Granny Rant
Saturday, September 27, 2003
::: WOW ~ This Is It! ~
I think it will work. What do you think?
A Heads Up ... Correction ~ plan NOT from Robin Williams
Next Question is, "Do We Care?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Leave it to
now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message.
Robin Williams' plan... (Hard to argue with this logic!)
I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for
peace. So, here's one plan:
1. The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their
affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Noriega, Milosovich and
the rest of those 'good ole boys.' We will never "interfere" again.
2. We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with
Germany, South Korea and the Philippines. They don't want us there. We would station
our troops at all US borders. No more will anyone sneak through holes in the
fence.
3. All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave.
We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered
up and deported to France immediately, regardless of who they are or where
they are from. France should welcome them.
4. All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days
unless given a special permit. No one from a terrorist nation would be allowed in.
If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum
would never be available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11
cashiers who won't speak English.
5. No "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't
attend classes, or they get a "D" and it's back home baby!..Never to Return.
6. The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise.
This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a
temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to
cope for a while.
7. Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for
their oil. If they don't like it, we go some place else. They can go somewhere
else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up their
storage sites would be enough.)
8. If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will
not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or
whatever they need. Besides...most of what we give them is stolen or given to
the army. The people who need it most get very little, if anything.
9. Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island some place. We don't need
the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a
good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.
10. All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can
call us "Ugly Americans" any longer.
Now, ain't that a winner of a plan. The Statue of Liberty is no longer
saying 'Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball
bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?'
If you agree with the above.....forward it to friends!!!!!!
::: The Awful Truth ~~ Spoken in The Worst Language :::
Warning .... some of the comments herein may be offensive, but I wanted
to present an accurate picture of what I saw while surfing re the DieBold
Black Box Voting Scandal.
The research and activism arm of BlackBox Voting.com
Fri Sept 26 2003
Diebold Demands Pull-Down of Black Box Voting
We'll get to that in a minute, but first: Here's a message from our friendly neighborhood cyberthug:
---full headers below---
So your silly little web site got taken down?...it couldn't have happened to a nicer C*NT.
Glad the information that was given to Diebold lended a helping hand in having your bullshit confiscated....to bad they haven't thrown you in jail yet (big emphasis on YET).
You sure are playing a dangerous game of chicken with the authorities. What will you tell your kids when mommy goes to prison?
Maybe you and Martha Stewart can share a prison cell?
===============
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To: bev_blackboxvoting@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 00:42:59 +0800
Subject: Your Pathetic Web Site
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===============
And this:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: a question
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 12:13:59 +0200
From: "Engeler, William"
To:
"You can't hide much longer"
===============
And there is much MORE ....
Yeah whatever.
Okay, so here's what you can do to help:
Get the word out far and wide that Diebold has done this thing. More info: http://www.blackboxvoting.com
1. Diebold issued a pull-down demand under DMCA for the BlackBoxVoting.org web site, citing a link posted on a forum in the site, claiming that the link allowed web visitors to visit an unrelated page, containing Diebold internal memos, which they say they own the copyright to.
2. Not only was BlackBoxVoting.org pulled down, but ALL of the documents, databases and programming for approximately 500 pages of material, most of which did not relate to Diebold at all, was confiscated, upon the (incorrect) advice of a North Carolina attorney named James Baker. Dozens of web pages were pulled down which had nothing whatever to do with the disputed information. First, the offending item was a post in a forum which contained a link. Nothing in DMCA allows Diebold to abuse the law to pull down unrelated web pages, but this is the direct result of their threat. To make matters more egregious, we were then prohibited from accessing the ftp server even to retrieve our files in order to place them elsewhere. After David Allen, the publisher of Black Box Voting, negotiated with the ISP, they decided to ignore their attorney's advice and reinstate access to the ftp server, and we have secured a First Amendment attorney to force the reinstatement of the site itself.
3. The confiscated pages included personal contact information for 200 activists, and the private strategy sessions for voting machine activists. BlackBoxVoting.org received no satisfactory explanation as to what authority they were confiscated under. We will demand a formal statement from the ISP that logs every single person who looked at them, accessed the files, or made copies of them.
"The .org site had an active discussion going on among people from all over the US and world about election security and flaws found in Diebold's voting system software. The idea that these discussion boards were confiscated is rather chilling. The discussions were password protected and not open for public view.
"In addition to the impact this action will have on the election security debate, it also may represent the first time the DMCA has been used to shut down a discussion. Although I don't know much about the DMCA, I do think it wasn't written with this kind of purpose in mind."
-- Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation
Still more: Just grab This Link and scroll down.
::: Diebold Box Scandal :::
More info at Your Vote is Not Safe
Read about this a couple of months ago. Surely the moron mainstream press
did as well! To be "fair and balanced" I did hear one mention of it.
Bev Harris, who coincidentally is being sued by Diebold, continues to be vindicated for her investigative work into the flaws of that company's voting technology and software.
[..]
Additional background on this very important issue is available via unknown news.
This is especially FUN ~~ How Bush Is NOT Going To Steal The 2004 Election
Appendix A: Legalities (read: why Diebold isn't going to sue me)
First, let me explain that I fully "confess" that I am distributing Diebold copyrighted product on my website. And I was (and am) involved in the effort to strip the encryption from some of the ZIP archives downloaded from Diebold's FTP site.
So why am I not worried?
a) I believe all this falls under "fair use". I have a history of using the Public Records Act to expose government-related misconduct, corruption and general stupidity. See also:
http://www.equalccw.com/commiemommies.html (the first time my reporting made Matt Drudge's site)
http://www.equalccw.com/donperata.gif (the second time Drudge picked my stuff up - note that Perata is a well-known rabidly anti-gun politician)
http://www.equalccw.com/oaklandzen.html
http://www.equalccw.com/sactoletter.html
...and other examples.
b) Voting is a highly "public" function, and public scrutiny over the election process is a VERY well established area of law. There have been two lower court decisions in favor of the secrecy of electronic voting systems but first, I believe those decisions were wrong and second, in those cases no specific allegations of misconduct were presented - only theoretical issues.
c) In Diebold's case, misconduct is very, VERY well established. Good God, where do we start?
By Clicking this link! FUN ~~ How Bush Is NOT Going To Steal The 2004 Election
Wonder What Russia Thinks
Friday, September 26, 2003
::: Put A Terrorist In Your Tank :::
Super post from Writerific on the ridiculous goings on of the Prince of
Darkness, Spook-Cheney, OPEC (the REAL terrorists), the Robotic Wall Street
Motley Fools, more Secret Energy Bunker Musings, and loyal Americans sigh ...
"Gee, aren't we glad we have those smart guys up there in DC to hammer out
the really tough stuff.
Just wait until the public (asleep at the main switch, with cell phone to ear)
finds out how badly the pharmaceutical industry has screwed us. Talk about
"fear as a means of promoting your position." Heard today on the news,
warnings that Americans should be aware of the worrisome trend in the
drug industry ... terrorists could use RX drugs as a weapon!
Well, that has me in the mood to run outside and scream... see ya later.
::: Here is a Really Great Slide Show About Our Troops :::
No matter how we feel about how we got there, the told lies, the disappointment of being
made a fool once again ... politics be damned ...
We Will Always Support Our Troops.
::: Environmental Group Wants Cheney's Task Force Records :::
:::::::: This one is just a straight steal folks ... Granny ::::::::
Environmental Groups Want Records of Meetings with Polluters
t r u t h o u t | Statement
Sierra Club
Wednesday 24 September 2003
Bush Administration Nearing Deal To Weaken Clean Air, Toxics Protections
For Communities Near Factory Farms.Environmental Groups Seek Records
From Bush Administration's Closed-Door Meetings With Agricultural Polluters.
Washington, DC- Newly obtained documents from the Environmental Protection Agency reveal that the Bush Administration is formalizing a back-room deal with the livestock and poultry industries that would let giant factory farm polluters off the hook for violations of the Clean Air Act and the Superfund hazardous waste law that have protected communities for decades. With this new incriminating evidence in hand, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment filed a lawsuit today under the Freedom of Information Act, demanding that the Bush Administration divulge information about its closed negotiations with the meat industry.
"Be it Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force or this back-room deal for the meat and milk industries,the Bush Administration continues to let polluters write the rules while leaving the public out of the process," said Ken Midkiff of the Sierra Club.
In May, environmental groups obtained an industry letter documenting clandestine negotiations with the Bush Administration to shield giant factory farms from the requirements of the Clean Air Act and Superfund hazardous-waste laws. Since then, the Bush Administration has been working on a deal that would allow factory farms to continue polluting without any threat of prosecution.
The Bush Administration has rebuffed environmental groups' requests for information about the closed-door meetings, claiming that it has "not entered into any 'safe harbor' agreement." However, environmental groups recently obtained a copy of the supposedly non-existent agreement. According to that draft, the Administration would allow the meat and milk industries to ignore clean air and hazardous waste laws indefinitely, asking only that industry "monitor" its emissions.
The Bush Administration has persistently refused to address pollution from factory farms, which concentrate thousands of animals in a single location and release enormous quantities of harmful pollutants. And Utah Mike Leavitt, nominated by President Bush to head the Environmental Protection Agency, has a history of favoring polluting agricultural interests; as governor of Utah, Mr. Leavitt helped to pass a law preventing citizens from bringing state suits against agricultural businesses.
"Exempting animal factories from basic environmental laws like the Clean Air Act would put thousands of communities at risk," said Brent Newell of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. "Instead of protecting those communities, the Bush Administration is working to protect polluters from the laws that safeguard the public welfare."
A copy of the draft agreement, the meat industry's memo proposing the amnesty agreement, the environmental groups request for enforcement actions, as well as other relevant documents can be found here.
Granny thinks the confirmation of Levitt bears watching. His responses on CSpan
a couple of nights ago were canned and empty at best. Me thinks they have
another Shill For Bush up for bids.
::: Poindexter Lurking In The Shadows??? :::
::: From Jim Krane - AP :::
Wednesday 23 September 2003
NEW YORK -- While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon's plans for a far-reaching database to combat terrorism, a similar project is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states -- and $12 million in federal funds. The database project, created so states and local authorities can track would-be terrorists as well as criminal fugitives, is being built and housed in the offices of a private company but will be open to some federal law enforcers and perhaps even US intelligence agencies.
Dubbed Matrix, the database has been in use for a year and a half in Florida, where police praise the crime-fighting tool as nimble and exhaustive. It cross-references the state's driving records and restricted police files with billions of pieces of public and private data, including credit and property records.
[..]
They say that Matrix houses restricted police and government files on colossal databases that sit in the offices of Seisint Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire who police say flew planeloads of drugs into the country in the early 1980s.
"It's federally funded, it's guarded by state police but it's on private property? That's very interesting," said Christopher Slobogin, a University of Florida law professor and expert in privacy issues.
Hmmm........ Recon we could do a start up IPO on it ... or run a lottery? I'm in!
Thursday, September 25, 2003
::: United States Is Building Huge Spy-Ears In Iraq :::
::: Was Thinking I Heard This One Denied on CSpan? :::
You just have to see this ... United States building "spy-ears" in two locations ...
right out in the open ... which will probably be bombed immediately. Be sure to
check the photo from the Israeli DEBKA link below.... Amazing!!
And Lo .... Bremer a quick study in colony building.
"We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or ... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country." This is US proconsul in Iraq Paul Bremer, speaking from Baghdad last Saturday.
[..]
Whatever the spin, and whatever the cost - at least in the short to medium term - in US casualties, the game plan remains to occupy and control Iraq for years. Iraqi sources inside the country and in Jordan and Egypt have confirmed information already circulated by the Israeli website (including a photo as well) DEBKA-Net-Weekly that the Americans are spending US $500 million to build two giant intelligence facilities: one north of Mosul, in Kurdish territory, and another in Baghdad's middle-class Saadun neighborhood on the Tigris River's east bank. This massive military presence may be a throwback to when the United States had a faithful regional gendarme, the Shah of Iran. But the facilities are necessary in order to enforce the economic agenda that really matters to Washington: the privatization of Iraq's economy and most of all the exploitation of its immense oil reserves.
From Israel's Debka-Net-Weekly ~~ American Snoopy
The new installations will greatly enhance America’s military, intelligence and electronic command and control over Iraq and its neighbors, notably Iran and Syria. The Mosul facility will guard northern Iraq’s oilfields and the pipelines carrying Iraqi gas and oil to Mediterranean terminals. Its instruments will reach into every corner of Iran and Syria, replacing America’s electronic eyes and ears in southern Turkey. This facility will be activated a section at a time according to need. Upon completion at the end of 2005, it will employ an operating staff of around 4,000 American intelligence personnel and electronic engineers.
***** Uh ... doesn't this sound like we might be staying a while?
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Middle East sources report that the intelligence center going up near Mosul is causing much nervousness in Damascus and Tehran. Both governments understand that when the first sections are activated in three months time, not a single military or intelligence move of theirs will go unseen by America’s electronic spies – and that goes for terrorist activity as well.
The functions assigned the Baghdad station are different. While the Mosul center will provide early warning against external threats to the US military presence in Iraq, the Baghdad station will stand guard over America’s political and military control of the capital and its satellite towns, including the Sunni enclave cities of Falluja, Ramadi and Tikrit.
[..]
Once the Baghdad electronic station is up and running it will aid US forces in their fight against guerrilla and terrorist assailants picking off GIs almost every day. These assaults are harmful but they do not detract from the overall American control over security in the broad expanses of a large country. There is every indication that the US civil administrator Paul Bremer is gradually pulling ahead of the difficulties. His recipe is simple. No Iraqi associated in any way with the overthrown Saddam regime or the outlawed Baath party is to be allowed to take part in government. Bremer equally bars from public service all Iraqis with foreign political connections, even American.
::: What the Hey?? ::: Outrage :::
::: Witness Protection Programs :::
Ok, I give up!
What's up with these figures?
Iraqi Witness Protection Program = $100 Million allocation.
U. S. Witness Protection Program = $30 Million allocation.
Wow, they must have more exciting witnesses than we do! Or
it could be there are just MORE of them.
So ... the green eyed monster rears its ugly head.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
::: The Latest Outrages :::
::: OR ::: A Granny Rant :::
Well, Granny is getting pissed (sorry, but it is true)!
Recently, I listened to Wolfowitz testify on Iraq and how the American people should
be willing to sacrifice for winning the peace. Well, sorry, but I blew a gasket upon
learning Pay Raises in Washington Would Proceed Like Clockwork.
I am pretty sure this was just after the politicians took off the entire month of August ~~
and I am also sure the soldiers in Iraq DID NOT get to take off the same period of
time.
Rummy could have at least declared a congratulatory "End To Major Conflict in Iraq"
... Just for August, you understand! What would have been impressive is to have
Rumsfeld fast rope off a Black Hawk onto an American HumVee (minus the
D/U shielding) in the Sunni Triangle. But then again, I am pretty sure I heard, all during August, our troops were still dying on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Then ... Bush gets face time on TV last week to announce a bombshell request for
$87 Billion for Iraq ... you know, for keeping up the military (that is fine!) and
a bit more ($20 Billion +) for various reconstruction projects.
Last week I also heard our wounded veterans, brought to Walter Reed Hospital
and treated for horrific injuries, including loss of limbs .... upon release are
presented with a $8.10 bill for food they consume for each day of their hospital stay.
The Official Story On The Food Bill ~~ No Less Disturbing
Plus ... Granny must be incredibly naive. I did not realize the soldiers had to pay for their
uniforms and apparently much more Just read below, or better still click the link:
"A uniform and boots cost $172.65. Add body armor for $1,620, a helmet for $322 and a load-bearing vest for $120.05.
Weiner said, "This will carry magazines of ammunition, grenades, and also canteens, first aid kit."
Nuclear, biological and chemical gear, including a gas mask, costs $341.75.
Weiner said, "This is the molie pack. This is to carry all of our gear - extra chow, extra clothes, extra ammunition."
Depending on the rifle they're carrying, it could cost around $700 apiece and walkie talkies are nearly $600. "
This is only the beginning. Consider the following:
***Returning vets who could be dealing with nightmares and visions of amputated limbs, heads
blown off, blood and guts strewn across the sand get this message from Bush: "Suck it up."
Funding for Post Tramatic Stress has been CUT.
***Military dependents normally covered under "Impact Aid," a program to help families
with the cost of having to move to a new area where schooling will be costly, will receive ZIP. Not funded!
George W. Whacks Aid For Military Children
"IF CYNICISM were a planet, the Bush administration would be Jupiter, the biggest of all.
These people have turned cynicism into political art, routinely claiming in public to be supportive of children, education, veterans, and other popular constituencies, while maneuvering in the back rooms to gut budgets and programs that support these very constituencies. An especially disgusting example is Bush's recent gut job on the program that provides essential school aid for the children of our troops. "
So now you get short changed because Granny is hungry!! Other rumors I have heard, but not had time to link:
*** Disabled Vets who receive pensions now have to deduct dollar for dollar from their
pensions what they receive for being disabled.
*** Combat and Hazard Pay Cut
*** Reserve Military families on wellfare.
Shameful!!
::: Email From Dubya To Iraqi Person :::
**********************************
Dear Iraqi Person,
Could y'all please stop killin' each other? The folks over here are startin' to
git madder than a feller in a canoe what done forgot his paddle! Wuts worse,
the more y'all keep tellin' folks on that com-putter thing-a-ma-bob wuts goin'
on down there, the more they don't pay no attention to my TV reporter guys on
Fox to tell 'em wut they need to know! Next thing ya know, I'll be out on my
butt come next eleckshun an' Daddy'll hafta start me another oil company so I
can look like I'm an important guy who is reely smart!
At the last meetin' I got to go to with Daddy & all his friends, Mr. Ashcroft
said wut we need to do is git Iraq some of them "Patriot Act" freedoms so we can
start lockin' more people up, but Mr. Powell told him to "keep it in his pants"
wut ever that means. Daddy & Mr. Cheney wuz laughin' an' havin a good ole time
cuz they just read some kind of profit paper fer Mr. Cheney's company that he
ain't sposed to work for anymore . uh.Halyberton or sumptin like that..Then they
wuz about to go inta whut we're gonna do in Iraq, but Mr. Cheney reminded Daddy
that it was my bed time, so I had to leave.
So, if ya'll could do me a favor, please stop all that killin' and when ya see
camera or reporter guys, just smile and tell'em just how much yer lives have
gotten better since us 'mericans came and liverated ya'll! Keep it up and Daddy
tells me after I'm re-elektid, we can liverate Iran & Syria next! Ain't that
cool!
Yer Bestest Buddy,
George W. Bush,
Pres. Of Texas & 'Merica
(Note: All spelling errors are original to the soon-to-be-unemployed chimp that
wrote them.)
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
::: Granny ~~~ What's Up? :::
Hi .... just wanted to stop by a second before work to say I am still alive
and kicking. Several items have cropped up on my agenda to keep me
from posting ... visiting grand kids, visiting parents, a minor buggie,
care of my sick doggie. Gaby the wonderhound is much better!
I have been listening and watching, though. Bush is on TV now at the
UN and I am afraid he will continue to be an ass, and repeat the same
"cowboy" rhetoric. Matter of fact, I can hear him doing so now.
What a silly toad!
Anyway, have been reading lots ... studying a huge download on the
history of Freemasonry, Illuminati and the Mormons. Whew ... quite a
project and am discovering many interesting things about these con-
nected groups.
Wow! It is difficult for me to believe our founding fathers we so tied in
with what boils down to occultism. But don't get me going this am --
no time.
Back soon! Granny
Just a P.S. here. I am NOT slamming the membership of the Masons. My
father was a Mason, wore the ring and I still have his beautiful Masonic
Bible.
Monday, September 15, 2003
::: Don Wiley ::: Benito Que ::: Vladimir Pasechnik
:::Links To David Kelly Emerge In Microbiologists Deaths
**************************************************
Dr. David Kelly—the biological warfare weapons specialist at the heart of the continuing political crisis for the British government—had links to three other top microbiologists whose deaths have left unanswered questions.
[..]
The two American scientists he had worked with were Benito Que, 52, and Don Wiley, 57.Both microbiologists had been engaged in DNA sequencing that could provide “a genetic marker based on genetic profiling.” The research could play an important role in developing weaponized pathogens to hit selected groups of humans—identifying them by race. Two years ago, both men were found dead, in circumstances never fully explained.
In November 2001, Que left his laboratory after receiving a telephone call. Shortly afterward he was found comatose in the parking lot of the Miami Medical School. He died without regaining consciousness.
Police said he had suffered a heart attack. His family insisted he had been in perfect health and claimed four men attacked him. But, later, oddly, the family inquest returned a verdict of death by natural causes. Many questions remain about Que’s death.
Who was the mystery caller who sent Que hurrying from his lab hours before he was scheduled to leave? What attempts did the police make to track the four mystery men—after admitting Que was the “probable” victim of an attempt to steal his car? What were his links to the U.S. Department of Defense? What happened to his sensitive research into DNA sequencing? How close were his connections to Kelly?
A few days after Que died, Wiley disappeared off a bridge spanning the Mississippi River. He had just left a banquet for fellow researchers in Memphis.
Weeks later, Wiley’s body was found 300 miles down river. As with Que, his family said he was in perfect health. There was no autopsy. The local medical examiner returned a verdict of accidental death. It was suggested he had a dizzy spell and fell off the bridge. Again, there remain many unanswered questions concerning Wiley’s demise.
Why did Wiley park his car on the bridge? Why did he leave the keys in the ignition and his lights on? Why was Wiley’s car facing in the opposite direction from his father’s house, which was only a short distance away? What happened to his research into DNA sequencing? How close were his connections to Kelly?
[..]
The death of a third microbiologist—Vladimir Pasechnik, 64 —has left even more questions.
On Nov. 16, 2001, Pasechnik was found dead in bed—10 days after he and Wiley had met in Boston to discuss the latest developments in DNA sequencing.
Kelly, with government approval, had helped Pasechnik create Regma Biotechnologies. Regma was allowed to set up a laboratory in Porton Down.
It was only a month later that Christopher Davis, a former MI6 officer and a specialist in DNA sequencing as a potential weapon, announced Pasechnik’s death.
Davis had retired from MI6 and settled in Great Falls, Va. He confirmed to a reporter that Pasechnik was dead—from a stroke—a month after the microbiologist had been buried.
Details of the postmortem were not revealed at an inquest, in which the press was given no prior notice. Colleagues who had worked with Pasechnik said he was in good health.
Why was it left to Davis to announce Pasechnik’s death? Who authorized the announcement? Did an MI6 pathologist conduct the autopsy, as one source close to the service claims? Why did Pasechnik continue to visit Porton Down up to a week before his death? Who authorized his security clearance to enter one of the most restricted establishments in Britain?
[..]
Kelly’s links to the Institute of Biological Research in the Tel Aviv suburb of Nes Zions are also intriguing.
His connection to the secret biological plant began in October 2001, shortly after a commercial flight en route from Israel to Novosibirsk in Siberia was blown up over the Black Sea by a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile.
All on board the flight were killed, including five Russian microbiologists returning to their research institute in Novosibirsk—a city known as the scientific capital of Siberia. It has 50 facilities and 13 universities.
**********************************
Ok folks, we have been down this road before, but there were More Dead Scientists.
Looks like it will be more difficult in the future to recruit Microbiologists!
Sunday, September 14, 2003
:::Radioactive Iraq ::: Shock & Awe People :::
And one of the most shocking aspects is how radioactive Iraq is at present.
Not only are we gifting the Iraqis with a slow cancer death, we are also pinning that medal on the chests of out troops.
::: Rumsfeld Under Fire :::
Criticism Mounts With Costs, Casualties
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have noticed Rummy has been looking a bit drawn lately. He is funny at
times (even though I know he is a person who is not concerned with the
American people's interest) and I am now thinking of his appearance on
one of the cable channels while in Iraq and taking questions. He had his
earphones in and dangli9ng down and a reporter asked him a question.
He said, "What, where is the translation?" The fellow next to him said,
"there is no translation, it is in English." Rummy was suitably sheepish.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rumsfeld has rankled many in the military with his aggressive style and far-reaching agenda for "transforming" the military, even as he has won acclaim for his leadership of the Pentagon through the trauma of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the building and ensuing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war on terrorism. Now, less than five months after he helped formulate and execute a bold plan in which a U.S. invasion force drove to Baghdad and toppled the Iraqi government in 21 days, Rumsfeld is facing his greatest challenge yet.
Having demanded full authority for overseeing the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, elbowing the State Department aside, Rumsfeld is being blamed by many in Congress and the military establishment for the problems facing the United States, which include mounting U.S. casualties and costs exceeding $1 billion a week.
[..]
Rumsfeld appears to be losing ground most dramatically on Capitol Hill, where even some conservative Republicans are expressing concern about his handling of Iraq. "Winning the peace is a lot different than winning the war," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who counts himself as a strong Rumsfeld supporter but notes that not all his colleagues feel the same. "His bluntness comes across as arrogance, and he's made some enemies on Capitol Hill, probably because of style differences," said Graham, an Air Force veteran who serves on the Armed Services Committee.
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the panel's chairman, struck a decidedly cool note when asked how Rumsfeld is doing. "Understandably we have some differences," he said Friday in a written response. "However, I consistently work with Secretary Rumsfeld to support the president and the men and women of the armed forces, and have a high regard for his integrity and forcefulness."
[..]
Robert McNamara for four years of Vietnam going down the toilet was absolutely convinced with a religious zeal that what he was doing was the right thing," said Thomas E. White, a retired Army general who was fired as Army secretary this year by Rumsfeld. "It wasn't until 30 years later that it dawned on him that he was dead wrong. And I think you have the same thing with Don Rumsfeld."
[..]
Yet, the difficulties in Iraq have diminished Rumsfeld's standing within the administration, according to people familiar with its inner workings, with a reduction in Rumsfeld's operating latitude. Unhappiness with Rumsfeld's freewheeling style -- he has been known to interject himself in issues usually considered beyond the purview of a secretary of defense -- had been building within parts of the administration, officials said.
But it was the Pentagon's handling of postwar Iraq that really hurt Rumsfeld's position, according to some administration officials.
[..]
Unhappiness with Rumsfeld flared on Capitol Hill months before the invasion of Iraq, when Warner stood up at a meeting of Republican senators with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and complained that Rumsfeld was neither cooperating nor consulting with the Senate. Warner told Card that he had never seen anything like it in 25 years in the Senate.
[..]
"I think his legislative affairs shop is awful," said one Republican senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It serves him so poorly. Don Rumsfeld can't be personally blamed for all of that. But the combination of personality, which some people find condescending and prickly and a little offensive -- Rumsfeld himself doesn't have any time for criticismand the fact that the groundwork hasn't been laid by a good legislative affairs staff, has created some problems."
[..]
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former head of the U.S. Central Command who also served the Bush administration as Middle East envoy, sharply criticized the Pentagon's handling of postwar Iraqin a speech before the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association 10 days ago. He received an enthusiastic response from hundreds of military officers present.
In the Army, there are worries that the Iraq occupation could do long-term damage to the service. Of the 10 active-duty Army divisions, nine will have all or parts deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan this year or next.
[..]
He is absolutely convinced that he is right, that his view is correct, so all the rest of this stuff that is floating around is kind of noise, a lot of which he just dismisses out of hand, or he rationalizes somehow as consistent with this plan of his," White said.
Robert S. Gelbard, a former U.S. diplomat with experience in several peacekeeping operations, said he is puzzled by Rumsfeld's insistence that no additional troops are needed to improve security in Iraq. "What's hard to figure out is the continued adamant statements that there's no need for additional troops," he said. "That is utterly perplexing, given the security situation there."
Saturday, September 13, 2003
::::: Cheney's Energy Pirates :::::
::: Behind Schwarzenegger Recall Hoax :::
The very same Dick Cheney-Enron energy pirates who ripped off the people of California during the 2000-01 so-called energy crisis, are now out to loot the state once again--under the guise of the "recall Davis" referendum, and the candidacy of the man Lyndon LaRouche refers to as the "overpriced geek act," Arnold Schwarzenegger.
While the rationale behind the drive to recall Gov. Gray Davis is that he drove the state into a $38 billion deficit, EIR has systematically exposed (see chronology, below) that California was robbed blind by Enron, Reliant, Williams Energy, and the whole crowd of energy pirates, who criminally conspired and profiteered off energy deregulation, while virtually destroying the U.S. electric power grid.
[..]
Cheney to California: Go to Hell
The looting of California by the energy pirates, led by Enron, Dynegy, Reliant, and Williams, was already under way when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were sworn in as President and Vice President in January 2001. But that was nothing, compared to the White House-sanctioned looting once they were in office. In 2000-01, California's annual energy bill went from $7 billion to $28 billion, as a result of deregulation and the unbridled price manipulations brought on by California's passage of energy deregulation in 1996 to take effect in 2000.
[..]
As soon as Bush-Cheney took office, they delivered a message to Californians: Go to Hell! President Bush announced a one-time-only, two-week extension of Clinton's emergency order forcing power-merchant companies to sell power to the near-bankrupt California utilities.
Vice President Cheney, appointed to head up the Administration's energy task force on day eight of the Bush Presidency, candidly told reporters the emergency order would not be renewed, and the Bush Administration would not lift a finger to help California to counter the energy pirates. "I'm a believer in markets," he babbled. "I think the notion of deregulation is basically sound. What happened in California, it was poorly executed."
Never mind Cheney's own lucrative career as CEO of the energy firm Halliburton; never mind that Enron was the largest corporate contributor to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and the other energy pirates were right behind Enron in bidding for Administration favor.
[..]
By March 2001, the piracy by the energy companies had reached the point that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), although dominated by dereg backers, had to launch a confidential probe into price manipulations by Williams Energy and Reliant. [..]
The fines were a slap on the wrist, as Williams' profits soared by 172% in the first quarter of 2001, and Reliant's jumped by 104%--largely due to the scalping of California.
All told, from the 2000-01 crisis to the present, California has been robbed of a sum greater than the current $38 billion state deficit!
Dick, Arnie, and Ken Conspire
The Cheney energy task force was a rubber stamp for Enron and the other energy pirates, who virtually wrote the text of the group's report, which was rushed to release on May 16, 2001 (a new General Accounting Office report assails Cheney for keeping the entire effort secret--see accompanying article). [..]
Cheney also spat on California in a PBS "Frontline" interview after the report was unveiled, coldly denying that the energy giants were functioning as a cartel. "The problem you had in California," Cheney lied, "was caused by a combination of things--an unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn't really deregulate. [..]
In April 2001, Cheney had met with Enron's chief executive, Kenneth Lay, a member of the Pioneers group of Bush campaign mega-contributors, who presented the Vice President with a memo laying out eight proposals. Seven of the eight, all promoting radical deregulation, were adopted almost verbatim in the Cheney report. Lay reportedly also pressured Cheney to ensure that his report made little mention of California. Cheney obliged.
In April 2001, Cheney had met with Enron's chief executive, Kenneth Lay, a member of the Pioneers group of Bush campaign mega-contributors, who presented the Vice President with a memo laying out eight proposals. Seven of the eight, all promoting radical deregulation, were adopted almost verbatim in the Cheney report. Lay reportedly also pressured Cheney to ensure that his report made little mention of California. Cheney obliged.
[..] Jason Leopold recently revealed that on May 24, 2001--one week after the Cheney report's release--Lay held a secret meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, to organize a group of GOP bigshots and Hollywood celebs to join his propaganda push against Davis, and peddle Enron's schemes for accelerated looting of the state through even more drastic deregulation.
Among the attendees: former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, infamous Drexel Burnham junk bond felon Michael Milken--and Arnold Schwarzenegger! The attendees were given a proposal titled "Comprehensive Solution for California." One key feature was that all state and Federal probes into Enron's role in the California energy crisis should immediately be shut down.
Lay knew Enron was dying, despite robbing California blind--the firm would file for bankruptcy Dec. 2, 2001[..]
Just before that meeting, on April 15, 2001, the New York Times reported on a meeting between "Bush political advisors" and the Terminator, to discuss a gubernatorial run. White House chief political advisor Karl Rove was quoted saying that a Schwarzenegger run "would be nice. That would be really, really nice. That would be really, really, really nice." In fact, Arnie had been at the White House, meeting with Rove, on April 12.
Lord Jacob's Dark Age Soire
While Schwarzenegger declined to run against Davis in 2002, he was being groomed by a much bigger group of financier pirates for some political slot. On Sept. 23, 2002, amid the Washington-London mobilization for war against Iraq, Arnold accompanied speculator Warren Buffett to a gathering at the Waddesdon Manor estate of Lord Jacob Rothschild in Britain. London Times correspondent Anatole Kaletsky, a guest at the European Economic Roundtable conference, co-sponsored by Buffett and Rothschild, wrote about the "dark age" gathering in a column on Sept. 26.
By Kaletsky's account, the meeting aimed at giving the elite financiers a preview of the hell to come, as Cheney and British Prime Minister Tony Blair steered their governments into a string of perpetual wars, starting in the Mideast, but soon to engulf Eurasia. "The apocalyptic tone was set by a hair-raising discussion of the Middle East," Kaletsky wrote.
[..] After dealing with Iraq, the pressure for 'regime change' would shift to Iran, then Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan... As if an ever-expanding war were not bad enough, the economic outlook presented to the gathered plutocrats was even grimmer, since it was not overlaid with the blustering confidence of the Washington war party.... The economic experts--including James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and, of course Buffett himself--all emphasized the impotence of monetary and fiscal policy after the collapse of one of the greatest speculative bubbles of all time. [..]
In July 2000, a somewhat less elite collection of financiers, technocrats, and politicians than those assembled by Lord Jacob at his British manor, had gathered at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, to anoint George W. Bush and Al Gore as Wall Street/London-vetted Presidential candidates, because both men would hand financial crisis management to the Federal Reserve and the banks.
According to accounts by Reuters and the Scotsman,>b> the Waddesdon Manor event similarly vetted the Terminator as the man for this season of wars and financial catastrophes.
Enter George Shultz
To make clear that Schwarzenegger is out to rape California in the tradition of Dick Cheney's Enron: On the opening day of his quest for the governor's mansion, Schwarzenegger showed up with his new chief campaign economic advisor, George Shultz, the man who installed Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle as top campaign policy wonks for George W. Bush, and who in 1971 was the official who convinced President Nixon to end the Bretton Woods system, thus triggering more than 30 years of global speculative looting and physical economic breakdown.
In recent years, Shultz, while retaining his status as director of the Bechtel Corp. (a key benefactor, along with Halliburton, of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War), has become a celebrity in his own right-- by peddling the legalization of drugs and the total deregulation of the global financial system. Not even the International Monetary Fund would survive Shultz's axe. He proposes a totally Darwinian global financial system, in which only the fittest would survive. Perhaps Shultz should take a second look at his new protege, since many years of steroid abuse have turned his Mr. Universe legendary pectorals into flabby feminine breasts.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
::: NeoCons Near The Edge of The BushCliff :::
::: Or ::: What Is Up At PNAC? :::
It seems I am hearing criticism of Dubya, Rummy, Cheney or someone
"up there" in power. Could this be part of the White House Wars
we have been hearing about?
More Troops for Iraq
************************
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that, on the security front in Iraq, "it seems to me that the trajectory we're on is a good one." But it is hard to find anyone else who agrees with that assessment. Certainly not the British - who now are thinking about increasing their force levels in Iraq. Certainly not the Shiites - who, for lack of security, are now discussing how to reconstitute their own militias. Certainly not even U.S. commanders - who, if you listen carefully to what they are saying, admit that there are not enough front-line troops to handle what needs to be done in Iraq.
Secretary Rumsfeld's response is that we need to turn things over to the Iraqis as soon as possible. Sounds fine in theory or even over the long run. Yet there is no way to train a large, effective and loyal Iraqi force in the time frame required. Despite this reality, the secretary resists any idea that more U.S. troops are needed
[..]
But the reality remains that, while the situation in Iraq is not as dire as many of the president's most fearsome critics suggest, we do face a serious security problem there. With a sound strategy and adequate resources, it can be addressed. However, it can't be if we pretend the problem doesn't exist or ask others to carry out tasks that only the U.S. and its allies can reliably accomplish.
**************************
More From The New American Century Guys
Gerecht on Post-Saddam Iraq
I would like to draw your attention to the following piece (“Help Not Wanted”) by Reuel Marc Gerecht in this week’s Weekly Standard. Gerecht, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow at the Project, argues that “internationalizing” Iraq’s reconstruction will make the democratic transformation of the nation more difficult, not less.
“In the Muslim Middle East, in the age of bin Ladenism, where the rulers and ruled are constantly assessing American strength and purpose, multilateralism, when it is so evidently cover for a lack of patience and fortitude, is never a virtue….When Washington talks about the need to share the pain, what these men hear is that America wants to run.”
Gerecht ~~ Weekly Standard
The organizing principle behind the American occupation of Iraq, so advises a chorus of influential voices, ought to be the foreign policy equivalent of financially syndicating risk. America's budget deficit is too big, the costs of administering and reconstructing Iraq too high, and the killing of U.S. soldiers in the country too frequent for the United States to bear alone the burden of transforming Iraq into a stable, democratic country. A recent post-conflict reconstruction report issued under the auspices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies asserts that "the scope of the challenges, the financial requirements, and rising anti-Americanism in parts of Iraq argue for a new coalition that includes countries and organizations beyond the original war-fighting coalition."
[..]
Irrespective of whether we should seek to have Europeans, Pakistanis, or Indians dying with or in lieu of Americans, irrespective of whether murderous hard-core Baathists and Sunni fundamentalists would feel less "occupied" and less murderous seeing Turks in their country, and irrespective of whether the economically stressed, antiwar countries of the European Union would actually give meaningful financial aid to Iraq, the idea of a "new coalition" to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq is entirely unwise. It would probably encourage the worst political and cultural tendencies among Iraqis, even among those who are profoundly pro-Western. It could easily send a signal throughout the Middle East and beyond that the Bush administration doesn't have the stomach to transform Iraq, let alone the region.
[..]
Just consider the difficulties the Bush administration has had pre- and post-war because of the profound and petty differences between the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon. Though diminished, those differences persist. And they have had at times baleful repercussions for the post-Saddam administration of Iraq, confusing Iraqis about what American intentions really are. Now imagine layered on top of this U.S. debating society Europeans, Arabs, Pakistanis, and so on, all with their own national and cultural predilections.
It ought to be self-evident that Washington would not want any military or security assistance from any Muslim state that is not a functioning democracy, which essentially rules out everyone but Turkey. The Arab Sunni states, all ruled by dictators or princes, have to varying degrees an interest in not seeing a stable, democratic, Shiite-dominated Iraq born in their midst. America's toppling of Saddam Hussein may possibly provoke an intellectual and political earthquake in the Middle East, but we can be certain that the states of the Arab League, which refused to recognize the legitimacy of Iraq's new governing council, will try hard to preserve the status quo. And the Turks have an awful reputation in Iraq, both among the Kurds, who have long-standing ethnic troubles with their northern neighbors, and among the Arab Shia, especially their clergy, who see the Turks as propagators of a secularism hostile to Islam. The Bush administration went to great lengths to keep the Turks out of northern Iraq during the war. Having Turkish soldiers at Iraqi street corners would be one of the swiftest ways of torpedoing the country.
[..]
None of this means, however, that the Iraqis who detest the French or the Russians or the United Nations would fail to use any of these parties against the American administration in Iraq if by doing so they could advance their own interests. The process of drafting Iraq's new constitution over the next 12 months may turn out to be a bruising affair, as the various groups in the country try to advance their concerns. This battling will likely be healthy, revealing the seriousness of the Iraqis' constitutional intent. The Arab Sunnis, Arab Shia, and Kurds could naturally try to introduce outside parties into the internal Iraqi debate to gain advantage or protect their flanks. The United States is going to have a discreet (one hopes), front-row, judge-and-jury seat. The U.S. officials who oversee this affair may be tested severely, as the Iraqis wrangle among themselves about what belongs in a constitution.
Hmmmm .......... these fellows are a riot!
::: September 11 :::
Spinning Sept. 11 Into a Useful Political Ploy
It amazes me how shallow the scar tissue protecting me from
the vast well of emotional shock and sadness really is. With
a few mere images, backed by hearfelt, well performed ballads,
my eyes burn again with tears.
The sorrow is just below the surface and I wonder how long
that will be true. Perhaps is will be ever so.
Yet .... this is true as well
It's two years since we counted planes — one, two, three, four — as they crashed into one tower and then another, and then the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania soil. Two years since we stopped in our daily tracks, gasps replacing the ordinary hum of a back-to-school morning, shock trumping every other emotion except horror. And fear.
Of course, everything did not change. Eventually, we used up the duct tape, put away the gas masks and ate the emergency supply of granola bars. But we retained that muscle memory of the world as a dangerous place in which we are high-risk patients.
[..]
The day, with its emotional scars and lessons, is being manipulated, handcuffed to the "war on terrorism." Nearly every battle, every action, every foreign policy, every call to follow the leader, is justified — no, sanctified — in the name of Sept. 11.
[..]
Did you read the story about a young Florida woman who was determined to sew a quilt for the family of every American soldier who died in the Iraq War? As the death toll rose to over 300, she remained committed to her kindness and to the war. "We have to stay there as long as it takes and take care of it once and for all," she explained. "No one wants another Sept. 11."
When does the small, repeated exploitation of this belief become the big lie? What do we make of a patriotism of fear?
::: President Dean & Vice President Clark :::
Well, whaddaya think?
Published on Thursday, September 11, 2003 by the Washington Post
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has asked retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark to join his campaign.
[..]
Clark, in a telephone interview yesterday, said he did not want to comment about the private meeting. Asked about reports that the two men had discussed a wide range of issues, including endorsing Dean, joining the campaign, possible roles in a Dean administration and the vice presidency, he said only, "It was a complete tour of the horizon."
Later, an adviser quoted Clark as saying, "I have only one decision to make: Will I seek the presidency?"
It was the fourth time Dean and Clark have met face-to-face to discuss the campaign. No decisions were made at the California meeting because Clark is still considering a run for president. Clark is scheduled to make a speech Sept.19 at the University of Iowa, when many political insiders expect him to announce his intentions.
[..]
Last week, Dean said the United States should not "take sides" in the Middle East conflict and said that an "enormous" number of Israeli settlements would have to be dismantled as part of a peace agreement. Yesterday, Dean shifted course, saying the settlements should be left to negotiators.
The governor's original comments angered a number of Jewish leaders and drew rebukes from two rivals, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Dean came under fire yesterday from a group of House Democrats for his comments on the Middle East. "This is not a time to be sending mixed messages," the Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), wrote to Dean.
Hmmmm ... well ... I thought it was brave of Dean to speak his mind. (Perhaps a possible negative career move, though) . The Israelis and Palestinians are never going to get it together if the negotiators don't get some backbone and insist on both sides towing the line and following the road map.
::: Who Is Counting The Dead In Iraq? :::
::: From Helen Thomas Her-Own-Self :::
The Pentagon has meticulously reported the American fatality toll in Iraq, now up to 286. That number includes 183 deaths from hostile fire since the start of the war. It also includes 148 dead since May 1 when President Bush declared the end of major combat operations. A Pentagon spokesman said that 1,105 U.S. service personnel have been wounded since the war began.
[..]
On March 18, two days before the U.S. invasion, Barbara Bush had an interview with ABC-TV's Diane Sawyer.
''Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen?'' Mrs. Bush declared. ''It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?'' Maybe she is right, but I don't think so.
Hmmmm ..... This woman is our President's MOM ... just thought I would remind you!
Helen continues ....
I asked Pentagon officials: ''How many Iraqis have been killed in this war?'' The answers were given ''on background'' -- meaning that the Pentagon spokesmen requested anonymity. The spokesmen were honest. They clearly were following orders from the policymakers when they replied that the Iraqi fatality toll was simply not our concern.
The reply to my first Pentagon call was: ``We don't track them (Iraqi dead).''
Weeks later I pursued the question and was told by a Defense Department official: ''They don't count. They are not important,'' meaning the casualty figures.
You cannot make this stuff up!!
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
::: From The Brits - ::: A Comprehensive Look At 9/11
::: And The Bogus War On Terror :::
The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination
Honestly people, this one is so well put together, I hate to leave any out, but I will try to leave some out ... these NeoCons and BushBoys not only followed their PNAC blueprint for oil grabbing and setting up the new global U.S. Empire ... they are even talking about regime change in China. Damned arrogant, if you ask me.
Oh ... and don't forget Bush Sr.'s reference to OFU ... that equals One Fodder Unit or Ordinary American.
Meacher does an excellent job on the piece and depending on which article or blog you read, Meacher resigned. ....... OR ....... Mecher was Sacked
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meacher Speaks
Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too.
[..]
We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
[..]
The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".
The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool".
Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.
First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.
All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? ...
[..]
Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.
The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).
In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).
Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).
Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.
The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s
This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.
A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Guess that Enron thing didn't pan out ... heard today the first of the Enron Criminals did the "perp walk" today.
Terrific article. It would be wise to click in and read the small portion I managed to leave out. Just could not help myself!
::: Bush To New Yorkers: Drop Dead :::
WOW Straight from TruthOut ... my fav!
The White House directly interfered with planned Environmental Protection Agency warnings about the toxic fallout from the World Trade Center explosions. It had "competing considerations" that came before protecting the health of the people of New York. Among them were re-opening the stock exchange as quickly as possible, and limiting clean-up costs and liability claims.
Because of Bush's lies, thousands of Americans will suffer cancers, emphysema, heart attack, stroke, birth defects, stillbirths, sterility, eye/ear/nose/throat disease and much more.
There have been few toxic events to match the explosions that pulverized the two World Trade Center towers. The short-term deaths of three thousand people will be dwarfed over the long term by the lethal fallout.
These were two of the last big buildings constructed with asbestos, whose health effects are infamous. Once ingested, the fibers can and do make cells cancerous. Thousands of miners and others exposed to asbestos have filed lawsuits against Johns-Manville and others.
The EPA knew that spewing all that asbestos into New York's air was a horrific event, and that lives could be saved by taking certain public precautions. Bush stopped that from happening.
The WTC also contained countless computer screens, light fixtures, calculators, telephones, network servers, paging systems, copy machines and much more high-tech office equipment laden with mercury and other toxic metals. The concrete, flooring, plastics, chemical cleaners, furniture, metal struts, window glass---all that was also pulverized into a horrific brew of murderous dioxins, furans and lethal powders with hideous killing power.
Where did it all come down? Who has breathed it? How many were elderly? Who might be uniquely sensitive? How many were pregnant, with vulnerable embryos? How far did their lethal powder spread through the region? Where is it now? How long will those poisons kill again and again and yet again? What could be done to prevent further sickness and death?
::: Bush Aides Admit Missteps on Iraq :::
Under and Over Estimates
One day after President Bush gave the nation a cautious view of rebuilding efforts in Iraq, senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to the country's infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country.
[..]
So is ... "Ooopps ... what Americans get?
In April, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that revenue from Iraqi oil would be $50 billion to $100 billion over a two- to three-year period and would cover a substantial portion of U.S. costs to rebuild the country. But yesterday, in a briefing with reporters, senior administration officials said the revenue will be nowhere near that high.
"Any sort of estimates in this kind of situation are very difficult, particularly so in a country like Iraq that had so little clear visibility to the outside world on everything that was going on," said one of the administration officials, speaking on the condition he not be named. "So I think it is fair to say that the level of decay and underinvestment in the Iraqi infrastructure was worse than almost anyone on the outside anticipated."
[..]
Of the $87 billion Bush asked for on Sunday night, $21 billion would go to rebuild the infrastructures of Afghanistan and Iraq. Administration officials said Iraq would get the lion's share of that $21 million. The final $66 billion would cover the military costs of occupying both countries. Iraq again is the heavy focus, with $51 billion slated to be spent on the military there.
Personally, I want to know where every penny goes, don't you?
::: Just General Ramblings :::
Does anyone else wonder why Bush, Republicans and the Fox Boys continue
to refer to Iraq as a mud village full of illiterates? A reporter or pundit today
bragged about the U.S. re-opening schools. And he actually said something
about Iraqi children going to school for the first time. I suppose that is
possible, but weren't we told repeatedly how well educated the Iraqi people
were. Those guys better watch out ... Americans may stop believing them.
I still want to know why we are incapable of reparing the electricity, water and
other essentials in Iraq. Isn't Bechtel all that? And Halliburton has
not managed to get enough oil for the Iraqis to have oil for themselves...
well, maybe they have now, but a short while back, Iraqis were lined up like
the 70's in America. Then I heard they were pumping oil to Turkey. Not up to
speed on this, but since I am rambling here ... I guess I can have a pass. Yes?
Watching Wolfowitz squirm on CSpan last night before the Senate Committee
was better than chocolate ice cream. He kept speechifying on and on ...
expounding on the sacrifices American would have to make. Well ... Hear
this: Americans would be more willing to sacrifice if the elite would stop
profiteering from the war. Stop the scramble for another country's oil,
stop rewarding each other with billion dollar contracts, and the ultimate
slap in the face to the American people: stop giving yourself raises all
the time when Americans can barely make ends meet!
The above in particular really gets me steamed. What bald-faced arrogance.
Ok... back soon ... gotta check the puppie and cook, but have a great post to
make if I can get the zoo under control this evening......
::: Idiot Bush Holds Forth :::
::: Under Banner of "Homeland Security" :::
It gets more difficult every day to listen to Dubya's bull.
He keeps repeating the same horse hockey ~~ the
same stuff everyone knows is a LIE.
"....... and those terrorist networks are no more ...
we are making progress ... so they cannot strike
the United States again .... blah, blah, blah."
Just nauseating!
And not only that.... Homeland Security is such a joke!
When quizzed by Congress, neither Ridge or his hirelings
could answer most of the questions put to them. There
were two guys on there one night (never got their names,
I came into the broadcast late) who did not answer a
single question!
Plus ... even though I have not checked the details, I
have heard the program is severely underfunded.
That is just like all the other programs ... botched!
The only thing Bush has funded are the Tax Cuts.
A Big Thank You and A Hug For All Who
Responded and Wished My Doggie Well
Gaby Update:
Sunday was the worst day so far. She was so terribly sad and weak, but now
she is moving better, the 6" gash on her hip is healing beautifully, one (even
longer) is not doing so hot, but that is because I cannot get the little witch to
stop licking the stiches. However, I am on her case, using betadine (not very
tasty) and am planning to get some BFI powder. The vet said that particular
place was two 4-5 inch gashes which he sewed as one. And there is one down
deep on her lower belly we have not even tried to glimpse.
That Saturday (or maybe Friday ... have lost track) night when the vet lifted
the towel, I knew by the look on the his face ... Gaby was hurt very badly
and might not make it. But when he called later around eleven to let me know
how it went and he gave me more detail, and I became more and more worried.
I also told him he'd better fix that mutt, cause if it was a choice between me
and the dog, my hubbie would have me on the pike.
This AM I threatened her with taping her belly, using gauze pads, but she
seemed altogether unimpressed. She just looks up at you with big weenie-
dog eyes ... you know about those, I'm sure.
Already the spoiled rotten queen of the house, my hubbie and I are fearful
she will be asking for the car keys and money for a steak joint before long.
She had me holding a bowl of water under her mouth so she could drink.
So I expect to see her flying down the road any day now, weenie-dog ears
flapping in the wind..
Thanks again for your concern. Granny, Hubbie, and the Zillion cats
::: Enron et al Wrote Bush Energy Policy :::
::: From The Democratic National Committee :::
Decided to post this one straight out as well ... seems kind of important.
Aug 27, 2003
Enron, Other Big Energy Companies Wrote Bush Energy Policy
A report from the General Accounting Office showed that the White House's 2001 energy policy was written largely by Bush cronies and campaign donors in the energy industry. The policy heavily favors energy companies, largely at the expense of our environment, especially national parks and other protected lands.
According to the Washington Post:
An energy task force, led by Vice President Cheney, relied for outside advice primarily on "petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, electricity industry representatives and lobbyists," while seeking limited input from academic experts, environmentalists and policy groups, the GAO said.
The White House has strongly resisted the GAO investigation, taking the agency to court to avoid releasing documents that show how often the administration met with industry representatives when crafting its plan. The GAO report took the administration to task for continuing its secrecy over who it met with and what was discussed in task force meetings.
Those meetings included a private half-hour session between Cheney and Kenneth Lay, chairman of Enron, the energy company that was President Bush's biggest donor throughout his political career before it declared bankruptcy in December 2001.
The Cheney Energy Task force released its energy policy in 2001 to wide praise from the energy industry, which would receive subsidies and favorable tax breaks under the recommendations. Environmental activists opposed the policies, especially those that called for increased drilling in national parks and other areas protected by the federal government.
The task force's recommendations included drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrats have stood up to Republicans on drilling in ANWR, and are continuing the fight as the GOP keeps pushing for the destructive plan. [Washington Post, 8/26/03]
From Democrats.org
::: Memo To President Bush: While You Were On Vacation :::
Dear President Bush,
August has been a difficult month for Americans. While you were vacationing at your ranch and raising millions of dollars for your re-election campaign, American soldiers kept dying in Iraq, the American economy continued to flounder, and new reports emerged describing just how little your administration cares about our environment. But at least someone got some good news: your friends at Dick Cheney's Halliburton have been awarded even more uncontested contracts for oil in Iraq.
We wanted to make sure that as you returned from your vacation, you were fully up-to-date. Please review the following stories below to learn what happened while you were clearing brush on your ranch.
All stories available if you follow this link
Associated Press: "Bush Less Sure-Footed in Postwar Iraq as Casualties Mount."
Los Angeles Times: "US Military Strength Called Lacking in Iraq; Republican Senators Are Among Those Saying More Troops Are Needed to Speed Rebuilding Efforts."
New York Times: "Senators Assail Two Officials for Lack of Postwar Details."
Los Angeles Times: "US Suspects It Received False Iraq Arms Tips."
San Antonio Express-News: "VA Seeks to Care for More With Less."
Wall Street Journal: "The Economy: CBO Projects Deficit Next Year of $480 Billion."
USA Today: "Gas Costs a Record $1.74 a Gallon."
Wall Street Journal: "Medicare Legislation Said to Be in Danger Without Bush Push."
Los Angeles Times: "The Nation: Nation's Jobless Plight Worsens."
Newsday: "EPA Misled Public On 9/11 Pollution."
New York Times: "Draft of Air Rule Is Said to Exempt Many Old Plants."
San Jose Mercury News: "Bush Administration Says It Won't Regulate Carbon Dioxide."
Washington Post: "Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought"
Overseas
Associated Press: "Bush Less Sure-Footed in Postwar Iraq as Casualties Mount."
Bush Is Under Bi-Partisan Pressure To Change Course As Number Of Post-War Deaths Surpasses Those Killed In Open Conflict. On August 26, the same day Bush spoke to American veterans, the US casualty count in Iraq reached a tragic milestone. The number of troops who have died in Iraq after May 1, when Bush declared an end to open conflict in Iraq, reached 141 -- surpassing the total who died before May 1. The Associated Press noted, "With casualties climbing and criticism growing, Bush is under intense pressure to do something differently -- something to stop the deaths of U.S. soldiers, quell acts of terrorism and turn on the electricity and water for frustrated Iraqis. At home, Democrats and Republicans alike are demanding answers... Struggling for solutions, the administration is divided on some of the central points. In the meantime, U.S. soldiers are dying at the rate of more than one a day." [Los Angeles Times, 8/27/03; Associated Press, 8/27/03]
Monday, September 08, 2003
::: Granny Struggling With Personal BS :::
I find myself in an ever MORE vile mood lately ... partially because my little
weenie dog got eaten by a huge black dog ... a rottie, I think. She is alive,
but stitched up all over and we are heartsick.
She (Gaby) looks sooooo sad, and she is sore and can barely move or
walk.
I am very MAD! My husband is very MAD! Even the cats are MAD!
Sunday, September 07, 2003
::::: -----> Alert! Alert! Alert! <----- :::::
::: Nazi Snake In The Grass is Hising :::
Everybody please help watch John Ashcroft and the Justice Dept.
First, when the bill was leaked, Ashcroft tried lying to Americans about
DSEA (Patriot II ~~~ the end of freedom in America), claiming the bill
was just a proposal and not a bill ready for passage.
B.S. I read the leaked bill myself and it is the most professionaly drafted and
polished collection of papers I have seen in a long time. It was Ready!
The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft, dated January 9, 2003, of this previously undisclosed legislation and is making it available in full text (12 MB). The bill, drafted by the staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, has not been officially released by the Department of Justice, although rumors of its development have circulated around the Capitol for the last few months under the name of “the Patriot Act II” in legislative parlance.
[..]
When told that the Center had a copy of the draft legislation, he said, “This is all news to me. I have never heard of this.”
After the Center posted this story, Barbara Comstock, director of public affairs for the Justice Dept., released a statement saying that, "Department staff have not presented any final proposals to either the Attorney General or the White House. It would be premature to speculate on any future decisions, particularly ideas or proposals that are still being discussed at staff levels."
The following text was printed at the top of each page:
Confidential---Not For Distribution
Draft---January 9, 2003,
Now With Bill Moyers Show
An Office of Legislative Affairs “control sheet” that was obtained by the PBS program "Now With Bill Moyers" seems to indicate that a copy of the bill was sent to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Vice President Richard Cheney on Jan. 10, 2003. “Attached for your review and comment is a draft legislative proposal entitled the ‘Domestice Security Enhancement Act of 2003,’” the memo, sent from “OLP” or Office of Legal Policy, says.
Bill Moyers interview with Chuck Lewis
[..}
MOYERS: I just go through here, you know? "Will give the Attorney General the unchecked power to deport any foreigner?"
LEWIS: Right.
MOYERS: Including lawful permanent resident aliens. It would give the government the power to keep certain arrests secret until an indictment is found never in our history have we permitted secret arrests. It would give the government power to bypass courts and grand juries in order to conduct surveillance without a judge's permission. I mean these do really further upend the balance between liberty on the one hand and security on the other.
[..]
LEWIS: Well, they do. They reduce judicial oversight with the secret intelligence courts instead of saying the court may do this now it's the court will do this. They can have ex parte conversations where they go into the judge without anyone else around. In terms of information about detainees, not only can they detain anyone they'd like to detain, there is no public information about it.
Journalists cannot find out the names of — we detained over a thousand people after September 11th because we thought they might all be terrorists. Not one of them was really found with any criminal charges to be a terrorist. And we don't know the names of almost all those people, still. And so it does appear that everything that folks might be concerned about with the Patriot Act, this is times five or times ten is what I look at it. I see it very serious.
MOYERS: You and I have had this kind of discussion often, we go back a long way together. The foundation that I serve on has been a big supporter of yours and you've been a big supporter of our journalism. If we were fighting terrorists instead of being journalists, wouldn't we want this kind of power in our hands?
LEWIS: Well, we would, but we operate in a democracy and there's other considerations. I mean I think, you know, there's no question, if you're in law enforcement, this is gonna make it easier for you to do your job. The problem is, we have a history in our country, just in our lifetime, in the last quarter century.
Where we've seen FBI and CIA abuses of ordinary citizens. Where mail has been opened, where homes have been broken into. Where infiltration has occurred in political groups. Informants have been used, misused. People's lives have been ruined. People have committed suicide because of the pressures brought against them by the government, by these kinds of secret intelligence agencies.
This is not a completely crazy idea to worry about the power of the government. And it was curbed and rolled back in the '70s. And there is something obviously occurring here in the public space around the whole issue of liberty and security right now.
And it is clearly changing and it's moving towards security. And the question for us as a people is what is the right balance. And I think my biggest personal concern is that there ought to be a debate about this. So the Patriot Act jammed through Congress in six weeks.
There was a Congressional — there was a Senate hearing that lasted an hour and a half, there were no questions to the Attorney General by the senators. This is too important for our country. Whatever anyone's point of view, this should be a conversation that the country should have.
And if I'm afraid they're waiting for a war or something and then they're gonna pop this baby out and then try to jam it through.
MOYERS: You mean that if it were not rolled out and discussed publicly until the United States has had war in Iraq, people might not pay as much attention to it as they would now.
Interesting, huh. In August 2003, Ashcroft took his show on the road ...
in an attempt to drum up support for his new Victory Act
WASHINGTON - Attorney General John Ashcroft is hitting the road to rally support for the Victory Act, which would further expand his powers to go after Al Qaeda and narcoterrorists, the Daily News has learned.
Ashcroft will starting pushing the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act later this month in a 10-day, 20-state Victory tour that includes a stop in New York.
Hmmmm.......
::: Bush Seeking to Turn Tail in Iraq :::
Just to try and save his bid for re-election
... another snake has just hissed in the grass!
Not for the Iraqi people's welfare, Not for the safety of American
troops, Not to stabilize the Iraq, Not to ensure formation of a new
democracy, Not to protect the oil riches for rebuilding Iraq, Not to
provide the most basic human services.
... NO ... Only when his approval ratings plunge, will George
Bush seek an exit stragedy.
Self-serving, you think?
Concern among the American public has reached such a pitch that, with his approval ratings plummeting, he will deliver a televised address to the nation tonight to reassure them that they do not face another Vietnam. With their sons and daughters dying daily in guerrilla attacks, Americans may now be becoming more frightened of being bogged down in a hostile country than of the terrorist threat against which Bush has pledged to defend them.
[..]
But Bush has now accepted the warnings of his Secretary of State Colin Powell and the more hawkish Under Secretary John Bolton that there will be a worse price if he doesn't back down. Bush's approval ratings have sunk to around 55 per cent - around 20 points lower than those of his father after the 1991 Gulf War.
[..]
A classified report drawn up by the US US Joint Chiefs of Staff and leaked last week blamed hurried and inadequate planning for the crisis, with too great a focus on an invasion and not enough on organising the peace. As the leading dove, Powell's stock is now rising in the White House, while that of the President's hawkish National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is judged to be falling.
[..]
'Condi Rice is in trouble,' said one Whitehall source.
'She has been consistently wrong since this thing started, wrong about what would happen, and Colin Powell has been consistently right.' The Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's insistence during a trip to Iraq last week that the situation was 'getting better every day' is also ringing increasingly hollow.
Friday, September 05, 2003
::: Karl Rove Identified As Person Who Leaked Identiy Of CIA Agent :::
::: Joe Wilson's Wife Valerie Identified and 70 Overseas Agents Die :::
This story has real legs and links from newspapers to blogs ~~
Has everyone on the internet doing the Pee Pee Dance.
Besides ... if you make it to the end, you get to find out we are all
considered OFU by Bush Sr. and what that means.
Bombshell! Joseph Wilson Points Finger at Karl Rove for Blowing Wife's CIA Cover!
26-Aug-03
Valerie Plame
"Ambassador Joseph Wilson dropped a bombshell at a forum organized by Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington. Wilson was asked whether he trusted the FBI to investigate the case. He started by saying that he had to speak hypothetically, since whether a crime was committed or not depended on his wife's status, about which he will not comment.... He then opened up: 'At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.' Josh Marshall had already noted his belief that Wilson had a suspect in mind. But having someone in mind is one thing, and making what is virtually a public accusation of a an aggravated felony is something else... Now that Rove has been accused, it's for him to respond. It's a simple yes or no: Did he talk to Novak about Plame, or instruct anyone else to do so? I hope that some [solid] journalists will be asking him that question."
THE VALERIE PLAME WILSON AFFAIR: SUMMARY TO DATE
Wilson kept his silence about his mission until after Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reported in June (***) that "a former ambassador" had gone on the mission. In early July, Wilson wrote the op-ed in the New York Times that launched the story of the missing uranium into major media attention.
Thereafter, the administration, with help from journalistic allies, appears to have launched a coordinated attack on Wilson.
Novak Tells The Tale ~~ July 14
In the Washington Post July 6, he talked about the Bush team "misrepresenting the facts," asking: "What else are they lying about?"
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.
The Nation:The Wilson smear was a thuggish act
"Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said days before the Post article ran. "But no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions." Wilson's mission to Niger provided more reason to wonder if the administration's denials were on the level.
Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
The Nation: White House Ducks Smear Inquiry
07/23/2003 @ 3:44pm
Was the White House conducting a smear campaign against the Wilson family and using classified intelligence to do so? When a reporter asked Scott McClellan, the new White House press secretary, about these articles, he replied, "Thank you for bringing that up. That is not the way this president or this White House operates. And there is absolutely no information that has come to my attention or that I have seen that suggests that there is any truth to that suggestion. And, certainly, no one in this White House would have given authority to take such a step."
Notice that he did not say that the White House was trying to find out if any of its people had engaged in this underhanded maneuver. McClellan said that he had seen no evidence, not that he (or anyone else in the White House) was looking for evidence.
"Is Novak lying?" McClellan was asked. "Do you think he's making it up?"
"I'm telling you our position. I'll let the columnist speak for himself."
[..]
And McClellan dodged the inconvenient fact that it was not only Novak who claimed to have received information about Wilson's wife from administration officials; it was Time, too. What are the odds that both the newsmagazine and the columnist got it wrong? McClellan wasn't asked that.
(Scroll Down) As for Rove, if he outted Wilson's wife, let him do time. But there is a much bigger fish in that house that deserves one hell of a lot more
I liked Wilson when I first read his editorial, but now all of that is changed. Now he is my hero. And I have this little feeling about him: He just might be tougher than anyone Rove has ever screwed.
As for "Bush's Brain", certainly Rove is all of that. But I've spent the last month in solid research focused around the Niger incident, and I've come up with some quite amazing things:
1) If Rove was all he is said to be, he never would have allowed Bush to fall into this mess. Texas may have been fine, but Rove is now well out of his league. He is now simply a tool being used by others.
2) Contrary to popular opinion, the Neocons are not running the show either. They are merely convenient (and quite effective) tools of a far greater force.
I make these claims specifically because both Rove and the Neocons have received so much attention and credit for Bush's "success". It is not that they are not contributors, but rather that they are all way out of their elements, and the evidence for this is almost trivial: Bush is in deep shit, and if Rove and the Neocons had half a brain between them, he wouldn't be.
The above is from a comment submitted on Pacific Views Blog by Blogger: Benedict-At-Large
This is a terrific Blog full of fantastic info. There is a "Cost of the War in Iraq" Counter,
flying so fast, adding $$$, it makes your head spin. Lots of other goodies too. Cakegate &
the Neocons Timeline and Flowchart ~~ right at the top... cannot miss it.
Tinfoil Hats On ... But no need to strap them down. Only necessary for
a few interesting and entirely believable statements re Karl Rove.
The leaker, it turns out, was none other than the notorious Karl H. Rove, Bush's so-called White House advisor. Ambassador Wilson identified him as Karl Roverer, with the umlaut over the "o."
According to reliable sources, as well as our own Al Martin Raw.com investigation, Karl Rove is, in fact, the grandson of Karl Heinz Roverer, the gauleiter of Mecklenburg, who was also a partner and senior engineer of Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurbüro AG. They built Birchenau, the concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
So Karl Rove has been identified as the leaker responsible for the deaths of more than 70 CIA assets overseas (See previous story "Will the Real Chemical Ali Please Stand Up? The Curious Case of Ambassador Joseph Wilson)
When Ambassador Wilson was asked how he knew it was Rove, he had documents in his possession identifying Rove as the leaker from a secret investigation of the State Department's Internal; Security Unit. It was a from a small clique, four Clinton holdovers in that department of the State Department that were sympathetic to what had happened to Wilson.
These investigations could not have possibly been made without at least the tacit acquiescence of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Wilson has announced that he will have his private attorneys petition the Department of Justice demanding that Roverer a/k/a Karl Rove be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identity Protection Act. This law specifically supposed to prevent what has happened in this case and that is the Bush administration attempting to retaliate against a senior government official who tells the truth about that administration by revealing the identities of intelligence members within their own families.
And where would Rove go? Karl Rove, it should be noted, is a dual citizen of the United States and Germany. Because of his position he has special diplomatic status.
[..]
Wilson's problem is that he has no greater legal standing than that of a private citizen. The Department of Justice, unbeknownst to anybody, has had a lot of communications with Wilson's attorney and they're claiming that Wilson has no special status, that he's just an everyday citizen, so that any demand he would make for prosecution would carry no more weight than a private citizen or OFU.
(OFU is George Bush Senior's term to describe the average American citizen. It stands for "One Fodder Unit.")
Now wasn't that fun?
::: Granny in CT Mode ::: Tinfoil Hats Required :::
This is a "post" from May 29, 2001 on Alternet.org ... very interesting.
The 13 Scariest White Guys in America
By Don Hazen, AlterNet
Some folks listed are dead ... some are in jail.
Scary Power is bullying and brute strength exercised in the public sphere. It's the freedom to threaten millions of people's safety and well-being, say by manipulating California's power supply. It's the ability to cheat hundreds of thousands out of large sums of money, as CitiGroup did with predatory lending practices. It's the clout to risk environmental disaster by blandly denying reams of scientific data, like ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond, who holds that global warming doesn't exist. It's an immense iron fist in a velvet glove, like the chemical industry simultaneously blocking safety tests for newly developed chemicals and convincing the public that such testing is routine.
[..]
Ultimately, Scary Power is the ability to control the public narrative to frame messages: globalization benefits all; environmentalists created the energy shortage; fair trade is a wishful dream. The scary guys' control of the narrative also discourages action, isolates people from one another and turns them off to engagement in public life. It breeds cynicism, hopelessness and apathy.
[..]
On the campaign trail a year ago, George W. Bush said, "As we use nature's gifts, we must do so wisely. Prosperity will mean little if we leave future generations a world of polluted air, toxic lakes and rivers, and vanished forests." Texas, meanwhile, had the most toxic air emissions and cancer-causing pollution in the country. Can anyone say doubletalk?
Read it ans truly weep!
::: Then .... There Are The Facts About Oil :::
Tinfoil Hats ON: Iraqi Oil Not Enough For US ...
Last Days of America?
Johnson of MSNBC quotes Randy Udall of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency,
"If you think of U.S. oil production as a six-pack ... of petroleum, four of the cans
are empty. We're kind of a black hole for energy,"
I keep reading this over and over in petrochemical publications, old and new studies,
weird science, reasonable and regular science sources and I procrastinate, hating to
ask everyone to constantly don TinFoil Hats. But the truth seems to be ... the
OIL WILL BE GONE SOON!
Why are we not doing anything about it? Why are we allowing Oil Barrons (Bush,
Cheney and Crew) to continue on the absurd path of ignoring and discounting
and supressing the science and scientists with the remarkable technologies
to save us?
Research is being done, has been done and is available NOW, if the powerful,
self-enriching Oil Kings and Politicians would just let go the reins.
Scientists who speak out publicly about Zero Point Energy and Scalar Electromagnetics
(that one they just want to keep secret for weapons and oh, mind control, etc. ),
do not get grants or are subjected to ridicule and drummed out of the scientific
community. Naturally, everyone wants to make the best and most reputable career
possible, have a nice home, take care of their family and so forth.
So the really radical technology is buried ... unless of course the DoD wants it.
Why do they hate us .... just wait and see!
Just think what the peole now starving and dying where there is no reliable energy
or drinkable water will think of us when they discover we have known about most
of this technology since around the 1900's and it has been supressed so a few rich
guys can get even richer. What kind of human beings will we be?
When J.P. Morgan found out N. Tesla planned to use a planned tower on Long Island
to generate "free energy," he totally flipped, refusing to further fund Tesla's project.
1903 was a landmark year for Tesla's Long Island Plant
More links:
Sorcerer Of Lightning: Nikola Tesla
::: More Scientific GobbledyGook :::
AND ::: How We Fried Folks In Iraq :::
GobbledyGook First:
Ying Xu, one of the nation's leading researchers in bioinformatics and computational biology, is leaving Oak Ridge National Laboratory to accept an endowed position at the University of Georgia.
[..]
But the scientist said Oak Ridge has super tools for biological research, including some of the world's fastest computers. The research reputation will be enhanced when the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source begins operating in 2006. The SNS will provide unprecedented neutron intensity, allowing researchers to evaluate materials on an atom-to-atom basis.
ORNL soon will begin construction of the $65 million Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, where scientists will prepare and study biological specimens on a tiny scale. It is being built adjacent to the SNS, and many visiting researchers will use both facilities.
I just love science ... guess I qualify as a Space Cadet as well as Conspiracy Theorist. I sure do wish Dubya & Company would calm down and quit pissing me off so I could investigate some really crazy stuff.
This is SKB's fault tonight, getting off in comments .... yaking about destroying the CW Weapons in Anniston, Al.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Strange Weapons ...
A nightmarish US super weapon reportedly was employed by American ground forces during chaotic street fighting in Baghdad. The secret tank-mounted weapon was witnessed in all its frightening power by Majid al-Ghazali, a seasoned Iraqi infantryman who described the device and its gruesome effects as unlike anything he had ever encountered in his lengthy military service. The disturbing revelation is yet another piece of cinematic evidence brought back from postwar Iraq by intrepid filmmaker Patrick Dillon.
[..]
Via email, he told me he has seen virtually every type of conventional weapon employed in battle, and is well acquainted with their effects on people and machines, but nothing in his extensive combat experience prepared him for the shock of what he saw in Baghdad on April 12th.
On that date, al-Ghazali and his family sheltered in their house as a fierce street battle erupted in his neighborhood. In the midst of the fighting, he noticed that the Americans had called up an oddly configured tank. Then to his amazement the tank suddenly let loose a blinding stream of what seemed like fire and lightning, engulfing a large passenger bus and three automobiles. Within seconds the bus had become semi-molten, sagging "like a wet rag" as he put it. He said the bus rapidly melted under this withering blast, shrinking until it was a twisted blob about the dimensions of a VW bug. As if that were not bizarre enough, al-Ghazali explicitly describes seeing numerous human bodies shriveled to the size of newborn babies. By the time local street fighting ended that day, he estimates between 500 and 600 soldiers and civilians had been cooked alive as a result of the mysterious tank-mounted device.
In a city littered everywhere with burned-out civilian and military vehicles, US forces were abnormally scrupulous about immediately detailing bulldozers and shovel crews to the job of burying the grim wreckage. Nevertheless, telltale remnants remained as Dillon found when al-Ghazali later took him to the site. Dillon said they easily uncovered large puddles of resolidified metal and mounds of weird fibrous material that, al-Ghazali explained, were all that remained of the vehicles' tires.
WOW ... sounds pretty bad ... could we be testing the Directed Energy Weapons or lasers?
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
::: Just Gotta Say One More Thing ... Then ... Go Cook :::
It is amazing ... just surfed over to an Israeli Blog ... just to see what was on there and while
running down the list of blogs on the blogroll ... guess who is on there: Instapundit
Wow : Israpundit
Check it out!
::: More Short Takes ~~ Iraq :::
Unprepared For Peace in Iraq
.... the frustration of the Iraqi people grows by the day, as does their anger. The inability of the United States even to restore basic amenities further fuels the fire.
[..]
Despite the best hopes for an Iraqi democracy, the Iraqi people and the world see only the worst fears of occupation. Instead of inspiring steps toward self-government, we witness hit-and-run murders of U.S. soldiers, terrorist attacks and sabotage. Our military action in Iraq has forged a caldron of contempt for America, a dangerous brew that may poison the efforts of peace throughout the Middle East and result in the rapid invigoration of worldwide terrorism.
[..]
A hallmark of true leadership is the ability to admit when one is wrong and to learn from errors. Candidate George W. Bush spoke about the need for humility from a great and powerful nation. He said, "Let us reject the blinders of isolationism, just as we refuse the crown of empire. Let us not dominate others with our power -- or betray them with our indifference. And let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character. The modesty of true strength. The humility of real greatness." It is time for the Bush administration to swallow its false pride and return to that philosophy of humility before it is too late.
***************
India, France & Germany .... Will Not Send Troops
WASHINGTON - India is insisting on a United Nations resolution mandating international cooperation before sending 25,000 of its troops to Iraq.
Germany will send troops, too, but not if they're under US command.
France will send its soldiers only if UN weapons inspectors return to Iraq, because it does not trust leaving the hunt for outlawed weapons solely to the Americans.
And in the administration itself, Defense Department officials are refusing to cede any control over the reconstruction of Iraq to the UN.
[..]
Last week, after the bombing of the UN office in Baghdad, Washington called for more nations to join the peacekeeping effort. The administration was responding both to growing concern in the United States over the cost of the Iraq occupation and to rising anti-US sentiment in Iraq. Administration officials and international diplomats said yesterday that those and other efforts to win international backing are making little, if any, progress. The US insistence on maintaining full military and political control in Iraq is blocking agreement with France, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Turkey. The last two, as Islamic nations, are particularly important to the peacekeeping effort, officials said.
***************
Just The Facts ... Or Percentages From Newsweek
Ok guys ... this one just chock full of stats! Like ...
The failure to capture Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, and the slow progress in Iraq have also affected Americans' views on the Bush administration's efforts to fight terrorists at home and abroad--but not drastically. A slim majority (54 percent) still approve of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, though Bush had a 74 percent approval rating in his handling of Iraq in mid-April
[..]
The biggest shift in opinion, however, comes in Bush's handling of non-terror issues. A plurality of voters now think the Democratic leaders in Congress have a better approach to dealing with the economy, tax cuts, healthcare, education, social security, the environment and energy policy. In January 2002, more thought Bush had the best approach to handling all the issues above, except the environment.
***************
Who's Losing Iraq
Karl Rove has got to be nervous.
[..]
With Iraqis in Najaf screaming, "There is no order! There is no government! We'd rather have Saddam than this!," we had one more ominous illustration that the Bush team is out of its depth and divided against itself.
You can't conduct a great historical experiment in a petty and bickering frame of mind. The agencies of the Bush administration are behaving like high school cliques. The policy in Iraq is paralyzed almost to the point of nonexistence, stalled by spats between the internationalists and unilateralists, with the national security director, Condoleezza Rice, abnegating her job as policy referee.
The State Department will have to stop sulking and being in denial about the Pentagon running the show in Iraq. And the Pentagon will have to stop being dogmatic, clinging to the quixotic notion that it only wants to succeed with its streamlined force and its trompe l'oeil coalition. Rummy has to accept the magnitude of the task and give up running the Department of Defense the way a misanthropic accountant would.
[..]
Another Bush-Cheney energy crony is Anthony Alexander of Ohio's FirstEnergy Corporation, which helped trigger the blackout after failing to upgrade its transmission system properly since deregulation. He was a Bush Pioneer, having raised at least $100,000 for the campaign.
This logrolling attitude has led to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers allowing Halliburton — which made Mr. Cheney a rich man with $20 million worth of cashed-in stock — to get no-bid contracts in Iraq totaling $1.7 billion, and that's just a start.
[..]
When he wasn't meeting secretly with energy lobbyists, Mr. Cheney was meeting secretly with Iraqi exiles. The Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi and other defectors conned Mr. Cheney, Rummy and the naïve Wolfowitz of Arabia by playing up the danger of Saddam's W.M.D.'s and playing down the prospect of Iraqi resistance to a U.S. invasion.
***************
UK Official Who Resigned Speaks Out
Hutton's remit was narrow - yet he has exposed the truth about the Iraq war
After eight days of the Hutton inquiry and enormous quantities of media coverage, it is worth pausing to try to take stock. Many of us have said that, deliberately or otherwise, Alastair Campbell's decision to go to war with the BBC had the potential to distract attention from the most important questions arising from the Iraq crisis - whether the nation was deceived on the road to war, and where responsibility lies for the continuing chaos and loss of life in Iraq.
Lord Hutton has been charged with inquiring into the narrower question of the circumstances that led to the death of Dr David Kelly and will report on this very important question. But his inquiry is revealing important information that casts light on the bigger question of how we got to war.
[..]
We know through emails revealed by Hutton that Tony Blair's chief of staff made clear that the dossier was likely to convince those who were prepared to be convinced, but that the document "does nothing to demonstrate he [Saddam Hussein] has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the west. We will need to be clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat. The case we are making is that he has continued to develop WMD since 1998, and is in breach of UN resolutions. The international community has to enforce those resolutions if the UN is to be taken seriously."
[..]
The tragedy of all this is that if we had followed Jonathan Powell's conclusion, and the UK had used its friendship with the US to keep the world united on a UN route, then, even if it had come to war, a united international community under a UN mandate would almost certainly have made a better job of supporting Iraq's reconstruction. In this scenario the armed forces would have concentrated on keeping order; the UN humanitarian system would have fixed the water and electricity systems; Sergio Vieira de Mello, as Kofi Annan's special representative, would have helped the Iraqis to install an interim government and begin a process of constitutional change, as the UN has done in Afghanistan; and the World Bank and IMF would have advised the Iraqi interim authority on transparent economic reform, rather than a process of handover to US companies.
::: Short Takes: Iraq, 9-11, EPA , Labor :::
Some special links
A Deadly Day for Charlie Company
The Marine unit was supposed to have backup as it entered battle in Iraq. But it was alone, and chaos exploded.
[..]
We got a man down! We got a man down!
The Marines' light armor had been pierced, and with it any illusion that this would be easy. They would take the bridge, but at a cost. Eighteen men from a single company were killed that day and 15 wounded, making it the deadliest battle of the war for U.S. forces
[..]
Had things gone as planned, the 200 Marines in their lightly armored vehicles would have avoided the densely populated heart of Nasiriyah, a city of 500,000. They were supposed to take a roundabout route to the north bridge, swinging east of the city behind a dozen M1-A1 Abrams tanks and a second Marine unit, Bravo Company.
[..]
***************
Bush Denies Aid To Some Overseas Groups - Broadens Gag Rule
Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund: "The world's poorest women and their children again are bearing the brunt of Bush's obsession with appeasing his domestic political base. This is the real face of Bush's compassionate conservatism."
***************
Dust and Deception
A draft E.P.A. report released last December conceded that 9/11 had led to huge emissions of pollutants. In particular, releases of dioxins — which are carcinogens and can also damage the nervous system and cause birth defects — created "likely the highest ambient concentrations that have ever been reported," up to 1,500 times normal levels. But the report concluded that because the outdoor air cleared after a couple of months, little harm had been done.
[..]
Immediately after 9/11 there was a great national outpouring of sympathy for New York, and a natural inclination to provide generous help. President Bush quickly promised $20 billion, and everyone expected the federal government to assume the burden of additional security. Yet hard-line Republicans never wanted to help the stricken city. Indeed, according to an article by Michael Tomasky in New York magazine, Senators Phil Gramm and Don Nickles attempted to slash aid to New York within hours of Mr. Bush's promise.
***************
Bush Declares Carbon Dioxide Not A Pollutant
The decision reverses a 1998 Clinton administration position. It means that the Bush administration won't be able to use the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
[..]
EPA General Counsel Robert Fabricant took the opposite position in his 12-page decision Thursday. "Because the (Clean Air Act) does not authorize regulation to address climate change," he wrote, "it follows that (carbon dioxide) and other (greenhouse gases), as such, are not air pollutants."
Auto industry representatives lauded Fabricant's position.
"Why would you regulate a pollutant that is an inert gas that is vital to plant photosynthesis and that people exhale when they breathe?" said Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based industry lobby. "That's not a pollutant."
***************
More Pitt on Labor Day
A man said, "On this Labor Day weekend, Americans pay tribute to the spirit of hard work and enterprise that has always made this nation strong. Every day, our workers go to factories and offices and farms and produce the world's finest goods and services. Their creativity and energy are the greatest advantage of the American economy."
What man said that? George W. Bush said that, on Saturday, from his ranch in Crawford Texas. Does anyone else appreciate the irony? This house is on fire, and George is sitting in the front yard with a great big flamethrower and a grin on his face. The history of unions has always been a story of the people versus the powerful, the worker versus the bosses, the folks scratching to keep the lights on at home versus the folks taking CEO salaries home that are so big they need a fleet of Brinks trucks to drive them, laughing, all the way to the bank
[..]
We shouldn't be surprised by this, by the cynical way Bush pats workers on the back with one hand while gutting their income with the other. This administration has made much of the need to support our troops in Iraq, something I am sure each and every person in this room agrees with. How, then, does this administration think it is supporting the troops by pushing a policy to cut hazard pay - overtime pay at the extreme definition - for our soldiers still under fire in Iraq?
[..]
A long time ago, a man named Benito Mussolini invented something called Fascism. In the time since, fascism has come to be defined by Nazis, by war, and by crimes against humanity that defy description. But when Mussolini invented fascism, those definitions had not yet established themselves. Mussolini, the inventor of fascism, defined it differently. "The first stage of fascism," said Mussolini, "should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and Corporate power."
Now, even with all my tough talk about hard words and doing away with caution, I am appropriately cautious about using so bloody a word in this setting. Well I should be. But I ask you: What do we have today if not the beginnings of the merging of state and corporate power? Even if you refuse to see our current situation through Mussolini's eyes, even if you refuse to use that hardest of words, the simple fact that the corporate world and the federal government are becoming one and the same is clear, and unavoidable. Is that merger complete in America? Certainly not. Are we headed in that direction? Lawyers use a Latin phrase: "Res ipsa loquitor." The thing speaks for itself.
What will the place of unions be in such a world? Where are the rights of workers?
[..]
A great, great many Americans are well aware that the folks running things today do not have their interests in mind, but instead serve the interests of entities that would see workers' rights ground to powder.
***************
Shameless Exploitation - Docudrama DC 9/11: Time of Crisis
The upcoming Showtime feature DC 9/11: Time of Crisis is a signal advance in the instant, ongoing fictionalization of American history, complete with the president fulminating most presidentially against "tinhorn terrorists," decisively employing the word problematic in a complete sentence, selling a rationale for preemptive war, and presciently laying out American foreign policy for the next 18 months. "We start with bin Laden," Bush (played by Timothy Bottoms) tells his cabinet. "That's what the American people expect. . . . So let's build a coalition for that job. Later, we can shape different coalitions for different tasks."
[..]
A movie that attempted to reconstruct Bush's actual activities on 9-11 would be fascinating, if not entirely heroic. A detailed attempt to account for the president's movements and actions on what he later termed that "interesting day" may be found at the Center for Cooperative Research website (cooperativeresearch.org): Bush had just arrived at a Florida elementary school for a pre-planned 9 a.m. photo op when he was informed that a plane had crashed into the WTC 15 minutes before. Bush would later make the impossible claim that he saw the event televised live. (In early December, the president told an Orlando audience he'd been watching TV that morning and saw "an airplane hit the tower of a-of a-you know . . . and I said, 'Well, there's one terrible pilot.' ") As Secret Service men evidently were watching TV in another classroom, however, news of the second crash reached him almost immediately. Bush's startled response, documented on video for all eternity and seen by millions, is restaged in the movie: As Chief of Staff Andrew Card appears beside Bush and whispers in his ear, the president responds with visible shock and panic (the real Bush was more expressive than Bottoms). Missing from DC 9/11 is the president's next move-picking up a children's book called The Pet Goat.
***************
Pardon my French but, son-of-a-bitch! Will someone please wake up the real America?
Pre-emptive policy is an unholy alliance having its own ‘axis of evil’ – greed, arrogance, and deception.
Vacations are not to be interrupted for this dime-store president and his nickel-plated cadre of fundraisers. The image of a leader heading to the White House and working in the name of peace and international stability is not as important as the drive for campaign money and supporting the theft of democracy in California and Texas and elsewhere in America. And it is that attitude that explains what is going wrong in Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and throughout the Middle East.
[..]
Does it not bother anyone that this White House wants to cut the hazardous duty pay for the very troops they claim will win the war? Or that this gang of unctuous thieves, want to cut veterans medical benefits for soldiers who have faithfully served their country? You know how old soldiers are; they survive wars just so they can sponge off the government for the rest of their lives.
[..]
And someone please, please tell me what happened to the free press? Oh I know jokes abound about the American press corps being embedded on golden kneepads in the Oval Office. But let’s face facts; these guys are flat on their backs like a cheap convention hooker.
::: Dance On The Graves Of The 9-11 Dead :::
Pitt Blasts Bush's Road to Iraq Show
William Rivers Pitt takes us from the 2000 Election (selection) to plans for the 2004
Republican Convention "next to the hole in the ground in New York ... and dance
on the graves of the dead who helped you get your war. Remember: No shame."
Dotted with loads of links like:
11. Stand before the American people during your constitutionally-mandated State of the Union address and lie like a rug about the threat posed by Iraq. Use evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program based upon crudely forged documents from Niger. Ignore other career intelligence officials, including the one you sent to investigate your 'evidence' who returned to label it fake and forged, when they state flatly that your estimations of the Iraq threat are far from accurate or honest.
12. Send your Secretary of State into the well of the United Nations Security Council to make your case, full in the knowledge that you are going to war no matter what that body decides. Show the UN absolutely no respect by allowing your Secretary of State to argue for war using intelligence data that is ten years old and plagiarized from the work of a graduate student. Note the irony surrounding the fact that this presentation comes a week after your State of the Union address, but that your Secretary of State refused to use the evidence you used before the American people in front of the international community.
And here is something Granny had never heard ...
14. Use the same discredited intelligence from Niger to convince Congress that a vote for war is absolutely necessary. Try to get them to pass a resolution that authorizes you to make war "on the region" surrounding Iraq as well as Iraq itself. When you don't get those three important words in the resolution, settle for what you did get.
Recommended by Granny ... a teriffic read!!
::: CynicalCyn Brings us a Scorecard of the Naive :::
::: Maureen Dowd ::: Slick Willie vs Dubya :::
*** Getting rid of OBL and Saddam and the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which we did not ...
*** Al Qaeda is replicating like cockroahes
*** Newsweek: OBL in Afghanistan plotting to use bio-weapons against America
*** The blow-up of the Road Map for Peace
*** Rummy and the lighter, faster force now being picked off by guerrillas
*** NeoCons - Ignore and push past the UN
*** Cheney (threatening to replace Rummy as the Prince of Darkness) -
*** We'll blow off the "chocolate making countries" - do it ourselves
*** Pentagon - sideline CIA and State on war and reconstruction
*** Cheney - banish that 60's feeling
*** NeoCons - democracy will spread like wildfire in Middle East
The capper - 25-member Iraqi Governing Council puppets scared to work late -
"On the Council, someone makes a suggestion, then it goes around the room, with everyone talking about it, and then by that time, it's late afternoon and time to go home."
Compare: Clinton's herky-jerky interventions around the world
and how the Bush "dream-team" makes our unseen tormentors
seem canny and organized.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
::: From Where is Raed? ::: AND ::: Baghdad Burning :::
A slightly different point of view
Two posts [Chaos] and [Position Open]
Look regardless of what he stood for and the fact he and his party are very good buddies with Iran, the significance and the gravity of what happened is not to be overlooked. I agree with you, if SCIRI had its way we would end up as an Iran clone.
[..]
Beside the significance of assassinating an Ayatollah these fuckers did it in front of an entrance to Imam Ali’s shrine. What idiot would do that? It is the same question everyone was asking about the bombing of the UN building, what sort of person would do this sort of thing? There is nothing sacred anymore. And right after a Friday prayer. There is just so much to this. Hundreds of people beside the Ayatollah, it is totally devastating.
Yes I know they would want to have an Islamic state here but they are much mellower than the Sadr and his “militant Hawza”, the importance of SCIRI is to counter balance. They have agreed to play the political game and abdul-Aziz al-Hakim (the Ayatollah’s brother) is on the Governing Council, isn’t he? They are working with the Americans.
Whoever did this is pure evil. The UN, an assassination in front of Imam Ali’s shrine. You wonder what will come next. If you ask me I think it will be media. Al-Jazeera I getting threatened quite often, and if you are moving with journalists the scariest thing that could happen is if people think you are from Jazeera. Al-Arabiya reporters were attacked in Najaf today and a couple of Reuter’s guys who the crowd thought were from Jazeera almost got in serious trouble. I got called an American intelligence agent and a collaborator with the Zionist agents, which kind of freaked me out. [Pictures are posted on the links].
you ask
Where is this guy living? Is he even in the same time zone??? I’m incredulous… maybe he's from some alternate universe where shooting, looting, tanks, rape, abductions, and assassinations aren’t considered chaos, but it’s chaos in *my* world.
I have an answer for you.
L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator, was on vacation. Nobody seemed to know when exactly he would return
He is on a beach somewhere in the states; I swear I am not joking. When they called him 3 hours after the incident he had no idea what they were talking about.
And there is another article in the Times worth reading, G was with Neil in Najaf and he is the Shia expert, they love him down there, they think he is a Shia muslim from Iran, if they only knew the truth. Anyway take a look at the article [Car Bomb in Iraq Kills 95 at Shiite Mosque] the death toll is now 113.
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more interesting links on Shia Pundit's Blog [Live like Ali - die like Husain].
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just saw this from AP
Two Iraqis and two Saudis grabbed shortly after the Friday attack gave information leading to the arrest of the others, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. They include two Kuwaitis and six Palestinians with Jordanian passports with the remainder Iraqis and Saudis, the official said, without giving a breakdown.
Monday, September 01, 2003
::: BushBrain Thinks Americans Are As Dumb As He Is :::
Quickie ... White House Alters Webpages About Iraq Combat
These guys are incredible ... I'm pissed. What if they start altering our Blogs?
I guess we would know we have arrived!
::: More Bush Lies ~ Iraqi Drones :::
Good for another expensive and sad chuckle!
Huddled over a fleet of abandoned Iraqi drones, U.S. weapons experts in Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration's public assertions,these unmanned aerial vehicles weren't designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons.
::: Big Slap From The Bush Snake :::
OR ::: You're Not Getting The $$$ :::
In the letter Wednesday to congressional leaders, Bush said he was changing the pay structure, invoking "national emergency or serious economic conditions," and would limit the raises to 2 percent. Federal workers had been expecting a 2.7 percent increase just to keep up with inflation. Instead they'll get across-the-board raises of 1.5 percent, with the remaining 0.5 percent for locality pay, a premium for workers who live in high-cost areas. About two-thirds of the government's 1.8 million civilian employees will get only the 1.5 percent raise.
[..]
Let's face it: This administration is no fan of federal workers. It is seeking to privatize federal jobs, waive and restrict union memberships for federal workers, and deny overtime pay for millions of white-collar workers. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, got it right when he said, "Bush is making federal employees pay for his own fiscal recklessness."
When Congress returns next week, it should undo some of the damage, starting with fully funding these pay raises.
::: MORE on Cheney ::: The Energy Task Force :::
GAO: Cheney Hindered Probe OR "Momma, I just saw a BIG snake"
Congressional investigators say they were unable to determine how much the White House's energy policy was influenced by the oil industry because they were denied documents by Vice President Dick Cheney about his energy task force.
[..]
The Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency reviewed the GAO's report before it was released and chose not to comment. The vice president's office declined to look at it, the GAO said.
[..]
"As gas prices reach historic levels and the nation's energy infrastructure is pushed beyond its limits, the Bush administration has decided their energy policy will be of the special interests, by the special interests and for the special interests," Kerry said in a statement.
Said Graham: "If the Bush-Cheney team has nothing to hide, then why are they hiding documents? There can be only one answer — they don't want the American people to know just how much influence the big oil companies have over U.S. energy policy."
GAO Cites Corporate Shaping of Energy Plan
That didn't take long.....
[..]
The task force was one of Bush's highest priorities after his inauguration and was launched on his 10th day in office. None of the group's meetings was open to the public, and participants told GAO investigators they "could not recollect whether official rosters or minutes were kept," the report said.
[..]
After this month's blackouts crippled much of the Northeast and Midwest, GOP congressional leaders vowed to move swiftly after Labor Day on energy legislation that is based on Bush's policy and includes plans for shoring up the nation's electricity grid. The legislation has been stalled for more than two years; Democrats say that is because of Bush's insistence on tax breaks and other incentives for energy production, including oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
[..]
The report provides Democrats with ammunition for their contention that Bush's energy policy is filled with favors for corporate interests. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who joined the request for the GAO probe when he was chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said voters should know what role energy companies played in writing the policy. "They will never know the full truth because the White House chose to stonewall instead of cooperate with investigators," said Lieberman, a presidential candidate.
[..]
The vice president's office "stated that it would not provide any additional information," the investigators wrote. An unusually caustic GAO news release complained of the office's"persistent denial of access" to task force records
[..]
Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club are pursuing a separate legal battle for the energy records. A federal appeals court panel ruled last month that the groups could be entitled to documents from Cheney's staff. The Justice Department has asked the full appeals court to review the ruling
Hissssss. Stay Tuned ... more on pigs at the trough = corporate and judicial "snake watch."
Someone else is watching as well ... "Power to the People", says Dennis Kucinich.
Kucinich lays it on the line in a frightening example of the tradgey of deregulation ~~ FirstEnergy Corp and the battle for electric power in Ohio.
FirstEnergy tried without success to keep online a very troublesome nuclear power facility at Port Clinton, Ohio, the Davis-Besse plant. Davis-Besse is currently shut down and has been for some time. FirstEnergy and federal regulators failed to properly monitor the plant's operations; boric acid corroded the head of the reactor, threatening to breach the reactor vessel.
Millions of people in the Midwest and the water supply of the entire Great Lakes region were at risk because of First Energy's negligence, improper maintenance, and actual cover-up of the degradation of the reactor. Further, federal regulators decided that despite the danger to one of the largest populated areas of the United States, FirstEnergy's financial condition required the flawed reactor to continue operation. The regulators put profit ahead of public interest.
If there ever was an example of an unholy alliance between government and industry, this is it. If there ever was an example of the failure of necessary regulation by the government of an investor-owned utility, it is the government's failure to regulate FirstEnergy. Now, according to published reports, the blackout that affected an estimated 50 million people may have begun in the FirstEnergy system.
Read all about how Kucinich fought to keep Cleveland's Muny Light (providing power at 20%-30% savings) from being gobbled up by CEI, First Energy's predecessor, and how CEI went behind the scenes and kept Muny from getting power off the grid. Little Dennis started a civic campaign to save Muny Light, gathering signatures in the snow (no story, now), and became elected Mayor, vowing his first act would be to cancel the sale. It is a true tale of corporate wariors against the little guy.
::: Snakes Hissing In The Grass in D.C. :::
::: Halliburton Won $1.7 Billion in Contracts
::: Under Operatiion Iraqi Freedom :::
Iraq: Halliburton Reaping Huge Profits
How low can you go ... from CorpWatch, a thoroughly disgusting report on the machinations
of our Vice President, Dick Cheney, Halliburton and Brown and Root. One-third of the monthly
$3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors. This re-
presents a significantly greater amount than was previously anticipated.
Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
[..]
Spreadsheets drawn up by the Army Joint Munitions Command show that about $1 billion had been allocated to Brown and Root Services through mid-August for contracts associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's name for the U.S.-led war and occupation. In addition, the company has earned about $705 million for an initial round of oil field rehabilitation work for the Army Corps of Engineers, a corps spokesman said.
Specific work orders assigned to the subsidiary under Operation Iraqi Freedom include $142 million for base camp operations in Kuwait, $170 million for logistical support for the Iraqi reconstruction effort and $28 million for the construction of prisoner of war camps, the Army spreadsheet shows. The company was also allocated $39 million for building and operating U.S. base camps in Jordan, the existence of which the Pentagon has not previously publicly acknowledged.
Over the past decade, Halliburton, a Houston-based company that made its name servicing pipelines and oil wells, has positioned itself to take advantage of an increasing trend by the federal government to contract out many support operations overseas. It has emerged as the biggest single government contractor in Iraq, followed by such companies as Bechtel, a California-based engineering firm that has won hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Agency for International Development reconstruction contracts, and Virginia-based DynCorp, which is training the new Iraqi police force.
Who Is DynCorp - You Won't Believe It
But, according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and other critics, the Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented money-making opportunities. "The amount of money [earned by Halliburton] is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe," Waxman said. "This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money rather than less."
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In addition to its Iraq contracts, Brown and Root has also earned $183 million from Operation Enduring Freedom, the military name for the war on terrorism and combat operations in Afghanistan, according to the Army's numbers.
Waxman's interest in Halliburton was ignited by a routine Corps of Engineers announcement in March reporting that the company had been awarded a no-bid contract, with a $7 billion limit, for putting out fires at Iraqi oil wells. Corps spokesmen justified the lack of competition on the grounds that the operation was part of a classified war plan and the Army did not have time to secure competitive bids for the work.
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The practice of delegating a vast array of logistics operations to a single contractor dates to the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and a study commissioned by Cheney, then defense secretary, on military outsourcing. The Pentagon chose Brown and Root to carry out the study and subsequently selected the company to implement its own plan. Cheney served as chief executive of Brown and Root's parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to run for the vice presidency.
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Brown and Root's revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling its earnings from its contracts in the Balkans, and is a major factor in increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year, according to industry analysts. The company reported a net profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million loss in the same period last year.
Waxman aides said they have been told by the General Accounting Office that Brown and Root is likely to earn "several hundred million more dollars" from the no-bid Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate Iraqi oil fields. Waxman, the ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, had asked the GAO to investigate the corps' decision not to bid out the contract
Ah Ha! One major Snake in the Grass Identified.
