA, attending training classes in 1985.
In 1990 and 1991, Plame was attached to a U.S. Embassy in Europe, according to address records, suggesting she may have operated under official cover for a time. Knight Ridder voluntarily is withholding the precise location of the embassy. Plame’s name doesn’t appear in State Department telephone and embassy directories from that period.
In April 1999, Plame, using her married name of Valerie E. Wilson, donated $1,000 to then-Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. She listed her employer as Brewster-Jennings & Associates.
The name suggested work in the energy field: The late Brewster Jennings was president of the old Socony-Vacuum oil company, predecessor to Mobil, now Exxon Mobil Corp.
A June 2000 listing in Dun & Bradstreet for a Boston-based “Brewster Jennings & Associates” names the company’s CEO and only employee as “Victor Brewster” and says it had annual sales of $60,000.
While that might seem like flimsy cover, former intelligence officials say that in fact meticulous steps are taken to create a lifelike legend to support and protect CIA officers operating under nonofficial cover.
The corps of officers using nonofficial cover is small, said former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, a critic of Bush’s handling of intelligence. The program was the subject of an internal battle, he said, opposed by traditionalists, who favored the orthodox method of having spies pose as American diplomats or military officers.
“It was always controversial. There were never a lot. And there are fewer now than there were,” Goodman said.
Johnson, the former CIA and State Department official, said espionage training could cost several million dollars, including $350,000 for the first year alone.
It appears that the Brewster-Jennings front was more than what is called “nominal cover,” and was used as part of Plame’s espionage, Johnson said.
That means anyone she met with could be in danger now, said Johnson, who described himself as “furious, absolutely furious” at the security breach.
On a personal level, if Plame’s covert career wasn’t over already, it is now.
“My wife’s career will certainly change as a consequence of this, but my wife is a star in her business,” Wilson said last Sunday on NBC. He added: “I have every expectation that her culture will embrace her and that she will continue to be a productive national security officer. But clearly her responsibilities will have to change as a consequence of this.”
Wilson has said his family is taking unspecified security precautions. His wife won’t talk to reporters.
“The bottom line is, she’s lost her career,” said former classmate Marcinkowski.
As a CIA officer operating overseas, “There’s only one entity in the world that can identify you. That’s the U.S. government. When the U.S. government does it, that’s it,” he said. "
The hypocritical neo-con "court jester", Charles "Snake-in-the-Grass" Krauthammer, vomits the Bushies' neo-hitlerian propaganda ... but, what did this neo-con ideologue put in writing a few months ago?
[i]Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We've had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven't found any, we will have a credibility problem. I don't have any doubt that we will locate them. I think it takes time. [/i]
Krauthammer five and one half months later http://www.washingtonpost.com... on David Kay’s inability to find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction whatsoever and his need to hang his hat on various dual use facilities which could have been used to produce weapons of mass destruction …
[i]Hussein was simply making his WMD program more efficient and concealable. His intent and capacity were unchanged.[/i]
Sic transit …"
David Kay has over 1200 inspectors and over 5 months thus far (building on UN work already accomplished and massive US military support-- but finding zip, zero, nada) http://www.tblog.com/template... , and wants additional inspectors, $600 Million & 6-9 more months! Whereas Hans Blix only had 100-220 inspectors and 5 months, but wasn't in Iraq for a week, before the corrupt Bush Regime & their neo-con attack-dogs & court-jesters all trashed and demonized him. Moveover UN Weapons Experts have discredited Kay's dishonest report http://www.tblog.com/template... , and one could be forgiven for wondering what Kay will "find (sic)" (or plant?), given his connections to the arms industry http://www.tblog.com/template... !!!
Why do the Bushies so desperately want David Kay to "find" (or plant?) those WMDs, that they've "coughed up" over 1200 inspectors, hundreds of millions of dollars with a request for an additional $600 Million, and 6-9 more months? Because WMDs posing an "imminent threat" to our National Security, was the reason they gave the American people for waging war in Iraq, and as it stands, the Bush Regime's credibility is shot amongst people with a conscience (and a memory).
Right-winged neo-con morality, truth, honour, integrity, and dignity??? Ha ha ha ha ha ... what a load of crap!!!
The neo-joker, Krauthammer doesn't deserve the appellation of "columnist", but instead is a neo-hitlerian "propagandist".
Why Bush Must Go: One Reason is Enough ... But, Here Are One Thousand Reasons
Why Bush Must Go: One Reason is Enough ... Bush is an ignorant and incompetent man who has betrayed the trust of the American people, having misled this country to wage war, based upon a vast array of lies, deceptions and falsehoods ... a crime under the U. S. Constitution.
But, for those who need further evidence of the Bush Regime's failed policies, visit this web-site devoted to "One Thousand Reasons to Dump George Bush - Dedicated to the quick but peaceful overthrow of the Bush regime" on http://www.thousandreasons.or... .
I urge you to peruse the long list of betrayals of our democratic system of government by Bush, and express your outrage to Congress on http://www.congress.org .
The following is a sample of some of the 1058 wrong-headed and dangerously stupid Bush policies [ http://www.thousandreasons.or... ]:
[b]The Reasons: War[/b]
1. The Bush administration’s preemptive war policy, wherein he claims the right to overthrow any government suspected of being a danger to the US, goes against international law, specifically the UN Charter, which prohibits one country from attacking another unless under imminent threat of invasion. The Guardian, June 7, 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Pri...,3858,4428724,00.html
2. For more than a year, Bush has framed Iraq as part of the “war on terror.” And for more than a year, he has produced no evidence for that claim. No evidence of a link between Iraq and 9/11. No evidence of an affinity between Saddam Hussein’s secular tyranny and the fundamentalists of al-Qaida. No evidence of a terrorist presence in Iraq greater than in other Arab or Muslim countries. No evidence that Iraq offered weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Slate September 10, 2003 http://slate.msn.com/id/20880...
3. Bush went to war in Iraq in spite of the will of the people. According to a CBS News poll before the war, “Americans are willing to wait for that approval: a majority wants Congress to wait until the U.N. has acted before voting on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, even if that would take longer than the few weeks in which the administration wants action.” CBS News September 24, 2002 http://www.cbsnews.com/storie...
63. U.S. troops will be welcomed in Iraq as liberators. The reality: Very few Iraqi citizens greeted Americans as liberators. In fact, many see the U.S. as an occupier. There has been widespread rioting, looting and demonstrations against the U.S. A strong guerilla movement has continued to cause many casualties among American troops. Council for a Livable World October 2, 2002 http://64.177.207.201/pages/8...
64. The war in Iraq will not be very expensive. The reality: It is now clear that the prediction of $50-$60 billion was extremely low. Last year Congress appropriated about $70 billion for the war; the latest request is for an additional $87 billion. It is almost anyone’s guess how much the U.S. will ultimately spend. Council for a Livable World October 2, 2002 http://64.177.207.201/pages/8...
65 A large number of U.S. troops will not be needed in Iraq after the war. The reality: U.S. and allied troops still number 130,000 in Iraq alone and about 200,000 in and around Iraq at the end of August — and 90% were Americans. A number of Members of Congress are calling for additional American divisions to be deployed to Iraq. The Administration is seeking troops of other nations. Council for a Livable World October 2, 2002 http://64.177.207.201/pages/8...
WAR: Exaggerating and Manipulating Intelligence[/b]
1. In his address to the UN, Bush claimed that Iraq was “expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.” FindLaw June 6, 2003 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/...
2. In an October 2002 radio address, Bush claimed that “Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons.” FindLaw June 6, 2003 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/...
3. In that same radio address, Bush said that “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons—the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.” FindLaw June 6, 2003 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/...
1. Joining Sudan, Libya and the Vatican, the White House is fighting to delete language requiring that women and adolescent girls have full access to affordable, quality reproductive health care, from the draft document for the UN Special Session on Children. The U.S. maintains this position despite the fact that reproductive health care is a proven way to reduce maternal and infant mortality, which all parties agree is crucial to improve the lives of children. Center for Reproductive Rights August 30, 2001 http://www.crlp.org/pr_01_083...
2. A Bush administration proposal to divert almost $2 billion in scarce welfare funds to promote marriage should be squashed. As one state’s effort shows, jobs and education lead to marriage, not the other way around. Religious Consultation September 10, 2003 http://www.religiousconsultat...
3. Restricting the right to abortion in developing nations is a major foreign policy initiative of the Bush administration; it appeases anti-choice constituents without offending more moderate conservatives. Women’s e-News January 20, 2003 http://www.womensenews.org/ar...
1. John Ashcroft was a cosponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed in 1996 which bans federal recognition of gay marriages and prohibits spouses in same-sex marriages from receiving federal benefits. ABC News, January 17, 2001 http://abcnews.go.com/section...
2. It is commonly believed that Bush derailed a Texas hate-crime bill in 1999 because it included protections based on sexual orientation. Also that year, Bush supported a measure that banned gay couples from becoming foster parents or from adopting foster children. ABC News, January 17, 2001 http://abcnews.go.com/section...
3. Bush claimed to be tolerant of gays, but he’s on the record as being adamantly opposed to hiring an openly gay person in his Administration. And Dick Cheney was forced to back off on his support for recognition of gay and lesbian relationships. Bush got positively gleeful over sending the three men who dragged James Byrd on the back of a truck to the death chamber, when only two are going (the other got a life sentence). And contrary to what he said in the debate, he did block hate-crimes legislation. Source: Time, p. 62, “Double Standard” at Wake Forest debate, Issues 2000, October 19, 2000 http://www.issues2000.org/Geo...
1. The Bush administration joined the law suit against the affirmative action program at the University of Michigan. The Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of the school. CBS News January 16, 2003 http://www.cbsnews.com/storie...
2. Bush claimed, falsely, that the University of Michigan program was a quota system. The Affirmative Action and Diversity Project January 24, 2003 http://aad.english.ucsb.edu/d...
3. They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in 1964, but Bush clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative action for the son and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a politically influential family. Affirmative action for a boy from a fancy prep school. These forms of affirmative action still go on. CNN January 20, 2003 http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPO...
11. In the mid-1990s, the United Nations published a report showing that the U.S. had already become the most class-stratified society among all the advanced industrial countries. Now, wealth in the U.S. is even more concentrated in the hands of a few. “It’s remarkable how little growth has trickled down to ordinary families,” [Paul[ Krugman explained. “Median family income has risen only about 0.5 percent per year—and as far as we can tell...just about all of that increase was due to wives working longer hours, with little or no gain in real wages.” Socialist Worker Online August 1, 2003 http://www.socialistworker.or...
12. By 2010, assuming the sunset provisions of Bush’s tax cuts don’t kick in, all but the top 5% of US taxpayers will see their share of federal taxes go up, while the top 1% will see a reduction of 2.7%. The very richest will see their tax rate fall by 25%. Citizens for Tax Justice June 4, 2003 http://www.ctj.org/pdf/allbus...
1. The Justice Department on Wednesday defied a federal judge for the second time, refusing to allow Zacarias Moussaoui to question senior al-Qaida captives in preparation for his criminal trial. Judicial punishment that could damage the prosecution is likely to follow. AP September 10, 2003 http://nytimes.com/aponline/n...
2. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT Act) gives excessive power to the executive branch to determine who is an enemy combatant. Rense June 28, 2002 http://www.rense.com/general2...
3. In the administration’s view, a citizen held as an enemy combatant can be detained without charges or judicial review and has no right to bail or a lawyer. Common Dreams January 10, 2003 http://www.commondreams.org/v...
1. Citing what it calls the “uncertainty” of the science behind global warming, the Bush administration plans to spend several more years and millions of dollars studying climate change instead of trying to fix it. As part of its 10-year plan to study climate change and determine whether human activity or natural occurrences are causing Earth’s atmosphere to heat up, the Climate Change Science Program will compile expertise from 13 federal agencies that collectively spend $4.5 billion on climate-change related programs; it will also redirect $103 million for satellite technologies to gather global climate data. NRDC July 24, 2003 http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecor...
2. The Forest Service announced “interim” guidelines that would further reduce protections for roadless areas, including those in the Tongass National Forest. The new directive includes removing a requirement that smaller, undeveloped areas next to large swaths of roadless forest lands be protected. These areas will now be opened up to road-building. The changes also end mandatory environmental impact reviews that enhanced public participation in and agency accountability for decisions to develop smaller wildlands. NRDC December 14, 2001 http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecor...
3. After dismissing as “fatally flawed” a General Accounting Office (GAO) report critical of his agency’s handling of a proposed permanent nuclear waste storage site in the Nevada desert, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham changed the rules of the game—i.e., the game being whether the proposed site complies with the law. With its recent issuance of the site suitability guidelines for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the Department of Energy (DOE) now says the government no longer must prove that Yucca Mountain’s underground rock formations would prevent radioactive contamination of the environment. Rather, DOE plans to rely on “engineered waste packages” that they hope will adequately contain the highly radioactive waste to be stored in Yucca Mountain. NRDC December 14, 2003 http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecor...
1. Despite the fact that the economy has been expanding for over a year, our labor market remains mired in a jobless recovery, and these conditions are now hurting the living standards of working families. Economic Policy Institute June 6, 2003 http://www.epinet.org/content...
2. The President and the Congress claim to have done so with the passage of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 , but as our testimony argues, this plan is unlikely to provide the boost the economy needs. Economic Policy Institute June 6, 2003 http://www.epinet.org/content...
3. Unemployment has averaged 5.8% over the past year, and most recently hit 6.1%, two points above the 2000 rate of 4%. Since then, over 3 million more persons have been added to the ranks of the unemployed. Economic Policy Institute June 6, 2003 http://www.epinet.org/content...
1. After Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that it was too expensive for the US, he came out with an alternate ‘ plan ‘ for his nation. Unfortunately the ‘plan’ is window dressing for doing nothing. Sierra Club of Canada http://www.sierraclub.ca/nati...
2. Nearly five years after the ceremonial signing of an international treaty to ban land mines, these deadly seeds planted malevolently in the earth continue to bear bloody fruit around the world: severed limbs, broken lives, shattered families. And still, the United States refuses to join 129 other nations that have already ratified the treaty. Once again, our government’s ungovernable urge to go it alone casts the nation in the role of pariah. Common Dreams October 21, 2002 http://www.commondreams.org/v...
3. The Bush administration’s hostility to the ICC has increased dramatically in 2002. The crux of the U.S. concern relates to the prospect that the ICC may exercise its jurisdiction to conduct politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of U.S. military and political officials and personnel. The U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the strong support for the Court by most of America’s closest allies. Human Rights Watch 2002 http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/...
1. GOP Joins Dems, Vets Against Benefit Cuts. Senior Republicans on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee have joined Democrats and veterans groups in a chorus of protest against proposals being considered by the Bush administration to shrink the number of military personnel who qualify for disability benefits. AP September 12, 2003 http://nytimes.com/aponline/n...
2. George and Laura Bush had gushed over Teach for America. Surely it would be protected. Besides, the education grants were so modest, the need so undeniable. Our nation does not exactly have a surplus of well-educated, enthusiastic people willing to teach in the most-distressed schools. How wrong I was. Even the acclaimed Teach for America has not been spared from the thoughtless politics in Washington right now. Philly News August 31, 2003 http://www.philly.com/mld/phi...
3. The Bush administration and its foot soldiers in the House are playing politics with one of America’s most successful programs for low-income families. For the first time, Head Start reauthorization is being discussed without its historic bipartisan support. The administration is using state flexibility as a guise to weaken crucial protections for poor children in Head Start—just as it is doing for many other programs, such as Medicaid, foster care and Section 8 housing. Tom Paine July 25, 2003 http://www.tompaine.com/featu...
1. President Bush convened a meeting in the White House and established the Energy Policy Development Group chaired by Cheney, to come up with a short-term plan for the energy crisis, and produce a report recommending a national energy policy. Over the next two years, the “Cheney Group” held secret meetings with Enron and other “energy” executives, which would become the subject of a lawsuit. The New York Times reported on May 16, 2001, that on the day the National Energy Plan was released, questions were being raised about the group’s “mysterious ways,” amid accusations that it had met in secret mainly with energy industry moguls who would benefit from its recommendations. Executive Intelligence Review August 29, 2003 http://www.larouchepub.com/ot...
2. Republicans are again trying to stick the country with one of their favorite bad ideas: drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. This time, they included drilling within a larger piece of bad policy, the energy bill approved by the House of Representatives on Friday. The energy bill curries favor with energy corporations and indulges the Republican prescription that a free market cures all ills. The House calls for risky steps deregulating electricity markets, gives new incentives to oil and gas drillers and creates $18.7 billion in tax breaks, mostly for oil, gas and nuclear energy. Seattle Post Intelligencer April 15, 2003 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...%5Foiled.html
3. Even though the government heavily censored the documents before supplying them to NRDC, they reveal that Bush administration officials sought extensive advice from utility companies and the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries, and incorporated their recommendations, often word for word, into the energy plan. NRDC August 13, 2002 http://www.nrdc.org/air/energ...
1. Bush’s appointee to head the FCC is the son of Colin Powell. A more experienced, less-partisan person would have better protected the public airwaves, which are essential to a functioning democracy. The Guardian October 29, 2001 http://www.guardian.co.uk/pri...,3858,4286872-105337,00.html
2. After nine months in office, Powell does appear hellbent on pursuing a corporate-friendly agenda that can only result in a further torrent of mergers in the media industries. The Guardian October 29, 2001 http://www.guardian.co.uk/pri...,3858,4286872-105337,00.html
3. For Mr. W, democracy only exists where money solves everything and where those who can afford a $25,000-a-plate dinner an insult to the billions of people living in the poor, hungry and underdeveloped world are the ones called to solve the problems of society and the world—Fidel Castro China Daily June 6, 2002 http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn...
1. Bush Wants States to Use Taxes on Theology. The Bush administration has stepped into the Supreme Court’s next big church and state case, seeking to force some states to spend tax money on college students’ religious education. AP September 10, 2003 http://nytimes.com/aponline/n...
2. Providing energy industry exemptions. In September 2002, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), issued a draft rule that would restrict access to previously public information that is now deemed potentially useful to a person planning an attack on production, generation, transportation, transmission or distribution of energy. This Critical Energy Infrastructure Information; (CEII) would suddenly be made exempt from FOIA and overseen by a critical energy infrastructure coordinator.; In essence, the proposal allows industry to categorize its information as CEII so that it will not be disclosed to the public. FERC argues it can exempt CEII from disclosure under FOIA as confidential business information since terrorism causes financial harm. Congress, at the urging of the Bush administration, is considering Critical Infrastructure Information; (CII) legislation as part of the bill to create a new department of homeland security. Voluntarily submitted CII would be exempt from FOIA, and such information could not be used in civil action suits or anti-trust actions. OMB Watch September 16, 2002 http://www.ombwatch.org/artic...
3. A March 2002 Department of Defense proposal that has been withdrawn would have created the possibility for criminal sanctions to be brought against individuals publishing unclassified research. OMB Watch October 25, 2002 http://www.ombwatch.org/artic...
1. After the 9/11 attacks, the United States enjoyed an enormous wellspring of sympathy from people around the world. Bush has squandered this support by projecting an unfortunately all-too -typically arrogant attitude toward the world. Seattle Post Intelligencer December 7, 2002 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...
2. This has not stopped our national misleaders from insisting that they are our ticket to security. But for that assertion there has been as little evidence offered as there has been for the claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to Americans or that he had anything to do with al-Qaeda. “We don?t need no stinkin’ evidence” is the attitude that oozes from President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Future of Freedom Foundation December 4, 2002 http://www.fff.org/comment/co...
3. Dangerous days lie ahead, thanks to Mr. Bush and his new strategic doctrine of global preventive war. Things were supposed to be different. Does anyone remember that day ages ago when then-candidate Bush promised a “humble” foreign policy? I guess to Orwell’s “War is Peace” and “Freedom is Slavery” we may now add Bush’s “Arrogance is Humility.” The Future of Freedom Foundation December 4, 2002 http://www.fff.org/comment/co...
1. Seeks to slash job training and help for workers who lose their jobs. AFL-CIO September 15, 2003 http://www.afl-cio.org/
2. Proposes eliminating 83 full-time safety and health jobs at OSHA and cutting $9 million from safety programs. AFL-CIO September 15, 2003 http://www.afl-cio.org/
3. Bypassed Congress to appoint labor solicitor opposed to worker safety measures. AFL-CIO September 15, 2003 http://www.afl-cio.org/
1. An umbrella group that advocates for more scientific research into technologies such as stem cell research and therapeutic cloning marked the second anniversary of President Bush’s stem cell research policy in August by issuing a statement declaring that the policy is hindering medical progress. American Medical News September 1, 2003 http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-p...
2. Food and Drug Disaster. With gusto, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan has promoted, in speeches and press releases, one of his priorities: increasing the amount of accurate information conveyed to consumers about FDA-regulated products. “I consider it a public health hazard when people are misled by false claims,” he said recently. Unfortunately, this rhetoric obscures a pattern of FDA actions and inaction under his leadership that decrease the amount of accurate information in the marketplace and, in McClellan’s words, create “public health hazards.” Washington Post September 9, 2003 http://www.washingtonpost.com...
3. Top Democrats say Bush policy will weaken HIV prevention programs. A new Bush administration policy that imposes a new layer of state or local review on federally funded HIV prevention programs has drawn a stern rebuke from top congressional Democrats. They say it could paralyze AIDS prevention initiatives and weaken local efforts to slow the spread of the deadly AIDS virus, HIV, which infects at least 40,000 people each year and kills 20,000 others. USA Today September 14, 2003 http://www.usatoday.com/news/...
A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"
St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move."
"Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?"
"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."
"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"
St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."
"Where's Bush's clock?" asked the man.
"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."
In recent days, Republican and Democratic Congressmen alike have warned the corrupt Bush Regime that they have an obligation to expose the felons-in-residence at the White House, who in a petty, vile act of vengence, leaked the name of a CIA operative, whose husband disclosed to the public, one amongst many of Bush's lies. Of course, the Bushies are covering-up for one or more of their own criminals-in-arms.
Nothing happens in the slimy, dishonorable Bush White House, without the approval of Cheney, Rice and Rove, all of whom should be "frog-marched" in handcuffs off-to-jail. Apparently, if you are loyal to the United States of America, and the American people, you are "fair game" to target and destroy, by the despicable Bushies, in their neo-hitlerian doctrine according to Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) Rove.
[i]Representative John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Member, on the House Judiciary Committee sent the following letter to Senior White House Advisor, Karl Rove, asking for his resignation: [/i]
Dear Mr. Rove:
I write to ask you to resign from the White House staff. Recent press reports have indicated that, while you may or may not have been the source of the Robert Novak column which revealed the status and name of a covert operative, the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, you were involved in a subsequent effort to push this classified information to other reporters and give it even wider currency. This itself may be a federal crime, but regardless of that fact, your actions are morally indefensible. In my view, it is shameful and unethical that an Administration that promised to govern with "honor and integrity" and "change the tone" in Washington has now engaged in an orchestrated campaign to smear and intimidate truth-telling critics, placing them in possible physical harm and impairing the efforts and operations of the CIA.
Recent reports indicate that you told the journalist, Chris Matthews, and perhaps others, that Mr. Wilson's wife and her undercover status were "fair game." Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, Oct. 13, 2003. Since these initial allegations have arisen, neither the White House nor your office have denied your involvement in furthering the leak. Repeated press inquiries into this matter have been rebuffed with technical jargon and narrow legalisms, instead of broader ethical issues. Indeed, in the same article it appears a White House source acknowledged that you contacted Matthews and other journalists, indicating that "it was reasonable to discuss who sent Wilson to Niger."
It should be noted that these actions may well have violated 18 U.S.C. - 793, which prohibits the willful or grossly negligent distribution of national defense information that could possibly be used against the United States. The law states that even if you lawfully knew of Mr. Wilson's wife's status, you were obliged to come forward and report the press leak to the proper authorities – not inflame the situation by encouraging further dissemination. 18 U.S.C. - 793(f). Larger than whether any one statute can be read to find criminal responsibility is the issue of whether officials of your stature will be allowed to use their influence to intimidate whistle-blowers.
Over three decades ago, our nation was scarred by an Administration that would stop at nothing to smear and intimidate its critics. I do not believe the Nation will countenance a repeat of such activities. For your role in this campaign, I would ask that you resign immediately.
Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr. Ranking Minority Member
cc: The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. Chairman Committee on the Judiciary
"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." - George W. Bush, Speech in Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003 [ http://slate.msn.com/id/20895... ]
Anyone else observe the irony of Bush's dangerously idiotic and bizarre screed?
US under Bush is not peaceful, but instead has already waged 2 illegal and immoral incursions, and the neo-con blood-suckers are already planning their insane invasions of Iran and North Korea.
US under Bush attacks everyone and anyone who doesn't genuflect before his madness.
US under Bush has the largest arsenal of WMDs in the history of mankind, that it recklessly and wantonly launches against innocent civilians creating his killing fields of mass graves.
But then, the operative word is "free" ... Perhaps, the cynical and smirking Bush isn't bungling his (ooopppsss ... Karl 'Goebbles' Rove's) words this time: as Attorney General John Ashcroft convinces the brain-dead to accept the Patriot Acts destroying our US Constitution and Bill of Rights; Gitmo Gualag Concentration Camps; and, other human rights abuses.
Bush is incorrect in his imbecilic rhetoric. Instead, "No free and [u]civilized[/u] nation" would commit such heinous and barbaric acts ..., but then the Bush Regime isn't civilized (they are brutish, murderous thugs and liars), and their warning message is clear:
The US is no longer the 'Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave'. Bush has transformed us into the 'Land of the Screed and the Home of the Slave'.
George W. Bush's De-Classified Professional Resume Discovered On-Line!!!
Purchased an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. Company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that appropriated land by using tax-payer money. Biggest move: Traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago Cubs.
With father's considerable influence (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas.
[b]ACCOMPLISHMENTS DURING TERM AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:[/b]
Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog-ridden city in the United States.
Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
Set the record for the most executions by any Governor in U.S. history.
In 2000 Became President of the US after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes. Was able to accomplish this with the help of my brother who was Governor of Florida -- a pivotal state with many voting irregularities that were never accounted for, or explained Further assistance for obtaining Presidency came with the help of my father's appointments of revisionist conservatives to positions in the Supreme Court of the United States during his earlier term as President.
[b]ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:[/b]
Attacked and occupied two countries.
Spent a large budget surplus created mostly by a previous Democratic administration, and bankrupted the treasury.
Shattered the record for biggest annual deficit in history of the US Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.
Set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.
First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.
First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, was faced with the worst security failure in US history.
Set the record for more campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.
In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
I've cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any president in US history.
Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any other president since the advent of television.
Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in US history.
First president to overtly and covertly work against the separation of church and state by supporting the use federal funding for religion-operated schools, religion supported anti-choice counseling clinics, and religion-based Sexual Abstinence presentations in public schools.
Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have.
Slashed healthcare benefits for war veterans.
Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me and my policies (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in history of mankind.
Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
My presidency is the most secretive and un-accountable of any in US history.
Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The 'poorest' multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice has a Chevron oil-tanker named after her).
First president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously go bankrupt.
Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world.
I am the first president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation.
Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States.
Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget-spending increases, More increases than any president in US history.
First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the human rights commission.
First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the elections monitoring board.
I have removed many more judicial checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.
I Refused to recognize Ecological concerns, or attend a World Wide ecocological Forum on Global warming.
I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.
I withdrew from the World Court of Law.
Refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war, and by doing that I no longer abided by the Geneva Conventions.
I am the first president in US history to refuse access to United Nations election inspectors (during 2002 US elections) for U.S. elections.
I have undermined the abilities of women in other countries to have personal control of their reproductive capabilities -- by witholding foreign aid to groups providing birth control choices and family planning information.
I complicitly and overtly support anti-choice political groups and fundamentalist Catholic and Protestant Religious groups in order to eventually remove birth control and other family-planning choices and options from all females in the US.
I hold the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations received.
My biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
I was the first president in US history to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.
First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then blatantly and shamelessly lied saying that the enemy had obtained the code to Air Force 1).
First US president to establish a secret shadow government.
Took the biggest upwelling of world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented and unpopular country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
With a policy of 'dis-engagement' managed to create the most hostile Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years. First US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
First US president in history to have the people of South Korea more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
Set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations that were bidding for government contracts.
Failed to fulfill my pledge to get Osama Bin Laden 'dead or alive'.
Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder congresional leaders of our country at the United States Capitol building. After 18 months I have no leads and zero suspects.
Failed to conclusively find "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that I claimed would be found in Iraq after our invasion of that country.
In the 18 months following the 9/11 attacks I have successfully prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States.
Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for US citizens than any other president in US history.
In a little over two years I have created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the Civil War.
Entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category-heading straight down.
[b]RECORDS:[/b]
At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine. (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).
AWOL from National Guard and Deserted the military during time of war. (But I was serving as an aide to a congressman at the time!)
Refuse to take drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.
All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my father's library, sealed in secrecy and are un-available for public view.
All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.
All minutes of meetings for any public corporation I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.
Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public review.
... [i]Satire Or Is It? [/i]...
Unfair & Imbalanced Hypocrisy: Fox News Collaborates with Ex-Saddam Regime Minister
Just prior to the Bush Regime's illegal and immoral incursion-turned-guerrill a-quagmire in Iraq, Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein ... Fox News and other right-winged, neo-fascist ideologues condemned Rather in the most vitriolic manner: demanding that he be fired ... tried for treason ... tried for sedition ... and worse ...
Now the neo-con, neo-fascist "news (sic)" or should I say, Bush Propaganda Outlet, Fox News (Unfair & Imbalanced Hypocrisy), is collaborating with an Ex-Saddam Hussein Regime Minister.
In "Everywhere and nowhere, Saddam retains his grip on Baghdad's imagination" by Suzanne Goldenberg, on http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1058867,00.html :
"Almost all of the bureaucrats [Saddam Hussein's Regime] at the information ministry have done very nicely for themselves since the war. The government minders who spent their days reporting to the intelligence services on foreign reporters or doing their best to obstruct their work have gone on to well-paid jobs - for the same foreign news organisations they once hounded.
The second-in-command at the information ministry, who spent his days reading the reports the minders wrote about visiting foreign journalists, has been employed by Fox News."
What would the neo-hitlerian Fox News, and the other corrupt Bushies' neo-con court jesters have cried-out if National Public Radio (NPR) or a Network News Channel (ABC, NBC, CBS), had hired an ex-Saddam Hussein Regime Minister?
Fox News credo: "Bush Reports ... Bush Decides ... Bush Propagandizes ... You Follow Like Dumb Sheep, Or Else! ..."
Iraq Never Posed a Threat of Selling WMDs to Terrorists ... But the Bush Regime's "Crazies" Do ...
The insane Bush "crazies" (as Cheney, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz were called by the Pentagon, who in the aftermath of the 2000 coup d'etat, bemoaned: "The Crazies Are Back!"), propagandized that one of the many evils of Saddam Hussein's Regime, was the potential sale of WMDs to terrorists. Of course, Saddam had no WMDs ... Saddam was an enemy of Osama ... Saddam had no links with Al Qaida ... but ....
Instead of fearing foreign terrorists obtaining WMDs from foreign rogue regimes, we should be more concerned about foreign and/or domestic terrorists obtaining WMDs from the corrupt, rogue Bush Regime.
In "Pentagon offers 'bioterror kit' online", by Julian Borger in Washington, on http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa...,12271,1058327,00.html :
"The Pentagon has been selling surplus laboratory equipment that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons, according to a congressional investigation released yesterday.
Defence officials were called in to answer questions before a congressional inquiry about the sale of the army surplus, which included centrifuges, evaporators, bacteriological incubators, and protective suits to unknown customers in other countries, including Egypt and the Philippines, where terrorist groups have been known to operate.
The news is particularly embarrassing, coming only days after the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group claimed the discovery of similar equipment in Iraq was evidence that the Saddam Hussein regime had a covert weapons programme.
"The cheap, virtually unregulated availability of low-cost biological laboratory equipment poses a risk to national security," said Christopher Shays, the Republican congressman chairing the inquiry. "The department of defence should not be a discount shopping outlet for would-be bioterrorists."
The Pentagon's sale of the surplus equipment was uncovered by Congress's general accounting office (GAO) which conducted a sting operation, setting up a dummy company to buy laboratory equipment online on a Pentagon website.
The GAO found that the defence department did not check the background of its customers. Most of the equipment being sold was available commercially but the Pentagon was selling it at bargain prices. The GAO bought $46,000 (£27,500) worth of equipment for just over $4,000 (£2,400).
A Pentagon spokesman said sales had been stopped pending the outcome of the inquiry. "
Iraqi Governing Council More Concerned About American Tax-Payers Than Corrupt Bushies
Ironically, it appears that the Iraqi Governing Council are more concerned about the existing rape, plunder & looting of the American tax-payer by the corrupt Bushies' and their pimps, the Global Corporate Empire ... than are America's Congress!
Don't you think it is about time to let Congress know that Enough is Enough?!?!? If so, please do not hesitate to contact them on http://www.congress.org .
This New York Times article on the administration's wasteful spending in Iraq is a couple of days old, but well worth a read. Here are just a few examples of decisions being challenged by the Iraqi Governing Council: one, spending $20 million to buy new revolvers and Kalashnikov rifles for the Iraqi police when the military is confiscating tens of thousands of weapons every month from Saddam Hussein's abandoned arsenals; two, spending $1.2 billion to train 35,000 Iraqi police officers in Jordan when they could be trained in Iraq for much less and Germany and France have offered to do the same for free.
Iraqis say there is strong evidence of corruption in the way contracts are awarded, some of them going to ex-supporters of Saddam. Members of the IGC are asking Congress to take a closer look: "There is mismanagement right and left, and I think we have to sit with Congress face to face to discuss this. A lot of American money is being wasted, I think. We are victims and the American taxpayers are victims."
In "Questions are Raised on Awarding of Contracts in Iraq" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1..., by Patrick E. Tyler and Raymond Bonner :
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 3 — Last month the Iraqi Governing Council questioned why the American occupation authority had issued a $20 million contract to buy new revolvers and Kalashnikov rifles for the Iraqi police when the United States military was confiscating tens of thousands of weapons every month from Saddam Hussein's abandoned arsenals.
On Wednesday the Iraqi council, in a testy exchange with the occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, challenged an American decision to spend $1.2 billion to train 35,000 Iraqi police officers in Jordan when such training could be done in Iraq for a fraction of the cost. Germany and France have offered to provide such training free.
These decisions are being questioned by Iraqi officials as Congress is also seeking to examine how the American occupation authority and the military are spending billions of dollars here. Iraqi officials and businessmen charge that millions of dollars in contracts are being awarded without competitive bidding, some of them to former cronies of Mr. Hussein's government.
"There is no transparency," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Governing Council, "and something has to be done about it.
"There is mismanagement right and left, and I think we have to sit with Congress face to face to discuss this. A lot of American money is being wasted, I think. We are victims and the American taxpayers are victims."
A number of businessmen say they believe it is necessary to pay kickbacks to win contracts. A spokesman for one of the largest American corporations awarding subcontracts here, Bechtel, said his company had neither paid any kickbacks nor had been approached by Iraqis seeking to pay kickbacks. He said Bechtel made all of its contract information available on its Web site and at offices in Baghdad and Basra. A check of the Web site on Friday found no information, only a notice that the site was "under construction."
The lack of transparency and competition, Governing Council members said in interviews, may be encouraging corruption. They said they believed that many contracts had been inflated beyond the reasonable cost for the work, creating opportunities for kickbacks between prime contractors and subcontractors.
One council member, Naseer K. Chadirji, said: "As the Governing Council we are in a very weak legal position. We don't have the right to investigate these contracts."
He added, "I don't have the evidence, but I think there is corruption. This is a common grievance that people tell me."
An Iraqi executive, who made millions of dollars as an insider under the Hussein government and would not allow his name to be used, said a relative outside Iraq had asserted that a Bechtel executive was looking to become a silent partner in an Iraqi company that would be favored with subcontracts from Bechtel.
A senior Bechtel official in Iraq, Clifford George Mumm, said that his company "would fire immediately anyone who tried to do such a thing" and that he did not believe that any Bechtel executive would engage in the kind of behavior described.
Mr. Mumm said there had been no kickbacks on the 105 subcontracts Bechtel had signed with Iraqi firms.
Asked about Iraqi assertions that Bechtel and other major American companies were awarding contracts to Iraqis who had grown rich under Mr. Hussein, Mr. Mumm said all of the Iraqi businesses that received Bechtel subcontracts were vetted by the occupation authority under Mr. Bremer.
The largest and most prominent Iraqi subcontractor that has emerged belongs to the Bunnia family, which grew immensely wealthy under the former government and was known for lavishing gifts, especially luxury cars, on members of the Hussein family.
"It is hard to understand the rationale for giving them contracts," said an American businessman.
Bunnia family members, in interviews over the last several months, have denied that they supported the old government and have said their business skills are needed to rebuild the country.
Looking at a list of companies that received subcontracts from Becthel, Mr. Othman, the Governing Council member, said he recognized at least a half-dozen that had profited from close relations with Mr. Hussein or members of his family.
Samir Sumaidy, a member of the Governing Council who owns a construction firm doing business in China, said Friday that the Iraqi interim government received no information from Mr. Bremer's authority on how it was spending Iraqi and American funds.
An American businessman, who would not allow his name to be used, said the occupation authority was doling out contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by simply telephoning favored companies and announcing, "I have a contract for you," as he characterized a telephone call he received this week.
Mr. Othman said, "I hope Congress knows what is going on, but if they don't know and we don't know, then God help everybody."
Council members said the contract to train Iraqi police officers in Jordan offended them because Jordan would draw a large payment from the dwindling Iraqi treasury and because many Iraqis resented Jordan's close ties to old government.
"The Iraqis are not very happy to see such large sums of money put in the hands of Jordan," said Mr. Chadirji, a lawyer and Governing Council member.
At a news briefing on Friday, Charles Heatly, a spokesman for the occupation authority, said 35,000 police offers were to be trained in Jordan because the necessary facilities did not exist in Iraq, an assertion that several Governing Council members challenged.
The Jordan plan was formally announced on Friday in a press release. Mr. Heatly said he thought that most council members had understood and agreed with Mr. Bremer's presentation on police training in their meeting on Wednesday.
But five council members said in interviews that the interim Iraqi government opposed the plan. "If we had voted, a majority would have rejected it," Mr. Chadirji said. "He told us what he did; he did not ask us."
The purchase of about 20,000 Kalashnikov automatic weapons, 50,000 revolvers and 10 million rounds of ammunition from Jordan has also been widely criticized by Iraqi Governing Council members.
The contract was issued by the Interior Ministry during the summer when it was being supervised by the former New York City police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik. Mr. Kerik did not respond to requests for an interview.
"It is totally unnecessary to buy them from outside the country," said Mr. Chadirji, who noted that he had purchased a number of Kalashnikovs to arm his personal bodyguards and that the price in the local market was as low as $50 for each weapon.
Mr. Heatly said logistical problems associated with buying so many Kalashnikovs in small lots from the Iraqi market would be excessive.
There would be no cost if the occupation authority obtained them from the United States military, which is now the custodian of countless thousands of Iraqi weapons, many of them said to be in mint condition.
Mr. Heatly did not have figures for the number of Kalashnikovs in allied hands, but he said there were not enough of them to satisfy the requirements of the contract."
"The first degree of folly is to conceit one's self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise counsel." - Benjamin Franklin
Ole' Ben Franklin must have gone to sleep and dreamt-up a nightmare of the Mad King George, when he penned this aphorism.
Bush suffers from the unfortunate folly of considering hiimself wise, but being a murderous buffoon-- having stumbled, bumbled & bungled us into bankruptcy here at home, and a nightmarish guerrilla quagmire abroad.
Bush uses inarticulate, "dumb-bunny", macho-man rhetoric that sounds idiotic coming from a coward who was AWOL in a drunken stupor, when it was his duty to serve ... and, now ...
Bush ignores advice from his own GOP elite to hold those criminals in his corrupt White House, accountable for the heinous and traitorous felony of exposing (outing) a CIA operative, placing her life and others at risk.
"[b]Am I wrong to think his heart's not really in this one?[/b]
Comments today from President Bush ...
'I mean this town is a -- is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's a lot of senior officials. I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth. That's why I've instructed this staff of mine to cooperate fully with the investigators -- full disclosure, everything we know the investigators will find out. I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is -- partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers. But we'll find out.'
[b]Rather short of dead or alive [/b]"
Yes, Joshua ... "rather short of dead or alive", indeed ... more like Bush's childish and nasty smirk of "Nah nah nah nah nah": you reporters can't "out" your sources ... ha ha ha I win I win I win ...". Bush is like a school-yard bully-- too terrified to confront the creeps in his own gang ... so he defends their indefensible criminal acts.
Meanwhile, the slimy "Chain-Gang" Cheney, "Egg-Fried" Rice, Karl "America's Joseph Goebbles'" Rove-- are "off the hook" although they are guilty of breaking the law ... for now!
The arrogant Bush Gang's Crimes Against Humanity and their contempt for the rule of law, makes Clinton's morality look mighty high-minded by comparison. (At least Clinton didn't massacre thousands based upon lies, deceit and ineptitute.)
Do You Have More WMDs at Home Than David Kay Has Found in Iraq?
"Kay's discovery of one vial of a reference strain of botulinum toxin that an Iraqi scientist had stored in his refrigerator in 1993 at his government's request was described by Bush on Friday as a piece of evidence that Iraq was prepared to have prohibited biological weapons.
Pincus reports "Before the war, the administration, using 1998 data from U.N. inspectors, said that Iraq had not accounted for 25,000 liters of anthrax bacteria and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin."
[Toxins like botulinum lose their potency after 5 years of storage ... Sorry, Bush, but again you're "grasping at straws" to fool your brain-dead sheep ...]
Please Visit Wal-Mart & Home Depot (and most American's garages ...) and you'll find more potential WMDs than Kay has found, thus far, in Iraq!
Did you know that Clorox Bleach is a lethal WMD if poured down a lot of folk's throats? Some insane mad-man might concoct a dangerous potion using rat-poison and weed-killer, and taint a large batch of food ... A few years back, a group of American terrorists bombed a Federal Building in Oklahoma City using a recipe of made of manure and other easily obtainable ingredients!
If David Kay was blind-folded & dropped in your house, would the U.S.A. be liable to be charged with having massive stockpiles of WMDs spread all over the place? You bet!
The Bush family tree's long lineage of fruit is of the poisonous variety ... Grand-daddy Prescott, Daddy G. H. W. Bush 41, and his corrupt son the Mad King George 43, did nothing for the benefit of America ... they've only been "out" for themselves! Others have been left to clean-up the Bush family messes, while they "take-the-money-and-run". They belonged to Skull & Bones, the unsavory secret Yale Society, that installs it's puppetry (unable to make-it based upon merit) into important positions of power.
Insanity is said to skip a generation at a time ... (I'll give Daddy Bush credit for having obtained international support for his Gulf War Adventure, where allies & Arab countries footed nearly 90% of the costs, and didn't exact the massive death toll, slaughtering thousands of innocents, as has his imbecilic son . http://www.tblog.com/template... ). Of course, family friends say the Mad King Bush is more like his mom, Barbara, and very unlike his father ... Barbara is known to be vindictive and self-interested, but she never showed the kind of pathological disease that her son, George seems to have inherited (from Prescott? ... Prescott was convicted of treason http://www.prisonplanet.com/a... , and supported Hitler's Nazi Party http://www.bk2k.com/bushbodyc... .) ... Maybe, it's just a "bad seed".
"No, I did not read the book, but what words more perfectly describe George Bush making one of the oddest speeches ever made at the UN? There he was - with his designer suit, costly watch, and constantly-manicured haircut - stone-faced and unrepentant for the violent destruction he caused, for his obvious lying, and for his rage against the thoughtful objections of others.
Actually, unrepentant seems an inadequate description, unaware or uninterested being closer to the mark.
The matter and manner of Bush's speaking are always an ordeal for thinking people. He seems convinced that every audience deserves the same approach given the pathologically credulous at a revival tent meeting.
But he outdid himself this time. His description of anti-social behavior on a global scale as support for the world community must have provided a sophisticated audience interesting dinner topics. One can imagine the bons mots around the subject of the world's most incorrigible, obvious liar claiming he defends UN credibility. As with Dostoevsky's Father Karamazov, it was as though all his recent vicious and disturbing behavior had simply never happened.
Of course, he sees the UN as good for a big handout towards the financial and human cost of rebuilding the waste he made of Iraq. This may seem odd for one of those "we ain't a gonna pay no damn UN dues" types, but, remember, psychopaths are complete narcissists.
But a handout is not Bush's critical need. Facing an election, he is looking for ways to deflect growing criticism and doubt from American voters. Americans have been remarkably quiescent over the dirty wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because they cost so few American lives and provided a reassuring sense of the nation's vast capacity for revenge, even if they killed mostly innocent people and few or any of those associated with 9/11.
But night after night of car bombs and dead American soldiers on television have a way of changing perceptions. America's press, "embedded" with the Pentagon long before the term was invented for the Iraq war, often poorly reports around foreign policy, but it simply cannot resist blood-and-ambulances stuff with real American victims. With this continuing week after week, it is likely more Americans will see the Iraq war for what it was - nothing to do with justice or democracy or rights or even terror - but one more kill-a-commie-for-Christ campaign, only on a vast scale with high-technology killing and no commies. And, as with all previous such holy wars, it just happens to serve the interests of America's utterly selfish foreign policy.
The UN is widely misunderstood in America, a circumstance people of Bush's leaning have always diligently cultivated, and its involvement on any appreciable scale gives Bush something external and vaguely-disliked to manipulate in explaining all the violence and confusion yet to come as a people revolt against conquest, occupation, and misery.
International involvement gives room for maneuver, wiggle room, and can be twisted with words to serve many purposes, including the claim that it vindicates Bush's wisdom, all those do-nothing, effete foreigners finally coming to recognize the threat of terror - and, yes, he once again with unblinking dishonesty linked terror with Iraq during his UN performance, terror being, with the bitterest irony, Bush's best ally in garnering votes. Iraqis fighting back with limited means against the world's military and technological Frankenstein naturally has to be called something else, so it is called terror, just as violent resistance to endless occupation and abuse in Gaza and the West Bank is.
Psychopathy likely is one of those many glitches in the gene pool, an evolutionary trial-and-error that served a useful purpose before modern urban society, psychopathic warriors being valued for their ability at defending early human settlements and terrifying potential enemies. Probably most of our legends of monsters such as vampires or ghouls derive from human experience with all-too-real psychopathic personalities.
Psychopaths are valued to this day as torturers for secret police, assassins, and dirty-tricks operatives for intelligence services. Police and prison-guard services who are careful about their hiring screen out such people with tests (there are extremely reliable ones), since psychopaths are naturally drawn to work where others will be at their mercy.
As with many mental disorders, from depression to schizophrenia, there appears to be degrees of psychopathy. The father of the late Jeffrey Dahmer, a man who killed, consumed and memorialized portions of his victims in his Milwaukee apartment, wrote a courageous book after the discovery of his son's horrific deeds. He recognized in retrospect signs from his son's childhood that something unusual was developing. He also, very importantly, recognized that there were uncomfortable thoughts he had had as a young man which now might be understood as a milder inclination in the same direction.
Politics with the power of elected office and the glow of press attention surely is a draw for at least the more moderately afflicted. There is reason to believe that psychopathy helps explain the careers of some horrible and bizarre politicians. The example that leaps to mind is the late Senator McCarthy. Yes, he was a nasty drunk, but lots of drunks function in politics without becoming destroyers of others' lives. The great Winston Churchill, for example, couldn't get through a day without his brandy.
How do you get rid of a political psychopath like Bush? Well, I hope the Democratic party doesn't see its only option as simply running another one. The Democratic contenders include at least a couple characters who might well qualify as having the disorder.
The armed forces have always been natural repositories for these dark creatures, the work of killing and the skill of being able to do it with relish making good fits. We have a general who suddenly discovered at nearly sixty years of age that he is a Democrat. What that means in the context of the general's military experience, which includes probable war crimes and extremely hazardous judgments in Serbia, is not clear.
We have a Senator who always smilingly supports death, whether as part of American foreign policy, Israeli foreign policy, or in prisons.
Maybe that's just how it has to be in a vast bloated empire that pretends it represents principle. After all, you need to keep all those disagreeable foreigners in line. Statesmen and humanitarian leaders aren't very good material for the job."
David Kay is Not Neutral ... Kay May Bloody-Well "Find" WMDs in Iraq ... But ...
David (Puppet) Kay's reputation is on the line ... He MUST "find" (plant?) WMDs in Iraq ... Why?
The Bushies trashed Hans Blix who only had between 100-220 inspectors and 6 months to search for the WMDs in Iraq ... Blix wasn't in Iraq for a week before he was undermined and sabotaged by the corrupt Bush Regime who lusted for their war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire in Iraq. The Bushies had their insane "pre-emptive" incursion to enrich their cronies & satisfy the kinky neo-con PNAC goons.
Post facto, Bush puppet Kay (with ties to the arms industry), has been given over 1200 inspectors and 4 months (also able to use work done by Blix team), and $300 Million. What did Kay find in Iraq? Zip, Zero, Nada!
Now the Bush Regime wants to give Kay more inspectors, 6-9 more months, and $600 Million additional funds? Even a naif can see that when someone is desperate to be "proven right"-- they might resort to whatever lengths are necessary, even if it means lying, cheating, stealing and murdering (Bushies modus operandi). [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
David Kay's misleading report has been discredited already by UN Weapons Experts. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ] At minimum, if Kay is awarded more inspectors, 6-9 months, and $600 Million (making the total cost of his "search" for WMDS close to $1 Billion) ... then an independent UN Weapons Inspection Team should be assigned as a watch-dog, to avoid further deceptions and despicable acts to "save" the Bushies' criminal backsides. Contact Congress to Demand that Kay's "search" be overseen by UN Weapons Experts on http://www.congress.org .
Read today's article in the Independent UK "Survey Group head's link to arms industry" by Glen Rangwala, on http://news.independent.co.uk... :
"For at least 10 years David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, has staked his professional and business reputation on the case that Iraq was a serious threat.
He was a frequent pundit on US television shows, making the case for regime change in blunt language. He called the attempt by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, to broker an effective inspections process in 1998 "worse than useless"; claimed in 2002 that Iraq was pursuing its weapons of mass destruction in order to bring about the elimination of the state of Israel; and said before entering Iraq that the Coalition would find not just a "smoking gun", but a "smoking arsenal".
Until October last year, Mr Kay was the vice-president of a major San Diego-based defence contractor, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), co-ordinating its homeland security and counter-terrorism initiatives. It was while he held this role that he claimed that Iraq could launch terrorist attacks on the US mainland.
SAIC was in the headlines earlier this year when it was revealed that the US government had given it a contract three years ago to produce mobile biological vans for training purposes. Until February SAIC's corporate vice-president was Christopher Ryan Henry, now a senior policy official at the Pentagon.
SAIC's spokesman acknowledged earlier this year that the company is deeply involved in the current war in Iraq, including its role in leading a $650m contract for services and support for the US army. Among other activities, the company runs the US-funded radio station in Umm Qasr, "Voice of the New Iraq", and helps to provide senior advisers to the US occupation authorities in Baghdad. It is not known if Mr Kay retains financial interests in SAIC. "
Arnold Tryst Uncovered: Dubya's Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay & Schwarzenegger Caught in an Orgy
Until now, I have ignored the Arnold Schwarzenegger scandals, because frankly, the sordid & obscene acts carried-out by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, are far more dangerous, dastardly and kinky by comparison.
However, a new and extremely unsavory story has been uncovered involving Dubya's good buddy, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay and poor dumb Arnold ... A tryst of corruption between the oil robber-barons led by Bush/Cheney, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, and Arny-boy? ... What unimaginable positions did they assume in their illicit orgy?
I mean it's one thing to grope a lovely lady (immoral and not to be excused ...), but Arny together with Dubya, Cheney, and Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay-- liars, warmongers, rapists of Americans & Iraqis, and swindlers of old ladies' pension funds!!!
Remind me again why Bush's puppy Johnny-boy Ashcroft never sought to charge Bush's buddy Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay for embezzling hundreds of millions, raping pension funds, defrauding investors, and massive job losses due to corruption and malfeasance? Is it his connections, stupid? See for yourself:
"It's hasta la vista to $9 billion if the Governator is selected
It's not what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to the girls a decade back that should raise an eyebrow. According to a series of memoranda our office obtained today, it's his dalliance with the boys in a hotel room just two years ago that's the real scandal.
The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.
Now, thirty-four pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.
Here's the story Arnold doesn't want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California's unique Civil Code provision 17200, the "Unfair Business Practices Act." This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers.
It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who's the plaintiff taking on the bad guys? Cruz Bustamante, Lieutenant Governor and reluctant leading candidate against Schwarzenegger.
Now follow the action. One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron's Lay calls an emergency secret meeting in L.A. of his political buck-buddies, including Arnold. Their plan, to undercut Davis (according to Enron memos) and "solve" the energy crisis -- that is, make the Bustamante legal threat go away. How can that be done? Follow the trail with me.
While Bustamante's kicking Enron butt in court, the Davis Administration is simultaneously demanding that George Bush's energy regulators order the $9 billion refund. Don't hold your breath: Bush's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is headed by a guy proposed by … Ken Lay.
But Bush's boys on the commission have a problem. The evidence against the electricity barons is rock solid: fraudulent reporting of sales transactions, megawatt "laundering," fake power delivery scheduling and straight out conspiracy (including meetings in hotel rooms).
So the Bush commissioners cook up a terrific scheme: charge the companies with conspiracy but offer them, behind closed doors, deals in which they have to pay only two cents on each dollar they filched.
Problem: the slap-on-the-wrist refunds won't sail if the Governor of California won't play along. Solution: Re-call the Governor.
New Problem: the guy most likely to replace Davis is not Mr. Musclehead, but Cruz Bustamante, even a bigger threat to the power companies than Davis. Solution: smear Cruz because -- heaven forbid! he took donations from Injuns (instead of Ken Lay).
The pay-off? Once Arnold is Governor, he blesses the sweetheart settlements with the power companies. When that happens, Bustamante's court cases are probably lost. There aren't many judges who will let a case go to trial to protect a state if that a governor has already allowed the matter to be "settled" by a regulatory agency.
So think about this. The state of California is in the hole by $8 billion for the coming year. That's chump change next to the $8 TRILLION in deficits and surplus losses planned and incurred by George Bush. Nevertheless, the $8 billion deficit is the hanging rope California's right wing is using to lynch Governor Davis.
Yet only Davis and Bustamante are taking direct against to get back the $9 billion that was vacuumed out of the state by Enron, Reliant, Dynegy, Williams Company and the other Texas bandits who squeezed the state by the bulbs.
But if Arnold is selected, it's 'hasta la vista' to the $9 billion. When the electricity emperors whistle, Arnold comes -- to the Peninsula Hotel or the Governor's mansion. The he-man turns pussycat and curls up in their lap.
I asked Mr. Muscle's PR people to comment on the new Enron memos -- and his strange silence on Bustamante's suit or Davis' petition. But Arnold was too busy shaving off his Hitlerian mustache to respond. "
Are Karl Rove and Bob Novak "Getting-It-On"? ... As the Stomach Turns ...
The Bush Regime and their ghoulish gang of neo-con attack dogs and neo-fascist court jesters are attempting to smear ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame (... Neo-con spin: blame the rape victim ... blame the murder victim ... blame the poor ... blame 9/11 ... blame Bill Clinton ... as Bush's Desk Plaque reads: "The Buck Stops Over There ... Way, Way Over There!").
Karl "Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles" Rove has a long-standing "relationship" with Bob "Lackey" Novak. Refer to "Karl Rove: Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles" on http://www.tblog.com/template... , and "Karl Rove's Lackey Bob Novak's Story Changes Daily Now To Protect Bush's Bungling Brain" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
Are Karl Rove and Bob Novak "getting-it-on"? Novak has become a discredited joke amongst respectable journalists, as he is panicky, as he makes his laughable propaganda tours around the neo-fascist talk shows, embarrassed by the fact, that his despicable column (intending to harm Wilson & his wife & whistle-blowers able to expose the Bush Gang's mountain of crimes), is instead doing damage to the corrupt criminals in the Bush Regime, who have committed a felony & should all be in jail. Read "Bush Regime's Leak of CIA Agent's Identity is to Intimidate Sources from Revealing Bush's Lies" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
Karl Rove & Bob Novak's long-standing "affair" makes the stomach turn ... they are both whores to the "corporate-take-all" neo-con rapist machine ... and stupidly have undermined their own corrupt paymasters, the Bushies, as well as punishing an honest man who told the truth about Bush's lies (phony Niger Uranium Sales to Iraq), and his wife, whose career is destroyed (a Pyhrric victory ... as are all Bush's so-called "victories"). Now, the discredited Novak is desperate to "save" his lovey-dove Rove's sorry and oh-so-unsavory backside.
In today's TalkingPointsMemo (1:10 PM) on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... , Joshua Micah Marshall, reports the following pathetic spinning by the liars-&-spin-meisters-ext raordinaires:
"A few days ago I wrote about the potential ripple effect of exposing Valerie Plame. You go back and see what companies she worked for, who her associates were, where she traveled and so forth, and you probably unravel a lot -- stuff that probably leads to the exposure of other agents and operations.
The Washington Post today has one example: the apparent CIA front company that Plame listed as her employer, Brewster-Jennings & Associates.
People are noting that the company's name made the rounds yesterday after Bob Novak mentioned it on TV, in apparent attempt to discredit Plame as a Democratic partisan.
I've avoided the rush of Novak-bashing that's swirled around this story. But his stance as a journalist simply trying to report out a story is being rapidly and severely diminished by his desperate effort to advance the agenda of those who leaked to him in the first place, i.e., to smear and discredit the Wilsons. (It's also being diminished by his far from credible efforts to exonerate the leakers by again and again revising what he's said on the subject.)
The truth, however, is that Novak's televised mention of Plame's 'employer' is a non-issue -- at least in terms of doing further damage.
The damage was done on July 14th when he first mentioned her name.
The point here is what foreign intelligence agencies (and to a lesser extent transnational corporations and perhaps terrorist groups) are able to find out. And you can rest assured that from the moment she was fingered as a CIA agent in a prominent nationally-syndicated newspaper column, all of them ran her name to map out her lists of associations and activities.
Information which was readily available on the Internet in a public database like the FEC's would have popped up really quickly.
So Novak didn't do any real damage yesterday -- but that's largely because there wasn't much damage left to do after his original disclosure."
"Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion ... and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us,' but he will say to you, 'Be silent: I see it if you don't.'" -- Congressman Abraham Lincoln, 1848
The Bush Regime, their neo-con attack-dogs and neo-fascist court-jesters, all continue to deceive the public in the most heinous and audacious neo-hitlerian manner. Their sophistry would be laughable if it hadn't resulted in the massacre of 367 US & British Soldiers, 17 Journalists and between 7376 and 9178 innocent Iraqi civilians [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ], thus far ... As it is, the Bushies' spinning is simply sickening.
Suddenly "WMDs posing an imminent threat" is transformed into "programs" ... Spinning "massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons intended to attack us and our allies" is turned into "capabilities and he might have 'intended to'" ... Outright lies of "nuclear mushroom clouds" is translated into "someday, perhaps 5-10 year from now, he might have gotten them, 'cause he wanted them" ...
This is an outrageous swindle, scam and neo-con con of a sleepy-headed public who have recently expressed their dissatisfaction with (rejection of) the neo-con insane "pre-emptive" doctrine, and over 61% of Americans don't believe we should topple "bad guys", certainly not unilaterally ... That's not America's business. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
The fact of the matter is that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the U.S.A. The Bush Regime represents a cabal of liars who should be tried for Crimes Against Humanity. A civilized nation doesn't wage an aggressive war (opposed by the entire world!) on another country, because of potential "intentions"-- The entire world community rightly condemns such hitlerian aggressions ... and, indeed, the Bush Regime's real motivations (the entire world recognizes) are to enrich their corrupt corporate cronies, while they are criminally callous to the obscene costs in lives and treasure. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
In today's "Experts Trash Kay Report" by Arab News, Associated Press, on http://www.aljazeerah.info/4n...%20Trash%20Kay%20Report.htm :
"VIENNA, 4 October 2003 — UN weapons experts yesterday trashed US claims that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had been planning to revive its atomic weapons program until the US invasion in March. Speaking to Reuters, an expert close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said David Kay’s report was largely based on “statements and opinions by scientists and officials with no apparent supporting evidence.”
Kay, head of the US-led team which has been searching for evidence of Saddam’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in postwar Iraq, said Thursday his team had found no stocks of such arms. But he said there was “evidence of Saddam’s continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons.”
“The testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons,” Kay said of the interim report his team supplied to the US Congress.
“Saddam Hussein remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons.”
The allegation that Saddam Hussein had revived his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs after United Nations inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 was the main justification for the US-led war to disarm Iraq.
But after returning to Iraq late in 2002 to conduct four months of inspections in the buildup to the war, the IAEA said it had found no evidence that Saddam had revived his clandestine atomic weapons program, a program the IAEA detected in 1991 and says it had dismantled by 1995.
“The (Kay) report is filled with the use of the words ‘belief’ and ‘may’ and ‘could have’ and these sorts of things,” the nuclear expert told Reuters. “This is not how the IAEA operates,” said the expert, who supported the agency’s prewar inspections in Iraq. “They would not have given credence to statements by individuals without having corroborating evidence to support their allegations. The IAEA only states what it can verify.”
The source also questioned Kay’s reliance on testimony from senior Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and high-level Baath Party official Khalid Ibrahim Sa’id, who was killed at a Baghdad roadblock by the occupation forces on April 8.
In his statement to US lawmakers, presented behind closed doors, Kay said: “Sa’id began several small and relatively unsophisticated research initiatives that could be applied to nuclear weapons development.”
Calling that limited allegation “pretty pathetic”, the nuclear expert close to the IAEA added that since Sa’id could no longer be questioned, his testimony should be treated with more than a grain of salt.
Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix told BBC radio that the United Nations Charter allowed self-defense against an attack, but that the US-led coalition had failed to prove Iraq posed a “manifest and imminent” threat — the UN criteria for military action.
“One (criterion) is that there should be a manifest threat,” Blix told the BBC. “The intelligence was not so strong in reality that it could be said to be manifest.
“And the second one would be the imminence of it. If they can develop weapons of mass destruction in five years or 10 years, well that certainly is not imminent.”
In Washington, a leading congressional critic, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the results of the search to date demonstrated no imminent threat existed “and there was time for more diplomatic effort before we went to war.”
Pelosi,, who met with Kay in the Capitol building, emerged to tell reporters that “it was clear to me that there was no imminence of a threat for weapons of mass destruction,” as the White House had claimed. She said the discoveries made so far are evidence of Iraq’s aspiration for a weapons program, but added there was a difference between that and achieving the ability to deploy such weapons. Pelosi, who voted against last year’s authorization of the use of force in Iraq, said the classified intelligence she saw at the time did not support the claim of an imminent threat of the banned weapons."
MoveOn Sets On-Line Record -*- Please Sign Petition to Demand Independent Counsel
A record-setting 20,000 people have signed the MoveOn.org's petition within one hour of it's introduction on-line. The petition demands the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the White House's outing of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative and the wife of Joseph Wilson. You can read or sign the petition at MoveOn's website: http://www.moveon.org/intimig... .
MoveOn cites: "According to the Washington Post, "two top White House officials" committed a high crime in the first weeks of July. They handed over the identity of an American secret agent to journalists. Republicans contend that an investigation by the Justice Department will reveal any wrongdoing. But Justice Department chief John Ashcroft -- who was appointed by President Bush and who employed key Bush advisor Karl Rove -- is hardly neutral. If we don't speak up now, the investigation could be left in John Ashcroft's hands, and the perpetrators and the crime could be swept under the rug. That's why we believe:
"Attorney General Ashcroft must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the White House's role in revealing an undercover CIA agent's identity. This act was a breach of national security and a felony and should be investigated by an independent party."
The insane Bush Regime is demanding $600 Million to fabricate ? (ooopppsss ... to "find") WMDs in Iraq. These pathological liars need an "exit strategy" from the world's disgust at their neo-hitlerian deceptions and aggression in Iraq! $600 Million can "produce" a lot of WMDs ... This "rubber-stamp" Republican Congress is the "corporate-take-all" Bushies' lap-dog ... as they rape America of $600 Million to "find" (or "plant"?) WMDs in Iraq ... "Hurraahh", they'll cry ... the neo-con "court-jesters" will shout "we told you so" ... the Bushies will smirk "now let's invade Iran & N Korea" for the PNAC Global Corporate Empire (and to bolster Bush's sagging ratings) ... Talk about a scam, swindle, shell-game ... or whatever you wish to call this crime!
David Kay (US Inspector) says it will take another 6-9 months, following over 4 months (June 2003) already spent (using 1200 people, and he wants even more people!) -- Hans Blix was only provided 80-100 professionals that grew to around 220, and 6 months-- less time and support than David Kay has been allotted with greater assistance and resources ... This is a damning indictment of the Bush Regime's sabotage of Hans Blix in order to pursue their bloody-war-turned-guerril la-quagmire.
Hans Blix was trashed and character assassinated by the ghouls and goons in the Bush Regime ... Hans Blix hadn't been in Iraq for a week, before the Bushies said it was taking too long ... Hans Blix was "stiffed"! This is a despicable sham and while it may provide Bush's puppet David Kay, job security, any "findings" are suspect, given the Bush Regime's corrupt modus operandi.
Contact Congress NOW and demand that this insane Bush Regime be held accountable for their Crimes Against Humanity on http://www.congress.org . [If Congress does approve this obscene amount of taxpayer monies to cover Bush's fat a*s, then an independent U.N. inspection team should be appointed as a "watch-dog" in order to ensure that the Bushies' don't play their usual sordid and vicious "games".]
Refer to "Officials Say Bush Seeks $600 Million to Hunt Iraq Arms" by James Risen and Judith Miller on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... :
"The Bush administration is seeking more than $600 million from Congress to continue the hunt for conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein's government had an illegal weapons program, officials said Wednesday.
The money, part of the White House's request for $87 billion in supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been spent on the weapons search, the officials said.
The budget figures for the weapons search are included in the classified part of the administration's supplemental appropriations request, and have not been made public. The size of the request suggests the White House is determined to keep searching for unconventional weapons or evidence that they were being developed under Mr. Hussein. The search so far has turned up no solid evidence that Iraq had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons when the American invasion began in March, according to administration officials.
Counting the money already spent, the total price tag for the search will approach $1 billion.
The money is intended specifically to pay for the activities of the Iraq Survey Group, made up of teams of troops and experts who are managed by the Pentagon but whose activities are coordinated by David Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector who reports to the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet.
Officials said the money for the Iraq Survey Group comes under the classified intelligence part of the Pentagon's budget request. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the classified category.
The request for increased funding comes just as Mr. Kay is scheduled to brief Congress in closed sessions on Thursday on an interim report of the Iraq Survey Group's findings so far.
He is to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The C.I.A. is expected to publicly release a declassified statement based on Mr. Kay's testimony after the briefings, officials said.
C.I.A. and other officials said last week that Mr. Kay's report would be inconclusive, suggesting that he will not say that he has found strong evidence of the existence of illegal weapons in Iraq.
Since the fall of the Hussein government, the failure to find evidence of illegal weapons has been a major political embarrassment for the Bush administration.
After the initial military-led effort to find such weapons came under fire, President Bush turned to the C.I.A. to oversee an expanded search. In June, Mr. Tenet asked Mr. Kay to act as his personal adviser on the issue and to provide strategic advice to the weapons hunters.
Officials familiar with the request said that if the administration gets all the money it is seeking, it will provide funding for a staff of 1,400 for the Iraq Survey Group. It currently has more than 1,200 members.
The cash infusion is being sought even though the group has gotten off to what experts and military officials said had been a rocky start.
Though a larger group than the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the military weapons hunting group that preceded it, the Iraq Survey group includes many members drawn from reserve units.
Some weapons hunting units have sat in Baghdad for days, sometimes weeks, waiting for missions, officials say.
"Even when hot tips have come in, it often takes days to mobilize a unit to visit a suspect site or talk to a suspect scientist," said a former member of one unit, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.
The Iraq Survey Group has also been slow to mobilize former international arms inspectors who had volunteered to accompany the Exploitation Task Force and the Iraq Survey Group, those inspectors say.
"Most of us have just given up waiting and gone on with our lives," said one former weapons inspector, who was told he would be sent to Baghdad.
The group has also concentrated on installing an unnecessarily elaborate infrastructure to support its operations, said several military officials who complained there was a disparity between the resources allotted to the two programs.
While the Exploitation Task Force worked out of an abandoned palace and the servants' housing quarters near Baghdad airport and remained short of vehicles, air support, computers and even electricity during the initial months of the weapons hunt, the Iraq Survey Group spent its first weeks installing air-conditioned trailers, a new dining facility, state-of-the-art software and even a sprinkler system for a new lawn, according to officials and experts who worked with the group this summer.
"They kept unloading crates and crates of new Dell laptops," said one Pentagon official who complained that the exploitation force lacked resources."
Corrupt Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz & Rove Should Go! So Should the Mad King George!
The insane Bush cabal is both corrupt and incompetent: Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rove (as well as their lackeys), have all betrayed this nation and should be investigated and tried for Crimes Against Humanity. Obviously, their blood-thirsty Defense Contractor cronies (Lockheed Martin ... ); war-profiteering Building & Oil Corporation buddies (Halliburton, Bechtel, Big Oil); and, the recently established neo-con-artist rapists-in-arms-with-Bush y-boy: Joe Allbaugh's "New Bridge Strategies LLC" and embezzler & thief Ahmad Chalabi's nephew's "Iraqi International Law Group (IILG)-- will all invest millions in propaganda campaigns designed to cover-up the ugly corruptions perpetrated by the Bush Regime & their Corporate Robber-barons.
By the way, impeachment hearings should be initiated to oust the Mad King George, for leading this country into an insane war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire in Iraq, based upon lies, phony pretexts, and falsehoods (the real motives were to enrich his corporate paymasters and to fulfill the power-lusts by the idiotic neo-con PNAC ( http://www.tblog.com/template... ) ghouls).
Yesterday, conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan got close to uncovering the potential Bush White House criminals who committed the sordid and vindictive crime (one amongst many) to punish ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson for telling the truth (Bush's lie about phony sales of uranium to Iraq for nukes), by illegally outing (leaking) that his wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA Agent. This is a heinous (and vengeful) crime (President Reagan & Veep Bush 41 were responsible for making it a crime under the law to expose undercover intelligence agents) of treason resulting in up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $50,000, for petty and mean-spirited motives, designed to silence whistle-blowers who could expose Bush's lies.
"MSNBC'S Buchanan & Press scored a major scoop on Wednesday, all but unmasking the high government official who "outed" a CIA operative via a July 14 column by Robert Novak. Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who worked with Valerie Plame, the reported agent, all but identified "Scooter" Libby as the government official who outed her – and at least one other in the Vice President's office.
Who is "Scooter" Libby?
He's the nexus of the neocon network in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and assistant to the President, whose office is the operational nerve center of the War Party. It is Libby and Cheney who made repeated trips to the CIA, pressuring them to accept tall tales of Al Qaeda connections and assorted "weapons of mass destruction" supposedly lurking in Baghdad – including the Niger-uranium yellowcake "evidence" that Iraq had acquired fissionable material for a nuclear weapon.
The documents purportly proving the Niger-Iraq uranium connection turned out to be a crude forgery.
Pressed by Pat Buchanan to name the leaker, Johnson refused to deny it was Libby; he furthermore stated that the perpetrator was no stranger to "scandal."
As Marc Rich's longtime lawyer, and a key figure in procuring the fugitive billionaire a presidential pardon, Lewis ""Scooter" Libby surely fits the bill.
Johnson also rebutted widespread stories that Plame wasn't an undercover intelligence officer. Clifford May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has said her status was an open secret, and that she was an analyst whose life would not be placed in danger if her CIA connection was revealed. Asked by Buchanan if Plame's work would have taken her overseas, where compromising her CIA affiliation would put her in physical danger, Johnson's answer was an emphatic yes. Furthermore, he emphasized, her outing would put all her various overseas contacts in jeopardy.
Developing ..."
When are we going to get rid of this vile, despicable and corrupt cabal of liars, thieves and rapists of America and Iraq, in the Bush Regime? I urge you to contact Congress today, and demand the resignations of Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rove. Also, demand that Congress establish an independent investigation and open-door impeachment hearings, to save this nation from further damage and destruction by the imbecilic ignoramus, Mad King George. Contact Congress on http://www.congress.org .
Most Americans Want An Independent Counsel Because They Don't Trust the Corrupt Bushies
Most Americans want an independent counsel appointed to investigate into the vengeful and illegal leak (outing) of a CIA Agent's identity [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ] by the corrupt Bush Regime, because they don't trust the Bushies. You can't fool us all, all of the time-- Read "The Other Lies of George Bush" by David Corn on http://www.thenation.com/doc.... . The list of Bush's lies is far, far too long for any single blog -- also refer to http://www.bushlies.com/ .
In "Outside Probe of Leaks Is Favored - Poll Findings Come As White House Softens Denials" by Dana Milbank and Mike Allen on http://www.washingtonpost.com... , they report:
"Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe a special prosecutor should be named to investigate allegations that Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday.
The poll, taken after the Justice Department announced that it had opened a criminal probe into the matter, pointed to several troubling signs for the White House as Bush aides decide how to contain the damage. The survey found that 81 percent of Americans considered the matter serious, while 72 percent thought it likely that someone in the White House leaked the agent's name. "
They conclude: "In the Post-ABC News poll, 34 percent thought it likely that Bush knew in advance about the leaks. Bush's overall support slipped to 54 percent from 58 percent in mid-September. That level is the lowest of his presidency but still respectable by historical measures. There was a high degree of suspicion directed toward the administration. Only 29 percent said the investigation should be handled by the Justice Department, while 69 percent favored a special counsel with autonomy from the administration. "
Does anyone with an iota of brain-matter actually believe that Johnny-boy "Robespierre-Tear-the-US- Constitution-and-Bill-of- Rights-to-Pieces-for-insa ne-Patriot (sic)-Acts" Asscroft will conduct a thorough, honest and open investigation?
Does anyone who wasn't born yesterday actually believe that Bush "Head-in-the-Sand" 43 will actually allow the truth to be revealed? Bush lacks the brains and the balls to even ask his own staff if they might have committed this heinous crime ... he shows no outrage ... he takes no action! Bush's cowardliness is consistent with how he treats every problem faced by his corrupt administration: pretend I'm a "tough guy" and pass the buck onto some poor sucker who will blame 9/11 or Bill Clinton!
Does anyone believe that the vile "Chain-Gang" Cheney or slimy "Egg-Fried" Rice, the liars-extraordinaries (who were probably involved in this crime) will be forthcoming? Cheney and Rice regurgitate the same old lies in all of their sordid propaganda tours, although they've been discredited over-and-over again ... These neo-fascists follow religiously Goebbles' advice: "If you tell a lie enough times, it becomes accepted as truth, and, the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be accepted."
Does anyone believe that Karl "Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles" Rove, isn't deeply implicated (he has a long-term relationship with Novak [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ])?
The Bush Regime's track-record when "things go wrong" is to stage a diversionary event (usually involving the deaths and misery of innocent people) to fool us all into "looking the other way".
This time, folks, don't be fooled, and don't look the other way!
The Most Insidious of Traitors: A Mean, Petty and Corrupt Bush White House
The Bush White House has no honesty, dignity, honor or integrity. The Bush Gang have proved themselves to be a corrupt cabal of neo-con con-artists all out to plunder and loot America and Iraq. Like their "bird-of-a-feather" (vulture) cronies (e.g. Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay), they rape and ravage Americans and Iraqis to enrich their greedy, amoral selves.
The Bush Regime committed a Crime Against Humanity, having waged a dishonest, illegal and immoral war killing 360 American and British soldiers, 17 Journalists and over 9000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
It is time to Declare Our Independence from the Mad (and not terribly bright) King George, Dicky-boy "Soprano" Cheney, Condi "Discredited Liar" Rice, "Poodle" Powell, Johnny-boy "Robespierre" Asscroft, and "Rummy-dummy" Rumsfeld and "Wolfy" Wolfowitz: incompetent buffoons and corrupt thugs-- who should be in prison-- not occupying the highest offices in the land.
Moreover, the war-profiteering (Truman considered it Treason) should be outlawed, and the blood-money should be confiscated from Bush's immoral (possibly illegally) "swindles" granted Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil, for looting America (along with new Bush scams by cronies: Joe Allbaugh's "New Bridge Strategies LLC" and Ahmad Chalabi's nephew's "Iraqi International Law Group (IILG)" to loot Iraq).
In "The Most Insidious Of Traitors", by William Rivers Pitt on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... , describes this ugly Bush crime (one amongst many):
""Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors." -- George Herbert Walker Bush, 1999
Karl Rove, senior political advisor to George W. Bush, is a very powerful man. That is not to say he has never been in trouble. Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush Sr. campaign for trashing Robert Mosbacher, Jr., who was the chief fundraiser for the campaign and an avowed Bush loyalist. Rove accomplished this trashing of Mosbacher by planting a negative story with columnist Bob Novak. The campaign figured out that Karl had done the dirty deed, and he was given his walking papers.
Demonstrably, Rove is back in the saddle again. The January 2003 edition of Esquire magazine carried an article by Ron Suskind which quoted comments from John DiIulio, a domestic policy advisor to the White House who had just retired from his post. On October 24, DiIulio had sent a letter to Suskind describing what he had seen while working for the Bush administration. The meat of the letter described an administration far, far more interested in raw political triangulation and ruthless spin than in actual policy and government functionality. Some excerpts from DiIulio's letter:
"Some are inclined to blame the high political-to-policy ratios of this administration on Karl Rove... some staff members, senior and junior, are awed and cowed by Karl's real or perceived powers. They self-censor lots for fear of upsetting him, and, in turn, few of the president's top people routinely tell the president what they really think if they think that Karl will be brought up short in the bargain. Karl is enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political advisor post near the Oval Office."
Even a casual political observer would have trouble missing the fact that this is one of the sharpest political outfits ever to reside in the Oval Office. Bush's team is a unified wall, cemented to their message-of-the-day, and they have done very well for themselves because of this. All of this can be laid at the feet of Karl Rove, the senior political advisor to George W. Bush. According to DiIulio, the preeminence of political considerations within this administration is so complete that any and all policy considerations or contemplation of actual issues are not so much in the back seat as they are in the trunk below the spare tire and the jack. This, again, can be laid at the feet of Mr. Rove.
All of Washington and the country has been buzzing for the last few days over a report that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate the White House regarding a matter of important national security. The wife of a former ambassador named Joseph Wilson, it has been alleged, was "outed" as an active CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak by this White House in an act of political revenge.
Joseph Wilson was the man dispatched to Niger in February of 2002 by the CIA, after Vice President Dick Cheney asked CIA to figure out whether there was any substance to the charge that Iraq was attempting to procure uranium "yellow cake" from that nation for the purpose of starting a nuclear weapons program. Ambassador Wilson went, investigated, and returned eight days later to state flatly that the evidence was garbage. He has claimed since that his analysis was one of three intelligence reports debunking the Niger story. Ambassador Wilson told this to Cheney's office, the CIA, the State Department, and the National Security Council. Despite the fact that Wilson made it clear that these allegations were untrue -- it was revealed that the 'evidence' to support the Niger uranium charge was a pile of crudely forged documents -- George W. Bush used the Niger uranium evidence dramatically in his 2003 State of the Union address.
In July, Ambassador Wilson went very public, criticizing the White House for using evidence to support war that they knew was patently false. One week later, Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. As it turns out, two senior White House officials cold-called six different journalists and informed them of Valerie Plame's status as a CIA agent, according to an anonymous administration official quoted by The Washington Post. None of the journalists ran the story. That same administration official was quoted about these revelations as saying, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." Joseph Wilson likewise charges that this act was done as an act of revenge for his vocal criticism of George W. Bush and the administration's actions leading up to the Iraq war. Specifically, he views Karl Rove as being possibly involved in, or at least condoning, the cutting down of his wife.
The facts of this story are singularly grotesque. Taken at the top layer, you have a White House that appears perfectly willing to go after the family members of its critics. Valerie Plame's career is destroyed, period. The act itself displays a level of viciousness that is dangerous to the functioning of this, or any, democracy.
Peel the second layer and you discover the rank illegality of it all. Section 421 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 reads as follows:
"Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
The third layer is where the darkness truly lurks, and where the deadly importance of this situation lies. Valerie Plame was not simply an analyst or a data cruncher. She was an operative running a network dedicated to tracking any person or nation that might try to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. That sentence deserves to be written twice. She was an operative running a network dedicated to tracking any person or nation that might try to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
The Bush administration pushed very hard the idea that America is in danger from WMD being placed into the hands of terrorists. This was one of the central arguments behind the war in Iraq. Yet in order to protect Bush's political standing, a couple of "administration officials" blew Valerie Plame, and by proxy her network, completely out of the water in an attempt to shut her husband up. In short, in order to protect Bush from the ramifications of using fake evidence to support his war, this White House destroyed an intelligence network that was protecting us from the threat posed by chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
We are less safe now that Valerie Plame is no longer performing this vital task, and the members of her network are in mortal danger of being revealed and destroyed. Beyond that, we are facing a level of hypocrisy that shatters any and all previously known boundaries. This administration ginned up a war in Iraq based upon manufactured evidence and wildly overstated threats, all of which was painted over with rhetoric about defending the country from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. The fate of Valerie Plame, and her network, shows without doubt that the moral standing of this administration is as empty as Saddam Hussein's WMD cache.
In Ambassador Wilson's words, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames."
The current spin from administration defenders within and without the mainstream media is that Valerie Plame was only an analyst, and not an operative. This, somehow, is supposed to lessen the blow of an administration willing to attack the families of its critics. Yet the characterization of Plame as an analyst is factually incorrect. For one, Robert Novak himself indicated that she was an operative in the original report that birthed this scandal. "Wilson never worked for the CIA," wrote Novak, "but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
Ray McGovern, who was for 27-years a senior analyst for the CIA, further confirms the status of Plame within the CIA. "I know Joseph Wilson well enough to know," said McGovern in a telephone conversation we had today, "that his wife was in fact a deep cover operative running a network of informants on what is supposedly this administration's first-priority issue: Weapons of mass destruction."
McGovern further elaborated on the damage done when such an agent has their cover blown. "This causes a great deal of damage," said McGovern. "These kinds of networks take ten years to develop. The reason why they operate under deep cover is that the only people who have access to the kind of data we need cannot be associated in any way with the American intelligence community. Our operatives live a lie to maintain these networks, and do so out of patriotism. When they get blown, the operatives themselves are in physical danger. The people they recruit are also in physical danger, because foreign intelligence services can make the connections and find them. Operatives like Valerie Plame are real patriots."
Mr. Rove has done this kind of thing before, specifically using Robert Novak in that one notable attempt to cut down Mosbacher. Rove is a disciple of the undisputed heavyweight champion of political assassins, Lee Atwater, and has often reached into a deep bag of dirty tricks to accomplish his political ends. He knows no ideology beyond power, and has no bones about using it to wreak havoc on anyone who gets in his crosshairs. The Esquire article about DiIulio finds him recounting a singular Rove moment, as he overheard a conversation happening in another room: "Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. 'We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!'"
Guess who was doing the cursing and threatening.
One last bit of inside baseball. When the Niger scandal erupted, the Bush administration went out of its way to blame the CIA for the mess, despite the fact that the CIA, along with the entire intelligence community, had been cut out of the loop by Don Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans. The OSP, and its pet Iraqi Ahmad Chalabi, became the source for all of the information regarding Iraq's weapons capabilities, and a number of intelligence insiders have publicly blamed that group for the preponderance of highly erroneous data about Iraq. For the Bush administration to completely usurp the CIA by depending solely on data manufactured by the Office of Special Plans, and then to turn around and blame CIA when the OSPs data did not turn out to be true, is as insane as it is laughable. Yet this is what they have done. The CIA's calling for this investigation is nothing more or less than the Agency defending itself, proving out the oft-repeated warning that one scapegoats the CIA at their mortal peril.
Also, the fact that this data came to The Washington Post from a White House official means that another Deep Throat may have just been born.
The White House has denied the allegation, and promises a full investigation. A great many people find it laughable to believe this White House is capable of investigating itself, and are demanding an independent investigation. A quick look at the White House telephone logs will reveal who called whom, and when. It may well be the case that Rove was not involved; there are several administration officials -- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rice, Card -- along with a constellation of administration associates and media mouthpieces, who had a vested interest in shutting Ambassador Wilson's mouth. The White House phone logs will be revelatory. If this administration fails to hand those logs over, they will stand in taint of high treason.
J'accuse."
Bush Needs A Lesson in History and Ethics -- Bankrupt Policies Are Inept & Corrupt
Wouldn't it be delightful if the Bushies knew a modicum of the history of our own nation and an iota of the history of other nations? Sadly, dumb-bunny Bush and neo-con Cheney declared themselves the CEO & COO Corporate President(s) ... and they sure as hell are obsessed with exploiting, plundering and looting America and Iraq, to grab power and riches (not unlike their greedy buddy, the crook Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay), and don't give a damn about the havoc, mayhem and misery they cause.
Bush and his slavish side-kick Condi Rice just love watching football games ... but then football hooligans don't give a damn about history, when they can "play little games" in the Oval Office, drink beer and choke on pretzels.
Poodle Powell isn't any better, having imperially announced a bizarre six-month deadline for the Iraqi people to draft their own Constitution. Powell also seems rather puffed-up and pleased with himself these days having scored a petty-little-victory over Rummy Rumsfeld in their ghoulish tete-a-tete power games (resulting in the deaths of 360 Americans & British Soldiers, 17 Journalists, and over 9000 innocent Iraqi civilians).
The entire petty, mean-spirited and ignorant Bush Regime certainly wastes more time playing their insane war games and taking power trips, resulting in the massacre of thousands of innocents to enrich themselves ... than they do actually "thinking" about the consequences of their actions ... But then thugs are obsessed with the force of brute power, and don't care about "thinking". The Bushies are drunk ... drunk with power that they are incompetent to use wisely.
Someone might want to remind Poodle Powell of a brief history of the founding of the United States of America:
In September 1774, the First Continental Congress was established with representatives from the original 13 colonies (except for Georgia), and who sent a petition of grievances to the Mad King George (not Bush).
A Second Continential Congress was set-up in 1775 to establish a Continental Army to fight the British (who didn't listen to the Colonies ... and said that the Colonists were really happy to have the British as occupiers ... sound familiar?). George Washington was appointed Commander in Chief ... They drafted a Declaration of Independence that was adopted by the 13 Colonies on the 4th July 1776.
During the bloody American War of Independence that was ultimately won against the British (with the help of the French-- every year a commemoration is held by French and Americans at the Cemetery Picpus, in Paris, where General LaFayette is buried), the Articles of Confederation were ratified in 1781, and not supeceded by the United States Constitution until 1789.
In other words, from the time that the Colonial Terrorists (as they were labelled by the Brits) obtained their independence in the American Revolutionary War, that lasted from 1775 to 1783, the interim drafting and review of the U.S. Constitution took over 7 years before ratification beginning in 1787, and final adoption on March 4, 1789. The Bill of Rights wasn't formally adopted until 1791.
Powell has given the Iraqi Governing Councel 6 months to come-up with a new constitution. This is not only absurd ... it smacks of the same purposefully impossible deadline given to the U.N. Inspectors who were labelled incompetent and trashed because they didn't find Iraq's WMDs in a matter of a few days or weeks.
Ironically, the incompetent buffoons in the Bush Regime have had months to find these elusive WMDs ... and still haven't done so, even with the full force of the U.S. Military behind them. Of course, now both American and Iraqis Weapons Experts and Scientistis say they didn't exist ...
Refer to:
"Doubt grows over prewar intelligence - Upcoming Kay report is already stoking skepticism of prewar claims, which are under fire in Congress." by Peter Grier on http://www.csmonitor.com/2003...
It is clear that Powell wants (wittingly or unwittingly) for the Iraqis to fail: Why? Just Follow-the-Money: The corrupt Bushies will stop at nothing (and I mean nothing ... doesn't matter how many innocent Americans and Iraqis are massacred in the "bargain") to ensure that their corporate pimps (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil) are enriched from the rape of America ... and also to install Bushies' cronies like Joe Allbaugh's "New Bridge Strategies LLC" and Ahmad Chalabi's nephew's "Iraqi International Law Group (IILG)" both of which are neo-con-artist rip-offs designed to rape the Iraqi people!
The Bush Regime never gave a "rat's a*s" about the Iraqi people (anymore than they give a "rat's a*s" about the American people): this is an insane Bush/Cheney Families Business Plan designed to enrich the Bushies, their pimps and their whores ... and those who collaborate with them are colluding in their Crimes Against Humanity.
"Cronyism is an important factor in our Iraqi debacle. It's not just that reconstruction is much more expensive than it should be. The really important thing is that cronyism is warping policy: by treating contracts as prizes to be handed to their friends, administration officials are delaying Iraq's recovery, with potentially catastrophic consequences." -- War-Profiteering Should Be Treason & Profits Should Be Confiscated!
Catastrophic consequences most certainly ... for the American and Iraqi peoples. The obscene expenditure demanded by the Bush Gang of $87 Billion ($20.3 Billion is a Welfare Package for Bloated Corporate Cronies) should be rejected and all tax-cuts for the rich should be repealed, as $166 is outrageous for this war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire. The United Nations should be provided the funds to assist the Iraqis to establish their own government, and we should only participate in Iraq as part of an international coalition (e.g. Bosnia).
Can't we find wiser and more competent politicos to run America than this vile and sordid Bush Regime? Surely, we need to Declare Our Independence from today's Mad King George. If not, God Help Us.
