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Bush's Legacy: U.S. Army - Brutal, Incompetent and Dysfunctional

05.31.04 (8:25 am) [edit]

The horrors of American military conduct are being documented every day. But one aspect of the leaked US report into prison abuse in Iraq has been little noticed. Gen. Taguba, head of the investigation, painted a picture of an army which can be not only brutal, but is also riddled with incompetence.

What is one to make, for example, of the way Capt. Leo Merck is said to have behaved? Merck, in charge of a military police unit, is alleged to have spent his time in Iraq taking “nude pictures of female soldiers without their knowledge”. His colleague, Capt. Damaris Morales, is ticked off for failing to train his troops. One of them proved unable, it is alleged, to get out of his vehicle without accidentally letting off his M-16 rifle. Taguba dryly notes: “Round went into fuel tank.”

The commanders were at each other’s throats. Gen. Janis Karpinski was barely on speaking terms with Col. Thomas Pappas from military intelligence, who had ousted her from control of the Abu Ghraib cells. “There was clear friction and lack of effective communication,” says Taguba. He found Karpinski “extremely emotional” and was disturbed, he said, that she seemed unwilling to accept that any problems were caused by poor leadership. She claimed she visited the prison regularly but did not do so, and saw very little of her individual soldiers. Battalion commander Jerry Phillabaum was “extremely ineffective”. His unit had to be run day-to-day by the major below him, as “numerous witnesses confirm”, but he was allowed to continue nominally in charge. The general’s two staff officers, Maj. Hinzman and Maj. Green, were “essentially dysfunctional”. Despite complaints from demoralized colleagues, they stayed in post. The legal officer, judge advocate Lt. Col. James O’Hare, “appears to lack initiative and was unwilling to accept responsibility for any of his actions”.

It was, perhaps, unsurprising that armed solders wandered round the prison in civilian clothes; that logbooks were filled with “unprofessional entries and flippant comments”; that they “wrote poems and other sayings on their helmets”; that old friendships replaced the military chain of command; and that saluting of officers was “sporadic”.

No one disputes that incompetence went far higher than the six who started torturing inmates on suggestions from private-enterprise interrogators, and also, it appears, merely to amuse themselves. During the inquiries, the overall commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez, made a scapegoat of one general, claiming that lack of clear standards, proficiency and leadership “permeates the brigade”. But the evidence laid out suggests military incompetence went far higher and wider than that.

Why are US soldiers of such poor quality? One reason appears to be that many officers and foot soldiers are not professionals. They are two-week-a-year reservists. The 320th military police battalion, at the heart of the abuse scandal, was a reserve unit based near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Karpinski, in charge of the brigade, was a corporate management consultant in civilian life. Phillabaum, in charge of the battalion, was a reservist. The company commander, Capt. Donald Reese, who “failed to properly supervise his soldiers”, was a salesman.

The present US administration, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is trying to exploit these 200,000 army reservists, to get a smaller, lighter, cheaper, full-time army, as well as seeking to privatize many jobs out to commercial firms. “The nature of reserve service as a purely one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, training group of soldiers that never gets mobilized over a 20-30 year period is over,” says Lt. Gen. James Helmly, its commander. “That is not the world we live in.” The army reserve, he adds, should be seen as a good business deal: “The cost for 100 active duty soldiers to maintain readiness for a year is approximately seven times greater than that of 100 army reserve soldiers.”

Cheap they may be. But this motley collection of part-timers have now sparked the worst US military scandal since Vietnam. It is they who are accused of being the true face of the force which President Bush claims is bringing freedom to Iraq. Like several other Rumsfeldian fantasies, it seems the idea that US neoimperial soldiering can be conducted painlessly and on a grand scale leads to disaster when it comes into contact with reality on the ground. - http://www.aljazeerah.info/Op...%20editorials/2004%20opin ions/May/%2029%20o/US%20A rmy%20%20Brutal,%20Incomp etent%20and%20Dysfunction al%20David%20Leigh.htm

Bush's Legacy: U.S. Army - Brutal, Incompetent and Dysfunctional

05.31.04 (8:22 am) [edit]

No Chance For Peace in Iraq

05.31.04 (8:16 am) [edit]

Now that the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) has appointed a cousin of Ahmad Chalabi as the next Prime Minister, seconded by the U.S. and upsetting the UN, if this is allowed to stand, there is no chance for peace in Iraq. Dr. Iyad Allawi may be a Shi'i, but his allegiances are to the U.S., power and corruption; the Shi'is of Iraq will not countenance this, nor should Lakhdar Brahimi and the UN.

There is a way for peace in Iraq as I pointed out in an article that recently appeared at www.informationclearinghouse.info and www.todaysalternativenews.com --it is by allowing the Iraqis to convene a national group of leaders from the Shi'i, Sunni and Kurdish factions in order to decide what type of government they want and how to hold elections in the very near future with the UN in charge. This plan also envisioned all American troops and bases leaving Iraq, so that Arab and Muslim peace-keeping troops could be brought in, as their ambassadors indicated they would.

But with this new poisoned curve-ball, it is clear that Bush and the IGC are meddling in Iraq's future and that the consequences will be more death. Bush, once he had his man in place, could say, "We shall give the Iraqis full sovereignty"--knowing full well that Allawi would ask the Americans to stay and would not void any of the illegal contracts the Bremer regime has signed that ransoms the future of Iraq to American corporations for the next 20 or more years--with American troops to enforce those dastardly agreements.

[b]Woe unto Iraq[/b].

Just as an aside, remember this, once GW Bush continues as president, his friends will be making more money in Iraq; but, if GW should lose the election, you can be sure he will be put on the board or hired as a major "consultant" to those companies that are raping the American taxpayers and the people of Iraq. I personally don't think that John Kerry, if he's elected, will have the nerve to stop Bush or allow him to go up for war crimes.

What will this do for the future of America? It will make us more reviled than ever in the Arab and Muslim street. Eventually, this will also add more troops to the radicals who want attacks against America and its places in the world. It also means that most of us will not be at peace in America because the anger will not subside in our lifetime--because the Bush devilment will have long term consequences and I'm not sure Kerry will have the stomach to stand up and correct matters. If Bush is re-elected, then pray to God for help, because with Ashcroft and friends in charge of America, we'll lose most of our civil rights so that Bush and his friends can take over America with an unofficial martial law in order to "better combat terrorism."

Dr. Iyad Allawi is not simply going to impact Iraq if he's allowed to be PM of Iraq, he will be the death knell of what is left of American leadership, morality and democracy. Our best hope at this time is that Brahimi will stand up, though he has not in the last 24 hours, or that France will stand up and stop this madness. If not, then prepare for the worst--more fighting, more deaths of Americans and Iraqis, more "terrorist alerts," and an American economy that is going down the tubes so fast it may not recover--taking you right along with it.

Oh yes, in order to maintain U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Phillipines, Korea, Japan, Germany, Uzbekistan, Kurdistan, and ad infinitum, expect a draft if Bush is re-elected.

[b]Sam Hamod writes on world affairs, especially the Middle East and Islam; he is the former editor of 3rd World News in DC; Director of The Islamic Center in DC; he may be reached at shamod@cox.net [/b] - http://www.aljazeerah.info/Op...%20editorials/2004%20opin ions/May/30o/No%20Chance% 20For%20Peace%20in%20Iraq %20By%20Sam%20Hamod.htm

No Chance For Peace in Iraq

05.31.04 (8:15 am) [edit]

Jews Have the Right To Protect Themselves Against Zionism

05.31.04 (8:12 am) [edit]

[b]By Rabbi Joseph Dershowitz[/b]

For decades Zionists have imposed their power upon the Jewish people, forced by the Zionist tactics to leave their homes and move to Israel, losing their wealth, their liberty, and their faith. The imposition of Zionist power continues to this day.

Prime Minister Sharon has stated that anti-Semitism is on the rise and that the only hope for the safety of Jews is to move to Israel under the protection of the Zionist state. “The best solution to anti-Semitism is immigration to Israel. It is the only place on Earth where Jews can live as Jews," he said.

But consider this…there are two times more Jews living outside the ‘state of Israel’ than within the so-called ‘state of Israel’. Here is better solution. Rather than immigrate the Jews of the world to Israel, why not peacefully re-assimilate the Jews of ‘Israel’ to the countries from which they came, and where, according to Jewish law and belief, they should have remained in exile and peace could prevail throughout the world.

The anti-Semitism cause by the Zionist movement has already cost world Jewry more than two-thirds its population and the toll continues to rise daily. The sympathizers and supporters of the Zionist cause, however well-intentioned, are actually the Jews’ worst enemies. It’s time to return to reality and truth. The Zionist movement is costing innocent lives.

It is time for the Zionists to “let our people go”. The Jewish people and the Jewish Religion have the right to defend themselves against Zionism. It is time to exercise those rights. Enough is enough!

- 30 -

True Torah Jews is an international, nonprofit organization of thousands of steadfast Jews who are true to Torah and Judaism. They are dedicated to spreading the word to the people of the world that not all Jews support the Zionist State. It is their hope that through this knowledge and understanding peace may be achieved.

They have organized demonstrations in Washington, DC to protest Sharon’s visit and outside the Israeli consulate in NY where an estimated 20,000 orthodox Jews voiced their opposition.

Recently, they took an ad out in the Washington Post and published an open letter to President Bush stating that “there is a silent majority of Jews opposed to Zionism” and requested “ that the State of Israel be referred to not as a Jewish state but as a Zionist state.” They “deplore acts and policies carried out by those - misusing the name of Israel - have substituted the ideal of nationalism for the teachings of the Holy Torah.”

In their ad ran Jan, 2004 on on WABC radio in NY they state, “It is the position of Torah True Jews that Jews do not need a state of their own. They believe that the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state is a grave violation of Jewish law.

[b]For More Information Contact Rabbi Joseph Dershowitz jdershowitz@truetorahjews .org [/b] - http://www.aljazeerah.info/31...%20Have%20the%20Right%20T o%20Protect%20Themselves% 20Against%20Zionism%20By% 20Rabbi%20Joseph%20Dersho witz.htm

Jews Have the Right To Protect Themselves Against Zionism

05.31.04 (8:11 am) [edit]

How War in Iraq Derails Real War on Terror

05.30.04 (11:16 am) [edit]

Colombo Bay sounds like it might be a novel by Joseph Conrad. It is instead a story by Richard Pollak about his voyage from Hong Kong to New York on a container ship named the Colombo Bay, which indeed stopped at the capital of Sri Lanka. The Colombo Bay also reveals just how badly the real war on terror has been compromised by the Iraq war.

We've all seen railroad flatcars loaded with freight-truck containers. These are carried to ports and loaded on thousands of container ships, which carry them around the world. The Colombo Bay carries more than 3,000 such containers, and it is not the largest of the container ships.

These vast ships are the tramp steamers of our era. They travel from port to port at speeds of 22 knots, unloading some containers and picking up other containers. Their turnaround times are much less leisurely than in Conrad's era, although the similarity to his stories is striking. Container ships have become the lifeblood of global trade and have added a trillion dollars to the U.S. annual business inventory. We couldn't do without them.

But think of the possibility for terrorists in those 3,000 containers on The Colombo Bay. When it docked off New York, the crew discovered that the seal had been broken on a container that carried missile warheads manufactured in Germany and shipped by rail to a French port for transit to the Raytheon Corp. The French authorities had broken the seal to inspect the contents and (with characteristic French efficiency) had placed a makeshift lock on the container and made no annotations on the shipping papers.

The Coast Guard spent two days clearing the container. Pollak comments that the Coast Guard's equipment is obsolescent (helicopters 20 years old) and its computers a generation behind -- and unable to communicate with the computers of the FBI, CIA and INS. Terrorists would have seen that a proper seal was on one of their containers.

Pollak adds that in 2003, Sen. Ernest Hollings, author of the Maritime Transportation Security Act, requested $1 billion for the Coast Guard for port security as an amendment to the $87 billion appropriation for the war in Iraq. The amendment was rejected. It was a classic example of how the administration's distraction with Iraq interfered with a critical component of homeland security -- which is not the same thing as President Bush's Frankenstein monster Department of Homeland Security.

The president talks about homeland security but, under the malign influence of the vice president and the ''neo-con'' intellectuals, he has made the war in Iraq a substitute for the real war on terrorism. Almost three years after the World Trade Center attack, O'Hare Airport does not have the equipment necessary to inspect checked luggage because the Transportation Safety Administration does not have the money to pay for the equipment.

But $25 billion more is going to his criminal war. The public still gives the president high marks on his success in the war on terror, mostly because they are judging by the war in Afghanistan and the early success in Iraq. However, our airports and our seaports are still not safe. How many more years will it take?

And how many years to straighten out the messes at the FBI and the CIA? A recent estimate was six years. When will that start?

Thus, despite all the talk about security during the years since the bombing of the World Trade Center, very little has been done to improve the security of our republic, other than talk. The majority of Americans expect another attack. They are wise to do so.

Because the terrorists will almost certainly try something before the presidential election, the container ships and airport checked baggage are perfect targets -- and not much better defended than was Logan Airport in September 2001. Think of a ''dirty" bomb exploded in New York or Long Beach Harbor.

If all the time and money and energy expended on finding ''weapons of mass destruction'' and capturing Saddam Hussein had been spent on protecting this country by measures besides harassing air travelers, the country would be much safer. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

How War in Iraq Derails Real War on Terror

05.30.04 (11:15 am) [edit]

Will Bush the Beheader use Terrorism to Become America's Pinochet?

05.30.04 (11:13 am) [edit]

Will George W. Bush use terrorism to become America's Pinochet?

Attorney-General John Ashcroft is priming the public for a terrorist attack, which can only mean Bush is sharpening his blades to behead the Constitution.

Augusto Pinochet seized absolute power in Chile on September 11, 1973. The US national security apparatus, including George H.W. Bush, used terrorism as an excuse to help Pinochet destroy what had been a constitutional democracy.

So is Shrub a president? Or is he a Pinochet?

By a 4:1 margin American historians have already rated W. "a failure." More than one in ten surveyed in the recent George Mason University History News Network Poll also rate Bush as "the worst president ever."

But ultimately, this Bush has no peer among US presidents. Let's look at three likely matches.

Richard Nixon trained Dick Cheney and Karl Rove as Dirty Tricksters. Nixon is Bush's role model for corruption, cynicism and personal psychosis. But Nixon was also a skilled, literate global diplomat who opened doors to China and the former Soviet Union and supported environmental protection. Bush has trashed all that.

Herbert Hoover callously presided over the beginnings of America's worst economic depression. Bush is right there. But Hoover was also a skilled, literate bureaucrat, and a Quaker-raised foe of war. Not exactly Bush.

Warren G. Harding was astonishingly corrupt. Bush, Halliburton and Enron have more than matched him. But Harding also hated repression and brought the anti-war socialist Eugene V. Debs straight from a federal prison cell to meet him in the Oval Office. Bush might well have had Debs executed.

Ultimately, Bush's real peers are not US presidents but Third World dictators, like Pinochet, many of whom his father also put in office. Their coda is clear:

. Use of "terror" as an excuse for totalitarian control;
. Official secrecy for its own sake;
. Seizure of power in contempt of free elections;
. Totalitarian militarism;
. Abuse of human rights and liberties;
. Love of the death penalty;
. Hatred of a free press;
. Imprisonment without legal recourse;
. Widespread torture;
. Brazen theft of public billions;
. "Free market" smokescreens for corporate domination;
. Taxing the poor to benefit the rich;
. Hatred of labor unions;
. Decimation of the natural environment;
. Assaulting elected leaders anywhere, anytime;
. Contempt for international treaties;
. Reactionary alliance with right wing church groups;
. Contempt for women's rights;
. Manipulating divisions of race and class.

The one American actually offered a dictatorship, George Washington, turned it down, shaping the nature of the Presidency for more than two centuries....until now.

Meanwhile Bush has beheaded the American economy, replacing First World surpluses with Third World debt.

Reminiscent of Joe Stalin, foreign intelligence, economic assessment and even basic science must not contradict Rovian spin or fundamentalist prophecy.

American education, once the envy of the world, is in shambles, with global students now turning away for the first time. America's moral prestige, never higher than after September 11, 2001, has been trashed. No US president has ever been so personally hated.

And never has a would-be Third World dictator stood more ready to shred our Constitution.

Stalin once quipped that power resides not with those who cast the votes, but with those that count them.

Bush may try to follow Stalin's (and brother Jeb's) lead by stealing the 2004 election, as in 2000. Or he may try to seize power like Pinochet did on 9/11/73 in a repressive crusade against convenient terrorism.

But one thing is certain: if Shrub's hyped-up power play succeeds, the beheading of America will be complete.

[b]HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE US is available at www.harveywasserman.com. He is co-author (with Bob Fitrakis) of GEORGE W. BUSH VERSUS THE SUPERPOWER OF PEACE (www.freepress.org). [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Will Bush the Beheader use Terrorism to Become America's Pinochet?

05.30.04 (11:12 am) [edit]

10 REASONS BUSH WANTS TO BAN MOORE FILM

05.29.04 (6:26 am) [edit]

[i][b]...like it could make him lose the next election[/b][/i]

A NEW film is sending shockwaves through the United States in general and the White House in particular - and it hasn't even been released yet.

Fahrenheit 9/11, which this week got the longest standing ovation in Cannes Film Festival history, tells what its director Michael Moore sees as the truth behind the war in Iraq and on terror.

It is said to be so powerful it could tip November's US presidential election against George W Bush. As Moore says: "We were able to get film crews embedded with American troops without them knowing it was Michael Moore. They are totally f***ed."

Disney has refused to distribute the film in the States, saying its content could upset the presidential elections. Moore says that's precisely why the public should see it.

[u][b]These are the 10 killer questions the film poses[/b][/u]:

[b]1. AFTER the 9/11 attacks, why was the only plane to fly out of the US carrying 24 members of Osama bin Laden's family?[/b]

IN the wake of the attacks, the US became a no-fly zone. Moore asks: "Why did Bush allow a private Saudi jet to fly around the US in the days after September 11 to pick up members of the bin Laden family and fly them out of the country without a proper FBI investigation? Might it have been possible that at least one of the 24 bin Ladens would have known something?"

[b]2. ARE the media covering up abuse of Iraqi prisoners and the disillusionment of American troops?[/b]

MOORE'S film shows soldiers hooding and mistreating Iraqi detainees, and even shows troops taking it in turns to sexually abuse a drunk elderly man.

He says: "This occurred outside the Abu Ghraib prison walls. The media is there every single day. Why haven't they seen this? I don't think we've heard American soldiers in the field talk as they do in this film about their disillusionment and their despair; about their questioning of what was going on."

[b]3. IS Bush deliberately creating a culture of fear to get poor American youth to fight his war?[/b]

MOORE accuses the Bush administration of deliberately creating a climate of fear, particularly by the instigation of the Department of Homeland Security, to increase numbers signing up for the armed forces. He calls this "the immoral act of sending kids to war on the basis of a lie".

[b]4. HOW deep does the connection between the Bush family and bin Laden family actually run?[/b]

MOORE exposes business links between the bin Ladens and the Bushes over the last 25 years. Bush Snr became a highly paid consultant for the Carlyle Group, one of the nation's largest defence contractors. One of the investors in Carlyle - to the tune of at least $2million (£1.2m) - was the bin Laden family.

The campaigner says: "The bin Laden family have extensive dealings with large companies in the US. They have donated $2m to Bush's alma mater, Harvard. They own property in Texas, Florida and Massachusetts. In short, they have their hands deep in our pants."

[b]5. JUST how sinister was the White House's doctoring of Bush's military record?[/b]

MOORE suggests that, far from being simply an exercise in proving that Bush attended to his Texas Air National Guard duties, the White House version also sought to hide evidence that Bush and his associates had close ties with various Saudi oil companies. He also suggests that a former military pal of Bush's, James R Bath, once sold a plane to the bin Laden family.

[b]6. DID Bush miss an opportunity to nail bin Laden during secret talks with the Taliban?[/b]

MOORE claims that while Bush was governor of Texas he built a relationship with the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. They met in Texas to discuss a project to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and into Pakistan.

Representatives of the Bush administration met the Taliban in the summer of 2001. Moore says they ignored the bin Laden issue and were pre-occupied with oil. He asks: "Was Bush discussing their offer to hand over bin Laden? Was he threatening them with force? Was he discussing a new pipeline?"

[b]7. WHY does the Bush family have a "special relationship" with the Saudi royal family?[/b]

"MORE than 1.5 million barrels of oil needed in the US daily from the Saudis could vanish on a royal whim, so we begin to see how not only Bush, but all of us, are dependent on the House of Saud," says Moore. "This can't be good for national security."

Moore also refers to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the US, who is nicknamed Bandar Bush because of his close links with the president. Despite increasing evidence linking the September 11 atrocity to Saudi militants, Bush still met Prince Bandar for dinner two days later.

[b]8. WAS Bush spending too much time on holiday to concentrate on terrorism?[/b]

BUSH was on holiday for 42 per cent of the eight months before September 11, letting his guard down, according to Moore. At a 9/11 commission hearing, CIA director George Tenet admitted he had known since August 2001 that Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in connection with 9/11, had been taking lessons on how to fly a 747. Tenet claimed he didn't tell Bush because the president, "was on vacation".

[b]9. DID Bush panic when he was told about the attack on the twin towers?[/b]

ON the morning of September 11, President Bush was posing for cameras at a children's literacy event in Florida.

Moore has previously unseen footage showing the rabbit-in-car-headlights expression on the president's face when he is told about the second plane hitting the twin towers.

A stopwatch appears in the corner of the screen, as the minutes tick by and the president keeps reading My Pet Goat, not knowing what to do without his advisers to tell him.

Moore says: "Was Bush thinking he should have taken reports the CIA had given him the month before more seriously? That he had been told al-Qaeda was planning attacks in the US and planes would possibly be used. Or was he scared witless?"

[b]10. DID Bush manipulate the major US media companies to fix his 2000 election win?[/b]

BUSH'S cousin John Ellis, a Fox News executive, was instrumental in "calling it" for Bush/Cheney on election night and cowed the other networks into joining in. This confusion helped set the scene for the debacle that ended in his election despite Al Gore winning the popular majority.

At the start of Fahrenheit 9/11, the major players are seen smirking and preening themselves. "Here they are," Moore narrates, "the whole corrupt gang who fixed the 2000 election." - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/...

10 REASONS BUSH WANTS TO BAN MOORE FILM

05.29.04 (6:24 am) [edit]

10 REASONS BUSH WANTS TO BAN MOORE FILM

05.29.04 (6:23 am) [edit]

Lying or Confused?

05.29.04 (6:16 am) [edit]

I confess – I'm not sure if President Bush lied or is just confused when he said in his recent speech that "full sovereignty" was to be handed over to an Iraqi government on June 30.

Full sovereignty would mean that the Iraqi government could tell us to get out of the country, and we would have to either go or go to war against the new government. Full sovereignty would mean, as the British said, that the Iraqi government could veto any decision by the U.S. military commander.

It's obvious that the president doesn't intend for the new government to have that much authority. His draft of a United Nations resolution makes that quite clear. So was he lying, or does he just not know what full sovereignty means?

In another part of his speech, one has to say that he told a deliberate fib. He said that the American embassy in Baghdad would operate like any other embassy. No, it will not. The embassy in Baghdad will have 1,000 employees. No one's embassy in any country in the world has that many employees, I venture to say.

Despite the president's words, what is clearly contemplated is a continuation of American occupation under another name. It's hard to reconcile the president's statements with the statements of several military men who have spoken of U.S. forces being in Iraq for as long as 10 years, let alone an embassy with 1,000 employees.

So the question remains: Is Bush the most deceptive president in recent decades, or is he some incredibly naive empty suit who reads without understanding whatever words someone puts on his teleprompter? I don't know. He's certainly not stupid in the medical sense, but he does appear to be dangerously undereducated and lacking in curiosity. And he has trouble with the English language.

To watch Bush's speech, you would never dream that 800 Americans have been killed and nearly 4,000 wounded, and that attacks against coalition forces continue at the rate of 50 per day. Nor would you guess that polls show that a majority of Iraqis want us out of their country now. One fellow has quoted an Army captain just back from Iraq as saying he met only two kinds of Iraqis: those who hated Americans and those who wanted Americans to get out of the country.

The president also misrepresented the situation in Fallujah. He called it a decision to share responsibility for security. Well, the Iraqi forces that "share" responsibility have not turned over any weapons or any members of the resistance, both of which we once demanded.

The oddest thing about his speech was that he has not the foggiest idea who will be in this new government he spoke so glowingly about. The people are being chosen by a United Nations official, but he apparently has not yet come up with a list of names. The president certainly has high expectations for people who are entirely unknown to him. Either he knows they will have no choice but to do what he wants them to do, or he is in for a big surprise, and for George Bush, this whole Iraqi venture has been nothing but one unpleasant surprise after another: no weapons of mass destruction, no welcome, no links to al-Qaeda, but instead heavy resistance, a $200 billion bill, huge delays in reconstruction, high casualties and falling approval ratings.

Never fear, though, for our president has not made a single mistake. We have his word on it. He is apparently one of those people who believe that they have merely to say something and it becomes true. Thus, he doesn't hesitate to praise a program in his speeches and try to cut it out of the budget altogether. Most people with such a disconnect from reality end up in houses other than the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

[b]Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969-71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column three times a week for King Features, which is carried on Antiwar.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner.[/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/reese/...

Lying or Confused?

05.29.04 (6:14 am) [edit]

Al Gore's Speech Energizes Country: Kerry Surges Ahead, Bush's Poll Ratings Plummet!!!

05.28.04 (11:12 am) [edit]

[b]Kerry Surges Ahead in 12 Crucial Swing States as Bush Poll Ratings Plummet [/b]

George Bush has had a warning shot from the crucial battleground states likely to decide the outcome of the presidential election where his rival John Kerry is surging ahead.

Less than six months from election day, polls suggest that Mr Kerry is leading the President in 12 of the 16 so-called swing states. In some states the lead is slight, but in places such as New Hampshire, which Mr Bush won in 2000, Mr Kerry has a lead of almost 10 per cent.

Though polls offer only a snapshot in time, pollster John Zogby, who made the latest survey, said if the present leads in these 16 states hold true - and Democrats and Republicans hold on to the states each party won easily in 2000 - Mr Kerry will win with a margin of 102 electoral college votes. In 2000, Mr Bush beat Al Gore by 271 to 267.

"I have made a career of taking bungee jumps in my election calls," Mr Zogby wrote in an op-ed article. "Here is my jump for 2004: John Kerry will win the election ... We are unlikely to see any big bumps for either candidate because opinion is so polarized and, I believe, frozen in place. There are still six months to go and anything can happen. But as of today, this race is John Kerry's to lose."

The battleground states, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin, are likely to prove crucial in deciding who carries the day on 2 November. Republican and Democrat strategists know that in at least 30 states, along with the District of Columbia, the outcome of the vote is a foregone conclusion. But in the battleground states - which were won in 2000 by six percentage points or less - everything is up for grabs.

Not surprisingly, this is where both sides are focusing much of their efforts, and trying to fine-tune their campaigns to reflect local issues, be it the controversial proposal to use Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a nuclear waste dump or else the issue of "guest worker" status for immigrants in heavily Hispanic New Mexico.

The poll of these 16 states will have shaken the President's strategists. As they have watched his approval rating sink to between 41 and 47 per cent - the lowest of his Presidency - his aides say that in the battleground states, the President has the advantage. This new poll suggests that is not the case.

"If these numbers are correct, the Republicans are probably disappointed," Ken Goldstein, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.

Some analysts attribute Mr Kerry's surge to biographical ads in these 16 states at a cost of $25m. Experts say they appear to have helped him recover from negative ads paid for by the Republicans which criticized his voting record in Congress and questioned his national security credibility. Adam Clymer, the political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey, told USA Today: "Kerry has been doing better lately in the battleground states, and my guess is his ads are very important in that."

At a national level Mr Bush and Mr Kerry are extremely tight and both sides agree that with the country so heavily polarized, the election is going to be close-run. Another poll, by Gallup, places Mr Kerry ahead of the President by 49 to 47, a statistical tie. This is the third poll in which the candidates have been separated by less than the margin of error.

Matthew Dowd, the Bush senior political strategist, said: "I didn't trust the readings on the states that said we were up or said we were down," he said. "I don't think the race has changed much, and I don't think ads are having much of an effect, given all the other news."

Given the impact that issues such as Iraq appear to be having on voters, strategists agree Mr Bush is far more of a victim to events than his rival. With no apparent end to the violence in Iraq, the President has seen his approval rating drop, and drop. Mr Bush's best hopes are for continued improvement in the economy, and that transferring sovereignty to Iraq results in a reduction in violence and enables withdrawal of US troops. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

[b]A Speech That's No Joke [/b]

It has always been easy to make fun of Al Gore. But if there's any truth to the thunderous criticism he's turned loose on the Bush administration this week, it's time to dispense with the jokes and listen seriously to what the man is saying.

If Mr. Gore is right, the nation is faced with a crisis of leadership that is perilously close to an emergency.

If he's wrong, then all the folks who have made the easy jokes at his expense can consider themselves vindicated.

The war in Iraq, said Mr. Gore, in an interview on Wednesday, "is the worst strategic fiasco in the history of the United States. It is an unfolding catastrophe without any comparison."

In an echo of the growing chorus of criticism here and around the world, he said the war has not only damaged "our strategic interests" and isolated the U.S. from its allies, it has also made the country more — not less — vulnerable to terror.

In a widely covered speech http://www.commondreams.org/v... earlier in the day, Mr. Gore said that Iraq had not become, as President Bush has asserted, " `the central front in the war on terror.' " But he said it has become, unfortunately, "the central recruiting office for terrorists."

The speech was extraordinary — blunt, colorful and delivered with the kind of passion you seldom see in politics anymore. The former vice president described Mr. Bush as incompetent and untrustworthy, and said his policies had endangered the nation.

The president, said Mr. Gore, had "planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind."

In the view of Mr. Gore (and many others), the essential problem has been the triumph in the Bush crowd of ideology over reality. The true believers knew everything better than everybody else, and the arrogance born of that certainty led, step by tragic step, to the war with no exit doors that we are locked in today.

That arrogance gave rise to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, the contempt for international agreements like the Geneva Conventions, the dismissal of concerns by some of the highest-ranking military professionals about the way a war in Iraq should be fought and the willingness of top administration figures to blow smoke in the eyes of ordinary Americans who were traumatized by Sept. 11 and worried about the possibility of further terrorist attacks.

"The same preference for ideology over reality has turned trillion-dollar surpluses into multitrillion-dollar deficits," said Mr. Gore. "And that same approach has led to the locking up of American citizens without recourse to lawyers or access to courts or even a right of their families to know they're being held in secret."

These and other matters are transforming the United States into a country that is more warlike, more brutal, less free, less just, less admirable and much less appealing than the nation that existed when Mr. Bush stepped into the presidency in January 2001.

Those who disagree with Mr. Gore should challenge him on his facts. Those who agree must look for ways to defend the honor and perhaps the very identity of the United States as we've known it.

The least serious part of Mr. Gore's speech was the part that got the most attention, his call for top officials of the Bush administration to resign. As an attention-getter, it worked.

But this was a speech in which the former vice president said: "What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations, more than the people of any other nation."

This is a time to remember the principles that made this a great nation, and to reaffirm them. I don't know what will happen in the election in November. What I know is that the nation is facing a crisis now. The Bush administration needs to step back from the abyss its ideology has dragged us to.

It may be that the president never understood what made the U.S. great. In that case, he'd be among those who could benefit most from a reading of Mr. Gore's speech. If he followed that up with a look at the Bill of Rights (it would only take a few minutes), he'd have a better understanding of what this country, at its best, is about. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Bush Fails on the "War on Terrorism": Al-Qaeda Alive & Well, Thanks to Dumb Dubya's Policies ...

05.28.04 (7:24 am) [edit]

Returning over and over again, no less than 19 times by our count, to the phrases he knows resonate with many voters -- "terror," "terrorist," and "terrorism" -- President Bush tried to convince Americans last night he has a handle on national security, and that his fumblings in Iraq are all part of his grand strategy. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein "makes us more secure," he claimed, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... just as Afghanistan is now more secure since the U.S.-led operation there. (He should read this report http://news.independent.co.uk... today, about "the war the world forgot," that says Afghanistan is "on the verge of anarchy.")

But a leading London think tank issued a report today saying al-Qaida has been emboldened, not weakened. Thanks to unfinished business in Afghanistan and an unnecessary war in Iraq that was not originally about direct threats of terrorism, but is now, al-Qaida is alive, well-funded, widely-dispersed and frighteningly invisible. As a result, Westerners are even bigger targets for terrorists.

In its annual Strategic Survey, the International Institute for Strategic Studies http://www.iiss.org/ said al-Qaida has more than 18,000 militants in its ranks around the world, and is represented in 60 countries. The Iraq war has been a boon for al-Qaida recruitment, the IISS says. While Afghanistan may have temporarily hobbled al-Qaida offensively, the network has regrouped and decentralized.

Here's a key paragraph from the report: "Overall, risks of terrorism to Westerns and Western assets in Arab countries appeared to increase after the Iraq war began in March 2003. With the miilitary invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States sought to change he political status quo in the Arab world to advance the American strategic and political interests. Al Qaeda seeks, among other things, to purge the Arab and larger Muslim world of U.S. influence. Accordingly, the Iraq intervention was always likely in the short term, to enhance jihadist recruitment and intensify al Qaeda's motivation to encourage and assist terrorist operations. The May 2003 attacks in Saudi Arabia and Turkey confirmed this expectation. The Madrid bombings in March 2004 reinforced the perception that al Qaeda had fully reconstituted, set its sights firmly on the U.S. and its closest Western allies in Europe and established a new and effective modus operandi that increasingly exploited local affiliates. Al Qaeda must be expected to keep trying to develop more promising plans for terrorist operations in North America and Europe, potentially involving weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, soft targets encompassing Americans, Europeans and Israelis, and aiding the insurgency in Iraq, will suffice." - http://www.salon.com/politics...

Bush Fails on the "War on Terrorism": Al-Qaeda Alive & Well, Thanks to Dumb Dubya's Policies ...

05.28.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

It's Bush's Bungled, Bloody Fiasco of a War, Stupid!!!

05.28.04 (7:18 am) [edit]

Remember when, not too long ago, George W. Bush sold himself as a "war president"? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... And his campaign tour bore the dangerously optimistic slogan http://blog.johnkerry.com/blo... "Winning the War on Terror Tour"? Well, with the Iraq mess disintegrating more each day, evidence that we're actually not winning the war on terror http://www.salon.com/politics... thanks to his failed policies, and as his poll numbers plunge http://www.usatoday.com/news/... to their worst ever, Bush's team is changing justifications for his re-election as swiftly as it made shifting justifications for war in Iraq.

Now, conveniently, the election isn't about the war so much as it's about the economy, they tell us. Today, Commerce Secretary Don Evans appeared on CNN's Inside Politics trumpeting the latest news http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap... that the economy grew faster than expected last quarter ([u]even though job growth lagged[/u] as profits are eaten up by gluttonous corporate top-dogs & fat-cats.) And Bush's father, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... who knows a thing or two about losing an election after waging war against Saddam Hussein, says everyone knows Americans vote on the economy, stupid. While it's true that the economy will play a major role in voters' decisions in November, BC'04 cannot wish the Iraq factor away. Voters will judge Bush on this war he chose to wage whether he likes it or not. - http://www.salon.com/politics...

It's Bush's Bungled, Bloody Fiasco of A War, Stupid!!!

05.28.04 (7:16 am) [edit]

Kerry Surges Ahead in 12 Crucial Swing States as Bush Poll Ratings Plummet

05.28.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

George Bush has had a warning shot from the crucial battleground states likely to decide the outcome of the presidential election where his rival John Kerry is surging ahead.

Less than six months from election day, polls suggest that Mr Kerry is leading the President in 12 of the 16 so-called swing states. In some states the lead is slight, but in places such as New Hampshire, which Mr Bush won in 2000, Mr Kerry has a lead of almost 10 per cent.

Though polls offer only a snapshot in time, pollster John Zogby, who made the latest survey, said if the present leads in these 16 states hold true - and Democrats and Republicans hold on to the states each party won easily in 2000 - Mr Kerry will win with a margin of 102 electoral college votes. In 2000, Mr Bush beat Al Gore by 271 to 267.

"I have made a career of taking bungee jumps in my election calls," Mr Zogby wrote in an op-ed article. "Here is my jump for 2004: John Kerry will win the election ... We are unlikely to see any big bumps for either candidate because opinion is so polarized and, I believe, frozen in place. There are still six months to go and anything can happen. But as of today, this race is John Kerry's to lose."

The battleground states, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin, are likely to prove crucial in deciding who carries the day on 2 November. Republican and Democrat strategists know that in at least 30 states, along with the District of Columbia, the outcome of the vote is a foregone conclusion. But in the battleground states - which were won in 2000 by six percentage points or less - everything is up for grabs.

Not surprisingly, this is where both sides are focusing much of their efforts, and trying to fine-tune their campaigns to reflect local issues, be it the controversial proposal to use Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a nuclear waste dump or else the issue of "guest worker" status for immigrants in heavily Hispanic New Mexico.

The poll of these 16 states will have shaken the President's strategists. As they have watched his approval rating sink to between 41 and 47 per cent - the lowest of his Presidency - his aides say that in the battleground states, the President has the advantage. This new poll suggests that is not the case.

"If these numbers are correct, the Republicans are probably disappointed," Ken Goldstein, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said.

Some analysts attribute Mr Kerry's surge to biographical ads in these 16 states at a cost of $25m. Experts say they appear to have helped him recover from negative ads paid for by the Republicans which criticized his voting record in Congress and questioned his national security credibility. Adam Clymer, the political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey, told USA Today: "Kerry has been doing better lately in the battleground states, and my guess is his ads are very important in that."

At a national level Mr Bush and Mr Kerry are extremely tight and both sides agree that with the country so heavily polarized, the election is going to be close-run. Another poll, by Gallup, places Mr Kerry ahead of the President by 49 to 47, a statistical tie. This is the third poll in which the candidates have been separated by less than the margin of error.

Matthew Dowd, the Bush senior political strategist, said: "I didn't trust the readings on the states that said we were up or said we were down," he said. "I don't think the race has changed much, and I don't think ads are having much of an effect, given all the other news."

Given the impact that issues such as Iraq appear to be having on voters, strategists agree Mr Bush is far more of a victim to events than his rival. With no apparent end to the violence in Iraq, the President has seen his approval rating drop, and drop. Mr Bush's best hopes are for continued improvement in the economy, and that transferring sovereignty to Iraq results in a reduction in violence and enables withdrawal of US troops. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Kerry Surges Ahead in 12 Crucial Swing States as Bush Poll Ratings Plummet

05.28.04 (7:08 am) [edit]

Is Bush Playing Games With Terrorism: Another (Man) of Ashcroft's Terrorists In Jail!!!

05.27.04 (5:45 am) [edit]

[b]What game is Bush playing with terrorism?

Is he trying to scare us to win back support?

Is he planning to stage a terrorist attack himself and pin-it on terrorists already in jail?

How do we know, because Bush tells so many lies and has committed so many crimes?[/b]

Amer El-Maati, the man at the very top of Ashcroft's list of mean ol' terrorists, is reportedly in jail http://www.trackingthethreat....

Is Bush Playing Games With Terrorism: Another (Man) of Ashcroft's Terrorists In Jail!!!

05.27.04 (5:44 am) [edit]

Bush Wants to Close Bases in U.S.-- But Is Opening U.S. Bases In Israel!!!

05.27.04 (5:39 am) [edit]

[b][u]Department of Defense News[/u]

CONTRACTS

NAVY[/b]

Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., Newport News, Va., is being awarded a $182,454,576 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with performance incentives for CVN 21 design effort; long lead time material and non-nuclear advance construction; and system development, engineering services, and feasibility studies for the Future Aircraft Carrier Program. Newport News Shipbuilding will provide all CVN 21 services and material in preparation for ship construction planned to commence in FY07. Work will be performed at Newport News, Va. (87 percent) and Groton, Conn. (13 percent), and is expected to be completed by December 2006. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C. is the contracting activity (N00024-04-C-2118).

Anteon Corp., Fairfax, Va.; Amsec LLC, Virginia Beach, Va.; and, EG&G Technical Services, Inc., Gaithersburg, Md., are each being awarded an indefinite-delivery/indef inite-quantity multiple award contract with cost-plus-fixed-fee pricing provisions for engineering, technical and logistics services for program support in the following functional areas: engineering analysis, logistics support, direct fleet support (DFS), functional checks, Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity (SIMA) support, industrial and installation services, assessment and maintenance of shipboard systems and equipment, Shipboard Alterations (SHIPALTS), Machinery Alterations (MACHALTS), Alteration Inspection Teams (AIT), training, maintenance/overhaul processes, identification, compilation and production of Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs), and other metrics as required. Each contractor will equally share the minimum guarantee of $50,000 at time of award. The contract awards encompass a base year and nine one-year option periods. For Anteon the base year amount is $22,995,154 and the contract ceiling amount, if all options are exercised, will be $253,735,868. For Amsec the base year amount is $25,520,914 and the contract ceiling amount, if all options are exercised, will be $298,913,466. For EG&G the base year amount is $26,455,687 and the contract ceiling amount, if all options are exercised, will be $286,625,914. Work will be performed in Hampton Roads area, Va. (75 percent); other ports in the Continental U.S. (20 percent); and various ports outside the Continental U. S. (5 percent), and is expected to be completed May 2005. Contract funds in the amount of $50,000 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The contracts were competitively procured. The requirement was issued under full and open competition and posted to the Navy Electronic Commerce On-line and the Federal Business Opportunity websites, with four offers received. The Fleet and Industrial Supply Center, Norfolk, Va., is the contracting activity. (Anteon Corp. - N00189-04-D-0030; Amsec LLC - N00189-04-D-0036; and EG&G Technical Services, Inc. - N00189-04-D-0035).

McDonnell Douglas Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Mo., is being awarded a $47,758,193 modification to a previously awarded fixed-priced-incentive-fe e contract (N00019-99-C-1226) for the procurement of the fiscal year 2004 ancillary mission equipment to support the F/A-18E/F production aircraft. Work will be performed in Mesa, Ariz. (38 percent); Clearwater, Fla. (28 percent); El Segundo, Calif. (23 percent); various locations across the United States (7 percent); and St. Louis, Mo. (4 percent), and is expected to be completed in September 2006. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md. is the contracting activity.

BAE Systems Applied Technologies Inc., Rockville, Md., is being awarded a $16,430,946 ceiling-priced modification to a previously awarded cost-plus-fixed-fee term contract (N00421-02-C-3235) to exercise an option for engineering, technical, and logistics services for the production, lifetime support engineering, and in-service engineering of radio communications system/command, control, communications, computer and intelligence systems. The estimated level of effort for this option period is 346,080 man-hours. Work will be performed in St. Inigoes, Md. (96 percent); Mayport, Fla. (2 percent) and Chesapeake, Va. (2 percent), and is expected to be completed in May 2005. Contract funds in the amount of $1,435,000 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division, St. Inigoes, Md. is the contracting activity.

[b]ARMY[/b]

Honeywell International, Phoenix, Ariz., was awarded on May 18, 2004, a $42,515,025 firm-fixed-price contract for 125 Containerized Automotive Gas Turbine 1500 Engines and 125 EAJ5.5 Digital Electronics Control Units. Work will be performed in Greer, S.C. (77 percent) and Tucson, Ariz. (23 percent), and is expected to be completed by January 2011. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This was a sole source contract initiated on Nov. 7, 2003. The U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-04-C-0453).

M+W Zander US Operation Inc., Plano, Texas, was awarded on May 18, 2004, a $31,676,996 firm-fixed-price contract for design and construction of military facilities. Work will be performed at various locations within[b] Israel[/b], and is expected to be completed by Aug. 17, 2005. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. There were 50 bids solicited on Dec. 23, 2003, and six bids were received. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Germany, is the contracting activity (W912GB-04-C-0021).

[b]DoD News[/b]: http://www.defenselink.mil/co...

Bush Wants to Close Bases in U.S.-- But Is Opening U.S. Bases In Israel!!!

05.27.04 (5:38 am) [edit]

Bush is Suckering Us: Woman Sought By FBI Reportedly Already Arrested In Pakistan 1 Yr Ago

05.27.04 (5:33 am) [edit]

[b]Woman Sought By FBI Reportedly Arrested In Pakistan

Neurologist Questioned By FBI For Alleged Al-Qaida Links[/b]

POSTED: 12:56 p.m. CST April 3, 2003
UPDATED: 12:57 p.m. CST April 3, 2003

U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly interrogating a Pakistani woman alleged to have moved funds and assisted with logistics planning for al-Qaida.

According to the Press Trust of India in an article published on its Web site Thursday, the woman has been identified as 31-year-old Aafia Siddiqui, who was being sought by U.S. officials last week along with two other men, including one whose last known address was in Miramar, Fla.

According to the PTI, Siddiqui was arrested in Karachi recently after returning from an overseas trip last month. The service quoted reports in the Boston Globe and Oklahama (TV) News Channel's Web site.

The FBI had issued a worldwide alert for Siddiqui, already said this ... a housewife and mother of three who holds a doctorate in neurological science and degrees from Braindeis University and M.I.T. ) Siddiqui reportedly lived in Boston with her husband for several years.

NBC News reported last week that senior U.S. officials that Siddiqui may be a so-called "fixer" for al-Qaida and not an actual member. According to those reports, Siddiqui may have been used by the organization move money and provide other logistical support. One official said, "The Intel indicates that she is tied to some very radical individuals in Pakistan."

The FBI said last week that Siddiqui may have provided support to another man being sought, Adnan El Shukrijumah, 27, whose last known residence was also in Miramar. Federal agents raided El Shukrijumah's Miramar home last week, interviewing his brother and father, who later told news reporters El Shukrijumah was out of the country with his family. They also denied he had any ties to terrorist groups.

Siddiqui was reportedly arrested at a relative's home after being tailed from Karachi's Qaid-e-Azam International Airport according to the PTI.

There was no word if her children, aged 6, 3 and 9 months, were with her.

Terrorism experts warn that if al-Qaida is now using Western-educated women, it will be tough for law enforcement officials to detect them.

"Being a mother and traveling with her kids would provide the perfect cover for someone to go in and out of Pakistan and elsewhere in support of al-Qaida and not engender one ounce of suspicion," NBC terrorism analyst Steve Emerson said last week.

Arabic newspapers have reported that al-Qaida had set up training camps to prepare women to "become martyrs" by carrying out suicide attacks on Western targets. The women's wing of the terrorist organization is allegedly headed by a woman calling herself "Umm Osama," or the "Mother of Osama." There was no indication in the reports linking Siddiqui to that woman, or indicating that Siddiqui is suspected of plotting suicide attacks.

Siddiqui was allegedly being interrogated at an undisclosed location. The reports quoted U.S. intelligence sources, saying Siddiqui was "essentially in the hands of the FBI now" but the sources refused to say whether she had been taken out of Pakistan.

Siddiqui reportedly worshipped at a mosque outside of Boston. The Imam of that mosque told NBC News Siddiqui stored Islamic books there and handed them out to anyone who showed interest.

"It was her, using the word loosely, 'crusade' to try to bring the word of Islam to America," the Imam said, adding that Siddiqui was never violent or radical, and expressed horror over the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

But Siddiqui reportedly left her Boston apartment and said she was moving back to Pakistan after the United States invaded Afghanistan.

The FBI is also seeking to question Siddiqui's estranged husband, Dr. Mohammed Khan. Khan, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist, was working at prestigious Boston hospitals until sometime last year, when he allegedly moved away too.

Neither Siddiqui nor Khan have been charged with any crime. - http://www.intellnet.org/news...

Bush is Suckering Us Again: Woman Sought By FBI Reportedly Already Arrested In Pakistan 1 Yr Ago

05.27.04 (5:30 am) [edit]

Iraqis Skeptical on Bush Speech, Want Bush's U.S. Occupiers Out of Their Country!!!

05.26.04 (6:42 am) [edit]

Iraqis reacted with weary skepticism Tuesday to promises from President Bush of a peaceful and independent future.

Iraq's defense minister said he wanted U.S. troops out within the year, to be replaced by newly trained Iraqi forces.

In a televised address to assure increasingly doubtful American voters that his project in Iraq was on track, Bush said U.S. forces would stay on and even be reinforced to stabilize the country after a handover of formal power to an interim government on June 30 and Iraqi elections in the new year.

Shortly before Bush spoke, Washington asked the United Nations to endorse a plan that would give U.S. forces an open-ended mandate to stay in Iraq, renewable in a year.

But Iraqis, from the streets of Baghdad to the ranks of the U.S.-installed administration, made clear they wanted a final end to 14 irksome months of occupation as soon as possible.

"In terms of the timeline for the presence of multinational forces to help us establish security and stability, I think it will be a question of months rather than years," Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Allawi said in London. He said Iraqi forces would probably be ready to step in before the mandated year was up.

It is an ambitious timetable but echoes the feelings of many Iraqis.

"Bush is a scorpion. He is a liar. He is sneaky, making all kinds of promises when he just wants to control Iraq," said Ayman Haidar, a policeman on duty in Baghdad.

[b]ABU GHRAIB TO GO [/b]

Welcomed by many Iraqis as liberators from Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops now face frustration among people tired of violence and economic hardship in one of the world's most oil-rich nations. Many are also furious at soldiers' abuse of prisoners.

Bush said he would demolish Saddam's former torture center at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, which has become newly notorious as the site of humiliating torments inflicted by American troops on naked and terrified inmates and captured on camera.

Among protesters outside Abu Ghraib Tuesday, Hussein Omeer said: "The problem is not with the building but what goes on inside. We want them to change the rules, not pull down the building."

Bush said that violence, like the assassination of the head of the Iraqi Governing Council last week and a Shi'i uprising, would likely get worse during the transition to Iraqi rule.

There are difficult days ahead and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic," said Bush, whose sliding job approval ratings are raising questions about his re-election chances in November.

U.S. tanks were in action before dawn south of the capital Tuesday, battling Shi'i Mehdi Army fighters around the town of Kufa. At least 11 people were killed and 22 wounded, hospital staff in Kufa and the nearby holy city of Najaf said.

A doorway at the holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine, Najaf's Imam Ali mosque, was slightly damaged by what appeared to be rockets or mortars.

Aides to Shi'i cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said several people were hurt in the incident likely to upset believers across the Middle East.

[b]FRANCE WANTS CHANGES [/b]

A soldier whose death Monday was announced Tuesday was at least the 580th American to die in combat since the invasion. A leader of Iraq's Turkmen minority was assassinated in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

At least two people were wounded in Baghdad, police said, when a car blew up outside the Karma hotel, used by foreigners and near the embassy of Australia, a close U.S. ally in Iraq.

The draft U.N. resolution, distributed by the United States and Britain, is expected to be broadly adopted.

France and Russia, which opposed the war, want unspecified changes and said the transfer of power must be genuine. "It is a draft -- a draft which should be discussed and improved," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Tuesday.

Germany, another war opponent, called Washington's plans "a good basis" for consensus. An Iraqi party headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a former U.S. favorite now openly hostile to Washington, said Tuesday the draft U.N. resolution did not give Iraqis enough.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was due to name a government in a week or so, representing Iraq's various communities.

A Washington Post-ABC poll Tuesday showed Bush's approval rating down four points in a month at 47 percent. Only four voters in 10 approved of his Iraq policy, the lowest ever, and 65 percent thought the United States was "bogged down" in Iraq.

[b]Battered Iraqis Find No Comfort in Bush Speech [/b]

Tue May 25, 2004 07:03 AM ET

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - President Bush's speech outlining his plan to hand over power to Iraqis and ease their troubles won few people over in Baghdad, where weary residents are bitter after more than a year of chaos.

Iraqis expressed little faith in American promises after months of occupation which many said had delivered only violence, a lack of basic services and a scandal over the inhumane treatment of prisoners by the U.S. military.

"He lies. We don't believe anything Bush says. The Americans have not done a thing for Iraqis. And now he promises to hand over power to Iraqis in a democracy after handpicking the people in the Governing Council," Haidar Majeed, a trader, said on Tuesday.

Bush delivered a televised speech Monday outlining plans for the transfer of power to a caretaker Iraqi government in just five weeks, on June 30.

He sought to persuade both Americans and Iraqis he had a workable strategy for improving tough conditions in the country, but many Iraqis didn't bother tuning in.

"I wasn't interested in Bush's speech. America has been all talk and no action. I will regain an interest in politics when I see developments on the ground taking place," said Jabbar Luay, 25, a former soldier eating pistachios in the blistering heat.

Bush spoke of defeating terrorism, the rise of a free and self-governing Iraq and improving security in a land where bombings have become commonplace.

But Iraqis at a typical coffee shop were concerned with more practical problems they also blame on the Americans as Baghdad enters another scorching summer under U.S.-led occupation.

[b]MANY COMPLAINTS [/b]

"The Americans can move a tank to Iraq in two days yet they can't even give us more than two hours of electricity a day for the air conditioning," said Fallah Hassan, sipping bitter Arabic coffee with fellow unemployed Iraqis.

"Saddam used to cut off the electricity to punish us and now we see the Americans living in his palace with no electricity problems while we suffer."

Bush said he had high hopes for "the rise of a free and self-governing Iraq" to give Iraqis a sense of hope, tackle terrorism and give momentum to reformers across the region.

But Iraqis complain they have not tasted any democracy more than a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

"We have never seen a member of the Governing Council in the streets talking to the Iraqi people, or checking on the unemployed and other problems," said Hamid Hassan, a plumber.

Iraqi policemen and security forces, who have lost hundreds of comrades to bombings by insurgents, are skeptical that American troops will leave security in their hands.

"Bush is a scorpion. He is a liar. He is sneaky, making all kinds of promises when he just wants to control Iraq," said policeman Ayman Haidar.

"I was tortured and they dislocated my shoulder under Saddam. Now the Americans say they want to help the police take over security. I don't believe them. They will never leave."

While many Iraqis are furious with the U.S. occupation, some fear a quick departure of American troops could unleash more security problems.

"We need an American presence until we have elections," said 41-year-old Musa al-Rubaie.

Iraqis Skeptical on Bush Speech, Want Bush's U.S. Occupiers Out of Their Country!!!

05.26.04 (6:40 am) [edit]

Bush Steps Down

05.26.04 (6:36 am) [edit]

We did not seek this war on terror. But this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving and it will tend toward hope or tend toward tragedy.� President Bush; War College

President Bush had an opportunity to �be straight� with the American people about our involvement in Iraq, and he chose not to. Instead, he tried to make the case that Iraq is the �central front in the war on terrorism� and, therefore, a battle we must win. Once again, he chose to demagogue the issue by exhuming the dark imagery of Nick Berg and alleged terrorist �mastermind� Abu Musab al Zarqawi. These are the grim incarnations that galvanize the public mind and draw support to the President�s crusade.

Framing the ongoing struggle in Iraq as part of the war on terror is intentionally misleading and only serves to obfuscate what the American people really need to hear from their president.

Here is a quote from the President�s speech that illustrates how effortlessly Bush merges the conflicting themes of terrorism and Iraq:

�We've also seen images of a young American facing decapitation. This vile display shows a contempt for all the rules of warfare and all the bounds of civilized behavior. It reveals a fanaticism that was not caused by any action of ours and would not be appeased by any concession.

We suspect that the man with the knife was an Al Qaeda associate named Zarqawi. He and other terrorists know that Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror. And we must understand that as well.

The return of tyranny to Iraq would be an unprecedented terrorist victory and a cause for killers to rejoice. It would also embolden the terrorists, leading to more bombings, more beheadings and more murders of the innocent around the world.

The rise of a free and self-governing Iraq will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology and give momentum to reformers across the region. This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power, and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world.�

Bush�s comments intentionally �muddy the waters� and create the impression that we are fighting terrorism in Iraq rather than generating it.

Again, it is time to put this nonsense and fear mongering behind us and be honest with the American people.

What is unfolding in Iraq is no longer a matter of conjecture or idle speculation. A widespread nationalist insurgency has evolved in response to a security vacuum created by a failed occupation strategy.

We don�t need to debate this point. We need a president who can stand up, look us in the eye and give us the facts without trying to advance his own agenda.

[i]The war on terror IS the Bush agenda[/i]. Even now, with his dramatic decline in the polls, Americans still believe he is a strong and resolute leader on that issue. But Iraq is not connected to 9-11 and it is deceptive to characterize it as such.

So far, not one member of al Qaida has been captured or positively identified in Iraq. Their presence is entirely a matter of speculation.

As for the nebulous al Zarqawi, nearly as many Intelligence analysts believe he is dead as alive. (And, Iraqis almost unanimously believe that the Berg killing was staged to deflect attention from the Abu Ghraib scandal)

Regardless of whatever terrorists might be active in Iraq, their numbers are small and their effect will be inconsequential unless they can win the sympathies of the average Iraqi.

And this is where the problem lies; the US has alienated their base of support by their ham fisted execution of the occupation. By shutting down a newspaper run by supporters of Muqtada al Sadr, they elevated a modestly popular cleric to a regional superhero who still controls three major cities.

Similarly, the siege of Falluja (although many Americans feel that the military response was justified by the brutal killing of four contractors) has turned out to be a political disaster. The battle killed nearly 600 Fallujans and attracted thousands more to the growing resistance.

These pitfalls could have been easily anticipated if the �coalition� had tried to find political solutions rather than military victories. However, when diplomacy and compromise are dismissed as signs of weakness, failure is inevitable. We simply cannot hope to win hearts and minds with bullets alone.

These errors in judgment could be ignored if the administration was moving in a positive direction, but it is not. The American people are now beginning to grasp that fact.

Bush needs to abandon the rhetoric that conflates Iraq with the war on terror; it suggests a sense of denial that borders on delusion. All progress in Iraq will be directly tied to how clearly we are able to assess realities on the ground without flights into fantasy.

Currently, (according to the most recent poll from the Financial Times) over 90% of Iraqis see the US as occupiers not liberators. This is just more proof that America�s motives are no longer trusted in Iraq. The opportunity to demonstrate the �benign intentions of the invasion� has passed. Realists should understand that this situation is not reversible. It�s time to go.

We will not succeed in Iraq because the vast majority of Iraqis now want us to leave and see us as the principal source of their ongoing difficulties. The only alternative would be to apply increasing levels of force and coercion to achieve our objectives. As Abu Ghraib illustrates, that is not an approach that is acceptable to most Americans.

Mr. Bush needs to address the American people and explain to them that our mission has failed and that we are withdrawing our troops from Iraq. He should demonstrate that he understands that the animosity now directed at America is a result of his misguided policies and his mistaken belief that military power should be employed to reshape the world.

He should add that when he saw the picture of a naked Iraqi prisoner in a dog leash he realized that America no longer had the moral authority to decide the fate of other nations.

He should acknowledge that on his watch America has abandoned its commitment to high ideals, human rights, civil liberties and even the rule of law. We have become just another petty, corrupt government that tortures their enemies and spies on their citizens.

This is Bush�s legacy.

Then, in keeping with his commitment to accountability, he should step down as President and allow someone more competent to take over. - http://www.aljazeerah.info/26...%20o/Bush%20Steps%20Down% 20By%20Mike%20Whitney.htm

Bush Ignores the Plight of Sick 9/11 Firefighters & Policemen

05.26.04 (6:31 am) [edit]

Over the last month, President Bush has repeatedly recounted how he was inspired by "the courage of the firefighters and the police"1 in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He recounted how, when standing atop a pile of rubble at Ground Zero, he was told by a firefighter, "Don't let me down"2. But more than two years later, he continues to ignore the needs of firefighters and police officers who are now suffering adverse health effects from their rescue efforts at Ground Zero. The situation has reached a head: yesterday, 1,700 cops and firefighters were forced to sue in court for the medical help they desperately need 3.

While the President's very first campaign commercial used photos of coffin draped corpses4 being pulled from the rubble, the White House has sought to hide evidence that Ground Zero firefighters and cops were exposed to hazardous toxins. Specifically, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) intervened to doctor EPA press releases 5 that were supposed to warn the public about toxins near Ground Zero. The press releases were modified to claim that the air was safe - despite the fact that there was not adequate scientific evidence to substantiate that claim. The CEQ was headed by James Connaughton, a former asbestos industry lawyer who represented companies in toxic pollution cases6.

When Ground Zero firefighters and cops began getting sick, the White House tried to block $90 million in funding7 for medical treatment. When Congress forced the Administration to accept the $90 million, the Administration then delayed the money8 and threatened to shut down the health-screening program. Even today, the New York Police Department has been denied much needed health grants9.

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. Remarks by the President at Victory 2004 Luncheon, 04/20/2004.
2. Remarks by the President to the American Conservative Union 40th Anniversary Gala, 05/13/2004.
3. "1,700 sue over 9/11 sickness", New York Daily News, 05/24/2004.
4. "President Bush: Don't use my husband as your mascot", Salon, 03/05/2004.
5. "W. House Molded EPA's 9/11 Reports", CBS News, 08/22/2003.
6. "It's public be damned at the EPA", New York Daily News, 08/26/2003.
7. "Cough up 9/11 aid, workers tell Bush", New York Daily News, 01/25/2003.
8. "$90M in WTC aid on hold", New York Daily News, 07/10/2003.
9. "1,700 sue over 9/11 sickness", New York Daily News, 05/24/2004.

Bush Ignores the Plight of Sick 9/11 Firefighters & Policemen

05.26.04 (6:27 am) [edit]

Fahrenheit 9/11: Burning Bush ...

05.26.04 (6:22 am) [edit]

[b]Burning Bush

It won the Palme d'Or. Can Fahrenheit 9/11 win the American presidential election?[/b]

It is one of the paradoxes of Michael Moore's career that by railing against the vested interests that make the rich richer, he has himself become incredibly wealthy. So when he became one of the handful of Americans to benefit substantially from George Bush's tax cut last year, he said it would be "a sin" to use the money in any way other than to defeat the very man who had given it to him in the first place.

In a few months, if things go to plan, he will lob the product of some of that money into the already bloody American electoral battlefield with the release of his upcoming film Fahrenheit 9/11. The film examines the relationship between the Bush and Saudi dynasties, and offers a critical view of the experiences of soldiers and their families in the Iraq war. On Saturday it won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes. And, during a tight presidential race in an increasingly polarised nation, some are now asking whether the film could play a role in losing Bush the election.

At this stage, there remains the possibility that things will not go to plan. Earlier this month Disney blocked distribution of the film, claiming it risked politically alienating too many people. The question of who gets to see Fahrenheit 9/11, and where, will determine whether it affects the outcome of the election. Drawing big crowds in Democratic heartlands such as Los Angeles or New York will make little difference. If the film reaches the malls of Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa and Missouri, however, it will be a different matter. "Moore has got to get it into the cineplexes and multiplexes," says Steven Schier, professor of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota, "and now that he has won at Cannes the force of the market could possibly push it there."

Presuming Fahrenheit 9/11 does find a distributor, its release will be a political event. According to the Washington Post, Miramax Films has hired a team of hardened Democratic apparatchiks - including Hillary Clinton's former campaign presssecretary, Howard Wolfson, top Gore adviser Michael Feldman and Clinton White House advisers Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane - to help counter any Republican attacks on the film.

So will it have any effect? "My guess is that all the people who will flock to see it were not going to vote for George Bush anyway - in other words, he is preaching to the converted," says Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media correspondent.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich would have agreed before he became one of the few people to have seen the film. "Ordinarily, I'd say it would have no effect on the election," he says. "There are two factors that could change that. First, the film itself - its second half has an emotional punch that may bring in less ideological audiences, should word of mouth take off. Secondly, the amount of publicity attending the movie, starting with the fight (contrived or not) with Disney. That may turn it into a commercial phenomenon that reaches across party lines to a larger audience than the niche reached by, say, Bowling for Columbine [Moore's last, Oscar-winning film]."

But if Moore is a divisive figure, he is speaking to an increasingly divided country. Polls show a nation deeply polarised on partisan lines, where the key factor in the forthcoming election will be not how many people you can get to switch sides but how many of your own side you can get to turn up at the polls.

"He will clearly be speaking to one side of the aisle," says Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff. "But for the Democrats, this election is not going to be about how much you love John Kerry, but how much you hate Bush. And Michael Moore is one of the prime exponents of that crucial emotional underpinning to Bush hatred."

With polls showing the main candidates so close, Moore's film is likely to have the greatest effect on both the rightwing and leftwing edges of the Democratic base, rather than the huge swathes of "yellow dog" Democrats - so called because they would vote for the party even if it stood a yellow dog for office. On the left are those who might back the independent, anti-war candidate Ralph Nader. Moore backed Nader in 2000, when the latter was widely criticised by Democrats for handing the election to Bush. A recent poll suggests Nader's running could be decisive, with Bush at 46%, Kerry at 43% and Nader at 7%. Separate polling shows that in at least half a dozen swing states Kerry would beat Bush in a two-horse race, but lose if Nader were standing. This time Moore has urged Nader not to run and is backing Kerry.

"It could make a difference with Nader voters, given Moore's history with Nader," says Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University in New York. "Insofar as the film suggests that people must find a way to do everything they can to defeat Bush."

Among more mainstream voters, the effect could be more subtle. "To say it won't win over people who might vote for Bush may be too mechanical a view of the way that public opinion works," says Jeremy Pikser, screenwriter of the political comedy Bulworth. "I can imagine that it could strengthen opinions on how completely rotten Bush is among people who didn't hate him before, and then they might have a conversation with someone at the water cooler who is not completely wedded to Bush and win them over."

Just as hatred of Bush can mobilise Democrats, so loathing of Moore may motivate Republicans. Moore-bashing has become something of a cottage industry, with websites such as Moorewatch.com - who "watch Michael Moore's every move" - posting regular diatribes against the film-maker. At times, the criticisms get personal. Speaking of Europeans' love for Moore, Christopher Hitchens said last week: "They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities."

On CNN last week, rightwing pundit Tucker Carlson said: "Michael Moore alleges the following things: that President Bush is responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11; that Bush's family is connected to Osama bin Laden in some important, sinister way; and that Bush intentionally caused the deaths of thousands of people in the war with Iraq simply to enrich his friends in the oil industry." Referring to the former Clinton and Gore advisers on the Miramax team, he asked: "What happens when the lunatic fringe and the mainstream of the Democratic party become indistinguishable?"

It was not clear whether Tucker had seen the film or not, but Pikser points out that Republicans don't have to have seen it in order to misrepresent it. "They're very good at that. Just as many liberals didn't see the need to actually watch Mel Gibson's The Passion in order to know that it was anti-semitic, so Republicans don't need to see Moore's film to hate it, or him, and use it accordingly."

For the time being, conservatives' attentions are elsewhere - focusing on the calamitous situation in Iraq and Bush's equally calamitous plunge in the polls. Several were asked to comment for this article, but none responded. But for liberals, Moore's forthcoming film is one more reason to imagine what, until a few months ago, they thought was unimaginable - that Bush could lose.

Katha Pollitt, a liberal columnist for the Nation, said: "I haven't seen it, but it sounds like a 100-minute negative ad against Bush and co. And negative ads work." - http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,13918,1224710,00.html

Fahrenheit 9/11: Burning Bush ...

05.26.04 (6:21 am) [edit]

Fahrenheit 9/11: Burning Bush ...

05.26.04 (6:20 am) [edit]

A disaster, any way you slice it: Bush speech alarms even war enthusiasts

05.26.04 (6:15 am) [edit]

Even the staunchest supporters of President Bush's Iraq enterprise were less than cheered by his speech to the nation Monday night outlining the path forward, some describing the administration as being in a state of panic.

In particular, the neoconservatives who provided the intellectual argument that an invasion of Iraq could provide a template for democracy in the Middle East are expressing open alarm that this effort is dangerously off course.

"There's no question the administration has been in total panic mode, and they don't need to be, because Iraq is salvageable," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has been a hotbed of support for the war. "But I think there is still so much indecision about what to do that it's going to be hard for them to do the right thing."

Many administration hawks were drawn from the neoconservative intellectual ranks, notably deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the idea that the United States could make Iraq a democratic beacon.

Their dismay comes as some Republicans in Congress fear that Bush's Iraq policy has become unhinged, given the relentless bad news coming out of Iraq: a multiheaded insurgency among Shiites and Sunnis, the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the steady rise in U.S. casualties.

Others on the political right, as distinct from their more interventionist neoconservative colleagues, have begun openly attacking the administration. Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin called Abu Ghraib "a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought." He asked why the administration was trying to occupy Iraq with current troop levels, "even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy."

Some of Bush's supporters concede the administration has committed blunders over the past year. Many suggest a sharp change in course -- such as adding thousands of troops, or moving up elections or forcefully quashing insurgents -- which they contend Bush did not promise Monday.

"It was important for Bush to remind the American public of the cost of failure," said Michael Rubin, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and another neoconservative war supporter. "Basically, Bush was letting us see the forest through the trees."

However, he said, "the devil's in the details, and with the stakes so high, we can't ignore the details."

Yet while criticizing the administration for failures of execution, few neoconservatives have abandoned their belief that the war was a good idea or that it is intimately linked, as Bush insisted Monday, with fighting terrorism.

Joining the neoconservatives in support of the basic war effort are Democratic hawks such as Rep. Tom Lantos of San Mateo, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.

"Iraq is clearly waiting to see if we will help develop a more open society or whether we will tire, declare a Pyrrhic victory and leave," Lantos said, urging persistence and greater international involvement.

"Nobody is admitting defeat, and if anything they are taking an even harder line," said Charles Pena, head of defense studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, which opposed the invasion and urges a speedy withdrawal.

Some contend that neoconservatives resemble the communists they once ridiculed, blaming the failures of communist ideology on the Kremlin's execution.

"It's an argument that shows that they didn't understand the problem to begin with, that you just cannot use military force to dictate outcomes everywhere in the world," Pena said. "It's based on this presumption that somehow we have to turn Iraq into a democracy, that that will somehow make us safe, which presumes Iraq was a threat to begin with."

War supporters have been emphasizing the bright spots in the occupation, such as the relative calm in some parts of the country.

Many compare the current situation in Iraq with the darkest moments of World War II, when rampant despair clouded victories that lay ahead.

Neoconservatives warn, however, that the administration seems headed on a dangerous course. Pletka charges the administration with "subcontracting" the political process to the United Nations. Many are particularly worried by the decision to enlist a former Republican Guard general to pacify Fallujah, site of a bloody Sunni insurgency last month. Handing over security to factional militias is a recipe not for elections but for civil war, they contend. They urge instead a crackdown by U.S. forces.

"The truth is it wouldn't take much actually to turn this around, not that they necessarily will," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a leading neoconservative think tank. "There are a lot of very positive trends going on in Iraq, and I think if you take care of the security situation and the political trend lines toward real elections, in fact I think Iraq is more than salvageable."

But their critics say the hawks' predictions have nearly all gone awry. The weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war were never found, and the war's cost, rather than being self-funded from Iraq's oil revenues, has reached $170 billion with no end in sight.

Neoconservatives widely predicted an easy occupation followed by an immediate peace, followed by "a flourishing democracy which would cause a domino effect across the region creating democracies elsewhere," said Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And then the very first foreign policy position taken by this new democratic Iraq, run by their exile friends, would be to recognize Israel, and that would somehow end the Arab-Israeli conflict, and bunnies would dance in the streets, and we would find life on Mars."

Singer said the plan was "incredibly ambitious to the point of absurdity, and of course reality stepped in, and that's where we are now."

Neoconservatives contend they predicted no such thing.

"I'm on the record as saying the occupation would require several hundred thousand troops and the process would take five to 10 years," said Schmitt. "So you didn't get the cakewalk stuff from us. That said, the administration made it harder on itself because, frankly, they planned a military campaign that was quite efficient at getting rid of the government but didn't plan on getting rid of the regime, and the result allowed a lot of Baathist Republican Guard and other insurgents to get their feet under them and create the insurgency we face today.

"I'm willing to say policy was still correct, but I'm not willing to take the blame for people's inability to carry it out in an effective fashion." - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

A disaster, any way you slice it: Bush speech alarms even war enthusiasts

05.26.04 (6:10 am) [edit]

59% of Americans Say That George W. Bush Has Done A PISS-POOR JOB!!!

05.24.04 (10:59 am) [edit]

[b]Down into Daddy territory.[/b] The president's approval rating is down to 41%, according to a just released[i] CBS News [/i]poll http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... .

WWLD: What would Lyndon do http://www.historychannel.com... ?

Lloyd Bentsen, bringing it all together with full Texasosity and history, could probably answer the above best http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITIC... .

Joshua Micah Marshall - http://www.talkingpointsmemo....

The World Hates George W. Bush, The Consumate Ugly American Crook

05.24.04 (10:55 am) [edit]

George W. Bush is the consumate Poster-Bully-Boy of the Ugly American: The imbecilic ne'er-do-well and traitor Dubya takes pride in the fact that he is stupid, ignorant and treats other nations and peoples with disdain and contempt ...

Moreover, the neo-fascist Bush and his cabal of neo-con war criminals trample & tread on the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights which they also treat with disdain and contempt ...

Bush isn't fit to be president, as the majority of historians (who actually do know something about history, culture and politics, unlike the arrogant Bushies) will tell you ...

-- Please read about how historians view Bush on : http://www.tblog.com/template...

-- For further justification for why Bush should be impeached read "Bush White House Memorandum on the Geneva Conventions" on : http://www.tblog.com/template...

Now is the time to call for the impeachment of Bush and the firing of Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the neo-cons who have hijacked our government and who have treasonously handed it over to gluttonous corporations (as well as Israel) who unconscionably define-and-carry-out our U.S. Domestic & Foreign policies. Americans are being used as cannon-fodder in Bush's unnecessary blood-thirsty wars, and as slave labour while corporate top-dogs & fat-cats reap massive neo-feudal-style profits embezzled from working people (Minimum wage would be between $15.00-$36.00/hour if working peoples' wages rose at the same rate as over-rated, rapacious & unethical CEOs & Executives' golden-pay-packets over the past decade.)

The corrupt Bush regime do not care about the health and prosperity of America and are unfit to serve our nation. They have damaged our economy creating the largest deficit spending and debts in our nation's history, by giving massive tax cuts, tax loopholes & tax boondoggles to corporations, wealthy oligarchs and hyper-rich plutocrats-- while Middle Class & Working people are hit hard by inflation (e.g. higher gas prices, etc.)and a crumbling national infrastructure.

Our Founding Fathers would hang their heads in shame!!!

Iraq and the Christian Zionists

05.24.04 (7:39 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq and the Christian Zionists[/b]

To understand what is happening in the Middle East, wrote George Monbiot in [i]The Guardian [/i]of London recently, you must first understand what is happening in the U.S., where evangelical Christians are driving President Bush's policies. The explanation slowly is becoming familiar to us, he says, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

Mr. Monbiot recounts that in the 19th century, "two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its 'biblical lands' (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth."

I had heard of outrage from some Jews in this country that evangelical Christian supporters of the Jewish state have motivations other than security against its Arab neighbors. One Jewish friend likened the idea as, "To save you, we have to kill you." He, too, cited what Mr. Monbiot said makes the idea so appealing to evangelicals:

"Before the big battle begins, all 'true believers' (i.e., those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow. The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about," he said, by "seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be."

Thursday's rebroadcast of[i] Frontline's [/i]"The Jesus Factor" on PBS recounted Mr. Bush's personal religious journey and the growing political influence of the nation's more than 70 million evangelical Christians. Mr. Monbiot describes the political calculus thusly: Fifteen percent to 18 percent of U.S. voters belong to churches or movements that subscribe to these teachings, including 33 percent of Republicans. Among them are some of the most powerful men in America: Attorney General John Ashcroft, several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who last year told the Israeli Knesset that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking" toward the Palestinians.

Said Mr. Monbiot: "So here we have a major political constituency -- representing much of the current president's core vote -- in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates' will be released 'to slay the third part of men.' " And they effectively pressure the president, he said, against any pressure on Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon.

Mr. Monbiot concludes: "The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85 percent of the U.S. electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15 percent, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter; it's a personal one:

"If the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to."

What Rick Perlstein called "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby" ("The Jesus Landing Pad," May 18 [i]Village Voice[/i]) suggests that the bloody debacle in today's Iraq is what the current administration wanted all along. It also may explain some of Mr. Bush's recalcitrance -- which his supporters liken to steadfastness -- in the face of the realities in Iraq. Most of what has gone wrong there was predicted well before the invasion, by very qualified people in government, and was preceded by massive protest worldwide.

Raney Aronson is producer of the [i]Frontline [/i]documentary, which can be viewed at www.pbs.org. In a Washington Post online interview, he was asked whether there is evidence that Mr. Bush "shares the 'Christian Zionist' belief that Israel must gain dominance over the Holy Land in order to bring the Second Coming of Christ, the Rapture, etc." President Bush "has not spoken about this issue," said Mr. Aronson. "But I do believe, as he talks so often of his faith, and his belief in the Bible, (that) this is a good question for him to address." - http://www.palmbeachpost.com/...

Iraq and the Christian Zionists

05.24.04 (7:35 am) [edit]

Iraq and the Christian Zionists

05.24.04 (7:32 am) [edit]

Iraq and the Christian Zionists

05.24.04 (7:31 am) [edit]

War Crimes & Double Standards

05.24.04 (7:25 am) [edit]

[b]War Crimes & Double Standards[/b]

[i]The allies claim to have right on their side yet they stand accused of killing innocent Iraqis, still more photographs show abuse by US soldiers and Israel mows down children in Gaza[/i]

There is a dreadful symmetry between the two incidents which last week virtually destroyed the allies� moral case for their military operations in the Middle East: the killings at an alleged Iraqi wedding and the decision to open fire on protesters in Rafah, Gaza.

Both took place in border areas considered to be lawless. If the US story is to be believed their forces attacked a legitimate target: a suspected safe house used by foreign fighters close to the Syrian border, and during the operation 22 enemy were killed. In the Israeli version, their soldiers were engaged in an internal security operation against known Palestinian targets following the killing of 13 of their own soldiers in Rafah last week. Both operations involved the use of overwhelming force. In the Iraqi desert the US deployed armoured vehicles and aircraft to attack a target defended by gunmen. The Israelis used tanks and attack helicopters in support of a ground offensive aimed at destroying buildings and tunnels used by Palestinians to smuggle in arms from Egypt. Both accounts have been challenged by eyewitnesses.

The Iraqi account of the attack in Makr al-Deeb, a small town in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan could hardly be more different to the American version. Eyewitnesses claimed American missiles were fired at a wedding party, killing more than 40 people, including 15 children and 10 women.

One eyewitnesss said: �At about 3am, we were sleeping and the planes started firing. They fired more than 40 missiles. As soon as they started attacking, firing the first missile, I went away. I was running. There are no fighters. These are lies. There�s no resistance. Even the bride and the groom died.�

Eyewitnesses outside the Tel Sultan refugee camp in the southern Gaza town of Rafah told a similar story of ruthless violence against unarmed civilians � again including children. The Israeli Defence Forces used missiles and tank shells to break up a demonstration, killing 10 Palestinians and wounding at least 40.

The Israeli military authorities were at pains to point out that the four-day offensive had military aims, in this case the destruction of tunnels used for smuggling arms from Egypt into Gaza. Israeli defence officials insisted that civilians had not been targeted, that warning shots had been fired into a �an open field� and that Palestinian gunmen had infiltrated the demonstration. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who ordered the operation as part of his policy to pull out of Gaza, let it be known that he was �sorry� about the incident.

For the Israelis condemnation was not long in coming. Both the UN and the EU called on Sharon to halt operations in Rafah and, in a rare move, the Bush administration decided not to veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israel�s actions. There was also a rebuke from US secretary of state Colin Powell who said the �wholesale bulldozing of houses� was not �productive�.

The UN�s envoy for human rights in Palestine, Professor John Dugard, went further, describing the actions as �war crimes� and calling on the Security Council �to take appropriate action to stop the violence, if necessary by the imposition of a mandatory arms embargo�.

His recommendation was followed by a statement by Amnesty International urging the Israeli government to act quickly and decisively to investigate the incident: � It is imperative that a thorough and independent investigation be promptly carried out . The scope, methods and findings of the investigation must be made public and those responsible for human rights violations must be brought to justice.�

Coming on top of the scandal at Baghdad�s Abu Ghraib prison, the offensive in Gaza and the Iraqi bombing will do nothing to help the cause of the US-led coalition in Iraq. The Bush administration was praying news coming out of Iraq would not get worse, but there is now a sense in Washington that the crisis is getting out of control. In addition to the drip-feed release of ever-more horrifying images of abuse, the case against the US is assuming such serious proportions that the words �homicide� and �murder� are now being used by military officials investigating the deaths of 37 detainees in Iraq and five in Afghanistan.

While 475 Iraqi detainees were released from Abu Ghraib on Friday, the relentless exposure of torture within its walls is taking its toll on the reputation of US forces in Iraq. A poll undertaken by the Iraqi Centre for Research and Strategic Studies shows that support for the radical Shi�ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr has increased as the popularity of the coalition has slumped. Last week only 7% viewed them as �liberators�, down from 40% at the end of 2003. Even Coalition Provisional Authority supporters, such as Kurdish leader Mahmoud Othman, now claims the occupation has been mismanaged: �What is happening is the accumulation of a year of mistakes. The Iraqis expected that when Saddam Hussein�s regime was toppled they should be allowed to govern their country.�

Tomorrow night in the apt surroundings of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, President Bush will defend his administration�s position. According to White House sources he will back the plans for an interim government drawn up by the UN envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, and will provide an up-beat assessment of the way ahead in the run-up to the transfer of sovereignty on June 30. More to the point, Bush will refute allegations that the US cause has been tainted by the charges of brutality from Abu Ghraib.

The latest evidence makes unhappy reading for a country which has always prided itself on helping the underdog. Far from treating the detainees under the terms of the Geneva Convention it is now clear that coercive interrogation techniques led to deaths which could attract murder charges. In one case Major-General Abed Hamed Mowhoush, commander of Saddam Hussein�s air defences died of �asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression� while being questioned. Other deaths were caused by �multiple gunshot wounds�, �strangulation� or �blunt force injuries� � all evidence of the use of extreme violence.

So far US military reaction to the evidence has been muted. But in the case of the attack on Makr al-Deeb, Major-General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was brutally candid when he was asked about the video evidence showing civilian casualties . �Let�s not be naive � bad things happen in war. I don�t have to apologise for the conduct of my men.� Mattis, a tough veteran of the Gulf and Afghan wars was simply stating a stark truth. In this new war against terrorism bad things happen, blameless people find themselves in the firing line, one side�s planned military strike can be another�s mindless atrocity, and all the time the line between operational effectiveness and war crime becomes increasingly blurred.

Bush has always insisted the war against terrorism is not a war against Islam. But the apparent massacre of Iraqis and the relentless tit-for-tat killings in the Palestinian territories seem to many Muslims to be evidence of what the US Middle East expert Edward Walker calls �a clash of civilisations�. The former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt now directs the influential Middle East Institution in Washington. He is convinced that �the way we are going is leading us towards the very thing we want to be against�, with the result that many Muslims feel that their world is under a savage assault from the West.

Walker�s fears came as more evidence of depraved brutality emerged from Abu Ghraib. Iraqi detainees are shown being forced to eat pork and drink alcohol � humiliations which hit at the heart of their religious beliefs. It is also becoming clear that the guards� behaviour was not only sanctioned by senior officers but some of the military intelligence officers had already used similar �softening-up� tactics while dealing with detainees at centres in Afghanistan where the Geneva Convention was not applied. Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Colonel Marc Warren, a legal officer in the US army�s headquarters in Baghdad, admitted that the personnel involved brought to Iraq �their own policies that had been used in other theatres�.

By yesterday, most Israeli tanks which rumbled into Rafah had been withdrawn, leaving behind a shattered landscape of torn-up roads and rubble.

The scars, physical and emotional, will remain. Earlier in the week Israeli commanders had vowed to raze the area to protect their soldiers ; now they are being more cautious. Israeli deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert has promised that there will be no more demolitions after bowing to pressure from Bush, who has admitted that �the unfolding violence in the Gaza strip is troubling�. Nobody was willing to say if the US president will be as forthcoming tomorrow night about recent events in Iraq and the �bad things� which happen there in the war against terrorism. - http://www.sundayherald.com/4...

War Crimes & Double Standards

05.24.04 (7:20 am) [edit]

Down into Daddy Territory: Bush's Approval Ratings Continue to Slip, Slide Away ...

05.24.04 (7:15 am) [edit]

Down into Daddy Territory: Bush's Approval Ratings Continue to Slip, Slide Away ...

05.24.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

Reasons for Rumsfeld's Resignation Apply More to Bush & His Neo-Con Hawks & Nazis!!!

05.23.04 (6:27 am) [edit]

Donald Rumsfeld has presided over the most foolish conflict since the War of Jenkins' Ear in the 18th century, and he is at the top of a military force that tortured prisoners. So Washington is humming with widespread calls, including one from this newspaper, for him to be fired.

But those demands strike me as unfair and premature.

Frankly, I'm astonished to be speaking up for Mr. Rumsfeld. But fairness must govern our handling of American defense secretaries as well as Iraqi prisoners. The central point is that we have no proof that Mr. Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture.

So far the evidence is mixed about whether there was a policy of abusing prisoners to get intelligence. It's troubling that there was similar misconduct in Afghanistan, and that some of the techniques reflect expertise in torture. On the other hand, interviews with inmates and guards alike have suggested that most of the really horrifying abuses may have been limited to the night shift at one cellblock of one particular prison. The latest revelations from The Washington Post are horrifying; guards threw inmates' food into toilets and tortured them into renouncing their religion.

So we need a thorough investigation. If Mr. Rumsfeld turns out to be complicit, he must go. But if, as Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba has said in his report (deservedly praised as tough and unsparing), the problems were at much lower levels, then why make a scapegoat of the defense secretary?

It's true that the torture arose in a climate of administration contempt for the Geneva Conventions, particularly reflected in those shameful Justice Department memos outlining loopholes so the U.S. could evade responsibility for war crimes. But this disregard for ethics and law arose mostly from the White House and the Justice Department.

The better argument for Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster is that he led us, poorly prepared and clutching the hands of a charlatan, Ahmad Chalabi, into a quagmire. His doctrine of underwhelming force hobbled our occupation and is partly responsible for the mess. According to a poll cited in The Financial Times, 58 percent of Iraqis now support Moktada al-Sadr, one of our enemies.

But remember: this is not Mr. Rumsfeld's war. It is President Bush's.

Mr. Rumsfeld is not a neo-conservative hawk. He is an old-fashioned conservative, a realist like the first President Bush, and he did not particularly press for war with Iraq. The real culprits are the neo-con ideologues who screamed for war: people like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby and the current President Bush himself.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not display the wisdom of Colin Powell, who pushed back against Mr. Bush in the run-up to war. But neither was he a jingoist. According to Bob Woodward's new book, Mr. Rumsfeld spent meetings asking questions rather than taking positions. So why fire Mr. Rumsfeld for carrying out his boss's invasion?

True, he has managed it poorly, and there's an argument for firing Mr. Rumsfeld for incompetence. But how do we justify retaining Mr. Cheney, who bears central responsibility for everything that has gone wrong, and George Tenet, who managed both to miss the 9/11 plot and to "find" slam-dunk evidence of Iraqi W.M.D.?

Indeed, under the neo-cons the war would have been even more mishandled. Mr. Wolfowitz believed that a small number of troops could seize Iraq's southern oil fields and that Saddam's regime would then fall.

What would firing Mr. Rumsfeld achieve? In its favor, it would send a message to the world that we are as appalled by our own war crimes as by Saddam's. But it would also leave a vacuum. The people immediately below Mr. Rumsfeld � Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Feith � are more culpable and would need to follow him out the door. Emptying the top three jobs in the Pentagon would be a nice gesture of accountability, but would also lead to paralysis and more Americans coming home in body bags.

So until proof emerges that Mr. Rumsfeld was directly connected to the torture, it would be unfair to single him out. That's why only 20 percent of Americans say in an ABC poll that Mr. Rumsfeld should lose his job. Even Democrats oppose firing Mr. Rumsfeld by a ratio of two to one.

The person who charted the course into Iraq and who bears ultimate responsibility is not Mr. Rumsfeld but Mr. Bush � and his bosses will get a chance to fire him in November. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%2 0and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd% 2fColumnists

Reasons for Rumsfeld's Resignation Apply More to Bush & His Neo-Con Hawks & Nazis!!!

05.23.04 (6:25 am) [edit]

Bush's Despicable Legacy: Regarding the Torture of Others ...

05.23.04 (6:21 am) [edit]

[b]I.[/b]

For a long time -- at least six decades -- photographs have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered. The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events, and it now seems probable that the defining association of people everywhere with the war that the United States launched pre-emptively in Iraq last year will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans in the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's prisons, Abu Ghraib.

The Bush administration and its defenders have chiefly sought to limit a public-relations disaster -- the dissemination of the photographs -- rather than deal with the complex crimes of leadership and of policy revealed by the pictures. There was, first of all, the displacement of the reality onto the photographs themselves. The administration's initial response was to say that the president was shocked and disgusted by the photographs -- as if the fault or horror lay in the images, not in what they depict. There was also the avoidance of the word ''torture.'' The prisoners had possibly been the objects of ''abuse,'' eventually of ''humiliation'' -- that was the most to be admitted. ''My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture,'' Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a press conference. ''And therefore I'm not going to address the 'torture' word.''

Words alter, words add, words subtract. It was the strenuous avoidance of the word ''genocide'' while some 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda were being slaughtered, over a few weeks' time, by their Hutu neighbors 10 years ago that indicated the American government had no intention of doing anything. To refuse to call what took place in Abu Ghraib -- and what has taken place elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay -- by its true name, torture, is as outrageous as the refusal to call the Rwandan genocide a genocide. Here is one of the definitions of torture contained in a convention to which the United States is a signatory: ''any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.'' (The definition comes from the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Similar definitions have existed for some time in customary law and in treaties, starting with Article 3 -- common to the four Geneva conventions of 1949 -- and many recent human rights conventions.) The 1984 convention declares, ''No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.'' And all covenants on torture specify that it includes treatment intended to humiliate the victim, like leaving prisoners naked in cells and corridors.

Whatever actions this administration undertakes to limit the damage of the widening revelations of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- trials, courts-martial, dishonorable discharges, resignation of senior military figures and responsible administration officials and substantial compensation to the victims -- it is probable that the ''torture'' word will continue to be banned. To acknowledge that Americans torture their prisoners would contradict everything this administration has invited the public to believe about the virtue of American intentions and America's right, flowing from that virtue, to undertake unilateral action on the world stage.

Even when the president was finally compelled, as the damage to America's reputation everywhere in the world widened and deepened, to use the ''sorry'' word, the focus of regret still seemed the damage to America's claim to moral superiority. Yes, President Bush said in Washington on May 6, standing alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan, he was ''sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.'' But, he went on, he was ''equally sorry that people seeing these pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America.''

To have the American effort in Iraq summed up by these images must seem, to those who saw some justification in a war that did overthrow one of the monster tyrants of modern times, ''unfair.'' A war, an occupation, is inevitably a huge tapestry of actions. What makes some actions representative and others not? The issue is not whether the torture was done by individuals (i.e., ''not by everybody'') -- but whether it was systematic. Authorized. Condoned. All acts are done by individuals. The issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such acts likely.

[b]II.[/b]

Considered in this light, the photographs are us. That is, they are representative of the fundamental corruptions of any foreign occupation together with the Bush adminstration's distinctive policies. The Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria, practiced torture and sexual humiliation on despised recalcitrant natives. Add to this generic corruption the mystifying, near-total unpreparedness of the American rulers of Iraq to deal with the complex realities of the country after its ''liberation.'' And add to that the overarching, distinctive doctrines of the Bush administration, namely that the United States has embarked on an endless war and that those detained in this war are, if the president so decides, ''unlawful combatants'' -- a policy enunciated by Donald Rumsfeld for Taliban and Qaeda prisoners as early as January 2002 -- and thus, as Rumsfeld said, ''technically'' they ''do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention,'' and you have a perfect recipe for the cruelties and crimes committed against the thousands incarcerated without charges or access to lawyers in American-run prisons that have been set up since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves but what the photographs reveal to have happened to ''suspects'' in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken -- with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be seen in a book just published, ''Photographing the Holocaust,'' by Janina Struk. If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

[b]Read the entire article, "Regarding the Torture of Others" by Susan Sontag[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Bush's Despicable Legacy: Regarding the Torture of Others ...

05.23.04 (6:19 am) [edit]

Bush's "Bay of Goats" ...

05.23.04 (6:16 am) [edit]

So let me get this straight:

We ransacked the house of the con man whom we paid millions to feed us fake intelligence on W.M.D. that would make the case for ransacking the country that the con man assured us would be a cinch to take over because he wanted to run it.

And now we're shocked, shocked and awed to discover that a crook is a crook and we have nobody to turn over Iraq to, and the Jordanian embezzler-turned-American puppet-turned-accused Iranian spy is trying to foment even more anger against us and the U.N. officials we've crawled back to for help, anger that may lead to civil war.

The party line that Paul Bremer was notified about the raid on Ahmad Chalabi's house after the fact is absurd. The Iraqi police, who can't seem to do anything without us, were just proxies. We were going after the very guy who persuaded us to go after Saddam, the con man the na�ve neo-cons cast as de Gaulle; the swindler who sold himself to Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz as Spartacus.

One diplomat from the region grimly cited an old Punjabi saying: "It's very bad when grandma marries a crook, but it is even worse when she divorces the crook."

Mr. Chalabi's wealthy family was swept out of Iraq in a coup in 1958 and he spent much of his life plotting a coup to take back his homeland, a far-fetched scheme that took on life when he hooked up with Mr. Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Doug Feith, who had their own dream of staging a coup of American foreign policy to do an extreme Middle East makeover.

The hawks dismissed warnings from their own people � such as the Bush Middle East envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni � that the Iraqi National Congress was full of "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London." As General Zinni told The Times in 2000: "They are pie in the sky. They're going to lead us to a Bay of Goats, or something like that."

The C.I.A. and State Department, too, grew disgusted with Mr. Chalabi, even though State paid his organization $33 million from 2000 to 2003.

Cheney & Company swooned over Mr. Chalabi because he was telling them what they wanted to hear, that it would be simple to go back and rewrite the Persian Gulf war ending so that it was not bellum interruptus.

The president and his hawks insisted that only a "relatively small number" of "thugs," as Mr. Perle told George Stephanopoulos last month, were keeping the country from peace. Mr. Perle said the solution was "to repose a little bit of confidence in people who share our values and our objectives . . . people like Ahmad Chalabi." The neo-cons still think he can be Churchill.

On Thursday, an Iraqi judge, Hussain Muathin, also lamented the actions of "a small number of thugs." But he was announcing warrants for the arrest of thugs around Mr. Perle's own George Washington, Chalabi henchmen suspected of kidnapping, torture and theft. Didn't we sack Saddam to stop that stuff?

Now we're using Saddam's old generals to restore order � reversing the de-Baathification approach that Mr. Chalabi championed � while Mr. Chalabi snakes around like a bus-and-truck Tony Soprano, garnering less trust than Saddam in polls of Iraqis.

A half-dozen dunderheads who thought they knew everything assumed they could control Mr. Chalabi and use him as the instrument of their utopian fantasies. But one week after getting cut off from the $335,000-a-month Pentagon allowance arranged by his neo-con buddies, he glibly accepts the street cred that goes with bashing America. And he still won't give us all of Saddam's secret files, which he confiscated and is using to discredit his enemies.

Going from Spartacus to Moses, he proclaims to America, "Let my people go" � even as he plays footsie with the country that once denounced the U.S. as the Great Satan.

On Friday at Louisiana State University, President Bush told graduates: "On the job and elsewhere in life, choose your friends carefully. The company you keep has a way of rubbing off on you � and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing. In my job, I got to pick just about everybody I work with. I've been happy with my choices � although I wish someone had warned me about all of Dick Cheney's wild partying."

Mr. Bush thought he was kidding, but too bad he didn't get that warning before Dick Cheney took the world on such a wild ride.

[b]Bay of Goats, by MAUREEN DOWD[/b], http://nytimes.com/2004/05/23...

Bush's "Bay of Goats" ...

05.23.04 (6:15 am) [edit]

What Would Our Founding Fathers Say About Bush's So-Called "Christianity"???

05.23.04 (6:12 am) [edit]

"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...

Our Founding Fathers were adament in creating a "wall of separation between church and state" and would have been appalled at the pressure brought to bear to impose hateful intolerence & divisive ideologies by so-called "religious" zealots and tyrannical fanatics like the traitorous & hypocritical Bush (unfit to be president) who is corrupting our system of democracy ... Bush's so-called form of "Christianity (sic)" pathetically has resulted in:

1. Bloody warfare based upon heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods (e.g. phony WMDs posing a so-called "imminent threat" to our national security, phony links between Al Qaeda & Saddam Hussein, cynically manipulating the fear & anger of Americans in the aftermath of 9/11, when Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, unlike the Saudis: Bush's buddies, etc.) for which he should be impeached;

2. Lack of compassion, lack of action to help over 45 million Americans without health care coverage (while Bush brags & smirks about Iraqis getting health care-- that is, when they are not being murdered, tortured, raped, ridden like donkeys, and abused in atrocities committed on orders from Bush, Cheney, Rice & Rumsfeld ...)-- so Americans live in miserable pain, diseased or go bankrupt with over 18,000 Americans dying each year because they can't afford health care;

3. Lack of concern, lack of action about skyrocketing poverty in the U.S.A. with over 25 million families desperately trying to to make ends meet, living below an out-dated poverty-line established over 40 years ago-- over 4 million Americans who are homeless-- between 9-15 million Americans without jobs;

4. Highest gap between the Hyper-Rich Haves & the Impoverished Have-Nots in over 75 years, with America's backbone, the Middle-Class shrinking;

5. Inflation (e.g. higher gas prices, higher costs in goods & services, more people losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages) hitting the Middle-Class and Working people very hard, while corporations, wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats are awarded immoral tax cuts, tax loopholes and tax boondoggles and living like Emperor Caligulas-- supported by the rest of us who are saddled with Bush's record-level deficits and historically high debts-- that are hurting the value of the dollar and our standard of living.

Our nation's infrastructure is crumbling all around us (e.g. Bush's "Leave No Child Behind" Failure has Left Lots of Children Worse Off because no funds were allocated to enable teachers to teach [Why do you think that the rich send their kids to private schools with 15 kids/class instead of the 30-40/class sizes that public school teachers have to contend with?]!-- No money for fire-fighters-- No money for roads, hospitals, schools, etc.), while the so-called "Christian (sic)" Bush is spending over $5 Billion/Month on Iraq (over $114 Billion thus far in Iraq, with no end in sight!)-- Bush's gang of neo-con thugs bribed the embezzler, crook & liar Ahmed Chalabi with over $33 Million (including $340,000/Month) for false information, and Chalabi betrayed our nation by selling national security secrets to Iran (Which Neo-Con Traitors in the Pentagon gave their "pet" Chalabi Top-Secret US information? Shouldn't these Neo-Con Traitors including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton-- who have gotten us into this mess be fired and tried for treason?) Condi Rice was appointed head of the Iraqi Stabilization Group (ISG) back in October 2003 by Bush and the situtation has continued to spiral out-of-control ever since! Why is Rice still in office, as she is over-rated, incompetent and a liar?

Where are all of these so-called "Christian (sic)" "values"??? Americans are being damaged, harmed and impoverished by a reckless, ruthless gang of neo-con warmongers for war-profiteering... There is nothing "Christian" in their heinous War Crimes and Rape of America.

It is sad to watch the cynical manipulation of uneducated, well-meaning, but foolish so-called "Christians (sic)" who stand behind a dangerously stupid buffoon Bush who acts like a Nazi and not an American. These misguided people are suckered by the Bushies who are using them/us as cannon-fodder, slave labour & sheep to further their own sordid & squalid aims. Those who profess to "love life" should be concerned (or outraged) over Bush's abortions of nearly 800 U.S. Soldiers and between 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians (pregnant women with unborn kids are amongst his casualties) with the death toll rising day-in-and-day-out and no end in sight... Moreover, do these so-called "Christians (sic)" approve of murder, rape, torture, putting a harness on the elderly and riding them like a donkey, and abuse of prisoners??? If so, it is no wonder that the Arab world wants none of it... The rest of the world wants none of it ... Conscientious and thoughtful Americans want none of it either...

Let "We the People" reject the hypocrisy of the corrupt Un-Christian, Un-American Bush regime and their over-zealot followers who would make Jesus Christ weep with shame for their heinous & callous treatment of American people and other peoples around the world (especially the Iraqis and the Afghanistianis who have been mercilessly massacred, tortured, etc.) ... And, who would make Our Founding Fathers weep, for we are NOT a so-called "Christian (sic)" nation and this ugly, arrogant and self-righteous religiosity is tinny, false, abhorrent and destructive to our Republic For Which It Stands (Our Republic Stands for our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, and NOT the Bible) ...

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

In a highly informative interview by Bill Moyers (NOW with Bill Moyers http://www.pbs.org/now/societ... ) with Susan Jacoby, author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" (excerpt on http://www.beliefnet.com/stor... ), they explore the dangers of our society being turned into a fanatical religious totalitarian system if we do not go back to the roots of our government, our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... Indeed, Ms. Jacoby cites John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S., who in the Treaty with Tripoli (1796-97), reassures the Barbary States of Northern Africa that the United States of America is "not to be founded on Christianity" http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/j... ...

"We the People" must extricate ourselves from the dangerously stupid and corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. junta, comprised of vile traitors who are undermining our nation's heritage, system of laws and historical role in the world community ...

[b]By WinstonSmith's Daily Journal[/b], http://winstonsmith.tblog.com...

What Would Our Founding Fathers Say About Bush's So-Called "Christianity"???

05.23.04 (6:10 am) [edit]

'Recognize Bush's lies; show the world we disagree'

05.22.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

Man, I look out at a world in dire need of a U.S. president who is compassionate and wise and loving and bright, and then I think of what we've got: a Yee! Ha! reactionary who has no conscience or common sense and is prone to tell lies. A man who yells "Bring it on!" to the whole wide world right before our eyes.

And I don't understand why we average Jills and Joes and John and Jane Does don't pause a moment and check this dude out. Why do we get captivated by his side shows, the asterisks to the horrors he has unleashed upon the world? Take, for example, what we are all focused on right now in Iraq: the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Everybody is in an uproar, and we should be, but what's all this George W. Bush talk about how the abuse "is a stain on our country's honor and reputation"? Please. Who is he to talk about staining our honor and reputation? He's the honor and reputation stainer of the universe.

Has there been a bloodier stain on our country's honor and reputation than the Shock and Awe Show he premiered in Iraq a year ago? I do not think so.

Could there be anything more humiliating and degrading to the people of Iraq than their being practically blown off the map?

And didn't the president set the tone for prisoners being led around on leashes and arranged into pornographic scenes? Isn't there something familiar about the pictures we've seen? The stances the young adrenalized, compromised prison guards copped, the thumbs up, the happy-go-lucky smiles, the "everything is cool" attitude? Huh? These warriors cannot be excused.

But their commander in chief set the tone for their behavior through every word they've ever heard him utter about Iraq, through every facial expression they've ever seen him mug about Iraq, through his "I couldn't care less" body language about Iraq, through his attack on Iraq as the world screamed "No!" to that.

Yet I hear that 42 out of every 100 of us still approve of what Bush has done in Iraq. Now that's alarming, considering that we don't have to reach very deep into the critical thinking portion of our brains to figure out what this man is all about. Come on, he is talking "liberation" and walking "occupation" and somehow close to half of us are OK with the situation?

Is there logic to our letting this man continue to pull wool over our eyes with his ongoing and never-ending lies, which shroud us, as a nation, in hypocrisy? And if we want to be silly for a moment and declare that this war really is about helping Iraqis establish a democracy, then why aren't we, "the people," helping? Why aren't we, as earthlings who are free, citizens of the Land of Liberty, challenging our leaders and demanding, with all the avenues at our means, that they relate to the rest of the world responsibly and peacefully?

If we don't demonstrate to ourselves and the rest of the world that we aren't complicit with the dismal tone George W. Bush has set, not only in Iraq, but also throughout the world at the dawning of the 21st century, then we have failed miserably as a democracy.

We need to stand tall in this needy world, as loving people of conscience and common sense, and lighten the stains on our nation's honor and reputation that grow darker day by day. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

'Recognize Bush's lies; show the world we disagree'

05.22.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

Bush's lies; show the world we disagree ...

05.22.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

O gullible Bushies! Neo-cons' best friend Chalabi is revealed to be spy for Iran

05.22.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

The Information Collection Program also "kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing" by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years.

An administration official confirmed that "highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel."

The Defense Department this week halted payment of $340,000 a month to Chalabi's program. Chalabi had long been the favorite of the Pentagon's civilian leadership. Intelligence sources say Chalabi himself has passed on sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Iranians.

Patrick Lang, former director of the intelligence agency's Middle East branch, said he had been told by colleagues in the intelligence community that Chalabi's U.S.-funded program to provide information about weapons of mass destruction and insurgents was effectively an Iranian intelligence operation. "They [the Iranians] knew exactly what we were up to," he said.

He described it as "one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history."

"I'm a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work," he said.

An intelligence agency spokesman would not discuss questions about his agency's internal conclusions about the alleged Iranian operation. But he said some of its information had been helpful to the U.S. "Some of the information was great, especially as it pertained to arresting high value targets and on force protection issues," he said. "And some of the information wasn't so great."

At the center of the alleged Iranian intelligence operation, according to administration officials and intelligence sources, is Aras Karim Habib, a 47-year-old Shia Kurd who was named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid on Chalabi's home and offices in Baghdad Thursday. He eluded arrest.

Karim, who sometimes goes by the last name of Habib, is in charge of the information collection program.

The intelligence source briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions said that Karim's "fingerprints are all over it."

"There was an ongoing intelligence relationship between Karim and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, all funded by the U.S. government, inadvertently," he said.

The Iraqi National Congress has received about $40 million in U.S. funds over the past four years, including $33 million from the State Department and $6 million from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In Baghdad after the war, Karim's operation was run out of the fourth floor of a secure intelligence headquarters building, while the intelligence agency was on the floor above, according to an Iraqi source who knows Karim well.

The links between the INC and U.S. intelligence go back to at least 1992, when Karim was picked by Chalabi to run his security and military operations.

Indications that Iran, which fought a bloody war against Iraq during the 1980s, was trying to lure the U.S. into action against Saddam Hussein appeared many years before the Bush administration decided in 2001 that ousting Hussein was a national priority.

In 1995, for instance, Khidhir Hamza, who had once worked in Iraq's nuclear program and whose claims that Iraq had continued a massive bomb program in the 1990s are now largely discredited, gave UN nuclear inspectors what appeared to be explosive documents about Iraq's program. Hamza, who fled Iraq in 1994, teamed up with Chalabi after his escape.

The documents, which referred to results of experiments on enriched uranium in the bomb's core, were almost flawless, according to Andrew Cockburn's recent account of the event in the political newsletter CounterPunch.

But the inspectors were troubled by one minor matter: Some of the techinical descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. They determined that the original copy had been written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents were fraudulent. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

O gullible Bushies! Neo-cons' best friend Chalabi is revealed to be spy for Iran

05.22.04 (6:40 am) [edit]

Neo-Con Hypocrites - Perverts, Voyeurs & Peeping Toms: A short history of the GOP

05.22.04 (6:38 am) [edit]

[b]Perverts, Voyeurs & Peeping Toms: A short history of the GOP[/b]

"Remember back when the Massa got to sleep with the slaves?" In the modern Republican party, the roots of its members' addiction to hidden sexual perversity stretch far back in time.

"But President Clinton had sex with that woman!" the Republicans cried. And then they spent almost a billion dollars trying to get off on the juicy details. How much, how often, where? Yuck!

"We have to stop homosexuals and abortions and..." And what? Late-trimester potty training? Scratch a Republican and you'll find someone who never got to wear Pull-Ups (and probably spent a whole lot of time in the woodshed too).

"Let's shut down the porn sites!" cry the Republicans. Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry in America. Who buys it? Who watches it? Republicans! I can prove it. Where do you think they learned all those bondage techniques they used on those poor Iraqi prisoners? Porno flicks!

"The media and political frenzy over apparent prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq continued to spiral out of control over the weekend much to the detriment of our nation..." Who is protesting the protest against use of pornographic torture in Iraq? Republicans! Who made this statement on the Concerned Women of America's website? Gary Bauer, a man accused of having an affair with a 26-year-old staff member (not named Monica). (Editor's note: See http://slate.msn.com/id/35836... for an exhaustive discussion about whether the accusations against this Christian right onetime presidential candidate had merit.)

"Welfare queens are immoral!" But only if you are not a Republican. Republicans are systematically bankrupting America through energy scandals and war-profiteering in Iraq. The amounts of money we are pouring into the coffers of such welfare queens as Halliburton and Enron? That's obscene.

Remember all those photos of aborted fetuses they are always parading around to make us feel bad? I have a question. "Why aren't you parading all those photos of already-born babies in Iraq, Kosovo and our own VA hospitals too? The ones that have been grossly disfigured by exposure to depleted uranium, another Republican gift to the world?"

"Homosexuals are an abomination!" Yeah? Then why are there so many Republicans jammed into all those closets? Have you ever been to one of those secret gay bars in Dallas? The GOP are wall to wall.

"You f*ucking *sshole b*tch!" Who is most likely to send me this kind of gross language potty-mouth hate mail? Republicans!

The thing about Republicans that angers me most is their blatant hypocrisy. They are just as sinful (if not more so) than the rest of us. Only they just hush it up.

If Republicans want to crow about morality, we normal people might even consider listening to them--if they were to become inwardly as well as outwardly moral. A good start would be for Republicans to begin to behave themselves, obey the laws of our country; confess their sins, end corporate welfare, jail George Bush and get out of Iraq. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Neo-Con Hypocrites - Perverts, Voyeurs & Peeping Toms: A short history of the GOP

05.22.04 (6:34 am) [edit]

BLUNT ASSESSMENT: S.F.'s Pelosi calls Bush 'incompetent' and lacking in judgment

05.21.04 (8:02 am) [edit]

[b]U.S. kills 40 civilians in village attack

BLUNT ASSESSMENT: S.F.'s Pelosi calls Bush 'incompetent' and lacking in judgment [/b]

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco offered her strongest condemnation yet of President Bush on Wednesday, assailing him as incompetent and declaring that the only way for the United States to triumph in Iraq is to replace him as commander in chief.

"Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader,'' Pelosi said. "He's a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.''

Pelosi has long been an outspoken critic of Bush and the war in Iraq. Yet the tone and extent of her comments during an interview with The Chronicle go well beyond criticisms leveled by her and other Democratic leaders in the past.

Speaking from her Capitol office for 45 minutes, Pelosi portrayed the president as dangerously in over his head and stubbornly unwilling to consider information that clashes with his own preconceptions.

"He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops, because he would not heed the advice of his own State Department of what to expect after May 1 when he ... declared that major combat is over,'' Pelosi charged. "The shallowness that he has brought to the office has not changed since he got there.''

The sharp words reflect a growing despair among lawmakers of both parties over Iraq as well as a growing sense of opportunity among Democrats that they will be able to capitalize on the deteriorating situation to oust Bush. A poll released Wednesday by the Democratic firm Democracy Corps found that 55 percent of voters say the United States is losing control in Iraq, while 41 percent believe the United States is making progress.

The White House dismissed Pelosi's comments as election-year posturing.

"It's clear that the election season is drawing near, and there are those who will pursue politics over policy,'' said White House spokesman Ken Lisaius. "That doesn't change the fact that the president is focused on winning the war on terror, protecting our homeland security and strengthening our improving economy.''

Bush, speaking to reporters after a meeting with his cabinet, said steady progress is being made toward the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis and toward free elections.

"We've got hard work to do,'' Bush said. "After all, we saw the vivid savagery of the enemy; the decapitation of a U.S. citizen reminds us all about the barbaric nature of those who are trying to stop progress toward freedom. We understand the nature of that enemy. We also understand the nature of our brave troops. They're motivated, they're skilled, they're well trained. They will accomplish the mission.''

While some members of Congress have been highly critical of Bush's Iraq policy, most Democratic leaders -- including Sen. John Kerry, the party's presumptive presidential nominee -- have shied away from the blunt language used by Pelosi. Their caution stems from the fluidity of the situation as well as a political concern that comments too strongly condemning the commander in chief at a time of war may be viewed by some voters as unpatriotic.

"It's a dangerous situation,'' Kerry said on his campaign plane earlier in the week. "You have to give the president some room to get things done, but if he doesn't do what he has to do ..."

Kerry did not finish the sentence.

Pelosi, who never fails to mention her support for the troops in Iraq, led the effort against the war in 2003 and has been a consistent critic of the Bush policy. Yet in her role presiding over all 206 House Democrats, she had - - until Wednesday -- been more restrained in her criticism of Bush's leadership abilities.

"Not to get personal about it, but the president's capacity to lead has never been there. In order to lead, you have to have judgment. In order to have judgment, you have to have knowledge and experience. He has none,'' Pelosi said.

She called on the United States to bring more allies into the war effort, to send more troops to Iraq if military commanders ask for them and to level with the American people about how much the conflict is going to cost, an amount she estimated will soon reach $250 billion. Though she voted against going to war in 2003, she rejected the idea of withdrawing from Iraq now as irresponsible.

But success in building the coalition and rebuilding Iraq can happen only with a new president, Pelosi said.

"This president has demonstrated very clearly that he does not have the capacity to present a plan to transition,'' she said.

"The only way we can get more troops from other countries is to have a president who respects the other countries. It's hopeless for George Bush. He has made it hopeless.''

Pelosi said Kerry's more gentle criticism of Bush's Iraq policy was appropriate.

"The risk in many of us speaking out in the way that I'm speaking out to you right now is that people will say, 'Oh, it's just political,' '' Pelosi said.

Yet in the end, Pelosi said, she is confident that the failures in Iraq, as well as discontent over domestic issues, will defeat Bush in November.

"He's gone,'' Pelosi said of Bush. "He's so gone.'' - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...

[[i]Let's hope you are right Nancy! Go Girl Go[/i]!]

BLUNT ASSESSMENT: S.F.'s Pelosi calls Bush 'incompetent' and lacking in judgment

05.21.04 (8:00 am) [edit]

Neo-Con Con-Man Bush's Legacy of Disaster: Rising Oil Prices Threaten US Economy

05.21.04 (7:49 am) [edit]

[b]Rising oil prices threaten US economy[/b]

[b]Can there be a greater temptation for politicians than to have control of an asset that may ensure they keep a grip on power? [/b]

So it is with President Bush now. So it was with President Clinton in the autumn of 2000.

The asset in question is oil in the form of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

With fuel prices at the pump bumping what is for Americans an outrageous $2 (�1.13) a gallon, the temptation might be for Mr Bush to put the odd million barrels of the national reserve on the market to ease prices and voters' pain.

After all, the Clinton administration released 30 million barrels two months before Vice President Al Gore stood - on the Democrats' economic record - against George W Bush four years ago.

Little good did it do Mr Gore.

Firstly, he lost. Secondly, the price of crude oil did drop - from $37 a barrel to $30 a barrel in the first few days, but then rose back to $36 a barrel. It then fell nicely because of other factors until, after the election, it was down to $32 a barrel.

The lesson for politicians: markets are wiser than you think.

Not that Mr Bush seems to need to learn that. He is, apparently, resistant to the idea of using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to manipulate oil prices downwards, despite the urgings of Democrats.

[b]Political sparring [/b]

Mr Bush ordered that the reserve be built up after 11 September 2001 as a buffer against cataclysmic global events.

The reserve is currently just below 660 million barrels but the aim is to raise it to 700 million barrels next year.

Perhaps, Mr Bush knows that any release of oil would be a drop in the ocean and unlikely to have any lasting effect. Perhaps, Democrats know that too, but also know a good political cause when they see one.

John Kerry, their contender, is being more cautious than his party colleagues. He wants no increase in the size of the reserve, but he is not calling for a cut either.

[b]Rising costs [/b]

It is true that the price of oil will depend on politics, but on politics far from Washington. The big factor will be the violent street politics of Iraq rather than the softer brand that accompanies an American election campaign.

The Gulf produces 70% of the world's oil, so any destruction of installations there will push prices higher. Petrol pump politics in the US will follow politics in Iraq.

Already, there is some political pain in the US.

Apart from a rise in the petrol price to above $2 gallon - a level regarded as high by Americans - companies are pushing up prices to cover rising fuel costs.

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, has warned that its customers could be spending perhaps $7 a week more on fuel because of the rises. And that means less spent on its goods.

Tighter economic times for customers and stores mean tighter political times for Mr Bush.

Moreover, rising oil prices can do nothing to keep inflation dead and buried with what we thought was a stake through its heart. For a decade, ever sharpening competition led to the belief that relentlessly rising prices were a strange concept confined to history books. Now, the word, if not the thing itself, is back.

[b]Rising or falling? [/b]

However, we should not be too gloomy.

There have been three big spikes in the price of oil in the last 50 years: after the Yom Kippur war 30 years ago; after the Iran-Iraq war in 1979; and after the previous Gulf war in 1991.

Each time, the high price of oil was followed by a recession. This time, the real price of oil is not high by comparison, once inflation is taken into account. According to Deutsche Bank, "it would be wrong to assume that the current nominal oil price is extreme".

"Indeed, in real terms, prices are only 6% above their 1971-2003 average," the bank says.

Prices are high relative to the recent past, but only at the levels last witnessed four years ago. The question is whether they are on the way up or down.

[b]Political uncertainty [/b]

It has to be said that the risks are on the up side. Few expect the uncertainty in the Middle East to diminish in the near future so there is unlikely to be any cutting of the "terrorism premium". The petroleum exporting cartel Opec may increase production somewhat but it is not far from capacity now. Similarly, refineries in the US are working at near to full tilt.

In the longer term, matters look even tighter. It is estimated that the global use of oil will rise by 50% in the next 20 years. Much of that extra demand will come in China and India.

The most doleful will note that most of the world's political tension today stems from conflicts over resources either water or oil. Political uncertainty is unlikely to diminish. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/bu...

Neo-Con Con-Man Bush's Legacy of Disaster: Rising Oil Prices Threaten US Economy

05.21.04 (7:48 am) [edit]

Tony Blair Under Siege & May Fall ... Traitor Bush Should Be Ousted Too!!!

05.21.04 (7:40 am) [edit]

[b]Blair Under Siege [/b]

Tony Blair is a man besieged. As the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq gets increasingly more difficult to support, his poll numbers are dropping. Mistrust among fellow members of the Labor Party is running high. The British online press is abuzz with talk of succession. Even his closest aides may be plotting against him.

So when a harmless missile struck Blair between the shoulder blades as he spoke to British parliament on Wednesday, who could blame him if he thought he had been stabbed in the back.

The British press is asking if Blair can survive? The consensus answer: his political future depends on the situation in Iraq.

"The perception that Mr Blair's days are numbered is held widely" among British voters, according to the Financial Times (subscription). Interviews with people on the streets of Birmingham in middle England, a bellwether of public opinion like Ohio is in the United States, reveal Blair "as embattled, untrustworthy and prematurely aged," the FT reported Wednesday.

Few think Blair will quit unless senior Labor leaders become convinced he is an electoral liability for the party.

"The political obituaries would be overwhelmingly negative," writes columnist Bruce Anderson in the Independent. "The PM also insists, as he should, that he has a duty to complete the task in Iraq."

But many Labor members of parliament loathe "the task in Iraq." They opposed Blair's support for President Bush's call for preemptive war. Having predicted the war would be a fiasco, these members of parliament now feel vindicated. They fear the war is already a liability.

"Although the situation in Iraq may not be a doorstep issue," says former member of parliament Michael Brown in the Independent, "it has poisoned the trust of Labour stalwarts."

Blair's likely successor would be treasury minister Gordon Brown who badly wants the top job, giving rise to speculation that Blair's own friends may be plotting his demise. The story was fueled by an interview that John Prescott, a Labor party leader, gave to the Sunday Times in which he said Blair's cabinet ministers were maneuvering for succession.

An eagle-eyed reporter spotted Prescott chatting with Brown for 90 minutes in a black Jaguar in the parking lot of a Scottish oyster bar. The Sunday Herald in Glasgow concluded that the two were strategizing about the post-Blair era. (Prescott described the story as "press prattle.")

Blair's friends told the Independent (subscription) on Tuesday that the prime minister plans to lead his party into the next general election (scheduled for January 2005) and to serve for one or two more years before handing over power to Brown.

"To exchange Blair for Brown in mid-campaign would be tantamount to an admission of defeat" in Iraq, argues Daniel Johnson in the Daily Telegraph. The result would be a "betrayal" that would poison relations with the United States, even if the Democrats win in November, he says.

Peter Mandelson, one of Blair's closest confidantes, writes in the Scotsman (registration) that it is "a sign of the maturity and steadiness" that "deepening anxiety over Iraq is not being turned into a personal revolt against the Prime Minister, contrary to the impression being created by some in the media."

But the anger at Blair, says Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, "is spread much wider than a few chatterers in university towns."

[b]For the entire article, click on [/b] http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Tony Blair Under Siege & May Fall ... Traitor Bush Should Be Ousted Too!!!

05.21.04 (7:35 am) [edit]

To the President from a Father: Shame on Us ...

05.20.04 (8:42 pm) [edit]

For two guys about the same age, George W. Bush and I do not have much in common. There are, however, two realities we do share: His daughter Barbara and my son Michael both attend Yale. And neither one is about to join the United States armed forces in Iraq. Why not?

Because they don't have to, they don't want to, and George W. and I won't let them.

One of those "flaming liberals" for which Massachusetts is famous asked me, "Why are people not taking to the streets every day protesting the Iraq war like we did in the '60s?" As I thought about it, the answer is simple. The Iraq war is not being fought, for the most part, by the children of the affluent or even affluent-hopefuls. And that is because it's not being fought by the conscripted.

Vietnam-era protest rules do not apply. There are no chants outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. of "Hell, no, we won't go." There are no draft classifications like 1-A or 4-F or student deferments. There is no threat that after next week's Yale graduation, the baby boom generation's kids will involuntarily be sent to places like Fort Dix, Parris Island, or Camp Pendleton.

This is a war of volunteer US combatants and National Guard "weekend warriors" who are trying to figure out how a monthly training exercise turned into a living hell. Patriots, one and all, and they should be lauded for their courage. But they shouldn't be there any more than Michael and Barbara should be.

When Barbara's grandfather, George Bush senior, decided in 1991 not to continue the Gulf War into Baghdad, he was roundly criticized for being a "coward."

In the end, he was right. He knew that there was a reason not to occupy a country for a prolonged period in an attempt to simultaneously toss out a dictator, find weapons of mass destruction, police the country, establish a new democratic government, and stabilize the entire region. He knew that it could not all be accomplished and that the endeavor would soon become quicksand in the desert.

While I have not discussed it with either of them, I suspect that deep down, Barbara and Michael agree with Bush senior. This might explain why we will not see either one rushing down to the local Army recruiter in the coming weeks, hoping to be patrolling a war-torn, insurgent-infested Baghdad neighborhood as soon as possible. I bet their answer to the question of "Why not?" would be a Muhammad Ali-like, "I got no quarrel with them Iraqis."

Now comes the hard part: why George W. and I wouldn't let them go even if they did want to. Of course, they are both over 21 and able to make their own decisions, but in both cases, their dads would surely fight any eagerness to join up. No parent wants to bury a child - let alone endorse a course that could well make that a grisly reality.

This war is a mistake - a big mistake. The rest of the world knows it, and in our hearts, so do we. In World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, rich kids, poor kids, college kids, and dropouts all went. They all fought, and hundreds of thousands died. This time it is mainly the poor kids leaving on those planes and coming home in boxes. Most parents whose children have other options will not allow them to go.

That's why the president is able to press on: All he has at risk personally is his presidency, not his children. That's why I am not organizing protests and why the rest of us are not outraged at every turn. This war has no personal consequences for most of us who as '60s peaceniks changed the world. Shame on us, both of us - all of us.

John Kerry was right when he said it in 1971, and he would be wise to take a stand now and say it again: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Mr. President, as this semester ends at Yale, I won't ask Michael to die for a mistake. Are you going to ask that of Barbara?

[b]David F. D'Alessandro is chairman and chief executive officer of John Hancock Financial Services[/b]. - http://truthout.org/docs_04/0...

Israeli Fascists Play on Christian Superstitions to Conduct Neo-Nazi Ethnic Cleansing!

05.20.04 (2:23 pm) [edit]

[b]Can Ethnic Cleansing Bring Back Jesus?

Only if you are a brain-dead fuckwit with neo-Nazi intentions to wipe-out an entire people!

Bush is a Mad Fuckwit who should be put in a mental institution![/b]

Rick Perlstein of the Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/i... acquired a damning memo ("you're not supposed to have that") demonstrating the hold the loony Christian far Right has on Bush Middle East policy. The gem in the article is the account of how Iran-Contra criminal mastermind and current National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams tried to reassure the Christian Zionists that an Israeli "withdrawal" from Gaza will not interfere with Jesus coming back because it wasn't part of ancient Israel. Actually, this is right. Gaza was in Philistia, not Judah, which was to its east. But for that matter, when the kingdoms split, the West Bank wasn't in "Israel" either, it was in Judah. So the loony tunes Christians who are trying to kill and dispossess the poor Palestinians to drag Jesus back may as well just give it up. He wasn't treated well enough by humankind the first time to want to come back, so we're on our own, and we may as well stop being barbaric to one another in his name.

=http://img27.photobucket.com/...

=http://img27.photobucket.com/...

It has for some time been obvious to me that the Bush foreign policy in the Middle East is driven by irrational and often puzzling considerations. But I hadn't stopped to consider, until Perlstein's excellent piece, that the White House is trying to bring about an apocalypse that would hasten Christ's return. And a damn fine job they're doing of it, if[i] that's [/i]what they are up to. Why, the place is more apocalyptic every day. The one downside for Bush is that he is beholden not just to the far right Christian loony fringe but also to Wall Street, and the latter can't actually be very happy with the roller coaster ride his policies are producing for their investments. Unlike poor people, moreover, the moneyed both vote and give to political campaigns. - http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?...

Israeli Fascists Play on Christian Superstitions to Conduct Neo-Nazi Ethnic Cleansing!

05.20.04 (2:22 pm) [edit]

Israeli Fascists Play on Christian Superstitions to Conduct Neo-Nazi Ethnic Cleansing!

05.20.04 (2:21 pm) [edit]

Israeli Fascists Play on Christian Superstitions to Conduct Neo-Nazi Ethnic Cleansing!

05.20.04 (2:18 pm) [edit]

Conservative Novak Reports That 1 Out of 5 Republicans Don't Want Bush ...

05.20.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

[b]"Bush's shaky base" by Hyper-Conservative Robert Novak: [/b]

During George W. Bush's keynote address to the 40th anniversary black-tie banquet of the American Conservative Union (ACU) last week, diners rose repeatedly to applaud the president's remarks. But one man kept his seat through the 40-minute oration. It was no liberal interloper but conservative stalwart Donald Devine http://www.conservative.org/p... .

As ACU vice chairman, Devine was privileged to be part of a pre-dinner head-table reception with President Bush. However, Devine chose not to shake hands with the president. Furthermore, he is one of about 20 percent of Republicans that polls classify as not committed to voting for Bush's re-election.

The conventional wisdom portrays the latest Zogby Poll's 81 percent of Republican voters committed to Bush as reflecting extraordinary loyalty to the president by the GOP base. Actually, when nearly one out of five Republicans cannot flatly say they support Bush, that could spell defeat in a closely contested election. When Don Devine is among those one out of five, it signifies that the president's record does not please all conservatives.

In a time of crisis in Iraq, Bush spent more than an hour at the J.W. Marriott Hotel Thursday night to celebrate the ACU's anniversary and woo his conservative base. His speech was crafted to evoke the maximum response from that audience. There was no mention of either "compassionate conservatism" or "no child left behind "

Why, then, did Devine dismiss a consciously conservative speech as "long and boring"? At age 67, Devine has spent a lifetime as a party regular and faithful conservative. I first encountered him some 30 years ago when, as a University of Maryland political science professor, he was adviser and strategist for conservatives in rules fights at Republican national conventions. Directing President Reagan's Office of Personnel Management, he was one senior administration official who took seriously the Reagan Revolution. He was a political adviser in Bob Dole's presidential campaigns and ran himself for Congress and statewide office in Maryland.

So, the question remains: Why would Devine stay seated at the ACU dinner when everybody else was standing and clapping? To begin with, he shares concern with many Republicans about what the U.S. is doing in Iraq and where it is going. Businessmen I have talked to recently exercise limited patience in how long they will tolerate the bloodshed and confusion.

What most bothers Devine and other conservatives is steady growth of government under this Republican president. If Devine's purpose in devoting his life to politics was to limit government's reach, he feels betrayed that Bush has outstripped his liberal predecessors in domestic spending. A study by Brian Riedl for the conservative Heritage Foundation last December showed government spending had exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II. Riedl called it a "colossal expansion of the federal government since 1998."

Curbing this expansion surely has not been on the top of Bush's agenda for much of his time in the White House. Until recently, when a presidential political aide heard conservative complaints about runaway spending, he predictably would point to the partial-birth abortion ban and tax cuts rather than address the grievance. In the last few months, the president's men have talked a better game about spending. Nevertheless, it is too late to satisfy Republicans such as Devine who care deeply about governmental growth.

Bush is also under pressure from his conservative base to speak more clearly and more frequently against same-sex marriage. At the ACU dinner, he drew one of his many standing ovations by declaring: "We stand for institutions like marriage and family, which are the foundations of our society." That was all he said on the subject in a speech that went on at length about the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.

Bush's saving grace for the 2004 election may be John Kerry. In the end, I am sure Don Devine will cast his ballot for George W. Bush, if only because the alternative is noxious. How many of the rest of that 19 percent of non-Bush voting Republicans in the Zogby Poll will fall in line may determine the outcome Nov. 2. That is the importance of Devine's little sit-down strike. - http://www.townhall.com/colum...

Wake-up America! It's The Treason, Stupid!!!

05.20.04 (5:04 am) [edit]

[b]Some Dare Call It Treason: Wake Up America![/b]

I am a member of Veterans For Peace, an organization of thousands of combat veterans. All of us have put our life on the line for this country. Most of us opposed the recent invasion of Iraq. We also opposed the first Gulf War, and the sanctions that followed. We opposed the slaughter of fleeing Iraqis on the Road to Basra. We opposed the use of Depleted Uranium munitions. And we opposed the lies upon which the first Gulf War was based. But there was one good thing about that first Gulf War. It ended. And without a wholesale invasion of Iraq. Why?

Here's what the first President Bush wrote about that in his memoirs:

"[i]Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land[/i].

My brothers and sisters, it is just too darn bad his son can't read!

I've been severely criticized for speaking out in opposition to this war. So have you, probably. We're told that we're aiding and abetting the enemy. We're told that we should support the president no matter what. We're told that patriotism demands that we support the war. They say that we're abusing the freedoms that our troops are in the Middle East defending. They say we should be ashamed to be protesting while the troops are in the desert protecting our right to do so.

Well I say, [i]Hogwash[/i]!

I feel an affinity for the troops over there in Iraq. They are my comrades in arms. I admire their sense of honor and sacrifice. I understand why some of them believe they should be there. They have neither the experience nor the wisdom to see past the lies they have been told. The truth is, they are not over there protecting our freedoms. Our freedoms are not under attack from Saddam Hussein or the remnants of his Baathist party. Our freedoms are under attack by John Ashcroft. They are threatened by John Poindexter. They are trampled by Donald Rumsfeld. They are disdained by Dick Cheney. And they are not even understood by George W. Bush. The battle to preserve our freedoms is not taking place in Baghdad and Tikrit. It is taking place in Central Park in New York City, in Lafayette Park in Washington DC, in Ghirardelli Park in San Francisco, and in River Front Park in Melbourne, Florida. The front lines go right down US 1 and up New Haven Avenue.

It is we, here at home, who are the foot soldiers battling to preserve our cherished freedoms by exercising them, in spite of opposition and ridicule. It is we who protect our civil rights through speaking out. We are the Minutemen sounding the alarm against tyranny. We are upholding the spirit of the American Revolution. We are preserving the freedoms that the troops in the desert have a right to come back to. The troops getting shot at in Iraq are not protecting us. We are protecting them, and their honor and their freedoms. We have just completed a forced march through hostile territory to defend their freedoms and ours, and the ideals America was founded on. We are protecting this nation by speaking truth to power. Let us do it loudly and fearlessly and courageously and joyfully, for we are the true patriots!

Here is the truth that we proclaim. This war has nothing to do with national security or freedom or democracy or human rights or protecting our allies or weapons of mass destruction or defeating terrorism or disarming Iraq. It has to do with money. It has to do with oil. And it has to do with raw imperial power. It is based on a pack of lies. And it is wrong. Those who forced this war on an unwilling world are guilty of flagrantly violating the US Constitution, the UN Charter, and international law. What they have done is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional and TREASON.

It's been said that somewhere in Texas there is a village looking for their idiot. Now that may be funny, but it misses the point. George W. Bush is not an imbecile. He is a TRAITOR.

Before this war started, we knew it would fracture NATO, split the United Nations, separate us from our allies, and destroy the great nation we inherited from our fathers who died in World War II. And it has. We knew it would make our beloved country feared and hated, an outcast from the world community, a pariah among the peoples, and the number one rogue nation on earth. And it has. It has done so based on a pack of lies. My sisters and brothers, that is not stupidity. That is TREASON.

We knew this sadistic corporate war would incense the Arab world, provide thousands of new Osama bin Ladens, and enormously increase the terrorist threat. And it has. We knew it would further endanger the American people and destroy our national security. And it has. That is not stupidity, it is TREASON.

The cabal of neoconservatives at PNAC who planned this war (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Perle, Jeb Bush) even before W became president, knew the American people would not stand for it unless there was a new Pearl Harbor. 9/11 supplied that. Our government was warned. They were warned by the Clinton Administration. They were warned by 11 other countries. And they were specifically warned by an FBI agent that one of them was planning on flying a hijacked airliner into the World Trade Center.

They not only ignored the warnings, they made sure no fighter jets were scrambled to stop it. If they had just done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to be followed, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. This is not stupidity, it is TREASON.

As a combat veteran, I will not stand idly by and watch our security destroyed by a president who went AWOL rather than fight in Vietnam. Honor requires that I call this by its right name. It is TREASON.

As one who has devoted his life to the security of this country, I will not stand by and watch an appointed president send our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs for the oil companies without calling it by its right name. It is TREASON.

I joined the Air Force to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Folgers, Chiquita Banana, and Exxon. We've had enough corporate wars. No more Iraqs. No more El Salvadors. No more Kosovos. No more Colombias. These are not isolated incidents of stupidity. They are part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial benefit of the wealthy few. It is a new colonialism. It violates our Constitution. It endangers our people. And it is TREASON.

As a pilot who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, I can tell you that the best thing our government can do for its combat veterans is to quit making more of them. Peace is patriotic; a preemptive war is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime, and TREASON. I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That includes a renegade president. Wake up, America! It is time for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the whole oil mafia to be removed from office and indicted for TREASON. We are the people. We are sovereign. We are the patriots. The whole world is with us. Never allow anyone to intimidate you into silence. Wake up, America! It's time to speak truth to power. God bless America, and God save us from the traitors in our government.

[b]Dr. Robert Bowman was a Col. in the USAF and was Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under President Jimmy Carter. He is Presiding Archbishop, United Catholic Church. He has been president of the Institute for Space and Security Studies since 1982. Before that he was vice-president of Space Communications Company; manager, Advanced Space Programs for General Dynamics; and director, Advanced Space Programs Development for the Department of Defense, directing the "Star Wars" programs. He is also a progressive populist candidate for President of the United States. He may be reached via email at: isss@rmbowman.com, See also his web site: http://www.rmbowman.com.[/b] - http://baltimorechronicle .com...

Before You Let the Right Turn You Into A New-Fangled Nazi, Read This ...

05.20.04 (4:59 am) [edit]

[b]Hitler said the same thing. The new rationalization is that its okay to annihilate Arabs (The Israelis, Neo-Nazis learnt nothing from the Holocaust):[/b]

[b]Settler Rabbi: Killing innocent people in war is allowed if saves lives

Rabbi Dov Lior, chairman of the settler�s rabbinical council ruled that killing civilians during warfare is permitted if it will save lives (Hitler claimed that wiping out Jews saved the lives of Germans, too)[/b].

The IDF are allowed to hurt so called innocent civilians during warfare, Chairman of the Yesha rabbinical council (Judea, Samaria and Gaza Strip), Rabbi Dov Lior, said in a Halachic (Jewish law) ruling made public Wednesday.

"The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them. This is the real moral behind Israel's Torah and we must not feel guilty due to foreign morals," Lior said.

Sources close to the Rabbi explained that Lior made the remarks Tuesday night and they had nothing to do with Wednesday�s events in Gaza. The IDF is allowed to use all means at its disposal to defeat terrorism �even if it means �innocent� people are killed�, the sources said.

The religious community did not publicly condemn Rabbi Lior�s ruling but warned against its implications. �It is a dangerous step that could test all religious IDF commanders taking part in the current fighting�, sources in the Yesha community told Maariv. - http://www.maarivintl.com/ind...

[b]Israelis Are the Nazis of the 21st Century[/b]!

Before You Let the Right Turn You Into A New-Fangled Nazi, Read This ...

05.20.04 (4:58 am) [edit]

Before You Let the Right Turn You Into A New-Fangled Nazi, Read This ...

05.20.04 (4:56 am) [edit]

Neo-con Lets Cat Out of Bag: Bush is Playing Americans for Suckers!!!

05.19.04 (6:40 pm) [edit]

[b]Michael Rubin[/b]�a young staffer at the American Enterprise Institute who�s just left the Pentagon, where he played a small role as a neocon cog in the Office of Special Plans war machine�let a herd of cats out of the bag about his favorite Iraqi phony, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress.

Chalabi, of course, is the roly-poly perpetrator of intelligence fraud and the convicted bank embezzler who still hopes to be leader of Iraq. Lately, Chalabi has scuttled into a would-be alliance with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the scowly fatwa man. In doing so, he�s had the temerity to criticize the United States, leading some fuzzy thinkers to believe that Chalabi, whose puppet strings are made of steel, might be trying to show some independence from Washington. Well, says Rubin, who served as one the Pentagon�s liaisons to Chalabi, that�s exactly what they want you to think:

�[i]Much of the information he collected was to roll up the insurgency and Ba'athist cells. It caught people red-handed," said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser who is now at a conservative think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

"By telegraphing that he is not the favorite son of America, the administration will bolster him, showing he is his own man[/i]."

In other words, it�s all a big con game. The still-neocon-dominated Pentagon�which this week stopped funding Chalabi�s INC �is playing its last card, hoping that it can boost Chalabi�s sagging fortunes by pretending to sever ties with him. That, the neocons hope, will allow Chalabi to strengthen his ties to Sistani, the king-making mullah who, they hope, holds Iraq�s fate in his wrinkled hands. - http://www.tompaine.com/artic...

Most Professional Historians Say That Bush is a "Failure"

05.19.04 (6:33 pm) [edit]

[b]How will historians tell the tale of George W. Bush's presidency?[/b] Some history professors aren't waiting 50 years to weigh in. The History News Network http://hnn.us/articles/5019.h... conducted an informal poll of professional historians -- eight in 10 said Bush's tenure has been a "failure." Twelve percent said Bush's presidency is the worst in all of American history.

Here's how historians finished the sentence "Bush's presidency is the worst failure since ____" and how they came to their conclusion.

REAGAN: "I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan--because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse."

NIXON: "Actually, I think [Bush's] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes." Bush uses "doublespeak" to "dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the 'Forest Restoration Act' (which encourages the cutting down of forests)."

HOOVER: "I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America's reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States."

COOLIDGE: "I think his presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for international relations, for health care, and for working Americans. He's on a par with Coolidge!"

HARDING: "Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice."

McKINLEY: "Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the 'hip pocket' of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove's favorite historical president (precedent?)."

GRANT: "He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney's corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant." - http://www.salon.com/politics...

Bush Legacy: More Horrific Photos of U.S. Murder & Torture of Prisoners!!!

05.19.04 (6:25 pm) [edit]

[b]The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos

More Photos Surface (updated May 19) (Warning: Graphic Photos Below)[/b]

ABC News has obtained two new photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing Spc. Charles Graner and Spc. Sabrina Harmon posing over the body of a detainee who was allegedly beaten to death by CIA or civilian interrogators in the prison's showers. The detainee's name was Manadel al-Jamadi. - http://www.antiwar.com/news/?...

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Bush Legacy: More Horrific Photos of U.S. Murder & Torture of Prisoners!!!

05.19.04 (6:13 pm) [edit]

Starting My Picture Gallery of Dubya Jerking-Off To Tortures & Atrocities!!!

05.18.04 (3:10 pm) [edit]

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[b]Atrocities in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'[/b]

"[i]We forget what war is about, what it does to those who wage it and those who suffer from it. Those who hate war the most, I have often found, are veterans who know it[/i]." - Chris Hedges, New York Times reporter and author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"

For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.

The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.

When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved.

Q: You spent 12 years in the Marines. When were you sent to Iraq?

A: I went to Kuwait around Jan. 17. I was in Iraq from the get-go. And I was involved in the initial invasion.

Q: What does the public need to know about your experiences as a Marine?

A: The cause of the Iraqi revolt against the American occupation. What they need to know is we killed a lot of innocent people. I think at first the Iraqis had the understanding that casualties are a part of war. But over the course of time, the occupation hurt the Iraqis. And I didn't see any humanitarian support.

Q: What experiences turned you against the war and made you leave the Marines?

A: I was in charge of a platoon that consists of machine gunners and missile men. Our job was to go into certain areas of the towns and secure the roadways. There was this one particular incident - and there's many more - the one that really pushed me over the edge. It involved a car with Iraqi civilians. From all the intelligence reports we were getting, the cars were loaded down with suicide bombs or material. That's the rhetoric we received from intelligence. They came upon our checkpoint. We fired some warning shots. They didn't slow down. So we lit them up.

Q: Lit up? You mean you fired machine guns?

A: Right. Every car that we lit up we were expecting ammunition to go off. But we never heard any. Well, this particular vehicle we didn't destroy completely, and one gentleman looked up at me and said: "Why did you kill my brother? We didn't do anything wrong." That hit me like a ton of bricks.

Q: He spoke English?

A: Oh, yeah.

Q: Baghdad was being bombed. The civilians were trying to get out, right?

A: Yes. They received pamphlets, propaganda we dropped on them. It said, "Just throw up your hands, lay down weapons." That's what they were doing, but we were still lighting them up. They weren't in uniform. We never found any weapons.

Q: You got to see the bodies and casualties?

A: Yeah, firsthand. I helped throw them in a ditch.

Q: Over what period did all this take place?

A: During the invasion of Baghdad.

'We lit him up pretty good'

Q: How many times were you involved in checkpoint "light-ups"?

A: Five times. There was [the city of] Rekha. The gentleman was driving a stolen work utility van. He didn't stop. With us being trigger happy, we didn't really give this guy much of a chance. We lit him up pretty good. Then we inspected the back of the van. We found nothing. No explosives.

Q: The reports said the cars were loaded with explosives. In all the incidents did you find that to be the case?

A: Never. Not once. There were no secondary explosions. As a matter of fact, we lit up a rally after we heard a stray gunshot.

Q: A demonstration? Where?

A: On the outskirts of Baghdad. Near a military compound. There were demonstrators at the end of the street. They were young and they had no weapons. And when we rolled onto the scene, there was already a tank that was parked on the side of the road. If the Iraqis wanted to do something, they could have blown up the tank. But they didn't. They were only holding a demonstration. Down at the end of the road, we saw some RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) lined up against the wall. That put us at ease because we thought: "Wow, if they were going to blow us up, they would have done it."

Q: Were the protest signs in English or Arabic?

A: Both.

Q: Who gave the order to wipe the demonstrators out?

A: Higher command. We were told to be on the lookout for the civilians because a lot of the Fedayeen and the Republican Guards had tossed away uniforms and put on civilian clothes and were mounting terrorist attacks on American soldiers. The intelligence reports that were given to us were basically known by every member of the chain of command. The rank structure that was implemented in Iraq by the chain of command was evident to every Marine in Iraq. The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials, including intelligence communities within the military and the U.S. government.

Q: What kind of firepower was employed?

A: M-16s, 50-cal. machine guns.

Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?

A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.

Q: After you lit up the demonstration, how long before the next incident?

A: Probably about one or two hours. This is another thing, too. I am so glad I am talking with you, because I suppressed all of this.

Q: Well, I appreciate you giving me the information, as hard as it must be to recall the painful details.

A: That's all right. It's kind of therapy for me. Because it's something that I had repressed for a long time.

Q: And the incident?

A: There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up." Man, I forgot about this.

Depleted uranium and cluster bombs

Q: You mention machine guns. What can you tell me about cluster bombs, or depleted uranium?

A: Depleted uranium. I know what it does. It's basically like leaving plutonium rods around. I'm 32 years old. I have 80 percent of my lung capacity. I ache all the time. I don't feel like a healthy 32-year-old.

Q: Were you in the vicinity of of depleted uranium?

A: Oh, yeah. It's everywhere. DU is everywhere on the battlefield. If you hit a tank, there's dust.

Q: Did you breath any dust?

A: Yeah.

Q: And if DU is affecting you or our troops, it's impacting Iraqi civilians.

A: Oh, yeah. They got a big wasteland problem.

Q: Do Marines have any precautions about dealing with DU?

A: Not that I know of. Well, if a tank gets hit, crews are detained for a little while to make sure there are no signs or symptoms. American tanks have depleted uranium on the sides, and the projectiles have DU in them. If an enemy vehicle gets hit, the area gets contaminated. Dead rounds are in the ground. The civilian populace is just now starting to learn about it. Hell, I didn't even know about DU until two years ago. You know how I found out about it? I read an article in Rolling Stone magazine. I just started inquiring about it, and I said "Holy s---!"

Q: Cluster bombs are also controversial. U.N. commissions have called for a ban. Were you acquainted with cluster bombs?

A: I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.

Q: What's an ICBM?

A: A multi-purpose cluster bomb.

Q: What happened?

A: He stepped on it. We didn't get to training about clusters until about a month before I left.

Q: What kind of training?

A: They told us what they looked like, and not to step on them.

Q: Were you in any areas where they were dropped?

A: Oh, yeah. They were everywhere.

Q: Dropped from the air?

A: From the air as well as artillery.

Q: Are they dropped far away from cities, or inside the cities?

A: They are used everywhere. Now if you talked to a Marine artillery officer, he would give you the runaround, the politically correct answer. But for an average grunt, they're everywhere.

Q: Including inside the towns and cities?

A: Yes, if you were going into a city, you knew there were going to be ICBMs.

Q: Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. They are not precise. They don't injure buildings, or hurt tanks. Only people and living things. There are a lot of undetonated duds and they go off after the battles are over.

A: Once the round leaves the tube, the cluster bomb has a mind of its own. There's always human error. I'm going to tell you: The armed forces are in a tight spot over there. It's starting to leak out about the civilian casualties that are taking place. The Iraqis know. I keep hearing reports from my Marine buddies inside that there were 200-something civilians killed in Fallujah. The military is scrambling right now to keep the raps on that. My understanding is Fallujah is just littered with civilian bodies.

Embedded reporters

Q: How are the embedded reporters responding?

A: I had embedded reporters in my unit, not my platoon. One we had was a South African reporter. He was scared s---less. We had an incident where one of them wanted to go home.

Q: Why?

A: It was when we started going into Baghdad. When he started seeing the civilian casualties, he started wigging out a little bit. It didn't start until we got on the outskirts of Baghdad and started taking civilian casualties.

Q: I would like to go back to the first incident, when the survivor asked why did you kill his brother. Was that the incident that pushed you over the edge, as you put it?

A: Oh, yeah. Later on I found out that was a typical day. I talked with my commanding officer after the incident. He came up to me and says: "Are you OK?" I said: "No, today is not a good day. We killed a bunch of civilians." He goes: "No, today was a good day." And when he said that, I said "Oh, my goodness, what the hell am I into?"

Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?

A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.

Q: What changed you?

A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.

Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?

A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.

Showdown with superiors

Q: I understand that all the incidents - killing civilians at checkpoints, itchy fingers at the rally - weigh on you. What happened with your commanding officers? How did you deal with them?

A: There was an incident. It was right after the fall of Baghdad, when we went back down south. On the outskirts of Karbala, we had a morning meeting on the battle plan. I was not in a good mindset. All these things were going through my head - about what we were doing over there. About some of the things my troops were asking. I was holding it all inside. My lieutenant and I got into a conversation. The conversation was striking me wrong. And I lashed out. I looked at him and told him: "You know, I honestly feel that what we're doing is wrong over here. We're committing genocide."

He asked me something and I said that with the killing of civilians and the depleted uranium we're leaving over here, we're not going to have to worry about terrorists. He didn't like that. He got up and stormed off. And I knew right then and there that my career was over. I was talking to my commanding officer.

Q: What happened then?

A: After I talked to the top commander, I was kind of scurried away. I was basically put on house arrest. I didn't talk to other troops. I didn't want to hurt them. I didn't want to jeopardize them.

I want to help people. I felt strongly about it. I had to say something. When I was sent back to stateside, I went in front of the sergeant major. He's in charge of 3,500-plus Marines. "Sir," I told him, "I don't want your money. I don't want your benefits. What you did was wrong."

It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

War Criminal Bush Sought Ways to Commit Atrocities Without Being Held Accountable!!!

05.18.04 (2:26 pm) [edit]

[b][u]Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings[/u]

Could Bush administration officials be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new measures used in the war on terror? The White House's top lawyer thought so

[i]Suspected Taliban and al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base kneel down before military police as prisoners are processed into the detention facility in January 2002[/i][/b]

The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

The concern about possible future prosecution for war crimes�and that it might even apply to Bush adminstration officials themselves� is contained in a crucial portion of an internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales obtained by NEWSWEEK. It urges President George Bush declare the war in Afghanistan, including the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, exempt from the provisions of the Geneva Convention.

In the memo, the White House lawyer focused on a little known 1996 law passed by Congress, known as the War Crimes Act, that banned any Americans from committing war crimes�defined in part as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Noting that the law applies to "U.S. officials" and that punishments for violators "include the death penalty," Gonzales told Bush that "it was difficult to predict with confidence" how Justice Department prosecutors might apply the law in the future. This was especially the case given that some of the language in the Geneva Conventions�such as that outlawing "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" of prisoners�was "undefined."

One key advantage of declaring that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections is that it "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," Gonzales wrote.

"It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 [the War Crimes Act]," Gonzales wrote.

The best way to guard against such "unwarranted charges," the White House lawyer concluded, would be for President Bush to stick to his decision�then being strongly challenged by Secretary of State Powell� to exempt the treatment of captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from Geneva convention provisions.

"Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that (the War Crimes Act) does not apply which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution," Gonzales wrote.

The memo�and strong dissents by Secretary of State Colin Powell and his chief legal advisor, William Howard Taft IV�are among hundreds of pages of internal administration documents on the Geneva Convention and related issues that have been obtained by NEWSWEEK and are reported for the first time in this week's magazine. Newsweek made some of them available online today. - http://msnbc.msn.com/id/49997...

War Criminal Bush Sought Ways to Commit Atrocities Without Being Held Accountable!!!

05.18.04 (2:25 pm) [edit]

War Criminal Bush Sought Ways to Commit Atrocities Without Being Held Accountable!!!

05.18.04 (2:22 pm) [edit]

Israelis Learned Nothing from Holocaust As Busharon Wipes-Out Palestinians Nazi-Style!

05.18.04 (1:55 pm) [edit]

[b]The Israelis have learned nothing from the Holocaust, as they wipe-out Palestinians Nazi-style as fast as they can while Busharon (Bush-Sharon [Neo-Con Version of Hitler-Mussolini]) are in office. In 2005, it's Concentration Camps, Gas Chambers and Ovens for the Arab World if Busharon are back in power![/b]

[i][b]Israeli troops have swept through a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza while helicopters pounded it with missiles.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed in Rafah camp, including several gunmen and two children hanging out washing[/b][/i].

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called it a "massacre", while the UN and EU called on Israel to halt the operation.

US President Bush said the bloodshed was "troubling", but told a Jewish-American audience that Israel had the "right to defend itself from terror".

[b]'No demolition' [/b]

The Israeli military says "Operation Rainbow" is designed to attack militants and stop the flow of weapons smuggled through tunnels from Egypt.

It denied there were plans for a further systematic demolition of homes, after knocking down almost 100 houses in the camp last week, leaving 1,100 people homeless.

But two left-wing Israeli MPs condemned the operation.

"It is completely unacceptable to continue baptising Gaza in blood because when Gaza is drenched in blood, it will also be the blood of our children," warned Labour politician Avraham Burg.

The BBC's Middle East correspondent, James Reynolds, says the Israeli army is determined to show that it has regained control of Gaza after 13 soldiers were killed there last week - the country's worst military loss in two years.

[b]Air raids [/b]

The raid began at dawn, with a missile from a helicopter fired at a group of gunmen outside a mosque in Tel Sultan, killing three of them.

Two more missiles were fired, killing three more people who rushed to help and leaving the mosque in flames.

In a second air strike, four Palestinians were killed, all civilians, according to hospital officials quoted by the Associated Press news agency.

Seven Palestinians, most of them gunmen, were also reportedly killed in street fighting.

And Ahmad Mughayer, 13, and his sister Asma, 16, were shot dead as they stood on the roof of their house. Both were hit in the head as they hung out washing, relatives said.

A Palestinian health official said a 20th man was killed while handling explosives.

Commentators describe the operation as one of the biggest in the area in years.

Trapped residents were reported to be huddling in the most protective rooms of their homes as bullets rained outside. Others tried to flee the area.

Rafah hospital and local clinics were reported to be unable to cope with the flow of bodies and wounded people.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian in the West Bank town of Nablus and a local militant leader in Jenin, the Israeli military said. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mi...

Israelis Learned Nothing from Holocaust As Busharon Wipes-Out Palestinians Nazi-Style!

05.18.04 (1:54 pm) [edit]

Israelis Learned Nothing from Holocaust As Busharon Wipes-Out Palestinians Nazi-Style!

05.18.04 (1:49 pm) [edit]

Bush's Legacy: US Soldiers Put Harness on Elderly Iraqi 70 Yr Old Woman & Rode her like a Donkey!!!

05.17.04 (8:40 am) [edit]

[b]"We the People" should demand that Congress http://www.congress.org pursue the[i] impeachment [/i]of the corrupt Bush regime [i]now[/i] for having brought this outrageous horror down upon our heads ...[/b]

[b]I feel knocked on my heels by this stuff.[/b]

[b]From the AP http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm... :[/b]

U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

The envoy, legislator Ann Clwyd, said she had investigated the claims of the woman in her 70s and believed they were true." ...

... "She was held for about six weeks without charge," the envoy told Wednesday's Evening Standard newspaper. "During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey. A harness was put on her, and an American rode on her back."

Clwyd said the woman has recovered physically but remains traumatized.

"I am satisfied the case has now been resolved satisfactorily," the envoy told British Broadcasting Corp. radio Wednesday. "She got a visit last week from the authorities, and she is about to have her papers and jewelry returned to her."

[b]I can't think of anything to say.[/b]

[b]Sources:[/b]

Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo, http://www.talkingpointsmemo....

"U.S. Troops Said to Mistreat Elder Iraqi" on http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...

Bush's Neo-Cons 'Jerk-off' Reaching Orgasm via Murder, Rape, Torture & Abuse!!!

05.17.04 (6:58 am) [edit]

The seven guards charged with abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison were a rogue band "just having some fun with the prisoners" and not carrying out orders to "soften up" detainees for interrogation, according to Army investigators.

The investigators, whose testimony is contained in court-martial records obtained yesterday by the Los Angeles Times, testified at a secret hearing in Baghdad, Iraq, that they found "absolutely no evidence" that the abuses had been authorized by officers in the Army chain of command.

At the same time, the documents show, a member of the military intelligence battalion operating at the prison testified that interrogators sometimes went too far in trying to extract information from detainees. It is the first known instance of a member of an intelligence unit testifying about misconduct by interrogators. - http://www.poe-news.com/stori...

Bush's Neo-Cons 'Jerk-off' Reaching Orgasm via Murder, Rape, Torture & Abuse!!!

05.17.04 (6:57 am) [edit]

Traitor Bush, Murderer Cheney & Torturer Rumsfeld: Will Rummy Go? Nazi War Criminals Stick Together!

05.17.04 (6:54 am) [edit]

From key members of Congress, to the Kerry campaign, to the [i]Army Times[/i], we hear a low growing rumble that Rumsfeld should go. A long-awaited sound, like rain starting after a dry spell.

Rumsfeld is surely responsible for apparently monumental tactical and strategic mistakes over the last three years.

He successfully marginalized real war heroes in and out of the Pentagon, while promoting more flag officer apparatchiks than Cohen ever did.

He created and nurtured an environment where the half-baked revolution theology of neo-Jacobins Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith trumped hard-headed and practical reality, every time. No exceptions. Doing the same thing, over and over, while expecting some new, improved result. The very definition of insanity.

He has spent more tax dollars on less military capability than ever before in our history. $500 billion a year, for several years now. We didn�t purchase security, or even improved military capability. Instead, we have a beefed up public propaganda operation run from the E-Ring of the Pentagon and we put recruitment programs on steroids and PCP in the face of a wised-up population. Well, at least defense contractor stocks are solid.

Thanks to Mr. Rumsfeld, we have a steady stream of dead Americans being flown home under cover of media blackout. We also have all of our old enemies at the ready, plus a whole bunch of new ones who would like nothing better than to kill Americans any way they can. These new enemies don�t need $500 billion a year to do it, not even close. But their existence sure helps pump up our military budget.

He has overseen the biggest boom in global base construction and completion since after World War II, with a ring of bases in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Djibouti, Georgia. Who needed that?

He seems very happy with an appointed Pentagon cadre unable to distinguish between vivid fantasies of Saddam�s degraded programs blossoming in the dark of night, and the very real WMD proliferation profitably pursued in broad daylight by our allies with our enemies. Pakistan? North Korea? Never mind, Messieurs Wolfowitz, Feith, Cambone, Shulsky, Maloof. You�re all doing a great job.

He has chosen the administration over the soldier every time. Whether the question is guns or butter for the actual soldier, the answer is no. Adding insult to injury, Rumsfeld has proposed paying the Iraqi torture victims in Abu Ghraib, while failing to advocate for the court ordered reimbursement of American POWs tortured by Saddam�s army in 1991. The Saddam Hussein accounts to have been garnished are now President Bush accounts. When it comes to treatment of POWs, it is just one more amazing similarity between the Saddam-izer in Baghdad, and the Colon-izer in Washington. The administration is currently in contempt of court. Rather than comply and reimburse American POWs, it is instead planning to try and overturn the court ruling that awarded this payment.

Rumsfeld has worked diligently to keep Congress in the dark about the money he was spending, and where. Hiding money in SOCOM accounts was apparently standard operating procedure. Only two weeks ago, the hot news was the inconvenient possibility that some $700 million of anti-terrorism defense money in 2002 was illegally spent by a Pentagon getting ready to invade Iraq. Miraculously, this serious accusation � the kind the Congress really likes to get its teeth into � has melted away in the news-rush about nastiness at Abu Ghraib. Funny how that works. Crimes at the very top inexplicably overshadowed by far more titillating crimes by the unwashed military. Hard time for the leadership versus hard time for the E-4. You pick.

So if you think Rumsfeld is in trouble, first set aside your suspicion that President Bush and Vice President Cheney lie all the time. Sometimes they don�t.

When Bush says Rumsfeld is "�doing a superb job. [He is] a strong secretary of defense, and our nation owes [him] a debt of gratitude," believe him.

When Cheney says, "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had," believe him, too.

Rumsfeld isn�t going anywhere. Not for six more months. - http://www.lewrockwell.com/kw...

Traitor Bush, Murderer Cheney & Torturer Rumsfeld: Will Rummy Go? Nazi War Criminals Stick Together!

05.17.04 (6:49 am) [edit]

THE STATE OF ISRAEL HAS DECLARED ALL-OUT WAR ON THE JEWISH PEOPLE WORLDWIDE

05.16.04 (6:29 pm) [edit]

Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel told the crowd at a Rome hotel. "We are witness to a great wave of anti-Semitism, and apart from the usual anti-Semitism against Jews, there is today the added hate of the collective Jew, which is Israel.�� The best solution to anti-Semitism is immigration to Israel. It is the only place on Earth where Jews can live as Jews," he said. (BBC website of Monday, 17 November, 2003 (http:/ /news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east /3275979.stm)

Mr. Sharon has moved from the planning stages as stated in November, 2003, to the execution of the plan which has been in development since the days of Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, who stated in his diary �It is essential that the sufferings of Jews. . . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . .I have an excellent idea. . . I shall induce anti-Semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-Semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-Semites shall be our best friends�. (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16)

In executing this plan they have successfully escalated anti-Semitism throughout the world.

There is great pain that the press and politicians are calling the actions of the Zionist movement �Jewish actions.� With these words they are helping the Zionists to fulfill their dreams.

We call upon the world again to understand that the state of �Israel� does not represent the Jewish faith and traditions and that Zionists are the greatest enemies to the Jewish people.

We appeal to people of good will in the media itself to open their minds and hearts to what we are proclaiming about the truth of Judaism, which has been distorted by the Zionists.

The promises of the Torah are always to be realized. This verse from the Torah demonstrates that those who are his enemies will pay a price when The kingdom of G-D will prevail.

Deuteronomy 32:43: Praise his People, O Nations: For he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will render vengeance against his adversaries and make expiation for his land and his People. - http://www.jewsagainstzionism...

Jews Against Zionism Airs Ad on WABC New York Radio

05.16.04 (6:24 pm) [edit]

[b]JEWS AGAINST ZIONISM IN THE NEWS

Check out web-site on [/b] http://www.jewsagainstzionism...

TWO-FACED BASTARD & WAR CRIMINAL: Bush Told CIA He Didn't Want To Know - Cover-up!!!

05.16.04 (7:46 am) [edit]

[b]Covering up the coverup[/b]

NEITHER the release of detainees from Abu Ghraib, nor Donald Rumsfeld's assurance that the abusers will be brought to justice address the real problem revealed by the photographs taken at the prison. That problem is the Bush administration's conflicting messages. Out of one side of its mouth -- the public, rhetorical side -- it condemns all forms of torture regardless of the need to secure intelligence. Out of the other -- the discreet wink and nod side -- it tells intelligence officials the gloves are off and they should do what they have to do to obtain life-saving information. The results were predictable: Low-ranking military intelligence and police believe that they are supposed to get information but are given little guidance about the means (short of lethal torture) deemed appropriate.

Nor would it be obvious to an untrained officer whether humiliation is a proper means of "softening up" or, if it is, whether exploiting religious taboos regarding sex comes within the category of acceptable humiliation. The fact that photographs were widely circulated suggests a belief that superiors would not disapprove of what they saw. This is not to excuse those who inflicted the humiliation, but it may explain why apparently decent soldiers believed they were doing what was expected of them.

After all, the administration did approve rough interrogation methods for some high valued detainees. These included waterboarding, in which a detainee is pushed under water and made to believe he will drown unless he provides information, as well as sensory deprivation, painful stress positions, and simulated dog attacks. It is also well known that the US subcontracts difficult cases to nations such as the Philippines, Egypt, and Jordan, which have no inhibitions about pulling out fingernails. The administration's attitude, as reflected in a secret memorandum prepared by the Justice Department, seems to be that we are not responsible if it can be argued that the detainees are formally in the custody of another country. This head-in-the-sand approach comes from the top.

The New York Times has reported that a CIA official was told that Bush had informed the CIA that he did not want to know where [the high value detainees] were [being held.] If this is true, it reflects a breakdown of responsibility. The president should know where detainees are being held and what is being done to them in the name of our country. It is his responsibility to authorize extraordinary means of interrogation if he believes they are necessary to our national security, or forbid them. It is this kind of choice of evils -- pitting our treaty obligations against our security -- that should never be abdicated to low-ranking officials.

The buck stops in the Oval Office, and the president may not willfully blind himself to the unpleasant realities of the dirty war against terrorism. If Bush believes that extraordinary means -- torture lite -- must be employed in extraordinary cases, then he must make the decision and bear the consequences.

It is not unlike the tragic choice that would have to be made if an apparently hijacked passenger jet were headed toward a crowded city. The decision whether to shoot it down should not be delegated to a low-level Air Force pilot. It should be made by the highest ranking official available -- the president or secretary of defense.

Unless the president is prepared to authorize the use of extraordinary methods in extraordinary situations, such as the ticking bomb terrorist or the terrorist who could lead us to Osama bin Laden, no such methods should be employed. Every soldier should be instructed to ask, before following an order to violate the norms of interrogation, whether the president has authorized him to break the rules. Since it should be clear that no president would ever explicitly authorize the tactics employed at Abu Ghraib, there should be no confusion about what was expected.

Scapegoating the military police for the failures of the administration will not solve the problems caused by a lack of accountability at the top. General Richard B. Myers's argument that the release of the videos and additional photographs would endanger the prosecutions is a coverup. His statement that the worst possible outcome is that the perpetrators get off is more likely to cause problems than the release of the photographs, since that statement sends a message of command influence.

It seems clear that Myers and his bosses want these soldiers convicted and hope that it will be seen as a just resolution of this matter. Not so. If these soldiers are the only ones convicted of a crime that goes to the top of the chain, then the coverup will have succeeded and the problems will persist. - http://www.boston.com/news/gl...

TWO-FACED BASTARD & WAR CRIMINAL: Bush Told CIA He Didn't Want To Know - Cover-up!!!

05.16.04 (7:44 am) [edit]

Would a Pullout from Iraq be More Chaotic than Bush's Inhumane Massacres, Rapes & Tortures?

05.16.04 (7:39 am) [edit]

[b]Would a Pullout from Iraq be more Chaotic Than This?

[i]The Case Against US-British Withdrawal doesn't Stand up to Scrutiny [/i][/b]

Can the American occupation of Iraq be sustained any longer? In the wake of the prison horrors revealed at Abu Ghraib, has the time not come for a serious debate on the immediate withdrawal, not just of British forces, but of the 150,000 US forces as well?

The worldwide shockwaves from the torture pictures are political as well as moral. Outrage is prompting calls for radical change, which Donald Rumsfeld's sudden trip to Baghdad no doubt is intended to block. In the US, Richard Holbrooke, a strong contender to run the state department in a Kerry presidency, calls the scandal "the most serious setback for the American military since Vietnam". Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander who ran in the Democratic party primaries, puts the prospect of pressure leading to an early end to the US mission as "better than 50-50".

In Iraq, according to Ahmed Fawzi, spokesman for the UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who is currently helping to select an Iraqi government: "Everyone we have spoken to has raised the issue. They feel humiliated."

For many Iraqis the pictures show something even worse than torture. They reveal pornographic sadism. "I knew prison abuse was happening," says Fateena Hamdi, a Baghdad university professor I rang the other day. "But I couldn't imagine it was being done for amusement."

It was clear from the earliest days of the occupation, as the late UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello argued, that sovereignty is the key to security in Iraq, and the occupation itself is the major source of instability. Even among Iraqis who welcomed the invasion, the presence of foreign forces quickly created resentment and suspicion. As long as there was no date for the troops to leave, Iraqis feared the US only wanted long-term military bases, and their oil. Many saw no choice but to resist the US, if necessary by force.

US troops also became a magnet for every kind of radical Islamist group, Iraqi and foreign. "We thank the Americans for two things," a Wahhabi sheikh told me with a smile in Baghdad last month. "They liberated us from Saddam so we can operate freely. They also created the conditions for us to resist them in our own country instead of having to go abroad."

Late last year Washington got part of the point, and the current timetable was set for appointing an Iraqi government and transferring sovereignty on June 30. But the plan was flawed since the US insisted on keeping its forces in Iraq even after June. As the date approached, more and more Iraqis grew angry over the limits to the sovereignty being transferred, since the US intends to keep control of security and even have the right to command the re-emerging Iraqi forces.

Then came the appalling use of excessive force in Falluja, which highlighted a developing mountain of evidence that the way US troops behave in Iraq creates more enemies than it eliminates. Their skills as peacekeepers are minimal. In more benign postwar environments such as Bosnia and Kosovo they have functioned reasonably, but at the slightest hint of hostilities they over-react and over-kill.

One solution canvassed by several commentators has been for the UN and the new Iraqi government to have oversight over US forces, or else to reduce their numbers significantly by bringing in Arab League or European troops. Holbrooke now shares that line, according to the New York Times, which says he believes the Bush administration must concede the US presence in Iraq is illegitimate and illegal in the eyes of the Arab world, and turn affairs over to the UN.

Iraqi and Arab reaction to the prison abuse horrors suggests that even this position may have become untenable. The time has come for Americans and their allies to ask the most searching question: what would happen if they left? The standard answer, even among countries like France which opposed the invasion, is that there would be "chaos".

That can no longer be taken for granted. We need to define that term and ask whether it would necessarily be worse than the chaos caused on a daily basis by the occupation forces' behavior. Vague talk of instability is no substitute for a proper assessment of the threats Iraq faces.

Externally, there are none. Its neighbors have no claims on Iraqi territory; nor is there a sign that any might intervene by force, except perhaps Turkey in the case of an irredentist future Kurdistan.

Iraq's threats are internal. But are they demonstrably more acute than those facing other Arab states, none of which - with the exception of Lebanon - harbors foreign forces with a mandate to maintain internal security. Why should Iraq be unique in needing outside forces?

The existence of political militias in Iraq is a serious problem, and the occupation forces' failure to disband them in the first weeks after reaching Baghdad is another mark against Washington. They are not yet as powerful as the regional warlords' armies which the US and its allies have equally failed to disarm in Afghanistan, but they could start clashing with each other. Since last year new militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army have been allowed to emerge.

The best way to deal with them is not by military force, as the US is trying in Najaf and Sadr City, but by incorporating the best of their cadres into the new Iraqi security structures and finding political avenues for their bosses' rivalries. That means the promised early elections. Restoring the leadership of the former Iraqi army (minus proven torturers and war criminals) would be another step which could restore national pride, reduce Iraqi resentment, and deny legitimacy to the militias, if it is done before June 30.

Sectarian clashes between Sunnis and Shias are often mentioned as a lurking menace, but Iraq's modern history has no such record - the leaders of both communities have been scrupulous in mobilizing community support against them. Ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds are a greater danger, since attitudes in the disputed cities of Kirkuk and Mosul can easily be roused at both the popular and the elite levels.

There might be a case for a temporary deployment of foreign forces in these areas, though not from Turkey or any Arab state, since they would not be seen as impartial. The Iraqi national army might be one-sided, unless (another urgent priority) Kurdish officers are soon given high-command posts.

These scenarios need to be fleshed out. But as the miseries of Iraqis under occupation multiply, the burden of proof is increasingly on those who claim that pulling foreign troops out of Iraq would be worse than keeping them there. Playing on the bogeymen of "chaos" and "a security vacuum" can no longer go unchallenged. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Would a Pullout from Iraq be More Chaotic than Bush's Inhumane Massacres, Rapes & Tortures?

05.16.04 (7:37 am) [edit]

Bush Pushes for Immunity from World Court ... Because He Is Guilty of War Crimes!!!

05.15.04 (2:36 pm) [edit]

[b]US Pushes World Court Immunity Amid Iraq Scandal [/b]

The Bush administration is pursuing its campaign to protect Americans from International Criminal Court jurisdiction even as it deals with the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal that may involve some of the very war crimes the court was created to handle.

So far 89 countries have signed agreements with Washington promising that Americans accused of grave international offenses, including soldiers charged with war crimes, will be returned to U.S. jurisdiction so their cases can be decided by fellow Americans rather than international jurists.

Other states may soon be added, officials said this week.

"It's never been our argument that Americans are angels," one senior U.S. official told Reuters.

"Our argument has been if Americans commit war crimes or human rights violations, we will handle them. And we will," he added.

The permanent court was established in 2002 after ad hoc institutions dealt with war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

But President Bush opposed it and insisted on so-called Article 98 agreements under which countries guaranteed not to surrender Americans to ICC prosecution.

With military and civilians on peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in 100 countries, Washington must preserve its independence to defend its national interests worldwide, U.S. officials said.

This position is coming under new scrutiny following publication of photographs showing U.S. army soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

The photos have fueled international outrage and severely damaged U.S. credibility. U.S. officials promise the guilty will be punished but rights experts worry prosecutions will focus on lower-ranking soldiers, not their superiors.

WAR CRIMES PROSECUTION

"The political reality is that its going to be harder now to persuade democratically elected leaders to immunize the U.S. military from war crimes prosecution," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

While some states may be more reluctant to sign the bilateral immunity agreements, it is unclear they can avoid it, said Anthony Dworkin, London-based editor of the Crimes of War Project Web site .

U.S. law prohibits military aid to countries that do not sign immunity accords and Washington has used this lever to exert "enormous pressure" on countries to sign, he said.

Some legal experts disagree with the use of Article 98 agreements and question government insistence that U.S. military interrogation rules in Iraq and elsewhere comply with the Geneva Convention.

Washington "is reluctant to test its interpretation" before international jurists, Dworkin said.

"All of us are appalled by those prisoner abuse photos and we need to address them," a U.S. official said. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Keeping Government Out of Religion & Religion Out of Government

05.15.04 (10:30 am) [edit]

"[i]Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society[/i]." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...

[b]Our Founding Fathers were adament in creating a "wall of separation between church and state" and would have been appalled at the pressure brought to bear by religious zealots and tyrannical fanatics like the traitorous Bush (unfit to be president) who is corrupting our system of democracy ...[/b]

In a highly informative interview by Bill Moyers ([i]NOW with Bill Moyers[/i] http://www.pbs.org/now/societ... ) with Susan Jacoby, author of "[b]Freethinkers: [i]A History of American Secularism[/i][/b]" (excerpt on