closed minded fanatics

It is just amazing how people of closed minds cannot disagree with without these snears, smears and personal attacks. It's a common affliction of which there is apparently no cure.

Oh well, I will try again: Iraq facts: Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1)Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Westerndomination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) theIraq .jihad;. (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, andpolitical reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-USsentiment among most Muslims.

Our generals on the ground in Iraq are retiring so they can complain. Three of them said so in a hearing that Republican politicians boycotted.

Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, said, "we went to war with a flawed plan. We certainly had the troops necessary to win the fight to take down Saddam Hussein, but we in no way considered the hard work to win the peace. There was 10 years of good, deliberate war planning by U.S. Central Command that was essentially ignored."

Soldiers are complaining, parents are complaining and these people turn a deaf ear. Iraq caused us to take our eye off the ball, so says the 9/11. Hello, earth to all those closed minds.
1:19 PM

the solution

Our nation can ensure every American access to health coverage but we can't do it with this Congress...Progressives don't need a new vision, we need increased representation in Washington.

We have a government that can't, won't, and shouldn't solve great national challenges like our energy dependence, education, and the war on terror.

That's why it's time to stand up for a new vision of government this November.

We can restore our democracy... The good news is we just need to get a majority and we can stop these threats in their tracks... Here's what I hope you will do, vote and get your friends to vote.

Iraq facts

Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1)
Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western
domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the
Iraq .jihad;. (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and
political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US
sentiment among most Muslims.

Countering the spread of the jihadist movement will require coordinated
multilateral efforts that go well beyond operations to capture or kill terrorist
leaders.

Modern Christians vs.the Prince of Peace

Those who proclaim their adherence to the words and suggestions of Christ may recall the Christ that spoke words of non-violence. (I’m speaking of the Jesus Christ pre-Constantine, and certainly pre-Augustine – Augustine, who penned, The Just War, making God a partner in the crime of war. Modern-day sensibilities could re-title his text as, War, Positive Pre-emptive Thinking with Jesus’ Blessing).

Before Constantine no Christian parent would offer up their child for a war nor allow them to be sent off to kill or be killed, although they might pray the state would be successful in its endeavor.

Since Constantine, Jesus not only condones war, but is expected to pick a side. Before Christ became a product of the State; before Christ was usurped from Christianity, Christians were non-violent.

They did not and would not participate in government actions that tested their faith. No man no state, whether secular or theocratic, is given or receives in some fashion the moral authority over the rest of us.

Pointing the barrel of a gun at our heads, destroying all of our possessions, torturing us for a confession or information, or just because they can, should not be the standard barer for moral authority; nor should the use of weapons of mass destruction that leaves the air, water and land tainted with radioactivity.

Radioactivity or depleted uranium (DU) that will eventually and lethally kill our soldiers and their families and our enemies and their offspring forevermore.

The only moral authority We the People have given the State is defined by its social contract. That contract is the Constitution and The Bill of Rights. It exists only because we the people affirm its promise. It’s been said the world has changed since 911. That’s true for our government is indiscernible.

It’s unrecognizable. It no longer adheres to the principles of our founding papers. It no longer accepts The Bill of Rights as the law of the land. No longer does it recognize treaties, proclamations or conventions.

Our leader leads by fiat. No longer does congress proclaim their responsibility to be both check and balance. Signing statements have become the law of the land. We the people look for justice. We look towards the courts that used to represent mankind’s last resort against tyranny.

If we begin with God’s basic premise, Thou Shall Not Kill and continue with the rebellious and revolutionary teachings of Christ: Love one’s enemy; Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, one has to question if these teachings apply to modern times? Or are they quaint expressions?

Certainly, nowadays one risks being deemed an enemy combatant or accused of treason if they espouse such notions. Today, Jesus would find Himself confined to a maximum security prison as a radical censoring his unpatriotic rantings of peace and non-violence. After all, He was a simple man.

A man of principle: The Prince of Peace. We knew how His story would end, even as children. We knew the State had to kill him; it was a given. Just like we knew in our hearts and minds what would befall Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

As we ponder our existence, question our reason and purpose in life, is it not the right to believe in non-violence and the right to practice it? Is it not the responsibility of those who govern to adhere to the social contract that we all agreed upon?

Or is it all for naught: null and void; is it all conjecture; is hope the false prophet in a dismal world of chaos? We need a new vision. A new belief that is more inclusive - so help us God.

killing for democracy

read today:
Bush said, "I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma." It will bring democracy. Really?

Killing innocent people, torture, draining our treasury, stealing elections, spying on American citizens without due process, leaving the people of the Gulf States hanging on their roofs for their dear lives, etc, do not bestow democracy and the people harmed should not be reduced to punctuation marks.

Democracy rises from the people. Great Britain did not go to war with our forebears to impose democracy, but to stop it

USA more at risk under Republicans

White House and Republican lies about Iraq:
America's Spy Agencies have concluded that the invasion of Iraq has created a flood of new Islamic terrorists and increased the danger to US interests to a higher level than at any time since the 9/11 attacks.

The study represents a consensus opinion of 16 different intelligence organizations. Entitled 'Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States', it was completed last April.

Its stark warning is that the threat from Islamic terror groups and their jihadi philosophy has spread across the world.

So much for White House and senior Republicans who often say their tough line has made America safer over the past five years.

Republicans destroy freedom, one step at a time

If ever there were a case that should turn the public against the Bush Administration's push for broader powers to suspend due process and continue to torture terror suspects, it is the story of Maher Arar, a Canadian computer engineer who found himself caught up in post-9-11 law enforcement paranoia.

Arar was a victim of the secret "rendition" program President Bush only recently acknowledged--a process by which terrorism suspects have been "disappeared" to other countries notorious for torturing prisoners during interrogation.

Arar, who was exonerated on Monday by a Canadian government commission of any ties to terrorism, spent a year enduring beatings in a small cell in Syria, before he was released.

The Canadian government blames the United States for withholding information from Canadian authorities, and sending Arar to Syria without notifying his family or the Canadian consulate, and for ignoring Arar's objections that he would be tortured. And, of course, there is the matter of his innocence.

Stories like Arar's show how much freedom we sacrifice under Bush's war on terror. This is not the kind of country most of us want to live in.

Rove, Bush's Brain,The Architect

recommended reading:
In The Architect, James Moore and Wayne Slater, the bestselling authors of Bush’s Brain, return to document how Karl Rove:
• Used lobbyist Jack Abramoff as a cat’s-paw to manage unruly legislators.
• Energetically led the antigay marriage movement while protecting a family secret that made his stance bizarrely cynical.
• Turned Christian churches into a gigantic vote delivery system, despite privately admitting to being a nonbeliever.
• Repeatedly leaked information to harm political opponents, making him the man investigators most wanted to talk to when they began probing the Plame affair.
• Was intimately involved in an international disinformation scheme to lead America to war.
The Architect is an eye-opening and frequently shocking report on the maneuverings of a brilliant but morally ambiguous political strategist, and the first-ever in-depth look at a political operative striving to absolutely control the future.

terroism, republicans

The Iraq war has contributed to an increased threat of terrorism, according to an intelligence assessment that has not lessened the Senate majority leader's defense of the U.S.-led invasion three years ago and occupation.
The classified assessment of the war's impact on terrorism came in a National Intelligence Estimate that represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government, an intelligence official said Sunday.

First, Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. said he had not seen the classified report, which was completed in April. Now as majority leader, that sounds like a lie. Then later in the TV program he said, "I think — and the majority of the American people think — what it shows is that we've got to win," Frist said

terroism threats increase under Republicans

The Iraq war has contributed to an increased threat of terrorism according to the latest intelligence assessment.

The classified assessment of the war's impact on terrorism came in a National Intelligence Estimate that represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government, an intelligence official said Sunday. The official, confirming accounts first published in Sunday's New York Times and Washington Post, spoke on condition of anonymity because the report is classified.

The report found that the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

republicans,dirty politics

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.

The hope is that a vigorous effort to "define" opponents, in the parlance of GOP operatives, can help Republicans shift the midterm debate away from Iraq and limit losses this fall. The first round of attacks includes an ad that labeled a Democratic candidate in Wisconsin "Dr. Millionaire".

Against some less experienced and little-known opponents, said Matt Keelen, a Republican lobbyist heavily involved in House campaigns, "It will take one or two punches to fold them up like a cheap suit."

republicans, torture

As the dust begins to settle on the latest round of George Bush vs. American Values, it's important to emphasize just how little support this man has for the torturous way he operates. While Senate Republicans now say that that they have reached some sort of Geneva Conventions-friendly "agreement" with the White House, the vehement backlash against Bush by the military this past week is well worth revisiting.

Five former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually had to publicly stand up against a sitting President of the United States! Yeah, it's really gotten that bad.

These men were joined by dozens of other Generals, Admirals, intelligence officers and the entire JAG Corp, plus, the FBI (who refuse to be present while interrogations are taking place because they are too gruesome).

What about those "rendition" sites in foreign countries?

islamofascists, religiousfundamentalists

I do not care to erode our constitution to become like the terroists, that's the difference between followers who will give up the Bill of Rights and independent thinkers that love our country.

It happened to blind followers in Nazi Germany in the 30's. I stand with Rep.Lindsey Graham, and Senators John Warner and John McCain on the tortue issue (all republicans, thank you, who right-wingers call appeasers).

Islamo-religiousfundamentalists is the correct term unless one parrots the Bush/Cheney propaganda,
and we have them without the "islamo" in our own country.

Republicans are always trying to redefine the language to their advantage: my dictionary says, "Democratic Party" not democrat party. Democrats need to teach those republicans the proper language usage.

bush,torture,rendition program

Sept. 18 - Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.
The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.

Iraq civil war update

More than 130 people were slain in two days — either killed in attacks or tortured and dumped in rivers or on the city's streets.The average number of weekly attacks increased 15% and Iraqi casualties increased by 51%, compared with the previous three months.

A U.S. Marine was killed in Anbar province. A U.S. soldier was declared missing after a suicide truck bombing a day earlier killed two other soldiers and wounded 30 west of Baghdad. There were six American deaths Thursday and Friday, raising the toll of U.S. service members killed in Iraq since 2003 to 2,678.

another Republican caught

Rep. Bob Ney, Republican, agreed Friday to plead guilty to federal criminal charges he made false statements and conspired to commit fraud and violate federal lobbying laws in the congressional corruption probe spawned by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In exchange for the improper gifts, Ney offered legislation on three occasions in 2002 to benefit Abramoff's lobbying clients and helped another client win a multi-million-dollar government contract for wireless communications, court papers said.

Ney had consistently denied any wrongdoing, even after his former chief of staff pleaded guilty in May.

islamofascism,Iraq, republicans

The problem is, almost everything that President Bush understands about his own war on terrorism is wrong. According to nearly a dozen former high-ranking officials who have been on the front lines of the administration's counterterrorism effort, the president is not only fighting the wrong war -- he is fighting it in a way that has actually made the threat worse. The war on terrorism, they say, has been mismanaged and misdirected almost from the start, in no small part because the president simply does not understand the nature of the enemy he is fighting.

"I hate the term 'global war on terrorism,' " says John O. Brennan, a CIA veteran who served as the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the primary organization set up by Bush to analyze all intelligence about terrorism and coordinate strategic operational planning. "I hate the tough talk, you know, the 'we're gonna kill these guys' stuff."

Brennan is not alone. In a survey conducted this summer, more than 100 top foreign-policy experts -- including former secretaries of state, CIA directors and high-ranking Pentagon officials -- were asked if the president is "winning the War on Terror." Eighty-four percent said no.

If the president had kept his focus on capturing bin Laden, top officials say, he might have been able to declare a swift victory. Instead, Bush shifted from going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to going after Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- a decision with fateful consequences for U.S. security. "Iraq broke our back in the War on Terror," says Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's Al Qaeda unit until 2004.

By failing to "smoke out" bin Laden as promised, the president has given hope to a new generation of freelance terrorist cells, Islamist copycats and Al Qaeda wanna-be's. "We let them get away," says a retired CIA station chief. "We took a relatively centralized organization and turned it into a generalized virus. Before Afghanistan, we were facing somewhat of a unified threat.

We now have the equivalent of a phantom that we're fighting." Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Marine colonel who served as Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department, also ridicules the president's notion that the enemy is a global force made up of "Islamic fascists" who can be defeated as the Nazis were by military force. "I don't think there's a soul in the administration, except for Vice President Dick Cheney, who believes that crap about 'Islamofascism,' " he says.

Marine Col. Devlin on Iraq

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.

The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq.One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.

Devlin, as part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) headquarters in Iraq, has been stationed there since February, so his report isn't being dismissed as the stunned assessment of a newly arrived officer.

In addition, he has the reputation of being one of the Marine Corps' best intelligence officers, with a tendency to be careful and straightforward, said another Marine intelligence officer

9/11, more lies, the pearly gates

The ABC 9/11 drama was produced by a Republican operative for Republicans to blame 9/11 on someone else. It did not state the fact that Bush had a CIA memo in early August 2001 on his desk stating that it was likely we would be attacked soon by planes and he did nothing, apparently notified noone, not even our air defense forces, and he just went on vacation.

Did they want it to happen so they could carry out their neo-con ambitions for world domination? Only God knows. Can you imagine what will happen when they get to heaven's pearly gates.

Iraq, more republican distortions

Two partially declassified reports issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that were critical of pre-war intelligence on Iraq that remains significantly overclassified, which means the public's right to know doesn't really exist in the real world.

Portions of the report which the intelligence community leaders have determined to keep from public view provide some of the most damaging evidence of this administration's falsehoods and distortions.

Also administration recent claims of progress in Baghdad are based on faulty reports of less casualties. The original report left out some and counted only certain incidents. How tacky at a minimum.

Iraq, republican war

The mishandled war in Iraq — which had nothing to with the 9/11 attacks — has proved to be a devastating blunder. Lawrence Wright, author of a new book on al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower, says internal al-Qaeda documents show that after its rout from Afghanistan, the organization was in despair and on the ropes.

But Iraq gave al-Qaeda a new lease on life, providing a place where extremists could go and fight — and helping prove their contention that the United States wants to attack Muslims and occupy Muslim lands.

The Iraq war has undermined U.S. efforts to win hearts and minds in the moderate Muslim world. In the five predominantly Muslim countries surveyed earlier this year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, support for the U.S.-led war on terror was only 10% in Egypt, 14% in Turkey, 16% in Jordan, 30% in Pakistan and 39% in Indonesia.

republican polluters

The Bush administration proposed easing environmental rules Friday to allow oil refineries and other industries to change how they calculate whether they need pollution control equipment.

"This is a big gift to the refinery industry," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an environmental watchdog group. "They are saying let's close our eyes and pretend pollution is not happening." "It's a way to allow industry to pollute more without cleaning up."

Bush, a wanna-be tyrant

Tyrants: The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home
A great wave of oppressive tyranny isn’t going to strike, but rather a slow seepage of oppressive laws and regulations from within will sink the American dream of liberty.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

(Quotations from our history, but sounds a lot like Bush.)

Iraq, al Quaeda, 9/11 lies

Air America has been playing the many times Bush said Iraq had contacts with al Aqaeda and was involved in 9/11. They also played Bush denied saying it.

Today, it came out that Iraq had no contacts or connection to al Quaeda and 9/11. Bush's spokesman didn't refute this, Tony Snow only said, "that's old news", he didn't deny it. Lies and the Liars who lie and lie in denial. Vote them out.

Rumsfeld would not listen to planners re Iraq

Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday. Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," General Scheid thought... Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today. "He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war." "In his own mind he thought we could go in and fight and take out the regime and come out".

"But a lot of us planners were having a real hard time with it because we were also thinking we can't do this",Scheid said. ".Once you tear up a country you have to stay and rebuild it. It would be very challenging." Rumsfeld wouldn't listen.

Later, Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."

CIA shows Republicans still lying about Iraq

There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.

The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates."
Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June this year.

The long-awaited report, said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the committee, is "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts" to link Saddam to al-Qaeda.

The report, two years in the making, comes out amid a series of Bush speeches stressing that pursuing the military effort in Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terrorism, and two months before that policy will be tested in midterm elections.

Bush, torture lies

Not that it should surprise anyone anymore, but yesterday's stomach-churning Bush speech defending torture contains this little number:

We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty obligations.

The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful. I cannot describe the specific methods used--I think you understand why--if I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country.

But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary.Zubaydah was questioned using these procedures, and soon he began to provide information on key al Qaeda operatives, including information that helped us find and capture more of those responsible for the attacks on September the 11th. For example, Zubaydah identified one of KSM's accomplices in the 9/11 attacks--a terrorist named Ramzi bin al Shibh.

The information Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of bin al Shibh. And together these two terrorists provided information that helped in the planning and execution of the operation that captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

First, according to Ron Suskind, Abu Zubaydah didn't clam up because he was "trained to resist interrogation," but because he has the mental capacity of a retarded child. Second, the idea that Abu Zubaydah's interrogation tipped off the U.S. to the existence of Ramzi bin Al Shibh is just an outright lie.

A Nexis search for "Ramzi Binalshibh" between September 11, 2001 and March 1, 2002--the U.S. captured Abu Zubaydah in March 2002--turns up 26 hits for The Washington Post alone. Everyone involved in counterterrorism knew who bin Al Shibh was.

Now-retired FBI Al Qaeda hunter Dennis Lormel told Congress who Ramzi bin Al Shibh was in February 2002. Abu Zubaydah getting waterboarded and spouting bin Al Shibh's name did not tell us anything we did not already know.

Of course, most Americans don't have access to Nexis. And most Americans don't remember--and can't be expected to remember--newspaper coverage of Al Qaeda for a seven-month stretch between the attacks and Abu Zubaydah's capture.

Bush is exploiting that ignorance to tell the American people an outright lie in order to convince them that we need to torture people. As Bush once said in another context, if this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.

Republican neo-con agenda for Middle East

An article by retired US Major Ralph Peters titled "Blood borders" published in the Armed Forces Journal last month has given Pakistan some food for thought over manipulating the geopolitical game on its own terms and conditions. Peters, formerly assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he was responsible for future warfare, argues that borders in the Middle East and Africa are "the most arbitrary and distorted" in the world and need restructuring.

Four countries - Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - are singled out for major readjustments. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are also defined as "unnatural states".Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey read much between the lines of talk of restructuring their boundaries.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently visited Turkey and then Lebanon, where he announced that his country would not send any peacekeeping troops to the latter.

Ankara (Turkey) then said that if peacekeeping forces tried to disarm Hezbollah, Turkey would pull out of the peace mission. These decisions are the result of back-channel diplomacy among Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan.

This is what the Republican neo-cons are really up to and what they are causing in the Middle East.

Iraq illnesses

It was a hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on a topic that Democracy Now! listeners know about: the soldiers from the New York National Guard who served in Iraq and who ended up being exposed to depleted uranium and who have been sick since coming back, they were finally -- had a beginning of a day in court.

It was a hearing over their lawsuit, they and their relatives, their families, against the United States military, over their exposure to depleted uranium. And there was a hearing over the government's motion to dismiss the case completely. And it lasted for several hours.

Gerard Matthew, who after he came back from Iraq, has been sick with illnesses that could not be diagnosed by the military. And then his wife becomes pregnant, and they have a child born with missing several fingers on one hand.

And so, he was from a separate transportation company that was transporting destroyed or damaged tanks back from Iraq into Kuwait. And so, all the soldiers, eight of them in total, are involved in the lawsuit.

Iraq, Republican war

Hubris, by investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn, adds more weight to a body of evidence that the White House was determined to go to war from early 2002. Planning on Anabasis, which cost $400m (£210m), started at the end of 2001 and was approved by President Bush in February 2002. CIA agents entered Iraq to recruit volunteers two months later.

The covert CIA preparations for war have been previously reported, but this is the first time details of the plan have been made public. According to the book, the CIA flew 80 former Iraqi soldiers into the US in the summer of 2002, and trained them at an energy department nuclear test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Talking to his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, in May 2002, President Bush made clear his intentions towards Saddam when he said: "I'm going to kick his sorry ass all over the Mid East," according to another press aide, Adam Levine, who witnessed the conversation.

They rehearsed seizing an Iraqi airbase at Nukhaib, near the Saudi border, and broadcasting a call to Iraqi units to join a revolt against Saddam. The CIA expected Saddam to strike back and violate the no-fly zone, creating a pretext for US-British military intervention. "The idea was to create an incident in which Saddam lashes out," John Maguire, a CIA agent who ran the operation told the authors, adding that if the plan worked "you'd have a premise for war: we've been invited in".

9/11, Katrina, hiding the money?

The current reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) state that the U.S. isn't prepared to handle disasters like 9/11 and lacks an effective way to track $88 billion doled out to help rebuild the Gulf Coast after last year's killer hurricanes.

The government has no place to collect data on how and where 23 agencies are spending their share of the $88 billion Congress has allocated for Gulf Coast recovery. Taxpayers and hurricane victims also should be able to find out how the money's being spent, the report said.

Now who do you suppose doesn't want us to know how the money is spent and who benefits?

Malloy lives, Air America sells out

read today:
Mike Malloy's firing, supposedly for budgetary reasons, is just another example of Air America’s willingness to follow "ieAmerica" into the tar pit’s of talk show network extinction. At least "ie " stood by their more talented hosts, something Air America seems to know little about.

No, Air America would rather stand by Jerry Springer (still on AAR in a few markets, but gratefully pre-empted by the very talented Stephanie Miller in most markets), the borish Al Franken and hire “out of house,” Jones network mega-bore; Ed Schultz… who actually makes Mr. Franken almost sound interesting… almost, while leaving the superior Randi Rhodes Show to but a handful of few stations nation-wide.

ode to Mike Malloy

This blog is just too serious. Once in awhile, there comes an entertainer that just blows you away. Well, we lost one of those when Air America fired Mike Malloy. He was a giant among mondane midgets. He spoke with sincere conviction from the heart AND he was hilarious. Okay, here are some of his references:

MALLOY ISMS:

George W. Bush: Chuckle Nuts, the Giggling Killer, President Bunny Pants, Man-or-Monkey, Dim Son, Weak-and-Stupid, Raisin Brain(s), Too-Stupid-to-Be-President, Too-Stupid-to-Chew-a-Pretzel, Too-stupid-to-ride-a-bicycle, Dipthong, MENSA Man, the Bush Bastard, the Toy President, Guaca-Moron, Cinco de Moron, Prince Valium
Dick Cheney: Darth Cheney, Cyborg Man, Bionic Man, Deadeye Dick
Laura Bush: Pickles
Condoleezza Rice: the Schoolmarm, Condoleezza Valdeez, The Shoe Lady
Alberto Gonzales: Torquemada, Torture Boy, Bush's Tejano
Donald Rumsfeld: Rumsferatu, Field Marshal Von Rumsfeld
Scott McClellan: Scotty the Duck, The Quacking Quackaroo
Tony Snow: Snowjob, Tony the Snowman, Foxy the Snowman
Rush Limbaugh: The Oxy-Moron, The Drug Addled Freak, The Pigman
Tom Delay: The Bugman

The best to you Mike Malloy to your bride, Kathy, and Molly. Bless you whatever you do and whereever you are. We will go to White Rose Society for your archives (give us a buzz when you are back on.) Bye , Bye Air America.............we will not listen to AA again, EVER!

immigration, another view

read today: Illegal Immigration in the US
I just watched an episode of Morgan Spurlock's show, 30 Days, where a guy from the Minute Men lived 30 days with a family of illegal immigrants in LA. Now that show got me thinking and it occurs to me that it's rather strange how opposed that some Americans are to illegal immigration.

I mean it strikes me that the United States is founded upon illegal immigration.I mean, it's not like the folks on the Mayflower submitted to interviews by the INS or Homeland Security. They didn't fill out the proper forms and wait for approval from the Americans of that time.

They just hopped on a boat and sailed over. I mean they were the original boat people and they didn't just take away jobs from the Americans that were already here. They killed them.

Really, I think most Americans should appreciate illegal immigration and what it has done for them. I mean without it they'd probably be still be in Britain getting persecuted for their religious views.

republican leadership

The Iraq war was a mistake and remains one today. This dilemma that the United States created in Iraq was a "miscalculation," at best and it was not planned with realistic expectations. The United States had no business invading Iraq, not when the terrorists and Osama bin Laden were, and remain, on the loose — threatening this nation, our allies and free people everywhere.

Shame on the Republicans running for reelection, our so-called representatives of the people, for not speaking out sooner. True leaders are not the ones who speak only when they are up for re-election.. Rather, they speak the truth no matter what the consequences.

republicans

The offices of at least six Alaska legislators, including the son of Sen. Ted Stevens, were raided by federal agents searching for possible ties between the lawmakers and a large oil field services company, officials and aides said.

Among the offices searched was that of Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, Republican, the son of the senior senator from Alaska. Ted Stevens, Republican..

VOTE REPUBLICANS OUT

Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, the Pentagon said Friday.

In a notably gloomy report to Congress, the Pentagon said illegal militias have become more entrenched, especially in Baghdad neighborhoods where they are seen as providers of security as well as basic social services.

Death squads targeting mainly Iraqi civilians are a growing problem. "Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife," the report said, adding that the Sunni-led insurgency "remains potent and viable" even as it is overshadowed by the sect-on-sect killing.

Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, in a separate session with reporters, said the security conditions have deteriorated even as the number of trained Iraqi troops has increased.

The Republicans are only starting to change their tune because the elections are coming. VOTE THEM OUT!

republican liars, not their children

Thought for the day:

For the first time in US History, we attacked another country without them attacking us.

Bush did order the invasion that killed hundreds of thousands of women and children in a country he now admits had nothing to do with 9/11, -- plus got over 2600 of our finest young men killed SO FAR--that makes him at a minimum, a BIG LIAR..(that's a fact)

And he and Cheney are about to do it again to protect their family oil interests and their Saudi friends. IMPEACH

mike malloy

If you are disappointed or angry about the firing of Mike Malloy by Air America send comments to >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>comments@airamericaradio.com

republican corporate facism

A just-released report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, top executives at major U.S. corporations took home 411 times more than average workers ;ast year.

In 1994, at the birth of the living wage movement, chief executive pay outpaced pay for average workers by only 142 times.

To fatten corporate bottom lines and hit those jackpots, executives have downsized workers, outsourced jobs, gutted pensions, trimmed benefits, and slashed R & D. These executive decisions, taken together, have left American workers appreciably poorer and American companies considerably less competitive.

Just one example: CEOs at the nation's top 34 defense industry companies, the new "Executive Excess" report documents, have seen their average pay double since the "War on Terror" began. Nearly every major corporation in the United States today is taking in substantial revenue from government contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, or grants.

In a jurisdiction that has already enacted a living wage ordinance, for instance, progressives could insist that no government contracts ought to go to companies that pay their top executives over 25 times that jurisdiction's living wage. SO GO VOTE THIS NOVEMBER.

more republican lies

WHEN President Bush declared last week that "nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered" the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a large segment of the American public must have been very surprised. Another lie.

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.": Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister.

Isn't this what Bush said, "my job is to say it over and over again." So, who is the facist?

WHEN President Bush declared last week that "nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered" the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a large segment of the American public must have been very surprised because saying it again doesn't change the FACT that its a BIG LIE.

bye bye Air America

It's a crying shame that Air America is on its last pegs. Evidence of this is the firing of their premier talk show host. You know his name. It's Mike Malloy. A real entertainer and commentator who tells it from the heart. A giant on that network among midgets.

The death knell has sounded. We have heard the taps being played. How sad. How revolting. It's a victory for the far right facists to silence such an eloquent voice. Bye Bye Air America. Have a nice funeral.

War money going to republicans

A new report on the "Cost of Iraq" will be released on Wednesday, August 30. The report will analyze the cost of the Iraq War by Congressional district.

Since the Iraq war began, the Republican-led Congress has spent more than $300 Billion on President Bush's failed policy. $18 billion has been awarded to Halliburton (Cheney's Company), much of which was in "no bid" contracts and $9 billion is missing.

Most Americans agree President Bush's Iraq policy is a fiasco. But Congress keeps rubber-stamping Bush's wasteful spending. By voting to spend $300 billion on the fiasco in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have short-changed education, health care, job creation, and tough homeland security.

Segregated Iraqi Army

The Iraqi army is recruited and trained regionally, and they expect to serve in their own provinces. That is by and large the practice, but in times of crisis -- like the outbreak of violence in Baghdad -- they can in theory be called on to deploy anywhere.

Members of two Iraqi military units have refused orders to deploy to heavily contested areas around Baghdad, a top U.S. military general said. . The majority were Shiite who make up 60% of the country"s population. Some army!

update Iraq

and the beat goes on and on:
U.S. price tag of $320 billion of our money and "at least 2,631 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems

A miserable milestone was passed the other day. America's (andBritain's) disastrous war in Iraq has now lasted longer than the US involvement in the Second World War.

how republicans do business with our money

Letitia White was a receptionist when she joined the staff of Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif. More than two decades later, she is an influential lobbyist whose connections to Lewis — now chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee and others on the Hill have translated into millions of dollars for her and her firm.

During the year prior to her departure from Lewis' office, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported, her income dropped by around $11,000, to just $80 below the $112,500 salary ceiling that would have triggered an automatic one-year ban on her lobbying of Lewis.

The day after leaving the Hill, on Jan. 9, 2003, White signed up a major client, General Atomics, along with one of its aeronautics subsidiaries. The companies received several multimillion-dollar earmarks that year in the defense spending bill for the 2004 fiscal year, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, including $3 million for General Atomics to provide anti-terror systems at Liberty Island, home to the Statue of Liberty, and $15.3 million for the aeronautics division to develop unmanned aerial vehicles.

By the end of 2003, White had signed up about 15 more clients, mostly defense contractors, and was bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. Her clients were enjoying similar success to General Atomics in getting earmarks. White, her husband lobbyist Richard White, and her firm's clients were donating generously to Lewis' fundraising committees.

White co-owns a Capitol Hill townhouse with the head of one of her client companies, Trident Systems Inc. Trident's founder, Nick Karangelen, is chairman of a political action committee called Small Biz Tech PAC that has employed Lewis' stepdaughter, Julia Willis-Leon, for fundraising. White and her husband have both donated to the PAC.

neo-con plans

That's surely the question uppermost in the minds of Bush administration neocons as they seek to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat following Israel's costly and unsuccessful effort to destroy Hizbollah. Urged on by the Bush administration (while condemned by the rest of the world), Israel undertook its invasion not for the reason advertised (in response to recent Hizbollah attacks) but to deprive Tehran from using the Shiite militia in retaliation for the long-planned attack on Iran.

If the Lebanese fighters can be driven from the border area back behind the Litani River, they will be unable to launch missile attacks such as the 3800 provoked by Israeli's most recent invasion.

U.S. public opinion will more likely accept an attack on Iran if it can be sold as part of the "War on Terror." Bush has already depicted Israel's attack on Lebanon as part of that war, and the U.S. corporate media has dutifully portrayed the recent fighting as between Israel acting in self-defense and a "terrorist Hizbollah" acting as a proxy for Iran, the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism."

Perhaps a third of the nation is inclined to accept an attack on Iran and the apocalyptic scenario to follow as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy---hence welcome in preparing the way for the Lord.

Even if Iraq's a disaster, Afghanistan a growing problem, and the president widely perceived as stupid and dishonest, the neocon-driven administration just might get what it wants---its new Israel-centered U.S.-occupied creatively chaotic Greater Middle East---by the end of the president's second term.

who is willing to bleed for these Republicans?

History is repeating itself this week, when the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, released a garishly illustrated and luridly written document that is ostensibly dedicated to ‘helping the American people understand’ that Iran’s fundamentalist regime and its nuclear ambitions pose a strategic threat to the United States.

Hoekstra is just one in a never ending coil of snake-like, Republican liars who want as much blood and death and injury as the American people are willing to give. They are cowards, these Conservatives. Given a chance to enter the military they flee like scared little children. So, who is willing to bleed for these Republicans?

war criminals

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein.

Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Republicans destroy freedoms, one step at a time

During his gubernatorial days in Texas, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into his political soul. In hindsight, it should've been loudly broadcast all across our land so people could've absorbed it, contemplated its portent?and roundly rejected the guy's bid for the presidency. On May 21, 1999, reacting to some satirical criticism of him, Bush snapped: "There ought to be limits to freedom."

So many freedoms to limit, so little time! But in five short years, the Republican BushCheneyRummy regime has made remarkable strides toward dismembering the genius of the Founders, going at our Constitution and Bill of Rights like famished alligators chasing a couple of poodles.

Forget about such niceties as separation of powers, checks and balances (crucial to the practice of democracy), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and open government-these guys are on an autocratic tear.

Whenever they've been challenged (all too rarely), they simply shout "war on terror," "commander-in-chief," "support our troops," "executive privilege," "I'm the decider," or some other slam-the-door political phrase designed to silence any opposition.

Indeed, opponents are branded "enemies" who must be demonized, personally attacked, and, if possible, destroyed.

Bush's find-the-loopholes lawyers assert that a president has the right to lie (even about going to war), to imprison people indefinitely (without charges, lawyers, hearings, courts, or hope), to torture people, to spy on Americans without court or congressional review, to prosecute reporters who dare to report, to rewrite laws on executive whim?and on and on.

children killed

Amnesty International on Wednesday accused Israel of war crimes, saying it broke international law by deliberately destroying Lebanon's civilian infrastructure during its recent war with Hezbollah guerrillas.

The human rights group said initial evidence, including the pattern and scope of the Israeli attacks, number of civilian casualties, widespread damage and statements by Israeli officials "indicate that such destruction was deliberate and part of a military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage.'"

The United Nations children's fund, UNICEF, estimates that some 1,183 people died, mostly civilians and about a third of them children, while the Lebanese Higher Relief Council says 4,054 people were injured and 970,000 displaced. U.N. officials reported that around 15,000 civilian homes were destroyed.

died for nothing

Hundreds of Israeli reservists pushed Monday for an investigation of how the government and army handled 34 days of fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas, saying they were rushed into battle without enough food, water and equipment.

A group of parents of fallen soldiers called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's resignation, saying that the government's objectives had not been achieved and that their sons died for nothing.

Sound Familiar? Ours have died based on lies of WMD's and a connection to 9/11 and went into a civil war without adequate armor.

out-of-step republicans

"Hezbollah has demonstrated that total Arab defeat is not inevitable. ... Israel has lost its tremendous psychological advantage," says George Friedman, an intelligence analyst and CEO of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm in Austin.

"Israel will be perceived by its enemies as weak, constrained and dysfunctional," says Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

The conflict also has dealt a blow to Bush's campaign to bring democracy to the region. It bolstered Iran, Hezbollah's main patron, and Shiites elsewhere — including in Iraq, where, "having first experienced the limits of American power, (the Shiites) are now seeing the expanding boundaries of Iranian power," Friedman says.
"Israel will be perceived by its enemies as weak, constrained and dysfunctional," says Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Yet, the United States is taking a different lesson from the conflict. President Bush said this week that Hezbollah lost. That shows just how ignorant and wrong these Republicans are and continue to be.

vote, vote vote

Five years after 9/11, the Bush administration has failed to keep us safe. The war in Iraq has diverted attention from protecting America from terrorism. This past week 9/11 commissioners said Iraq is distracting from security at home. The war in Iraq has inflamed the whole Middle East and is helping Al Qaeda attract new recruits.

Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose. Katrina showed all of us that the Republicans aren't able to protect America at home.

The Republican Congress hasn't followed through on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Republican political attacks during last week's terror threat are outrageous. Dick Cheney said Connecticut voters were supporting Al Qaeda. Don't let him get away with that.

Register to vote, demand paper trails so they can't steal close elections again, and VOTE.

baby killers

Limits to tolerance There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as a justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the god of flora, fauna and the galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it silly, stone tablets, burning bushes and a license to kill.

We call baby killers "baby killers" and will never accept that people such as these have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We just say: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing and shame on every terrorist strike against civilians whether carried out by Hamas, the Hezbollah or the State of Israel!

who is moral in politics?

Cheney suggested Wednesday that Lamont's victory might encourage "the al-Qaeda types" who want to "break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task." Joe Lieberman thinks a Lamont victory in Novermber could embolden terrorists.

"My God, here we have a terrorist threat against hearth and home and the very first thing that comes out of their mind is how can we turn this to partisan advantage. I find that offensive," Lamont said in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press.

the future of our beloved USA

The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.

Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about. If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

Four sorrows are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787.

First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut.

Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co- equal 'executive branch' of overnment into a military junta.
Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.

Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens.

update Iraq

Police found a dozen bodies trapped in a grate in the Tigris River, and a roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers on a foot patrol south of Baghdad Saturday as nearly 50 violent deaths were reported across Iraq.

They appeared to have been the victims of sectarian death squads(civil war) that operate in the religiously mixed communities in the Baghdad area.

Remember Cheney saying the insurgents in Iraq were just deadenders in their last throes. Lies, lies.

false government accounting

The federal government keeps two sets of books.

The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.
The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules. It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005. If Social Security and Medicare were included — as the board that sets accounting rules is considering — the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.

Congress has written its own accounting rules — which would be illegal for a corporation to use because they ignore important costs such as the growing expense of retirement benefits for civil servants and military personnel.

crony "govment" contractors

The Bush administration on Wednesday awarded temporary housing contracts worth up to $1.5 billion for future hurricane disasters, including four to companies that previously received no-bid contracts for Katrina work.

Four of the six contracts awarded will go to Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure, Bechtel National, CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Enterprises Inc., which received similar contracts but without competition after Hurricane Katrina last fall.

Some of the companies have strong political and government ties. The Shaw Group's lobbyist, Joe Allbaugh, is a former FEMA director and is a friend of President Bush, while Bechtel CEO Riley Bechtel served on Bush's Export Council from 2003-2004, and CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Corp. have done extensive previous work for the government.

Iraq update

New studies make the Bush administration's "liberation" argument for a 'pre-emptive' war against Iraq seem questionable.

The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by U.S.-led coalition forces has been responsible for the death of at least 150,000 civilians, reveals a compilitation of scientific studies and corroborated eyewitness testimonies.

The majority of these deaths, which are in addition those normally expected from natural causes, illness and accidents, have been among women and children, documents a well-researched study, that had been released by The Lancet Medical Journal.

The report in the British journal is based on the work of teams from the Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University in the U.S., and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.

Lebanon update

Israeli death toll to 97, including 49 soldiers, the 12 reservists and 36 civilians. Israel's attacks on Lebanon have killed at least 617 people, including 524 civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers and at least 53 Hezbollah guerrillas.

Iraq civil war, who do you believe?

The Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, neo-cons and their lackeys say Iraq is not yet in a civil war. However, the Iraqi civil war has already begun, U.S. troops say: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims;
Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

Republican neo-cons

There is no way that the Republican neo-cons in our shadow government are ready to admit that their thinking is flawed; they continue to confuse confidence with success, desire with achievement, military muscle with the ability to achieve practical goals. Who pays for all this bumbling?

google chickenhawks for conservatives

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth: Mark Twain

He must have been talking about conservatives for liberals try to create a moral universe, conservatives try to dismantle it. Jesus was a liberal.

more republican lies

Republican conservative websites and Web logs have used only snippets of Dingell's comments. Mehlman said Friday, "As our allies fight this same war on other fronts, should we support them, or should we — as the longest-serving Democrat in the House and possible committee chairman John Dingell said — 'not take sides for or against Hezbollah.'"

Now for what Dingell really said," if the United States is going to be an honest broker in the Middle East, it must talk to Israel and Hezbollah. I happen to be — I happen to be against violence, I think the United States has to bring resolution to this matter. Now, I condemn Hezbollah as does everybody else, for the violence," Dingell said.

More lies by these republicans.

Republicans on your health

Creekstone Farms, a Kansas beef producer, wants to reassure customers that its cattle are safe to eat by testing them all for mad cow disease. Sounds like a smart business move, but there's one problem: The federal government won't let the company do it.

Sixty-five nations have full or partial restrictions on importing U.S. beef products because of fears that the testing isn't rigorous enough. As a result, U.S. beef product exports declined from $3.8 billion in 2003, before the first mad cow was detected in the USA, to $1.4 billion last year. Foreign buyers are demanding that USDA do more.

The brain-wasting disease — known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE — is extremely rare but extremely deadly. Since 1986, it has killed more than 150 people worldwide, mostly in Britain, who ate infected meat.

USDA is doing the bidding of large cattle barons afraid that Creekstone's marketing will force them to do the same tests to stay competitive. It's true that the incidence of mad cow disease is quite low. But there's little logic in stopping a company from exceeding regulations to meet the demands of its customers, or protecting its rivals from legitimate competition

"In a nation dedicated to free market competition," says John Stewart, CEO of Creekstone, which is suing USDA, "a company that wants to do more than is required to ensure the quality of its product and to satisfy customer demand should be allowed to do so." When regulators disagree with reasoning like that, you know the game is rigged.

republican war

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" marched through the streets of Baghdad's biggest Shiite district Friday in a show of support for Hezbollah militants battling Israeli troops in Lebanon.

"Mahdi Army(Iraqi) and Hezbollah are one. Let them confront us if they dare," the predominantly male crowd shouted, waving the flags of Hezbollah, Lebanon and Iraq

Al-Sadr followers painted U.S. and Israeli flags on the main road leading to the rally site, and demonstrators stepped on them — a gesture of contempt in Iraq. Alongside the painted flags was written: "These are the terrorists

Protesters set fire to American and Israeli flags, as well as effigies of President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, showing the men with Dracula teeth. "Saddam and Bush, Two Faces of One Coin" was scrawled on Bush's effigy. This is what these Republicans have got us into based on lies.

two sets of books ok for our "go'ment"

The federal government keeps two sets of books.

The set the government promotes to the public has a healthier bottom line: a $318 billion deficit in 2005.

The set the government doesn't talk about is the audited financial statement produced by the government's accountants following standard accounting rules.

It reports a more ominous financial picture: a $760 billion deficit for 2005.

If Social Security and Medicare were included — as the board that sets accounting rules is considering — the federal deficit would have been $3.5 trillion.

who cares?

read today:
The story that rockets to Israel came from Cana, it turns out, was a lie. No rockets originated from Cana, yet all those women and children were horribly killed. And none of these self styled US sleeve Christians care. All those victims might as well have been victims of the pogroms in Poland back in 1943.

update Iraq

and the beat goes on and on:

U.S. price tag of $320 billion of our money and "at least 2,578 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

who are the killers?

We killed 190 people in Lebanon, most of whom were refugees, during the month of April, 1996. Many of them were women, old people and children. We killed 9 civilians, one a 2 year old girl and one, a centenarian, in Sahmour, on April 11th. We killed 11 civilians, including 7 children, in Nabatyeh, on April 18th.

In the UN Camp in Cana, we killed 102 people. We made sure to inflict death from a distance. In a very secular manner, without the archaic idea of sin, without the tediluvian worry to consider man in the image of God, and without the primitive proscription, "You shall not kill!"

We didn't fly those planes, you say. Oh, you are correct, we just made the bombs. Our Bush won't even ask to stop the killing.

our republican idiot

Bush's recent trip to Europe to visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel and meet with world leaders in Russia at the annual Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations caused a stir and showed what an idiot he really is.
He could be heard cursing over a live microphone, talked longingly about "slicing the pig" at a barbecue in his honor, and gave an impromptu neck massage to a startled Merkel that was seen around the world via the Internet.
.

more killing of children

Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.

The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike in Qana, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500.

Infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit after Israel's missile strike. But she still did not call for an immediate cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militias

Republican Sleeve Christians

On Saturday, Israel made its closest strike to Hezbollah ally Syria yet. Warplanes hit the Lebanese side of a Syrian-Lebanese border crossing, forcing the closure of the main transit point for refugees fleeing and humanitarian aid supplies entering Lebanon. Two more missiles hit the area early Sunday.

Another portent of what more fighting could bring came in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre, where volunteers lowered 31 wooden coffins into a mass grave, victims of Israeli bombardment in past days. A tiny coffin held the body of a 1-day-old girl killed when a missile smashed her family's white-flagged car as they fled their home village

Don't any of these Sleeve Christians in the Republican party/government care????

Republican "Grand Oil Party"

Net income in the second quarter was $10.36 billion, or $1.72 a share, compared to $7.64 billion, or $1.20 a share, in the year earlier quarter. It was the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.

Revenue rose to $99.03 billion from $88.57 billion in the prior-year quarter. That was short of ExxonMobil's record third-quarter revenue of $100.72 billion — which also stands as record revenue generated by any U.S. public company ever in a single quarter.

Indeed, the profit increase at Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's second-largest oil company, was even better than ExxonMobil's on a percentage basis. Second-quarter earnings jumped 40% as high oil prices offset production difficulties in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico. Net profit rose to $7.32 billion from $5.24 billion a year earlier. Sales rose less than 1% to $83.1 billion.

These reports come a day after another large U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips (COP), said it earned more than $5 billion in the quarter and at a time when many drivers in the U.S. are paying $3 for a gallon of gas

republican war bungling

Up to two-thirds of the Army's combat brigades are not ready for wartime missions, largely because they are hampered by equipment shortfalls. Nearly every non-deployed combat brigade in the active Army is reporting that they are not ready for combat. The figures, he said, represent an unacceptable risk to the nation.

"I have testified to the facts about our readiness and I remain concerned about the serious demands we face," said Schoomaker, adding that the Army needs more than $17 billion in 2007 and up to $13 billion a year until two or three years after the war ends. Schoomaker and other Army officials have been very vocal about their funding shortfall in recent weeks.

Schoomaker traced the problem's origin to entering the Iraq war in 2003 with a $56 billion shortfall in equipment. The Army managed the situation by rotating in fresh units while keeping the same equipment in Iraq. Over time, he said, the equipment has worn out without sufficient investment in replacements

update Iraq

and the beat goes on and on:

U.S. price tag of $320 billion of our money and "at least 2,565 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

Republicans vs our laws

President Bush's penchant for writing exceptions to laws he has just signed violates the Constitution, an American Bar Association task force says in a report highly critical of the practice. The ABA group, which includes a one-time FBI director and former federal appeals court judge, said the president has overstepped his authority in attaching challenges to hundreds of new laws.

The attachments, known as bill-signing statements, say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds."This report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy," said the ABA's president, Michael Greco. "If left unchecked, the president's practice does grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries."

The task force said the statements suggest the president will decline to enforce some laws. Bush has had more than 800 signing statement challenges, compared with about 600 signing statements combined for all other presidents, the group said.

The ABA report said President Reagan was the first to use the statements as a strategic weapon, and that it was encouraged by then-administration lawyer Samuel Alito — now the newest Supreme Court justice.

The task force included former prosecutor Neal Sonnett of Miami; former FBI Director William Sessions; Patricia Wald, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards; and former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein; and law school professors and other lawyers.

Lebanon from US evacuees

US evacuees speaking at a news conference accused Israel of killing innocent civilians by bombing Lebanon indiscriminately in its campaign to cripple Hezbollah.

"Israel is trying to punish the entire country of Lebanon," said Stephen McInerney, 31, a graduate student at American University of Beirut. "It's like childish revenge that doesn't accomplish anything."

Tom Charara, 50, of Long Beach, Calif., had taken his wife and children to visit the grandparents. "I've seen little kids being burned alive," he said. "There is nothing that calls for that kind of force."

abuse ok

The group Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday that U.S. military commanders encouraged abusive interrogations of detainees in Iraq, even after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal called attention to the issue in 2004. Between 2003 and 2005, prisoners were routinely physically mistreated, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme temperatures as part of the interrogation process, the report said.

"Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk," wrote John Sifton, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The organization said it based its conclusion on interviews with military personnel and sworn statements in declassified documents.

The group Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday that U.S. military commanders encouraged abusive interrogations of detainees in Iraq, even after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal called attention to the issue in 2004. Between 2003 and 2005, prisoners were routinely physically mistreated, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme temperatures as part of the interrogation process, the report said.

"Soldiers were told that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, and that interrogators could use abusive techniques to get detainees to talk," wrote John Sifton, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The organization said it based its conclusion on interviews with military personnel and sworn statements in declassified documents.

another Republican scam at our expense

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt on Friday defended his family's charitable giving, as two senators called for tighter regulation of private foundations.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Leavitt and his relatives have claimed million of dollars in tax deductions through a charitable foundation that until recently paid out little in actual charity

The Post reported that the Leavitt family, along with the other tax breaks recently passed for the wealthy, used nearly $9 million in assets to set up a charitable foundation in 2000. But unlike standard private foundations, it is not required to give away at least 5% of assets to charitable causes.

While Mike Leavitt alone has claimed about $1.2 million in tax write-offs since 2000, the foundation gave away only $49,000 in 2002 and $52,000 the next year, the Post reported.

Working families should be disturbed by these types of stories that keep appearing in the papers about wealthy people who take a big charitable deduction to get a significant tax break, yet retain control of the funds, benefit from that control, and little to nothing actually goes to real charities doing important work.

"They're basically sitting on all this money, getting a charitable write-off and doing nothing with it," said Rick Cohen, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. Cohen reviewed the foundation's records and tax returns at the Post's request. Another Republican scam.

US Economy, your vote, mad as hell

Did you know:

1. The United States now has the largest gap between the poor and the wealthy since 1929 which was just before the Great Depression.

2. For the first time in our history, we are an exporter of raw materials in value greater than manufactured goods inported. The definition of an industrial country is just the opposite; that is, when manufactured goods exported is greater than raw materials inported.

3. The Chinese and others are beginning to dump their excess dollars into the Euros.

4. Excess dollars held be foreigners are also being used to buy up US assets, toll roads, port facilities, farmland, companies, manufacturing, motels, you name it. The profits, of course, go back to the foreign owners.

5. The National Debt when Carter left office was $0.9 Trillion, now it is $8.5 Trillion, AND who owns the bulk of it? It used to be owned to our citizens, now the bulk of the debt is owed to foreigners, mostly Chinese. Nice isn't it. That's what we get when corporations take our jobs overseas.

We are well on the way to becoming a third world country. We are going down the tubes. Have you "HAD ENOUGH?" The solution? Your US Representatives and Senators have to be voted out of office. Don't complain if you don't vote.

Join those of us who are "Mad as hell, and aren't going to take it anymore"

shooting Iraqi civilians with impunity

Written by Columnist Trudy Rubin:

"Just over a year ago, my translator, Yasser Salihee, was shot dead by an American soldier. Salihee, a 30-year-old medical doctor and aspiring journalist, was working for Knight Ridder News Service to make extra money. He was driving home after a haircut when a U.S. sniper mistook him for a potential car bomber. He couldn't stop in time and was shot between the eyes.

I arrived in Baghdad right after Salihee died and told his story to several Iraqi officials. The reactions were astonishing. Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi told me that an elderly friend of his had just been shot dead by U.S. soldiers. Kurdish parliamentarian Mahmoud Othman told me that he knew of 10 civilians who had been shot dead by U.S. soldiers.

Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Samir Sumaidaie (recently appointed ambassador to the United States), complained bitterly to reporters that U.S. Marines had killed his unarmed 21-year-old cousin.These cases came to light because the victims were well connected. But Salihee's death was investigated only after pressure from Knight Ridder. "

No one knows how many similar cases are never even reported. And armed civilian contractors there are notorious for shooting at Iraqi civilians with impunity."

modern conservative

"A modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." -- by JKG

Iraq update

and the beat goes on and on:
U.S. price tag of $320 billion of our money and "at least 2,547 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

borrow and spend republicans

"By pursuing pro-growth policies and restraining government spending, we will keep our economy the envy of the world," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

Earlier in the week, the White House released figures estimating that the difference between what the government spends and what it collects in revenue for the budget year ending Sept. 30 will be $296 billion, an improvement over the $423 billion that was predicted in February.

This is the fourth time they have high-balled the estimate so that they could claim improvement. $296 billion is the fourth highest defecit ever. And "restraining government spending" give me a break. Another snow job by these borrow and spend republicans.

war, who D's,P's,P's?

another republican lie

Another Repubican lie in their efforts to control and silence the press:

News reports on the terroist financing program elicited furious republican criticism of the New York Times and other publications from those who want us to believe that classified information had been improperly and damagingly disclosed.

But "closely similar" accounts were publicly presented years ago in open congressional hearings, the Washington Post reported today.

Cheney,Rove,Libby, Plame,Wilson

Former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said Friday they decided to sue Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove because they engaged in a "whispering campaign" to destroy her career.

The Wilsons' lawyer said in the lawsuit that it "concerns the intentional and malicious exposure by senior officials of the federal government of ... (Plame), whose job it was to gather intelligence to make the nation safer and who risked her life for her country."

Instead of confronting Wilson on his criticism, the lawsuit said, the White House officials "embarked on an anonymous 'whispering campaign' designed to discredit ... (the Wilsons) and to deter other critics from speaking out."

Libby is the only administration official charged in connection with the leak investigation. He faces trial in January on perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges, accused of lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about when he learned Plame's identity and what he subsequently told reporters

republicans,Plame,retaliation,revenge

The CIA officer whose identity was leaked to reporters sued Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide and presidential adviser Karl Rove on Thursday, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Valerie Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador, accused Cheney, Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of revealing Plame's CIA identity in seeking revenge against Wilson for criticizing the Bush administration's motives in Iraq.

the Halliburton scam

Halliburton subsidiary KBR, also known as Kellogg Brown & Root, provides food, water, shelter, laundry service and other logistical support for troops under a 2001 contract that has been extended several times.

Halliburton is a Texas-based oil services conglomerate once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, who owns stock and still receives deferred compensation from the company. Bush administration officials have come under fire since the beginning of the war in Iraq for awarding more than $10 billion to the company and its subsidiaries in 2003 and 2004, some of it in no-bid contracts. There have been allegations of fraud, poor work, overpricing and other abuse.

"It has taken them far too long," Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said of the Army. "I believe literally hundreds of millions, and probably billions, of dollars have been wasted — it's almost an unbelievable amount of waste and abuse and likely fraud."

Earlier in the day in a speech on the Senate floor, he held up a hand towel that he said cost double what it should have because the company "wanted its name embroidered on the towels given to the troops."

"Taxpayers can breathe easier knowing that the days of $45 cases of soda and $100 bags of laundry are coming to a close," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Now that we are trying to get out of the Iraq mess, Halliburton has reaped all it can, so these Republicans will put what's left out for bids. Cute.

anoher republican lie

Columnist Robert Novak said publicly for the first time Tuesday that White House political adviser Karl Rove was a source for his story outing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Triggering the criminal investigation, Novak revealed Plame's CIA employment on July 14, 2003, eight days after her husband, White House critic and former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction.

The White House denied Rove played any role in the leak of Plame's CIA identity and Novak, with his decision to talk to prosecutors, steered clear of potentially being held in contempt of court and jailed. ANOTHER REPUBLICAN LIE.

Tony Snow continues Republican lies

The Bush administration said Tuesday that all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defense Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by President Bush. That decision struck down the tribunals because they did not obey international law and had not been authorized by Congress.

The policy, described in a memo by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England reverses the administration's earlier insistence that the detainees are not prisoners of war and thus not subject to the Geneva protections.

"It's not really a reversal of policy," Snow asserted, calling the Supreme Court decision "complex.". Another lie.

republicans don't like freedom of the press

Anyone who believes an inquisitive and free press is essential to America"s democracy, especially in times of war, should be concerned.

Offering no proof, the republican administration has claimed the terrorist financing stories in the NY Times, which the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal also published, have harmed security.

In fact, the all-out efforts to cut off terror financing had been well publicized long before the latest stories ran.
The stories raised legitimate issues about the administration"s cult of secrecy, its sweeping surveillance operations and its refusal to comply with constitutional checks and balances.

They played an important role in informing the public-- and Congress-- about what the executive branch is doing in the name of the "war on terror".

That's exactly the role of the press in a free society and precisely why it was protected from censorship by our Founding Fathers.

How Republicans steal elections

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, it is convincing that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004.

Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004. -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,60 votes.

In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.

And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

update Iraq, hint to Bush

U.S. price tag of $320 billion of our money and "at least 2,542 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

See " War Casualties" link below for realistic estimates of civilian deaths.

Evidently the President, who did not serve in Vietnam, never learned the custom of paying respect to all the dead from a war. He is happier honoring nobody, and seems to think everybody else is as well. Neither has George Bush ever figured out the significance of mass casualties. Something of their significance (however little) might have impressed itself on his conscience, if he had tried to fit even a few of the more than 2500 funerals into his busy vacation schedule.

Hint to the President: When casualties are so frequent that you can’t find the time to attend the funerals of soldiers killed in a war you started, it’s a clue that the war is not going well.

wrong strategy in Iraq

Three years into the war in Iraq, the U.S. Army has nearly completed a thorough revision and update of its official doctrine on counterinsurgency.

The new doctrine begins with a thoughtful presentation of the nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency, their evolution and their characteristic strategies, and proceeds to consider the design of counterinsurgency operations.

Among the "paradoxes of counterinsurgency" are the fact that "the more you protect your force, the less secure you are"; "the more force [is] used, the less effective it is"; and "sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction." Hello Republicans!

update Iraq

U.S. price tag of $320 billion of our money and "at least 2,533 " members of the U.S. military have died, not counting (1)"contractors" (2) Iraqi civilian women and children (3) the tens of thousands that have been wounded, and (4) the one in five surviving soldiers that have lingering mental problems.

See " War Casualties" link below for realistic estimates not provided by our present government.

republican prosperity

While the rich get richer with tax breaks, more than 13 million children, about 18%, live in poverty . One third of America's children live in homes where none of the parents had full-time, year-round job.