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RADICAL WELFARE IN THE GAZA STRIP
Uncle Hamas Cares for Palestinians
By
Ulrike Putz in Gaza City

SPIEGEL ONLINE - December 20, 2006, 12:05 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,455632,00.html
The West classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, but in the Gaza Strip, the Islamist organization is widely respected for helping families in need. International aid groups also praise Hamas for being free of corruption.
Etidal Sinati's life in poverty began one night in March 2003. Israeli helicopters were flying air attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza City and Etidal's husband Mohammed and a group of other men from the neighborhood went out to assess the damage. But the Israelis weren't done; an attack helicopter returned and fired on the onlookers. Etidal's husband was killed, leaving her with seven children and no one to provide for them. Overnight, the Sinatis became a welfare case -- and loyal to Hamas. The radical Islamist group took the destitute family under its wing.


Photo Gallery: Palestinians DividedClick on a picture to launch the image gallery (10 Photos) Go on-site to view.
"My husband was not a Hamas supporter. In fact, he was for Fatah," says Sinati, now a widow. It is cold in her two-room hut; a mentally ill uncle sits in a corner occasionally laughing to himself and pulling his wool blanket over his head. "But without Hamas we wouldn't have survived, and even with their support it's been difficult."

The official pension for the wife of a "martyr" -- a Palestinian killed by the Israeli military -- is €100 every three months. For a large family living in Gaza, this is about enough for one good seafood meal, but is not enough to live on. "So Hamas adopted my children," says Etidal Sinati. The widow receives €15 a month in child support for each child, and all of her children attend a school run by Hamas free of charge. "I voted for the crescent in the January election," says the illiterate Etidal. The crescent moon is Hamas's symbol.

A party for the poor
At first glance Hamas, a party that looks after the poor with its money and charity, appears to be playing a well-known tune on the instrument of populism. On the other hand, every major international aid organization is singing the Islamist group's praises when it comes to the quality of its work. "In the International Crisis Group's 2003 report, the most important American NGOs gave perfect marks to Hamas's work; they couldn't have achieved a better result," says Helga Baumgarten, a lecturer at Birzeit University in Ramallah.

Baumgarten believes that the success of the party, which emerged from the radical Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, is based on two factors: the highly professional work of the group's welfare agencies and Hamas's oft-cited integrity. "In fact, all studies have concluded that Hamas operates without a trace of corruption," says Baumgarten. "This has enabled it to gain the respect of the population over the years."

Nevertheless, Hamas is no moderate party. It sees itself as the spearhead of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. Following its surprising election victory in January, the organization refused to renounce armed conflict or to recognize Israel. Its repeated use of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens since its founding has also contributed to Hamas being classified as a terrorist organization in the West -- despite its day-to-day charitable activities.

But it is difficult to say whether Hamas deliberately uses its charitable work to generate sympathy within the population. "Social commitment is not a means to an end; I would not interpret this merely as exploitation," says Baumgarten. And even if it were, parties the world over operate no differently.

Building on faith
Al-Mujamma al-Islami, or the Islamic Center, in southeastern Gaza City is proof positive that Hamas literally builds on faith. The mosque on the ground floor of the newly constructed center has been in operation for weeks, while the center's employees sit between boxes on the fourth floor above the women's gallery in the prayer room. The center, founded in 1973 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin making it the oldest Islamic charity in Gaza, had grown too big for its old headquarters. Its 150 employees just moved in to their new offices on the weekend.

At first the wheelchair-bound Yassin, who founded Hamas in 1987 and was killed in a targeted Israeli missile attack in 2004, managed the organization's funds from the living room of his modest house a few streets away. Today the center has evolved into a giant charitable institution in Gaza, operating 16 kindergartens, 30 Koran schools, and providing thousands of families with money, food and clothing. The center also pays child support for 5,000 orphans. Etidal Sinati also collects aid payment for her seven children here.

Nidal Shabana, the center's director, currently manages an annual budget of about $1 million. Despite his prominent position, Shabana remains a modest man, although a hint of pride for his work trickles through when he talks about the Islamic ping-pong team that recently won the Gaza championships under his tutelage. "Modesty and honesty are principles that are especially valued in Islam," he says. When asked his opinion about the growing strength of Islamist parties in the Arab world -- a phenomenon viewed with great concern in the West -- Shabana becomes circumspect. The behavior of Islamic leaders happens to be exemplary, he says, adding that their hands are clean. In a roundabout way, Shabana is saying that he considers the political leaders in neighboring Arab states to be corrupt and morally weak.

Ulrike Putz
Etidal Sitani with her stepmother on the left and a friend of the family in the middle.
Since the 1970s, the failure of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world -- dominated by ruling families intent on lining their own pocketbooks and bloated, inefficient bureaucracies -- has led to Islamist groups filling a social and political vacuum in the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. The fact that Hamas hasn't received recognition as the sole governing party in the Palestinian Territories is by no means just a local quirk. Resistance to Hezbollah's quest for power up the road in Beirut is similar. These religious fundamentalist organizations are a threat to the region's established regimes; it's not just Israel and its Western allies that are interested in keeping the Islamists in check.

Etidal Sitani is also aware that the organization that has thrown her family a lifeline is facing pressure from within the Palestinian Territories and from abroad. But this has only strengthened Sitani's support for her benefactors. Her eldest son recently tried on his father's uniform. But while the father was a reservist in one of the Fatah Movement's security forces, the son plans to fight for Hamas. "I will not allow him to join the militias just yet. After all, he is only 15," says the mother. "He can do it when he is 20."

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006
All Rights ReservedRelated SPIEGEL ONLINE links:

Photo Gallery: Palestinians Divided
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,18107,00.html
"One Big Prison": A Glimpse at Daily Misery in the Gaza Strip (12/18/2006)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,455254,00.html
Power Struggle in the Gaza Strip: Palestinian Strife Continues Despite Cease- Fire (12/18/2006)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,455216,00.html
The World from Berlin: Chaos in the Palestinian Authority (12/18/2006)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,455229,00.html
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BUSH SEEKS MORE TROOPS
A bigger military is needed for a long war on terrorism, he says.
By James Gerstenzang and Noam N. Levey,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
December 20, 2006

WASHINGTON — With generals warning that long deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the Army to a breaking point, President Bush is asking for plans to expand the military for a long war against terrorism, a senior administration official said Tuesday.

The growth would reverse the course pursued by Donald H. Rumsfeld, who six years ago set out to restructure the nation's military forces and advocated cutting two divisions, or about 40,000 soldiers, from the Army.

Bush asked Robert M. Gates, who replaced Rumsfeld as defense secretary Monday, to prepare plans for a more muscular military, with the idea of incorporating the expansion in the 2008 budget request that the administration plans to send to Congress in early February.

Countering any talk that a beefed-up force would necessitate a draft, Army officials have said they believe at least an extra 20,000 soldiers a year could be recruited through pay incentives.

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** Vietnam, anyone? The White House nimrod might not read books - but the SE Asia debacle wasn't that long ago. Go into a war with no long-term plan other than "We're gonna kick some peasant ass" and no exit strategy in place, and you've got a recipe for disaster. (As Nixon, Kissinger, LBJ, Westmoreland all discovered the hard way. Which was not quite the same way as the 58,000 U.S. military personnel who came home in a box, or not at all.)

** "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - George Santayana (1863-1952, Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist, raised and educated in U.S.)

** "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" (the more that changes, the more it's the same thing).

It seems that we're getting someone with dubious experiences in military as well as covert operations filling Rumsfeld's position.

It is a scary thought when one thinks of what went on in Central America. Robert Gates's taking over isn't such a calming thought. Time will tell, and since we have to accept who it is for the time being, let's hope for the best. With this administration, however, hoping for the best has been and more than likely, going by past history, is, and will be, such a lost cause. I just don't see good coming from any of them. I hope to be proved wrong, but.....

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.Berliner Zeitung 20.12.2006

Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Mexican filmaker Alejandro talks with Bert Rebhandl about his third film "Babel", what it's like to shoot with Brad Pitt in places where no one knows him, and the Latin American Left: "I represent the Left today, a post-ideological Left. Ideologies divide things into black and white, superior and inferior. Bush is a fanatic, a nutcase who sees an axis of evil everywhere he looks. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, who stylises himself as Bush's adversary, is also a radical, not a leftist. He too sees an axis of evil wherever he looks, and in that he's just like Bush. He produces anger, that's disturbing. Earlier politicians were useful to society. That's no longer the case. Nowadays they just use society for their own cult of fame, as a platform for eccentric appearances. In that they're no different from Paris Hilton."
http://www.signandsight.com/intodaysfeuilletons/1105.html
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TIME~~~~~~~~~~
Syria in Bush's Crosshairs
Exclusive:A classified document suggests the Administration is considering a plan to fund political opposition to the Damascus government. Some critics say it would be an unwarranted covert action
By
ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON
Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006

The Bush Administration has been quietly nurturing individuals and parties opposed to the Syrian government in an effort to undermine the regime of President Bashar Assad. Parts of the scheme are outlined in a classified, two-page document which says that the U.S. already is "supporting regular meetings of internal and diaspora Syrian activists" in Europe. The document bluntly expresses the hope that "these meetings will facilitate a more coherent strategy and plan of actions for all anti-Assad activists."

The document says that Syria's legislative elections, scheduled for March 2007, "provide a potentially galvanizing issue for... critics of the Assad regime." To capitalize on that opportunity, the document proposes a secret "election monitoring" scheme, in which "internet accessible materials will be available for printing and dissemination by activists inside the country [Syria] and neighboring countries." The proposal also calls for surreptitiously giving money to at least one Syrian politician who, according to the document, intends to run in the election. The effort would also include "voter education campaigns" and public opinion polling, with the first poll "tentatively scheduled in early 2007."

American officials say the U.S. government has had extensive contacts with a range of anti-Assad groups in Washington, Europe and inside Syria. To give momemtum to that opposition, the U.S. is giving serious consideration to the election- monitoring scheme proposed in the document, according to several officials. The proposal has not yet been approved, in part because of questions over whether the Syrian elections will be delayed or even cancelled. But one U.S. official familiar with the proposal said: "You are forced to wonder whether we are now trying to destabilize the Syrian government."

Some critics in Congress and the Administration say that such a plan, meant to secretly influence a foreign government, should be legally deemed a "covert action," which by law would then require that the White House inform the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill. Some in Congress would undoubtedly raise objections to this secret use of publicly appropriated funds to promote democracy.

The proposal says part of the effort would be run through a foundation operated by Amar Abdulhamid, a Washington-based member of a Syrian umbrella opposition group known as the National Salvation Front (NSF). The Front includes the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization that for decades supported the violent overthrow the Syrian government, but now says it seeks peaceful, democratic reform. (In Syria, however, membership in the Brotherhood is still punishable by death.) Another member of the NSF is Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former high-ranking Syrian official and Assad family loyalist who recently went into exile after a political clash with the regime. Representatives of the National Salvation Front, including Abdulhamid, were accorded at least two meetings earlier this year at the White House, which described the sessions as exploratory. Since then, the National Salvation Front has said it intends to open an office in Washington in the near future.

"Democracy promotion" has been a focus of both Democratic and Republican administrations, but the Bush White House has been a particular booster since 9/11. Iran contra figure Elliott Abrams was put in charge of the effort at the National Security Council. Until recently, Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the Vice President, oversaw such work at the State Department. In the past, the U.S. has used support for "democracy building" to topple unfriendly dictators, including Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and Ukraine's Vladimir Kuchma.

However, in order to make the "election monitoring" plan for Syria effective, the proposal makes clear that the U.S. effort will have to be concealed: "Any information regarding funding for domestic [Syrian] politicians for elections monitoring would have to be protected from public dissemination," the document says. But American experts on "democracy promotion" consulted by TIME say it would be unwise to give financial support to a specific candidate in the election, because of the perceived conflict of interest. More ominously, an official familiar with the document explained that secrecy is necessary in part because Syria's government might retaliate against anyone inside the country who was seen as supporting the U.S.-backed election effort. The official added that because the Syrian government fields a broad network of internal spies, it would almost certainly find out about the U.S. effort, if it hasn't already. That could lead to the imprisonment of still more opposition figures.

Any American-orchestrated attempt to conduct such an election-monitoring effort could make a dialogue between Washington and Damascus — as proposed by the Iraq Study Group and several U.S. allies — difficult or impossible. The entire proposal could also be a waste of effort; Edward P. Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who worked on the Iraq Study Group report, says that Syria's opposition is so fractured and weak that there is little to be gained by such a venture. "To fund opposition parties on the margins is a distraction at best," he told TIME. "It will only impede the better option of engaging Syria on much more important, fundamental issues like Iraq, peace with Israel, and the dangerous situation in Lebanon."

Others detect another goal for the proposed policy. "Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Syria opposed, the Bush Administration has been looking for ways to squeeze the government in Damascus," notes Joshua Landis, a Syria expert who is co-director of the Center for Peace Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "Syria has appeared to be next on the Administration's agenda to reform the greater Middle East." Landis adds: "This is apparently an effort to gin up the Syrian opposition under the rubric of 'democracy promotion' and 'election monitoring,' but it's really just an attempt to pressure the Syrian government" into doing what the U.S. wants. That would include blocking Syria's border with Iraq so insurgents do not cross into Iraq to kill U.S. troops; ending funding of Hizballah and interference in Lebanese politics; and cooperating with the U.N. in the investigation of the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Senior Syrian government officials are considered prime suspects in Hariri case.

Money for the election-monitoring proposal would be channeled through a State Department program known as the Middle East Partnership Initiative, or MEPI. According to MEPI's website, the program passes out funds ranging between $100,000 and $1 million to promote education and women's empowerment, as well as economic and political reform, part of a total allocation of $5 million for Syria that Congress supported earlier this year.

MEPI helps funnel millions of dollars every year to groups around the Middle East intent on promoting reforms. In the vast majority of cases, beneficiaries are publicly identified, as financial support is distributed through channels including the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit affiliated with the Democratic Party, and the International Republican Institute (IRI), which is linked to the GOP. In the Syrian case, the election-monitoring proposal identifies IRI as a "partner" — although the IRI website, replete with information about its democracy promotion elsewhere in the world, does not mention Syria. A spokesperson for IRI had no comment on what the organization might have planned or underway in Syria, describing the subject as "sensitive."

U.S. foreign policy experts familiar with the proposal say it was developed by a "democracy and public diplomacy" working group that meets weekly at the State department to discuss Iran and Syria. Along with related working groups, it prepares proposals for the higher-level Iran Syria Operations Group, or ISOG, an inter-agency body that, several officials said, has had input from Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, deputy National Security Council advisor Elliott Abrams and representatives from the Pentagon, Treasury and U.S. intelligence. The State Department's deputy spokesman, Thomas Casey, said the election-monitoring proposal had already been through several classified drafts, but that "the basic concept is very much still valid."
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
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This seems to be Robert Gates field of expertiese, so what is up with him?
SRH .....http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,1571751,00.html
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IN THE NEWS:
Bush Found Out About The Supoena Today
December 20, 2006
How many years ago did Bush promise to get to the bottom of PlameGate?

Of course, that was disingenuous, because he is probably underneath the pile he swore to get to the bottom of.

Anyway, it strikes us as mind-boggling that at a December 20th "news conference," Bush claimed he didn't know Cheney had indicated that he would testify at Libby's trial.

The ProgessiveTruth,
a blog,
gives us the run down:

"Earlier this week it was reported that Vice President Cheney will be called as a witness for the defense in the trial of Scooter Libby. According to Cheney spokesperson Lea Anne McBridge, "We've cooperated fully in this matter and we'll continue to do so."

However, during this morning's press conference, CNN's Elaine Quiano asked the President about this development.

"What is your reaction to that, is that something you'll resist?"

Bush responded that he was unaware of this development until reading the newspapers this morning.

"No, I read about it in the newspaper today, and uh, it's an interesting piece of news and that's all I'm going to comment about an ongoing case."

Why is it I knew the Vice President was being subpoenaed a day before the President did? Why was it that the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, had to read about his Vice President testifying in the newspapers? Guess the Patriot Act doesn't cover sharing information within the Executive Branch."
http://theprogressivetruth.blogspot.com/2006/12/bush-found-about-cheney-subpoena-today.html

As one BuzzFlash reader noted, at least Bush's response confirms that he can read.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Bush Found About Cheney Subpoena TodayEarlier this week it was reported that Vice President Cheney will be called as a witness for the defense in the trial of Scooter Libby. According to Cheney spokesperson Lea Anne McBridge, "We've cooperated fully in this matter and we'll continue to do so."

However, during this morning's press conference, CNN's Elaine Quiano asked the President about this development.

"What is your reaction to that, is that something you'll resist?"

Bush responded that he was unaware of this development until reading the newspapers this morning.

"No, I read about it in the newspaper today, and uh, it's an interesting piece of news and that's all I'm going to comment about an ongoing case."

Why is it I knew the Vice President was being subpoenaed a day before the President did? Why was it that the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, had to read about his Vice President testifying in the newspapers? Guess the Patriot Act doesn't cover sharing information within the Executive Branch.

Posted by Janie
at
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Labels: Bush, Cheney
1 comments:
Jerry said...
Isn't that Bush's favorite way of dodging anything he doesn't want to deal with? He is forever ignorant of something, or just found out and have to get back to you on it.

December 20, 2006 1:41:00 PM CST http://theprogressivetruth.blogspot.com/2006/12/bush-found-about-cheney-subpoena-today.html .
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--
Jeb Bush tells reporters
Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:25 PM ET
MIAMI (Reuters) - The shadow of President Bush seemed to loom large over his younger brother on Wednesday, as the outgoing Florida governor ruled out any plans to return to elected office.

"No tengo futuro (I have no future)," Jeb Bush told Spanish-language reporters in Miami, when asked about any possible political ambitions after he steps down next month.

The popular, two-term governor has often been touted as a savvy politician with a good chance of following both his brother and father, George H.W. Bush, into the White House.

But the unpopularity and dismal job-approval ratings of his brother may have scuttled any plans Jeb Bush may have had for a future in politics after running one of America's most crucial swing states for the past eight years.

Bush did not elaborate on his terse "no future" comment. But he has said repeatedly over the past year that he would not run for president in 2008 and has never seemed comfortable with talk about Bush III or the Bush presidential dynasty.

"Jeb would have made an outstanding presidential candidate," said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who joined Bush at a luncheon on Wednesday hosted by a Cuban American political action committee.

Brownback, a Republican who launched an exploratory committee three weeks ago to consider his own bid for the presidency, added that he was "a Jeb Bush-type conservative."

In a backhanded slap at President Bush, Brownback cited "a heritage issue" as one factor currently weighing against a Jeb Bush presidency.

"People may be wanting to see a different name," he said.

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-12-21T022449Z_01_N20428647_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-JEB.xml&WTmodLoc=USNewsHome_C1_%5bFeed%5d-7 ***
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Bush India statement raises Congress concerns

By
Carol Giacomo,
Diplomatic Correspondent
Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:15 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A statement by President Bush issued in connection with the just-signed U.S.-India civil nuclear cooperation law has raised concerns that Bush may try to circumvent some of Congress' intentions, lawmakers and analysts say.

The statement, clarifying Bush's views on law and policy, was issued after he signed legislation on Monday permitting U.S. sales of nuclear fuel and reactors to India for the first time in 30 years.

In the statement, Bush said his signature "does not constitute my adoption of the statements of policy (in the law) as U.S. foreign policy." Also in responding to reports mandated by Congress, he would consider how releasing data requested by lawmakers might "impair foreign relations."

In one of its most controversial directives, Congress stipulated in the law that presidents should report annually on India's cooperation in restraining Iran's nuclear program, which Bush has condemned as a major international threat.

"With his recent signing statement, once again the president has shown he views Congress as a nuisance rather than an equal branch of government under the Constitution," said Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a Democrat whose party will control a majority of the new Congress to be sworn in next month.

It was "outrageous that the president has repeatedly stated the greatest threat to U.S. national security is a nuclear Iran, yet explicitly rejects Congress' declaration that it shall be the official policy of the United States that India will not use its nuclear technology to help develop Iran's nuclear weapons arsenal," Harkin said in a news release.

'THUMBING HIS NOSE'

In the statement, Bush also said he considered as only "advisory" a congressional directive prohibiting nuclear transfers to India that conflict with guidelines of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, which the United States helped establish years ago to restrain nuclear trade.

Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts said this shows Bush is "reserving the right to ignore the Nuclear Suppliers Group."

The president is "turning decades of U.S. international policy on its head -- and thumbing his nose at Congress at the same time," added Markey, co-chair of the House of Representatives task force on non-proliferation.

Separately, during a telephone conversation between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bush on Thursday, Singh said he still had some concerns over the law.

"The Prime Minister said India still has some concerns, though many have already been expressed in the President's signing statement," said a statement from Singh's office.

Critics in India say the deal may constrain New Delhi's policy toward Iran as well as its nuclear weapons program and fails to guarantee uninterrupted fuel supplies for civilian reactors.

Before U.S. nuclear exports can begin, other approvals are needed including a Nuclear Suppliers Group decision to change its rules barring trade with India and passage of a second U.S. law.

Some non-proliferation experts worry that if the United States does not win NSG approval -- which must be by unanimous consent -- Bush will let the trade with India go forward.

The White House and State Department rejected such interpretations of Bush's statement.

Asked if Bush might ignore the NSG, a State Department official told Reuters: "No, quite the opposite."

He said that while NSG guidelines are "political commitments," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "has been very clear that we're not going to do the (nuclear) deal without consensus in the NSG."

Meanwhile, a White House official said the statement's treatment of the NSG "is not regarding any particular intended course of foreign policy or with any particular practical effect in terms of intended treatment of material (nuclear) transfer."

Rather, the statement is intended to deal with the "domestic issue of government power rather than an issue of international nuclear policy," he said.

Justice Department lawyers were concerned the way the law is written meant that a change in NSG rules would force a change in U.S. law, a U.S. official said.

(Additional reporting by Nita Bhalla in New Delhi)

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-12-21T161445Z_01_N20406847_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-INDIA-USA.xml
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POGO Urges Congressional Hearings into
No-bid Commercial Items Contract

DoD Inspector General Report Finds Nine-Year Contract
a Boondoggle for Hamilton Sundstrand

Contact: Jennifer Porter Gore jgore@pogo.org or (202) 347-1122
November 30, 2006

WASHINGTON --The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) this week urged Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), and Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) to look into the upsurge in the number of no-bid commercial items contracts.

This request stems from issues raised in a recently released Department of Defense Inspector General’s (DOD IG) report concerning the company Hamilton Sundstrand and its nine-year $860 million spare parts contract with the federal government. The report finds Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies Corp., charged the U.S. Defense Department exorbitant prices for aircraft spare parts. Prices for several of the items skyrocketed by as much as 900 percent.

For more information, follow the link for a copy of POGO’s letter to Congress.

Follow the link to a redacted copy of the report available on the DOD IG’s website.


Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable federal government.

Go on-site to access the links (underlined in article text) by clicking on the following one:

http://pogo.org/index.html
© The Project On Government Oversight 2006
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United Technologies Pricing Data Sought by Air Force
(Update3)
By
Jon Steinman and Tony Capaccio

Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- United Technologies Corp.'s Hamilton Sundstrand unit may not be awarded the remainder of an $860 million spare-parts contract with the U.S. Air Force unless it turns over pricing information to prove it hasn't been overcharging.
The Air Force, in an emailed statement, said it has suspended the process of awarding the second and third phases of the three- phase contract, which account for more than $664 million in potential revenue. Hamilton Sundstrand won the first phase in 2004.

The decision stems from a Sept. 29 report by the Defense Department's Inspector General which found that Hamilton Sundstrand provided minimal pricing data for some aircraft parts. Costs for some items in the first phase of nine-year contract have jumped as much as 900 percent, according to the Washington- based nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

``The Air Force has suspended activity aimed at executing phases II and III of the Strategic Supplier Relationship while the pricing issue on Phase I is being worked,'' Air Force spokesman Donald Manuszewski said in the statement, which was sent yesterday. ``We do not anticipate a decision to move forward with phases II and III until pricing issues related to phase I have been resolved.''

The Inspector General's report shows that, among other things, the company charged the Department of Defense $15.05 for a straight headless pin, while it billed a non-government client $3.88 for the same item, according to the oversight group.

``The Air Force is an important customer to Hamilton Sundstrand. We're working with them to resolve this as quickly as possible,'' said Hamilton Sundstrand spokesman Dan Coulom.

Red Rating
The contract covers parts such as generators and gearboxes for aircraft including F-16 and F-15 fighters, the B-1B bomber, KC-135 tanker and T-38 trainer.

Hamilton Sundstrand, the world's second-biggest provider of auxiliary power units for aircraft behind Honeywell International Inc., contributed $4.4 billion of Hartford, Connecticut-based United Technologies' $42.7 billion in revenue last year.

If Hamilton Sundstrand doesn't provide the requested pricing information, the company could be given a ``red'' rating in the Pentagon's Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System, or CPARS, Manuszewski said.

``CPARS are used by the Air Force as a method to assess past performance and are based on a multitude of factors, including business relations,'' Manuszewski said. ``As such, a red rating in an assessment could have an impact on future contract awards.''

Shares of United Technologies fell 49 cents to $62.73 at 12:25 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They had gained 13 percent this year before today.

Renewed Oversight
As of Oct. 31, $49.3 million has been paid to Hamilton Sundstrand under the $195.7 million first phase of the contract, he said.

The issue may prompt a new round of oversight on Capitol Hill, where the incoming chairmen of the House and Senate armed services committees have both said they plan to hold hearings on defense contract performance.

``Senator Levin is aware of this and is looking into it,'' said Tara Andringa, a spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who takes over the Senate Armed Services Committee next year.

The Inspector General's audit found that the Air Force routinely classified as ``commercial'' parts that only had military use, according to an unedited copy released last month by the government oversight group. The improper classification allowed Hamilton Sundstrand to avoid providing the cost and pricing data, the report said.

No Cooperation
The company ``repeatedly refused attempts by DoD contracting officials to obtain the information necessary to determine price reasonableness for noncompetitive spare parts,'' according to the report. The Air Force has yet to receive the information it is seeking, Manuszewski said.

In the copy of the report posted on the Inspector General's Web site, the dollar figures on what Hamilton Sundstrand charged for parts are redacted, citing ``contractor proprietary data.''

The Air Force has been criticized by the Inspector General for signing similar contracts with Lockheed Martin Corp. on the C-130J transport and F-16 training simulator services and with Boeing Co. for tankers.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jon Steinman in Washington at jsteinman@bloomberg.net ; Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: December 21, 2006 12:26 EST http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afZRyKsyTbRY&refer=home

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Tyler Drumheller Interview on PBS, on OPB,
Tavis Smiley:
Transcript: Tyler Drumheller Interview
Friday December 15th 2006

Good evening from Los Angeles. I'm Tavis Smiley.

First up tonight, new evidence of how the Bush administration manipulated pre-war intelligence. Tyler Drumheller spent more than twenty-five years at the CIA. Now retired, he has revealed alarming new details about White House actions in the run-up to the Iraq War. Tyler Drumheller tonight on his best-selling book, "On the Brink."

Tyler Drumheller
Tavis: Tyler Drumheller spent more than twenty-five years in the CIA before retiring in 2005 with a rank equivalent to a four-star general. He's also the recipient of the agency's highest career award, the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. His new book about pre-war United States intelligence is called "On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence." Mr. Drumheller, nice to have you on the program.

Tyler Drumheller: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Tavis: Every time I get a chance to talk to someone like you, that is to say, someone who has been on the inside of a particular operation knowing that the work that they were doing was being bastardized, being misused, being misappropriated, I often wonder how it is that you stay on the inside when you know that that's what's happening.

Drumheller: That's a very good question. I've been asked that before. You know, I was roughly thirty years in the CIA and, during that time, there were many things like this and you always think that it's going to get better and, before, it always had even with the Reagan administration or the similar things and others, part of the Clinton administration. This got worse and worse and, frankly, I had given myself up to the 2004 election. I said, if President Bush was re-elected, then I was going to retire, which is what I did.

Tavis: When you say it got worse and worse and worse, give me some texture to that.

Drumheller: Well, in the beginning, they turned the intelligence process on its head. They came with the idea of what they wanted to look for rather than the active. It's the classic example of the Cuban Missile Crisis where you get a story that comes in, it's very important, and then the White House reacts to it and goes forward.

In this case, they had their idea of what they were going to do set in the beginning. They came and looked through all the different intelligence that was available and picked - they called it cherry-picking; you hear that all the time - what they wanted to use. Even when we found out that the one particular source was a bad source and some of the others were all bad sources, they continued to hold on to that and to fight for that source.

At the same time, we developed another source that was, I think, a good source. It's been proven out over time and it was ignored. So in the end, I decided I wasn't having any effect anymore, it was time to go and pursued someplace else.

Tavis: Your answer to that question raises two questions that I want to follow up on. The first is, when you say they came looking to find the evidence to support their thesis or at least what they wanted to do - I don't want to make assumptions here. I think I know what you are talking about. But what were they looking for to under-gird?

Drumheller: At the end of the 1990s when the Clinton administration moved resources from Iraq to Iran and terrorism, and rightly so, I think, there was a group of people - neocons, for want of a better word - who later on ended up in various senior positions in the Bush administration who developed this idea that there was a level of unrest inside of Iraq below Saddam.

People were ready to rise up and would support the eventual growth for a liberal democracy there that could be spread through the Middle East. Well, most of that reporting was based on hypocritical information from Iraqi émigré groups in the states who had their axes to grind on this. There wasn't any real hard intelligence on it until they got this one particular source which really fed what they were doing.

But in the end, I think they didn't believe the American people would support a war to spread liberal democracy in the Middle East. That's too obscure and too vague. So that's where they began to focus on the idea of the weapons of mass destruction and that could be passed on to terrorist groups.

Tavis: What happens when they come looking for stuff that you guys inside the agency know is not credible, but they decide to use it anyway? As a guy on the inside, what do you do at that point? What can you do?

Drumheller: Well, what you do - I don't believe in leaking information in my whole career. That goes against everything because you don't know where you leak. I've had other retired agency people say to me that I should have leaked this to the press. You don't know what the effect is going to be to that, that you're going to put someone's life in jeopardy somewhere because you don't know all the hidden aspects of it.

But what you do is try and go as far up the chain as you can and assume that the people above you are going to do the right thing. John McLaughlin, Deputy Director of the agency, I briefed him on this a week before the Powell speech and he said, "You know, this guy is probably a fabricator. We can't use this information." And George Bennett, the night before the speech. Now at that point, he turned and said, "George, it was probably too late."

But still, if you had someone that's a senior officer call you and tell you something that you've already been told there's a question about, you know you shouldn't use this information and make sure it's not in there. I assumed that it had been taken out. I mean, I was naïve enough right up until I was watching Powell give the speech on television that it was being taken out. Then when that comes, as my executive assistant told me, I said, "Did we send them the wrong speech back? We didn't edit the speech?" They said, "No, they just didn't pay any attention to you." Then I realized that it was time for me to go.

Tavis: What are you thinking - I'm curious inside your head here - what are you thinking when you're watching your president say stuff to the American people and the world that you know is not credible? What are you thinking when you're watching the Secretary of State go to the U.N., to the world body, to make a case with evidence that you know isn't credible? What goes through your mind when you're watching this?

Drumheller: Well, it's extremely frustrating just on a personal level. It's just really angry. Then it's an idea that you feel like - and this is one of the other reasons that I didn't leave right away - because there's a lot of young officers, people out in the field.

That's one thing the American people can have confidence in is that, outside of the Washington political team, there are young people really doing the hard work out in the field. They risk their lives, put their families under stress and everything to collect this information and then they're not using it properly. That's another whole set of frustrations.

Then in the end, you just think, "What happened?" Because I am a great admirer of Colin Powell. I wanted him to run for president in 1996. It's one of the great tragedies. I believe this is going to be one of the great blunders of all times in America, maybe the greatest blunder of the twentieth century.

Tavis: I'll come back to that thought in just a second. Hold that. To your point, though, right quick before I lose it about Mr. Powell. I appreciate your candor about how you felt about Colin Powell and wanting him to run. Inside of an agency where you are a career officer, how do you separate your work and how that work is used from your own personal politics?

Drumheller: You have to. That's a key point. That's one of the things that's been compromised, one of the things that's been lost. Everything in Washington is so highly archly politicized right now that you're either with the administration or you're against them. If you're against them, you're stupid or you're disloyal, you know, that sort of thing. You have to get away from that.

Even in the Reagan administration, as politicized as the Reagan administration was and a lot of issues, Iran Contra and all that, they did manage. Even Casey, who was an arch politician, did keep the service away from the political level and you can't have the politicians directly involved with the officers.

What's happened is, over the last few years, you have - I think it was done so they could show off a little bit. Well, not show off, but show the good side of the agency to the Congressmen. But they now have Congressmen talk directly to case officers and directly to analysts and that way buys disaster.

Tavis: How do you feel when you're on the team responsible for delivering good intel when all of a sudden you guys become the bad guys and it was bad intel?

Drumheller: Well, failure was at my level and that's what I really felt. I think it was at the level of the policymaking level on up. You know, the intelligence process is collection, analysis and policies. The collection part of this was very good. It wasn't as much. We didn't have as much as we should have had, but we did have enough reporting that would have told them over time - and there are other things that I can't go into because they took them out, and rightly so probably - that there was enough time.

Saddam was a big geopolitical threat if they really wanted to build that case, to build up a force that could have - sort of a Gulf War type coalition. There's a lot of evidence that the Europeans and the French and others would have contributed large parts of this. But then the policy part of it broke down. So, yeah, the intelligence didn't fail. The part that failed was the part that the policymakers were involved in. You feel it's a real betrayal, like I say, again of the people who are really doing the work.

Tavis: You made a passing reference a moment ago, Tyler, to the things that they took out. You even said perhaps rightly so. They would be who?

Drumheller: This book was vetted over a year and a half. It took a year and a half to write it and to finish it with the involvement of the agency. They weren't particularly happy that I did it, but on the other hand, they were very professional about the way they took out anything that affected an ongoing operation now.

There were a couple of instances where they took out things that were my opinions. I went back and addressed it with them and they put them in. There were some areas that I disagreed with them on. There's one particular story, which I wish I could tell you, but I can't (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) So do I, but I'll ask a question about it, not knowing what it was or is. The subtitle suggests how the White House compromised American intelligence. As convinced as a reader might be about how we dropped the ball on intel around this war, how much more convinced would he be if the stuff that they took out had been left in?

Drumheller: Oh, he'd be a lot angrier.

Tavis: A lot angrier.

Drumheller: It has to do with the - there were some things that were done - I have to be careful. There were some things that were ignored. Intelligence said that the administration didn't even question whether it was right or not. They just ignored it, which had to do with the deployment of troops in certain areas. I won't say any more than that.

Tavis: I don't want to get you in trouble.

Drumheller: Don't get me in trouble.

Tavis: And I don't want my phone tapped. It probably already is with some of the guests I've had on this program (laughter), but I digress on that. Let me ask you, finally. Tell me two things. One, how bad it really is in retrospect and, going forward, could something like this happen again on Iran or North Korea where bad intel gets us into a drama and, God forbid, another war?

Drumheller: Well, I think the last election was a real Civics lesson, so I think the country is watching. I think it's less likely. But I was very concerned and I still am. There are a lot of parallels between Iran and Iraq and now it's the same thing. There's a lot of reporting coming in again from émigré groups that are saying, you know, there's all these people in Iran that want to rise up and, if we just bomb their nuclear sites, then they'll rise up against the Mullahs.

What happens is, it's very dangerous to depend on émigré reporting. It's also very dangerous to view war as an academic exercise. There are still a lot of people - I saw people on a talk show Sunday morning still viewing this as sort of an abstract academic thing when there are young kids getting their legs blown off or getting killed for it.

I think it is dangerous. I think the hope is that eventually - I don't think it's going to happen in this administration because I think it's just too hard for them to do - they're going to have to go back and start over again and basically go back to 1947 and rebuild it.

Tavis: Well, a new president might give a chance for a new and fresh start, at least on the intel front. The new best-selling book by Tyler Drumheller is "On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence." He ought to know. He was on the inside for about thirty years. Mr. Drumheller, nice to have you on the program.

Drumheller: Thanks for having me.

Tavis: My pleasure.

Learn more about this guest. http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200612/20061215_transcript.html#1
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Swift-Boating Obama:

Right-Wing Pundit Questions Senator's "Loyalty" to America

Debbie Schlussel Argues Obama is Muslim with Questionable Loyalties;
Latest in a Long String of Smears by Pundits, Media
Washington, D.C. -- Taking the current media focus on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) middle name a step further, right-wing pundit and regular MSNBC guest, Debbie Schlussel argued that because Obama's middle name is Hussein and the fact that his late father was of Muslim descent, Obama's "loyalties" must be called into question. In her December 18 column headlined "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim," Schlussel asked: Is this "a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?" She ended her column by asking if Obama becoming vice president instead would be acceptable. Answering her own question, she wrote: "NO WAY, JOSE ... Or, is that, HUSSEIN?"

"Schlussel's article is the latest example of the bigoted conservative attacks against Senator Obama," said Karl Frisch, spokesman for Media Matters for America. "While Schlussel's comments are among the worst, she certainly isn't alone. The public discourse surrounding Senator Obama has devolved into a petty game of who can say his middle name more often or insult his character and ancestry with the most zeal. It's time for this bigotry to stop. News outlets like MSNBC can make the first move. They shouldn't give people like Schlussel airtime to spew their hate-filled conspiracy theories because when they do, they undermine their own reputations as legitimate news organizations."

Schlussel's column fits into a larger pattern in the recent media coverage and commentary regarding Obama. Indeed, like Schlussel -- who has repeatedly appeared on MSNBC in the past -- numerous media figures have gone out of their way to highlight Obama's middle name in recent weeks, a detailed accounting of which is available below or online at the following link:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200612200005
November 7: During MSNBC's special election coverage on November 7, co-anchor Chris Matthews remarked that Obama's "middle name is Hussein" and suggested that it would "be interesting down the road."
On November 27, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson referred to radio host Bill Press as "a true member of the Barack Hussein Obama fan club."
November 28: During the November 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Republican strategist Ed Rogers referred to "Barack Hussein Obama."
December 5: On the December 5: December 5 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, senior political correspondent Carl Cameron told viewers: "Though he's written two books about himself already, most people know very little about Barack Hussein Obama Junior's uncommonly privileged life."
December 11: On the December 11 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, correspondent Jeanne Moos noted that "[o]nly one little consonant differentiates" Obama and Osama. She then added, "[A]s if that similarity weren't enough. How about sharing the name of a former dictator? You know his middle name, Hussein."
December 11: On the December 11 edition of The Situation Room, CNN senior political analyst Jeff Greenfield compared the similarity of Obama's "business casual" clothing to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "jacket-and-no-tie look." Greenfield concluded the segment by saying: "Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil, why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread." He later explained on the CNN website that he was making "a joke."
December 13: On December 13: December 13, Matthews teased another interview with Rogers by describing the strategist as "the one who just loves Barack Obama's middle name Hussein."
December 14: On the December 14 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh gave Obama a "nickname" -- "Barack Hussein Odumbo" (in reference to Obama's "big ears").
December 14: On the December 14 edition of Hardball, NBC's Mike Viqueira announced "a man named Barack Obama, whose middle name, incidentally, is Hussein, running for president."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200612200008

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Still more ideological diversity at Time:
Kristol and Kinsley signed up
SummaryTime magazine has reportedly hired William Kristol, who has advanced misleading attacks on Democrats and opponents of the Bush administration's policies, as a "part-time columnist" and Michael Kinsley, who has used his columns to dismiss evidence that the administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war, as a biweekly columnist.

In his December 18 column, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz reported that Time magazine has hired Weekly Standard editor and Fox News contributor William Kristol as a "part-time columnist" and Slate.com founding editor and the Guardian's (U.K.) American editor-at-large Michael Kinsley as a biweekly columnist. A Media Matters for America review of recent op-eds by both Kristol and Kinsley showed that the former has a track record of repeatedly getting it wrong on Iraq; Kristol has also advanced misleading attacks on Democrats and opponents of the Bush administration's policies. For his part, Kinsley has used his columns to dismiss evidence that the administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war, defend the Republican leadership's handling of the Mark Foley scandal, criticize House Democrats, and attack the validity of the Iraq Study Group.

As Media Matters documented, Kristol was chief among a handful of conservative commentators who offered highly optimistic predictions regarding the Iraq war's duration, difficulty, and human and financial costs -- even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Kristol predicted that "restructuring Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan," and that "American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators." Kristol declared in April 2003 that the "battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably." That same month, he maintained that there is "almost no evidence ... at all" that "the Shia can't get along with the Sunni, and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime." Among Kristol's optimistic appraisals of the Iraq war:

"The larger question with respect to Iraq, as with Afghanistan, is what happens after the combat is concluded. [...] And, as in Kabul but also as in the Kurdish and Shi'ite regions of Iraq in 1991, American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. Indeed, reconstructing Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan.

"The political, strategic and moral rewards would also be even greater. A friendly, free, and oil-producing Iraq would leave Iran isolated and Syria cowed; the Palestinians more willing to negotiate seriously with Israel; and Saudi Arabia with less leverage over policymakers here and in Europe. Removing Saddam Hussein and his henchmen from power presents a genuine opportunity -- one President Bush sees clearly -- to transform the political landscape of the Middle East." [Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; 2/7/02]

"The United States committed itself to defeating terror around the world. We committed ourselves to reshaping the Middle East, so the region would no longer be a hotbed of terrorism, extremism, anti-Americanism, and weapons of mass destruction. The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably. But these are only two battles. We are only at the end of the beginning in the war on terror and terrorist states." [Weekly Standard column; 4/28/03]
"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular." [National Public Radio, 4/1/03]

Media Matters has also documented numerous instances in which Kristol has advanced misleading attacks on Democrats and others who disagree with the Bush administration's national security and terrorism policies, including:

On the December 6 edition of Fox News Live, immediately following the release of the Iraq Study Group's report, Kristol dismissed it as "an evasion" and repeatedly called it "not a serious document." Kristol also described himself as "angry" after "read[ing] through" the report "because it's ... deeply irresponsible." Kristol warned Fox News host E.D. Hill that "if we follow the recommendations of this report, we would lose the war."

On the September 10 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Kristol attacked Democrats for "turn[ing] every event, including now the fifth anniversary of 9-11, into a partisan fight" and claimed that it is "a totally false charge that [President Bush] has played the politics of fear." In fact, the White House had reportedly acknowledged that the timing of President Bush's September 6 announcement that 14 terror suspects had been transferred from CIA-run secret prisons to the Pentagon's detention facility at Guantánamo Bay was an attempt to capitalize politically on the then-upcoming anniversary of the attacks and frame the debate over the fight against terrorism in the White House's terms.

During the April 9 edition of Fox News Sunday, Kristol attacked special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the 2003 leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity as "absurd" and a "politically motivated attempt to wound the Bush administration." He also asserted that Fitzgerald's case "is crumbling" and criticized Fitzgerald for "refusing to close ... his investigation of [White House senior adviser] Karl Rove and other people," concluding that Fitzgerald is "out to discredit the administration."

However, in 1998, Kristol attacked as "Nixonian" critics of independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who, as Media Matters noted, sought and obtained authorization to expand the scope of his original mandate to investigate the Whitewater deal, which yielded no charges of wrongdoing by former President Bill Clinton, into an investigation of the Monica Lewinsky controversy.

On the January 29 edition of Fox News Sunday, Kristol claimed that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, during an interview on the program, had asserted that the controversial warrantless domestic surveillance program was "probably some kind of domestic spying on political enemies." But Dean made no such allegation. Rather, he expressed concern that the National Security Agency -- having been authorized by Bush to intercept the international communications of U.S. residents without a warrant -- was eavesdropping on innocent Americans. He further criticized the program's lack of legal oversight as infringing on "the rights of ordinary Americans not to be intruded on by their government."

As Media Matters previously noted, media critic Eric Alterman (now a Media Matters senior fellow and columnist) lamented in an April 11 Altercation post that the "most liberal columnist at ... America's largest weekly newsmagazine," referring to Time magazine senior writer Joe Klein, "pretends that the message of liberals for the past twenty years has been that they 'hate America,' just as if he were reading from talking points issued by Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter." Alterman was commenting on Klein's remarks at an April 11 event that Democrats would not be successful in upcoming elections "if their message is that they hate America -- which is what has been the message of the liberal wing of the party for the past twenty years." Meanwhile, Kinsley, who will join Klein as a columnist for Time, has criticized Democrats and opponents of the Iraq war and the Bush administration's Middle East policy, while defending Republicans in his recent Washington Post, Slate, and Los Angeles Times columns:

As Media Matters noted, following the publication of the Downing Street Memo, a secret British intelligence memo suggesting that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq, Kinsley published an op-ed that was among several that downplayed or dismissed its significance. Kinsley wrote in June 2005:
"But even on its face, the memo is not proof that Bush had decided on war. It states that war is 'now seen as inevitable' by 'Washington.' That is, people other than Bush had concluded, based on observation, that he was determined to go to war. There is no claim of even fourth-hand knowledge that he had actually declared this intention. Even if 'Washington' meant administration decision-makers, rather than the usual freelance chatterboxes, [the head of British foreign intelligence] was only saying that these people believed that war was how events would play out."

In his Washington Post column published on November 7, Election Day, Kinsley, in response to the "New Direction for America" election-year platform released by House Democrats, wrote:

.....Democrats call for ending the "Disabled Veterans' Tax" and the "Military Families' Tax." The what? There cannot be any such thing as a Disabled Veterans' Tax. It is a label dreamed up by people wanting special treatment, like the Republicans' brilliant 'death tax' for the estate tax. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they don't. But why can't we leave this bullying-by-terminology to Newt Gingrich?

According to a December 4 Marine Corps Times article, the "Disabled Veterans' Tax" refers to the "reduction in retired pay that is still required of many [military] retirees who also draw veterans' disability benefits." The article reported that Democrats have proposed allowing "full and immediate concurrent receipt of retired and disability pay for everyone who served 20 years."

In his November 14 Post column, Kinsley concluded, "It's a nutty and not very attractive idea to turn an urgent issue of war and peace over to a commission," weeks before the Iraq Study Group had released its report on recommendations for a stable Iraq.

In his October 20 Post column about the House Republican leadership's handling of inappropriate electronic messages allegedly sent by former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) to underage former House pages, Kinsley wrote that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) "is suspected, probably falsely, of being willing to sacrifice a child for the good of his party, and now the other party reaps the benefit." Kinsley then asked, "Do you think that if the devil told [House Democratic Leader] Nancy Pelosi [CA] she could undo the scandal, save these 17-year-olds from the trauma of electronic messages from a sicko congressman and give up her hopes of being speaker, that she would find such an offer tempting? I don't."
— R.M.

Posted to the web on Thursday December 21, 2006 at 4:12 PM EST
http://mediamatters.org/items/200612210007
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Carl P. Leubsdorf:
Bush won't be swayed by public censure
But war likely to determine how his presidency will be judged
06:29 AM CST on Thursday, December 21, 2006

You've got to say this for President Bush: He's willing to risk further decline in his popularity to pursue the course he thinks is right in Iraq.

He may even be willing to do so in the face of opposition by some of his military commanders.

And he seems unconcerned over how this will ultimately affect his place in history, even as some historians are already rendering sharply critical judgments.

The president made clear again Wednesday that he won't be deterred by growing public disenchantment with the war, the anti-Republican tide in the elections, or by setbacks in Iraq itself.

"We're not succeeding nearly as fast as I wanted," Mr. Bush conceded at his end-of-the-year news conference. But he reiterated "We're going to succeed" in the struggle with terrorism that he deemed "the calling of our generation."

To do so, he said, "is going to require a sustained commitment from the American people and our military," a commitment that has come under question by both.

Polls show that public confidence continues to drop, and some top military men inside and outside government have expressed doubt that the war can be won militarily.

But when Mr. Bush was asked if he was willing to persist in Iraq even if meant going against the will of the American people, he replied, "I am willing to follow a path that leads to victory."

And he sidestepped a question about whether he will, if necessary, overrule military commanders who are skeptical about sending more troops, calling them "bright, capable, smart people whose opinion matters to me a lot."

He refused to say whether, as has been widely reported, his current effort to devise "a new way forward that can succeed in Iraq" will lead to an increase in U.S. forces.

But Mr. Bush made clear that beginning to withdraw U.S. troops, as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended, is about the farthest thing from his mind.

"I want the enemy to understand that this is a tough task, but they can't run us out of the Middle East," he said. "They think it's just a matter of time before America grows weary and leaves, abandons the people of Iraq, for example, and that's not going to happen."

In a sense, the end of the election campaign and the replacement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with Robert Gates have given Mr. Bush some breathing space to revise course in Iraq.

Though pressures for withdrawal – from the polls, the Iraq Study Group and the new Democratic majorities in Congress – have isolated Mr. Bush politically, it's unlikely his critics can keep him from implementing policies that include an increase in troops.

Many lawmakers in both parties favor increasing the size of the Army and the Marine Corps. And even during the Vietnam war, members of Congress were slow to restrict the use of funds to fight it.

Besides, it's nearly two years until the next election.

And though optimism about Iraq is minimal these days, it's always possible that changes in U.S. policy could produce a more positive result than analysts expect.

If that happens, Mr. Bush and his Republican party could reap the political benefit, especially Sen. John McCain, who has urged sending more troops. Critics would be put on the defensive.

On the other hand, if the proposal Mr. Bush plans to formally unveil next month fails to improve a situation he now admits has not gone well, he could put fellow Republicans in a 2008 bind.

As long as most Republicans support the war, potential GOP presidential candidates will be reluctant to stray from that stance.

But they could face severe problems in a general election because so many Democrats and independents want to end it.

Even then, Mr. Bush's persistence may delay a definite end to the struggle and withdrawal of most U.S. troops until his successor's presidency.

Mr. Bush was asked if his legacy would extend beyond Iraq. He declined to speculate, noting he's been reading books about George Washington and adding:

"My attitude is, if they're still analyzing No. 1, 43 ought not to worry about it and just do what he thinks is right."

And he observed that "most short-term historians," some of whom have already called him a failure, usually have political views and aren't 'exactly objective.' "

Still, the success or failure of the war in Iraq is likely to be central in judgments of the George W. Bush presidency.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington Bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News. His e-mail address is cleubsdorf@dallasnews.com.

More Viewpoints
Carl P. Leubsdorf: Bush won't be swayed by public censure

Ben Lieberman: By blocking U.S. energy supplies, we're creating our own crisis

Mark Davis: Avoid danger, prolong life ... but at what cost?

Keven Knight: I'll remember Kelly James as an inspiration

Eugene Robinson: Surge in troops to bring nothing but surge in deaths



© 2006 The Dallas Morning News Co.
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It's clear now just where we're headed. The "Ship of State" has a roped-in-place rudder; it's helm is tied into place and there is no one with vision enough to remove anything or anyone which will change it's course. The people who are in charge are too stubborn to see we are going to run aground. We'll be floundering due to their not seeing the inherent dangers in not having a alternative course. This stubborness in the face of all that is reasonable is too much to take. If George W. Bush isn't stopped before he takes us beyond the point of no return, what will we have to do? What will become of us as a nation? This is way beyond reason, these pompus men with their delusions of grandeur. To keep holding this course, when there is no one in charge who knows how to implement what it is they are wanting to accomplish is crazed. It's insane. Hand that man some ball bearings, put him in a skiff and send him on his way. SRH.................
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"I'm Jealous of Cuba": An Interview with Gore Vidal

By Rosa Miriam Elizalde

12/21/06 "Counterpunch" -- -- Havana.

Gore Vidal was in Cuba for five days, following a frantic and packed program that took him from the University of Computer Sciences, the Latin American School of Medicine, the University of Havana's main campus, to the National Ballet School, from Old Havana to the park in honor of John Lennon where a bronze replica of the lead Beatle is found, seated as if he were a nearby neighbor.

For the brief span of an hour, Gore Vidal agreed to chat with us for this interview. He is the most erudite American writer of his generation and the most corrosive critic of the present Republican administration. But Vidal does not simply speak to us. He interprets what he says. Modulating his voice, he brings to life George W. Bush, Eisenhower, FDR, an obscure Pentagon bureaucrat, and even himself, mocking all of them with the irony contained in a visage that belies his 81 years of age.

He is more interested in being remembered as an historian than as a novelist. Although his works easily triple his age (we can find in his bibliography novels, tragedies, comedies, memoirs, essays, film and television screenplays), he has a singular obsession: the loss of the Republic. "The main bit of wisdom that I learned from Thomas Jefferson, and he from Montesquieu, is that we cannot maintain both a Republic and an Empire simultaneously. We have been rapacious imperialists since the Mexican War in 1846."

The Birth of an Empire

RM: In Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams and Jefferson, you talked about the first imperialist war in modern history, with the intervention of the United States in Cuba. Was the island the desired treasure?

GV: American imperialist history started long before. It was inevitable that the original English settlers, not to mention the Dutch and the French who occupied the eastern seaboard of the US, would look west where there was more wealth. It's curious that the only American president that liked democracy, Thomas Jefferson, was the first to push the limits of the Constitution. We have to recognize that our founding fathers hated democracy and they hated tyranny so they made sure we wouldn't have a Hitler and we wouldn't have chaos, which is how they thought the Athens of Pericles was. Ironically the third president, Thomas Jefferson, who gave us our identity in the declaration of independence, had recourse to weapons. He not simply told us that all men are created equal, but that they have inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No government had ever said that before. So we began in a rather special place, it didn't last long thanks to Jefferson, he bought up that which is now 20 States and made the famous Louisiana purchase. Millions of people were added to the US because of the vast amount of land that he bought, rather illegally. And so, we just aimed west and inevitably we were going to turn imperial against our neighbors. The first of our neighbours that we attacked was Mexico in 1846 en route to what we really wanted which was California and that was at the time of President [James] Polk.



RM: Up to that time the Americans had been furious land conquerors, but only in their own continent.

GV: Our first deliberate imperial president, (Jefferson was a reluctant imperialist), was Theodore Roosevelt, and he was looking around for more property to add to the US, which is where Cuba comes in. Theodore Roosevelt was ambitious and very imperial. In the summer recess of those golden days (I was brought up in Washington DC) the heat was so great that the entire government left town, we've never had such peace, such prosperity as when the American government was on vacation. During that time however, something happened on this island when a certain battle ship of the US was sunk and the yellow press of William Randolph Hearst blamed it on the Cubans, because in back of the Cubans was the Spanish Empire which was our real target. Cuba was used to inspire an anti-Spain sentiment that would justify the involvement of the US in the war. Hearst claimed that he had made it up, but it was actually Teddy Roosevelt who pulled the strings of those events. First as William McKinley's vice president, and later, when he died, as president of the United States. So, Roosevelt and several friends, one of them Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, very powerful in the Senate; and another one, Henry Adams, our great philosopher of history, they decided that we really should expand. Adams said, "Whoever controls Shanxi province in China"-which is now Manchuria and parts of Korea-"controls the world," because it is the richest section in minerals, in mining, in energy and the Chinese empire was crashing. All of Europe was trying to get a piece of China and we decided we'd get our piece.

RM: Cuba was a stepping stone to reach the Philippines.

GV: Yes. That's when we made an alliance with the Philippine insurgents, revolutionaries, who wanted to separate from Spain in order to have their own republic. We promised them we would do it, we would have a "noble" movement in the United States called Cuba Libre, which was the official motto of the Spanish American War, which in the end had nothing to with Cuba Libre, which ended up as a rather disagreeable drink of rum and coca cola.

RM: So, they went marching off to war

GV: So he went to war; the first thing Roosevelt did -McKinley was out of Washington- was to send our fleet to Manila, to
"help" the insurgents. He lied to them. He made them think that we were going to establish a Philippine government and then we didn't, so Spain is now finished as an imperial power. The United States, with McKinley and Teddy, opened a new stage of imperial American expansion, and continued the greatest comedy in our history.

Hypocrisy is always terribly funny. McKinley said "I got down and prayed to God, after we seized Manila. What am I to do now with these people, these poor people? What will we do for them?" And he said, "God spoke." (It sounds very familiar today), God spoke to him and said, "We must help these people and we must Christianize them." The Secretary of State responded, "Mr. President, they're already Roman Catholic," and McKinley said "that's what I mean!" So there we were on a religious mission in the Philippines on the edge of the richest section of China and that was the first great imperial adventure in the midst of which Cuba was no longer 'Libre'. The United States was already occupying it and Puerto Rico also. We were taking over much of the Caribbean and we retained it for a long, long time, under special mandates and so forth and so on.

RM: During your years in Guatemala you established a friendship that warned you of US intervention in that region. Did you see it coming?

GV:Well, I thought that our expansion was finished in 1898. Between 1846 when we got Mexico, 1898 when we destroyed the Spanish Empire and we got the Caribbean and we got the Philippines, which was really what we wanted. I just thought why would we do that? After all we had conquered Germany and we'd conquered Japan, we were occupying both countries and each one was a world and not just a nation. We had the first global empire thanks to President Roosevelt, another imperial Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, and he knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to destroy European colonialism wherever it was; the United States would then take over with some sort of mandate to "look after" the countries that we had "liberated", as he liked to put it. And that got us, formally, into the business of empire.

Mario Monteforte Toledo, a good friend of mine, was vice president of Guatemala and he was also in charge of the assembly there, the Parliament. He used to come to Antigua where I had a house. He was living in Guatemala City where the government was, and he said "well we don't have much longer you know," and I said "what are you talking about?" and he said "your government has decided to seize Guatemala" and I said, "oh, come on, we just got Germany, we just got Japan, what are we going to do with Guatemala? It's not worth our while!" Oh, he said, "It's worth the while of the United Fruit Company and they control these things." And this is the first time I understood hemispheric politics. Yes, I knew about yanqui imperialismo, I knew all about that, but I thought much of it was exaggerated and you know, we had conquered the world in 1945. It was the end of the pretensions of the European powers and also of Japan so I said "Well Mario, I don't believe it," Well he said, "as we are speaking President Arévalo," a very nice man, and elected as a pure democrat, with a small "d", and Arévalo had said, "well we've got to have some revenues, and the United Fruit Company has never paid taxes. We're going to tax them minimally on the bananas and so on that they sell all over the world. We make nothing, they make everything." Simultaneously, the ironies of history, Henry Cabot Lodge- son of the Henry Cabot Lodge who was a Massachusetts senator, who was in favor of the conquest of the Philippines-, called President (Dwight David) Eisenhower, and said Arévalo and his group in Guatemala are "communists" and they are going to seize all the lands of United Fruit.

We know what happened afterwards. They forced Arévalo to leave Guatemala and then it finally came to a head in 1954 when the freely elected president of Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz was dismissed by the American Ambassador, John Peurifoy, and General Carlos Castillos Armas was put in his place, and from that moment on we have put nothing but warlords in charge of Guatemala. It's been a bloodbath for its citizens for most of these years. It is better now, but it's still not very good.
Mark Twain said after our refusal to grant free government to the Filipinos, "the American flag should be replaced not with the stars and stripes, forget them, it should be the Jolly Roger, the skull and crossbones, because we bring murder wherever we go."

Banana Republic

RM: in The Golden Age you said FDR could have avoided the Pearl Harbor attack that took the US out of its peaceful isolation and decided its entry into the war. To what extent is that true?

GV: Well nations, like individuals, tend to work from templates; there is a plan in their heads which worked once before and may work yet again. We've always found that whenever a president is murdered it's always a "lone crazed killer" who is evil. He does it for no reason. No reason is ever given because we might find out what the politics behind it were. The American people are never told the politics about anything. So we've always had this reluctance. Our rulers don't want us to know why things are done.

So Roosevelt, with the best will in the world, saw that Hitler would be dangerous not only to Europe but in the long run to the United States; after all we are a mercantile power. We trade. With Hitler in charge of Europe, life was going to be very difficult for us. Eighty percent of the American people in 1940, and I was one of them, were against going to war in Europe against Hitler. Roosevelt did the next best thing. He was our great Machiavelli, who knew more about how the world worked than any previous president, and Roosevelt, who saw that sinking our ships, which got us into war against Germany in 1917, was not going to get us into the war against the Germans in 1941. He needed something to cause an important trauma and made the Americans' mind up regarding the war. Therefore, he provoked the Japanese into attacking us at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

It was a brilliant plot and it worked. The Japanese had just signed an alliance with Germany and Italy, the Tri Partite alliance. If anyone attacked one of the three the other two would come to their aide. It was a defensive, not an aggressive, treaty. The Japanese realized that Roosevelt had them in the bag. He had given them an ultimatum, one: get out of China; well they'd already created a country called Manchuria, out of the northern part of China. They had been trying for years to conquer China, and now they get orders from four thousand miles away, "get out!" He said, if you don't, I will turn off all of your benzene, particularly aviation fuel, which they needed for war planes, and for war ships, and scrap metal, cause they had no supplies.

Everybody thinks, how crazy it was for this little country to attack such a big country as the United States, well they weren't crazy, what they intended to do, was give us a big shock, which would make us think about other things for a time, by attacking, sinking the fleet at Pearl Harbor. During that period they thought it would take the United States a year to build another fleet, which was about right. They would then go south to Java and Sumatra and seize the Dutch oil fields, taking Singapore, Malaysia, everything else along the way. It was a good plan and it worked, but Japan had no idea of the speed with which we could re-arm. Roosevelt did. Remember we were once a great industrial power. We're not anymore. The first sign of our industrial power was assembly line automobiles, and steel plants. We could do everything fast. We turned out thousands of B-17´s, the flying fortresses. This was indeed the plane that won, for the United States at least, WWII.

RM: You were a privileged observer of that pre-war period.

GV: I was raised in Washington D.C. during the Roosevelt administration. So Roosevelt, during our economic depression, designated 8 billion dollars to re arm the United States. 1940 marked the end of massive unemployment. For the first time in years, people were quite content, because we'd had the depression and we were on our way to have the greatest war machine on earth, something which has since become a curse.

RM: Do you blame Harry Truman for the United States becoming the authoritarian country it is today? Many Americans do not share this opinion. George W. Bush, for example, has said recently that the man who dropped the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a good president.

GV: Well, remember two things: most Americans have no information at all on history, on geography, or on what's going on in the world. They don't know about these things. Roosevelt had made arrangements so that we would detach the colonies from France, Holland, Portugal. By 1945 when the war in Europe and in Asia ended, we would get them, and we would become their masters. Americans knew none of this, and they still don't know. They're not taught this; the rulers do not want them to know it.

Truman was personally rather popular. He was a nice little man. He knew nothing at all about geography, history, religion, he knew nothing. Behind him he had a Prince Metternich, who was Dean Achinson, the Secretary of State, a great international lawyer. And he knew everything. He was the one who then designed the totally militarized state that emerged by 1949/50 under Harry Truman. And it all comes down to one document, the National Security Council document number 68. There were several points. We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn't threaten us. It was a holy war, just as now we've made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant.

The man who should have been president in 1945 was Henry Wallace. However, he was replaced by a Mr. Nobody, a southern right winger named Harry Truman, from Missouri; who took over the government when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945.

So we got a terrible president because he was so bad that they built him up into an idol, everybody's. Everybody who knows nothing admires Harry Truman, and they don't know why. He's just such a nice little man. He was a nice little man, but he ended the Republic and set us on this wave of conquest. He went yelling and screaming to the people that the Soviet Union was on the march, that they were about to seize Greece, that they were immediately going into Italy, they could then cross over to France, and cross the Atlantic at any time. We hear echoes of this in the current little man, Mr. Bush, who says: [imitating GW Bush] "well we can't fight them over there we're going to have to fight 'em over herefight them over here" We don't have to fight them; they have no way of getting here. But no American can ask questions like that because they will be thought unpatriotic or silly.

RM: According to your own words, "the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995 are explained according to a law of Physics: there is a reaction to every action". You were speaking about the hatred spread by the United States around the world and in its own country. Was this a prophecy?

GV: Well I wouldn't directly connect it with what happened on 9/11. What happened after McVeigh did what he did, except that we now know that he really didn't do it by himself, somebody else was involved, quite a few people were involved. But essentially the Clinton administration *and we now look back on it as being a very American one, in the best sense of the word-drew up his Draconian rules about terrorism in the United States just to get revenge on the ghost of Timothy McVeigh.

And that became the USA Patriot Act. After 9/11 happened the Bush Administration found these papers, from the Clinton administration in the Justice Department. They activated all of them and that is the USA Patriot Act. It has just about removed our Constitution. It just annulled everything about sacred liberties and that was the result of McVeigh.

A child of five who knows nothing about the law can tell you that 9-11 requires a police response. We've been hit by the Mafia. You can't go to war without an enemy nation to attack. You can't have a war without a country, try and explain that to an American, I don't think they know what a country is. We certainly know 80% of them believe that Saddam Hussein that had a country called Iraq was working in tandem with Osama Bin Laden, who was living in a beautiful palace in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's all nonsense. They had no connection the two. But Bush wanted to complete the work of his father, and to show that he was bolder than his father, he would be "Bush of Baghdad" not quite Lawrence of Arabia. Americans think they are the same person, and that both of them attacked us on 9/11.

RM: A recent CBS poll shows that 75% of the population in the US is not in favor of him or his policies. His popularity has plummeted to historic levels. Will Bush be the most hated president in US history?

GV: When I said I am not a prophet that doesn't mean I can't occasionally guess what's coming. I knew that what those they call the neo conservatives in the United States (the old word that was used to describe them was "fascist"), they want to use American power in order to get the corporations which are generally gas and oil to maximize profits. They want to manipulate the constitution so that it is rendered meaningless. They want supreme power, and circumstances allowed us to elect a man that's a real fool, literally a fool.

If the American people had a free press, an alert media, he could never have been elected anything. He's not competent; if you listen to him talk for ten minutes its clear he doesn't know what he is talking about. He's desperately trying to read a teleprompter and nothing really makes sense, and without one of his advisors he can't face anybody when it comes to a question.´

Since Woodrow Wilson left the oval office in 1921, no US president writes his own speeches. The president reads what other people write. Sometimes the President agrees with it, and sometimes he doesn't. Eisenhower used to read his speeches as if he were discovering something new on the paper. During his first presidency, the country was astonished when he said in the middle of a speech: "If I'm elected president I will go to.Korea!?" He was serious. Nobody had said anything to him before that surprise. But anyway, he went to Korea.

Well had the American people seen that and if we had a media that was interested in the Republic, and not in profits, the whole story would have been different; after all, Albert Gore did win the election in 2000 by the popular vote, some 600,000 votes ahead of Bush. And eventually the intervention of the Supreme Court into that election falsified the entire election. So we became overnight a banana republic without any bananas to sell. And that is our problem at the moment.

RM. The Bush administration has led the country into such a disaster that Fidel himself said recently that he believes the United States public will oust President Bush before he finishes his term. Do you see this happening?

GV:The people running the Bush Administration are so mindless and radical that they're apt to start bombing Russia, or start bombing Iran. They would have to start a diversion, so they can scream: "true patriots come to the aid of the Commander in Chief in war time" [imitates Bush]. That's their rubric. Well that's all nonsense. In other words, they create events. They create panic.

Two days after 9/11 there was somebody in the government saying, "it's not if they attack again, it's when!" The nonsense had already begun. Then we say, well it's been seven or eight years and they haven't attacked and they say "well that's because of the precautions that we take at the airports oh! You don't like them! Because you have to take your shoes off, but at the same time that is what has saved you from an attack." Well, prove it! We can't prove it, they retort, without revealing our secret sources. It's circular.

I hope that the Democratic Congress which comes in, with the chairmanships of congressional committees, including the Judiciary, gets every last one of them under oath before Congress to answer these questions.

RM: What would be necessary to re-establish the Republic?

GV: Listen to the great words of our greatest president, Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at his first inauguration. The country was collapsing, economically the banks were coming down, money was short, and he struck a great political note which other presidents have generally imitated until we get down to this junta he said [imitating Roosevelt] "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." That is the basis of the Republic. Don't be taken in by fear. There are people who make money out of fear. That's their job, just to frighten.

I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. The French Revolution brought the world Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis XVI after all, was not as bad as that. So you very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution. I think we're going to have one due to economic collapse

There was a headline in one of the big American papers the other day that the army was begging the administration for money. They don't have the money to make fools of themselves in Baghdad. They've got to raise it somewhere; we have no tax revenues because all the rich people have been exempted from tax as well as corporations. It used to be that 50% of the revenues of the Federal government came from the taxes on corporate profits. Its about 8% now, they've just eliminated it. Corporations don't pay tax and rich people don't either. So they've not only helped all their rich friends who now have enough money to finance the Republican Party with billions of dollars so they can tell lies about anybody in the country and pretend that the patriots of the country are traitors. It's a very good trick both economically for them and it's a bad trick on us real Americans, we don't like it. We've lost the Bill of Rights; we lost the Magna Carta, on which all of our liberties are based for 700 years. No, it's not been an amusing time.

WE HAVE A CRISIS OF RIGHTS

RM: In your memoirs, you mention that during a conversation with JFK he told you about his plan to assassinate Fidel, and that his alliance with the extreme Cuban American right had become a nightmare for him and his brother, Robert. Are these groups related to their deaths?

GV: Well it had total control, I think it is much less now, Kennedy had to give his life for it, you know. Though the assassination we now know was done by Mafia, out of New Orleans, and a man called [Carlos] Marcello was in charge of it. They were trying to get Bobby Kennedy. Marcello who was the boss of New Orleans and also of the Havana casinos at one point, [Santos] Trafficante who ran the Mafia in Tampa Florida, said we've got to get rid of Bobby, they have this recorded, the FBI. We've got to get rid of him, and Marcello said, "if a dog bothers you, you don't cut off the tail," and that was the death sentence for Jack Kennedy.

RM: What is you perception of the true influence this Cuban American community has had on US policy towards Cuba in the last 40 years?

GV: They managed to have an enormous influence on the country, and I think this is less now. This has always been a very corrupt state; Florida has been a corrupt state from the beginning, from the days of the confederacy. The addition of a bunch of angry Batista lovers did not help the political situation down there, and a lot of these people had a lot of money or they made a lot of money and could be counted upon to support anybody who hated Castro and hated what is being done in the modern Cuba and they'd vote for him. Florida is a big state, it's a key State. We have something called an electoral college which often decides elections and it has so many voters which are based on how many representatives get elected to Congress and so on. Well Florida is beautifully situated for any demagogue who appeals to the Batistaites, or just anybody who still wants to fight communism. They're still marching, and they're going to arrive on the beaches in no time at all. They are very slow to understand, obviously, partly because they've been misinformed, misinformed. By their government, by the media, which worked with the government. And so we have a misinformed population and Florida is still one of the first places candidates go to and try and get votes. But it's much less now, so, count on that, it's a bit of luck.

It's a very complex 18th century machinery to keep us from having democracy. Our founders didn't like democracy, I find I often have to repeat that a few times, but they didn't like it. And now of course we're bringing democracy to Iraq and all these other countries who are longing for it.

RM: Silence and lies have kept five Cubans unjustly imprisoned in the US. Could you comment on what you know about the case and your opinion on it?

GV: I know of the case through lawyers, not through the media. And it seems another stupid thing our government is doing. It is my understanding that President Clinton and President Castro got together on this one, to try and stop the terrorists in Miami who were bombing tourist offices to discourage tourism to this country. The two presidents were in agreement that this was a bad thing and that they should try and stop it. So Clinton put the FBI on it and I don't know what Castro did, but he went along with it and then the FBI suddenly starts to arrest five Cubans who were dedicated to protecting Cuba and innocent tourist owners of tourist agencies from terrorism, from bombers.

We love imprisoning people almost as much as we like the death penalty which is just the brightest star in our diadem. So you have a country mad about torture, murder, and execution, lifelong sentences in prison. The mindset is all there, it goes back to I'm not going to go into the background but it is protestant Puritanism: everyone must suffer, if they've done anything wrong. If you're rich God loves you: that's the proof. And if you're poor, he doesn't like you: that's the proof. It's not a healthy mindset for any people and I'm afraid the State of Florida has got a great many of those people as well as what they've picked up from the Batistaites.

So, the Five, the Cuban Five as they are known in legal circles in America, I think are all in prison with what seem like eternal sentences for having obeyed two presidents one here and one in America to stop these crazy bombers from killing innocent civilians.

And the government that will do that, knowing the consequences, you know our government in not as stupid as it seems, it does evil things because that's the way you keep control. Don't think they didn't learn a lot from the twentieth century dictatorships. And so it is very important that they behave like this to insure that we don't stop the people who are bombing the tourist agencies in Miami. We are now almost lawless because we've lost so many of our protections under the Constitution. So we have a crisis of law, a crisis of politics, and a constitutional crisis.

RM: Oliver Stone was recently sanctioned by the US State Department for violating the blockade against Cuba. His crime was traveling to Cuba to make two documentaries about Fidel. Are these measures constitutional?

Gore Vidal: Well of course it's a violation, as the first amendment grants us freedom of speech, the fourth amendment of the constitution is the bill of rights, which guarantees our rights to assembly and so forth. We have had since 9/11 a coup d´etat in the United States, the first we've ever had, in which a group of rather dishonest oil and gas people were able to seize the power of the State and by so doing they ended up with the Congress in their hands, they ended up with the presidency and much of the judiciary and much of the courts. It happened very fast. It's quite unique. It will be a great story one day at the moment it's just something the people don't understand. What they've never seen before doesn't exist really. Well they're seeing it now, in situ, as archaeologists, and it's a very unpleasant sight. Out of that come the sanctions, as you put it, on Oliver Stone, who has every right to make any movie that he wants to make and in whatever circumstance, as long as he breaks no laws, and no laws have been broken here. They [Bush and Cheney] just don't like it, oh! My goodness me!

RM: Are you afraid of any reprisals against you when you return to the US?

GV: I trust they'll never like anything I say or write or do.

RM: One last question. You've been here for a few days already. Is Cuba anything like what the media presents to North Americans?

GV: [Laughs] Are you crazy?!!! NO! We're told everybody hates it here; everybody is starving to death, and they put out stories in Cuba on how they have wonderful doctors but in fact they are terrible doctors and nobody goes to them, any Cuban who is sick goes to the Mayo Clinic in America!

There is no lie that our government will not tell and has not told. So no correct picture gets through. One of the reasons I'm doing television here, is I feel every now and then I do have some audience out there. I can talk about what I've seen. I've seen the influx of doctors, would be doctors into Cuba. I've been in that building which used to be a Russian Naval Base, and is dedicated to teaching a whole generation about medicine, about community services, something Americans hate, you know, everybody is help for himself, grab all the money you can and then run away, to Tahiti or someplace. I was talking to 8 or 9 Americans from New York, Massachusetts, who are studying medicine here. I said, "well, is it as good as they say," they said, "oh yes it is, its rather better, better than anything we could get at home, going to ordinary medical universities." Why don't we do the same for the health of our people and other countries? I see what you've done with medicine, from Africa to the deepest Amazon or wherever.

We had a great Constitution, and a great legal system. Only by the restoration of that can we have a country with aspirations and with indeed successes like Cuba. Don't think I don't get extremely jealous for the United States, since I am a super patriot; I get very jealous.

RM: Will you return?

GV: Never make predictions.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist living in Havana. She is the editor of Cubadebate, a Cuban online publication, and she has a weekly column in Cuba's daily newspaper Juventud Rebelde. She is the author of several books, including Los Disidentes, Chavez Nuestro and El Encuentro.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15978.htm

http://counterpunch.com/mariam12212006.html
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Target Iran:

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change
The aircraft carrier Eisenhower and its strike group entered the Persian Gulf on Dec. 11. Another aircraft carrier, the Stennis, is expected to depart for the Gulf within the next month. The military said it is also taking steps to prevent Iran from blocking oil shipments from the Gulf.

Broadcast - 12/21/06 - Democracy Now! - Audio Runtime 50 Minutes

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AMY GOODMAN: Today on a Democracy Now!, we present an in-depth discussion between two figures who have been very critical of the Bush administration's policy on Iran. Scott Ritter is a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. He recently wrote the book, Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change. Seymour Hersh is the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for the New Yorker magazine. In October, Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh held a public conversation in New York about Scott Ritter's new book. Seymour Hersh began the conversation.

SEYMOUR HERSH: So, Scott, in your book you write at some point -- you list a -- you have an account of some of the things that are going on today inside Iran. You say Israel and the United States were carrying out -- this is on page 147, etc. -- were carrying out a full-court press to try and identify and locate secret nuclear facilities inside Iran. Israel made heavy use of its connections to the Iraqi Kurdistan and to Azerbaijan to set up covert intelligence cells inside Iran, whose work was allegedly supplemented with specially trained commandos entering Iran disguised as local villagers.

The United States was conducting similar operations using Iranian opposition forces, in particular the MEK -- that’s the Mujahideen cult, which is a terrorist group, defined by us as an at-one-time anti-Saddam, now anti-Iran group that works very closely still with us, despite its being listed as a terrorist group.

And you describe using opposition forces inside Iran and the MEK to conduct cross-border operations under the supervision of the CIA. The US has also made use of its considerable technical intelligence-collection capabilities, focusing the attention of imagery and electronic eavesdropping satellites, etc., for operating along Iran’s periphery. The problem was that neither the Israelis nor the United States could detect any activity whatsoever that could point to a definitive location on the ground where secret nuclear weapons activity was taking place.

A couple of questions. Says who? I haven’t read this in the New York Times. You don’t source it. What’s the source? And what do you know? And how do you know this?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, as I mentioned in the back, where I talk about sources, most of that information is readily available in the press -- not the American press. You’re not going to read about it in the New York Times, you’re not going to read about it in the Washington Post, you probably won’t read about it in most mainstream English-language newspapers. But, you know, we used to have an organization in the CIA called FBIS, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, that would translate the newspapers of the various nations around the world to give you literally a bird's-eye view of what’s going on in that country.

So if you read the Azeri press, for instance, you’ll find out that the Israeli Mossad has upped its efforts to build a station in Azerbaijan. And the Azeri press will delve into that more. Why does the Mossad want to build a station operating? There’s a couple reasons. One, the Mossad is working with the Azeri population. You know, there is a Jewish minority in Azerbaijan that has emigrated to Israel. And so, there’s a number of Azeri Israelis that the Israeli government now is bringing back to Azerbaijan to work on this issue. This is spelled out in the Azeri press, so if you want to get some good insights, read the Azeri press. Read the Turkish press. The Turkish press will also talk about what’s going on in Iran and Azerbaijan. This will give you the leads.

And then, because I’m not an active in-service intelligence officer anymore, I will take these leads and call friends who are active serving intelligence officers. And while they’re not going to divulge classified information, I’ll say, “Hey, I read something, where certain activities are taking place. Can you comment on this news?” We’ll sit down over some beers, and they’ll comment. And then you dig even further. And I’ll tell you that I wrote the book before I went to Iran. But when I got to Iran and I talked to Revolutionary Guard commanders, what surprised me is that they knew all this. The Iranians were very cognizant of what was going on in the Azeri section of Iran, in the Kurdish section. They could quote, you know, chapter and verse about what the CIA is up to, what the Israelis are up to.

But, you know, again, the bottom line is, why don’t I footnote this? For probably the same reason why a lot of people don’t footnote things, because if I commit to a specific piece of information coming from a specific written source, that means that another piece of information that I don’t commit to a specific written source, where did that come from? Well, maybe it came from a human source. Now, I’ve just made it easier in this day and age for those who don’t want factual information to get in the hands of the average American citizen, those who want to keep American foreign policy and national security policy secret from the Americans they are supposed to be protecting. They’ll go after these people, and you know they go after these people. And I’m going to do everything I can to ensure that I don’t facilitate harm coming to those who have the courage to assist me in trying to get facts out to people so they can know more about this problem we call Iran.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Why doesn’t my colleagues in the American press do better with this story?

SCOTT RITTER: One of the big problems is -- and here goes the grenade -- Israel. The second you mention the word “Israel,” the nation Israel, the concept Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. We're not allowed to be highly critical of the state of Israel. And the other thing we're not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel and the notion of Israeli interests may in fact be dictating what America is doing, that what we're doing in the Middle East may not be to the benefit of America's national security, but to Israel's national security. But, see, we don’t want to talk about that, because one of the great success stories out there is the pro-Israeli lobby that has successfully enabled themselves to blend the two together, so that when we speak of Israeli interests, they say, “No, we're speaking of American interests.”

It’s interesting that AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli lobby don’t have to register as agents of a foreign government. It would be nice if they did, because then we’d know when they’re advocating on behalf of Israel or they're advocating on behalf of the United States of America.

I would challenge the New York Times to sit down and do a critical story on Israel, on the role of Israel's influence, the role that Israel plays in influencing American foreign policy. There’s nothing wrong with Israel trying to influence American foreign policy. Let me make that clear. The British seek to influence our foreign policy. The French seek to influence our foreign policy. The Saudis seek to influence our foreign policy. The difference is, when they do this and they bring American citizens into play, these Americans, once they take the money of a foreign government and they advocate on behalf of that foreign government, they register themselves as an agent of that government, so we know where they're coming from. That’s all I ask the Israelis to do. Let us know where you’re coming from, because stop confusing the American public that Israel's interests are necessarily America's interests.

I have to tell you right now, Israel has a viable, valid concern about Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. If I were an Israeli, I would be extremely concerned about Hezbollah, and I would want to do everything possible to nullify that organization. As an American, I will tell you, Hezbollah does not threaten the national security of the United States of America one iota. So we should not be talking about using American military forces to deal with the Hezbollah issue. That is an Israeli problem. And yet, you’ll see the New York Times, the Washington Post and other media outlets confusing the issue. They want us to believe that Hezbollah is an American problem. It isn’t, ladies and gentleman. Hezbollah was created three years after Israel invaded Lebanon, not three years after the United States invaded Lebanon. And Hezbollah’s sole purpose was to liberate southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. I’m not here to condone or sing high praises in virtue for Hezbollah. But I’m here to tell you right now, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization that threatens the security of the United States of America.

AMY GOODMAN: Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Audio - Audio
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15968.htm

[jonesy]

"We certainly know 80% of them believe that Saddam Hussein that had a country called Iraq was working in tandem with Osama Bin Laden, who was living in a beautiful palace in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's all nonsense. They had no connection the two. But Bush wanted to complete the work of his father, and to show that he was bolder than his father, he would be "Bush of Baghdad" not quite Lawrence of Arabia. Americans think they are the same person, and that both of them attacked us on 9/11. "

...ain't that the truth.:shrug:

[Saundra Hummer]

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Asleep in the Bunker
December 21, 2006
The other day, during his end-of-the-year press conference, George W. Bush said he would happily consult with military commanders, members of Congress (even Democrats!) and other experts about what to do in Iraq. But note how he framed this open-mindedness: "I am willing to follow a path that leads to victory." Just as he was making that remark, TomPaine.com was posting my latest "Loyal Opposition" column. Here it is.
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Bush, Asleep In The Bunker
David Corn
December 20, 2006
www.tompaine.com

I'm sleeping a lot better than people would assume.
--George W. Bush
Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense this nation has ever had.
--Dick Cheney

This is scary. The president of the United States of America has created a hellish disaster that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of American soldiers, and he's resting well. The vice president believes that the man responsible for three of the greatest military blunders in U.S. history (attacking Iraq without devising a strategy for securing the country after the invasion; dissolving the Iraqi army, creating armed and trained recruits for the incipient insurgency; and mounting an extensive de-Baathification campaign that destroyed the governing infrastructure of the nation) did his job well.

Such comments suggest that the two people in charge of this country are not living in denial but detachment. They must realize that Iraq is a mess perhaps beyond remedy. But that doesn't seem to affect them. How can that be?

Bush and Cheney are in the bunker. The American public has rendered a judgment on the war and Bush and Cheney's management of it which is: not worth it, and you blew it. Washington's policy poohbahs--with the release of the Iraq Study Group report--pronounced the war practically lost. (Bush, showing more than he intended, said of the report, "To show you how important this [report] is, I read it." Still, he rejected its key Hail-Mary proposals.) Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the nation's number-one Johnny-come-lately, seconded the Iraq Study Group's conclusion that the United States is losing in Iraq. And all this occurred before the recent news that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have concluded that the White House cannot define the military mission in Iraq, that attacks against Iraqi and American troops are (once again) up, and that the Pentagon considers Shiite militants, not the Sunni insurgency, as the most grave threat in Iraq (meaning the Bush administration is supporting a government run by Shiites unable or unwilling to control Shiite death squads).

Bush seems unable to grapple with the worsening situation in Iraq. Apparently lacking ideas of his own, he held high-profile meetings with military commanders and experts to ponder options. And this was front-page news. (Shouldn't the president regularly be talking to his commanders and outside experts about the Iraq dilemma?) Yet this chatter produced nothing immediate. Bush delayed a speech in which he supposedly will announce changes in his Iraq policy. The bottom line: The commander in chief had no clear notion of his own about what to do next.

As the Iraq Study Group showed, there are no new big--or promising--ideas for Iraq. The report produced by the panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton was infused with not only realism but also pessimism. It noted the fundamental challenge is resolving the deeply rooted sectarian conflict causing much of the violence in Iraq. Yet the report said, "Many of Iraq's most powerful and well-positioned leaders are not working toward a united Iraq." If that is indeed the case, the main proposals of the commission--enhance the training of Iraqi security forces, withdraw combat troops slowly (if conditions permit), and conduct a diplomatic blitz--will not likely produce much. After all, why bother to train the security forces of a government driven by sectarian strife? (Might U.S. forces end up training militia loyalists?) The Baker report--quite purposefully--avoided talk of victory in Iraq. The mission per Baker is to clean up the mess (somewhat) and get the United States out.

That is not, I am guessing, how Bush views the matter. He cannot concede he's made that mess. He cannot let go of his grandiose (post-weapons of mass destruction) justification for bringing death and chaos to Iraq: Turning Iraq into a stable beacon of democracy and spreading freedom and positive change throughout the region. (Of course, the opposite appears to be happening. Arab moderates have been weakened by the Iraq war, and existing conflicts in the area have been intensified by the war.) So here's the bad news: Bush is in a hole and he will keep on digging.

Bush is not interested in extrication. (No thank you, Mr. Baker.) He wants that victory. Consequently, he's going to be more interested in listening to anyone who says there is a path to victory than anyone who counsels there is way (maybe) to minimize the damage done. And since any alternative to the present course, including a minimize-the-damage-done plan, carries with it the risk of dangerous consequences (withdrawing U.S. troops could lead to more chaos in Iraq and the onset of regional conflict), Bush probably figures he might as well pursue a plan with some promise--however illusory--of victory.

It's no surprise, then, that the White House seems to be leaning toward a "surge"--sending thousands of troops into Baghdad in a desperate attempt to stifle the sectarian violence there, if only temporarily. The Pentagon opposes doing so. And such an action, as Powell, the Iraq Study Group, General John Abizaid, the Central Command chief, have noted, is unlikely to address the fundamental factors shaping and driving the sectarian warfare. But by ordering a surge, Bush could play the role of the decisive decider-in-chief, willing to make the hard call necessary for triumph.

As Bush and Cheney plot the way ahead in that bunker, they are dismissing the Baker report and holding on fast to the belief they did the right thing and this will all end up well. It's easy to envision them bucking not only Baker and Daddy Bush's realist pals but the military, Nervous-Nellie Republicans in the Congress, and, yes, the American public. Days before the elections, Cheney laid out the White House strategy when he said that the Bush administration will pursue its Iraq policy "full speed ahead." Despite the election results, the Baker report, and the ever-deteriorating reality in Iraq, Bush shows no signs of revising his basic approach. It is full speed ahead--perhaps until he can dump this war on another president in January 2009--and damn the consequences.

Posted by David Corn
at
December 21, 2006 03:53 PM

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/12/asleep_in_the_b.php

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[Saundra Hummer]

"We certainly know 80% of them believe that Saddam Hussein that had a country called Iraq was working in tandem with Osama Bin Laden, who was living in a beautiful palace in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's all nonsense. They had no connection the two. But Bush wanted to complete the work of his father, and to show that he was bolder than his father, he would be "Bush of Baghdad" not quite Lawrence of Arabia. Americans think they are the same person, and that both of them attacked us on 9/11. "

...ain't that the truth.:shrug:

Who knows the least, the American voter or some of those in government? I'm beginning to think that both are 'hurtin. From all we've been hearing and learning of lately, it's no wonder we're in such a fix. Our school systems have failed us, there's scores of people out there who know nothing about our freedoms, and why we have them and what is going on now that threatens them. When our school aged kids believe news articles should be presented to a government official for approval before being published, before it's made available to all of us. This, to me at least, is very scary. It may happen one day, what with all we're seeing now, things which we never ever dreamed possible in a free democratic society.

I never thought that I'd live to see the day when it just may be we'll need to fight to have our "inalienable rights" restored. I do think it might come about, that is if things keep going at the same pace, if the Bush/Cheney administration and ones to follow keep up the abuse and challanges to our Constitution. The thing is, who'll have the backbone to do it? Who will recognize what it is that is happening, and work to change the outcome? To think of two more years of their abuse and their wacky plans, and how they will go about carrying them out is more than scary, it's sickening. Totally disturbing.

[jonesy]

Who knows the least, the American voter or some of those in government? I'm beginning to think that both are 'hurtin.

The administration has played on the fact that the great majority of Americans are very poorly informed when it comes to world matters, nor do they seem to care. Tell them whatever - they don't know any better. Play on their fears and we can sell them anything. The Gulf of Tonkin lie wasn't all that long ago.

How many of those who are now sickened by the whole chain of events realise that the outcome of this war was predicted by those who were against it not because they were simply "anti-war" - but because they understood the Middle East dynamics.

~pimp:

[Saundra Hummer]

The administration has played on the fact that the great majority of Americans are very poorly informed when it comes to world matters, nor do they seem to care. Tell them whatever - they don't know any better. Play on their fears and we can sell them anything. The Gulf of Tonkin lie wasn't all that long ago.

How many of those who are now sickened by the whole chain of events realise that the outcome of this war was predicted by those who were against it not because they were simply "anti-war" - but because they understood the Middle East dynamics.

~pimp:

You know Jonesy, I don't know enough about either side of this issue, this "thing" in Iraq nor do I know a whole lot about the people who drive it, but any fool could see where this was headed.

I'm afraid if our young kids aren't taught any better than has been happening, that the United States is on a downhill slide. Without better educations, without the desire to delve into what is going on in the world, and without having developed reasoning skills, as well as a strong ethical base, we will be, if we're not already, on the way out. There won't be enough level headed, educated, & ethical people out there to take us in the right direction. We'll just "hold the course" behind anyone who pulls the wool over our eyes, and as we well know, this has already been happening.

[Saundra Hummer]

.
~~~~~~~

"Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others."

Marcus Tullius Cicero - (106-43 B.C.)
Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator

~~~

"The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away."

Immanuel Kant - (1724-1804) German philosopher

~~~

"There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few ... They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?"

Erasmus of Rotterdam 1469-1536, Adages IV.i.1.

~~~~~
.

[Saundra Hummer]

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Robert Fisk: Banality and barefaced lies
Here in America, I stare at the land in which I live and see a landscape I do not recognise
Published: 23 December 2006
I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect. Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at the faraway region in which I live and work for The Independent - the Middle East - and see a landscape which I do no recognise, a distant tragedy turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and barefaced lies. Am I the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter?

I picked up Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It's a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls "a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights".

Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is "afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...". A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, "is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them".

Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book - until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour - Egypt - secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print", ho! ho!) then felt free to tell its readers that Carter had stirred "furore among Jews" with his use of the word "apartheid". The ex-president replied by mildly (and rightly) pointing out that Israeli lobbyists had produced among US editorial boards a "reluctance to criticise the Israeli government".

Typical of the dirt thrown at Carter was the comment by Michael Kinsley in The New York Times (of course) that Carter "is comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa". This was followed by a vicious statement from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who said that the reason Carter gave for writing this book "is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media. What makes this serious is that he's not just another pundit, and he's not just another analyst. He is a former president of the United States".

But well, yes, that's the point, isn't it? This is no tract by a Harvard professor on the power of the lobby. It's an honourable, honest account by a friend of Israel as well as the Arabs who just happens to be a fine American ex-statesman. Which is why Carter's book is now a best-seller - and applause here, by the way, for the great American public that bought the book instead of believing Mr Foxman.

But in this context, why, I wonder, didn't The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel's cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn't Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn't Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa - one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid - paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin? This of course, certainly did not become part of the great American debate on Carter's book.

At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report - which doesn't really study Iraq at all but offers a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the green zone of Baghdad - dream zone would be a more accurate title - there are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis): a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli withdrawal from Golan, etc. But it's written in the same tired semantics of right-wing think tanks - the language, in fact, of the discredited Brookings Institution and of my old mate, the messianic New York Times columnist Tom Friedman - full of "porous" borders and admonitions that "time is running out".

The clue to all this nonsense, I discovered, comes at the back of the report where it lists the "experts" consulted by Messrs Baker, Hamilton and the rest. Many of them are pillars of the Brookings Institution and there is Thomas Freedman of The New York Times.

But for sheer folly, it was impossible to beat the post-Baker debate among the great and the good who dragged the United States into this catastrophe. General Peter Pace, the extremely odd chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said of the American war in Iraq that "we are not winning, but we are not losing". Bush's new defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he "agreed with General Pace that we are not winning, but we are not losing". Baker himself jumped into the same nonsense pool by asserting: "I don't think you can say we're losing. By the same token (sic), I'm not sure we're winning." At which point, Bush proclaimed this week that - yes - "we're not winning, we're not losing". Pity about the Iraqis.

I pondered this madness during a bout of severe turbulence at 37,000 feet over Colorado. And that's when it hit me, the whole final score in this unique round of the Iraq war between the United States of America and the forces of evil. It's a draw!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
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[jonesy]

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."


-- Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Chief of the Luftwaffe, at the Nuremberg trials.

[EdByrne]

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."


-- Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Chief of the Luftwaffe, at the Nuremberg trials.

This sure says it all.

[Saundra Hummer]

. ...........
Flurry of Calls About Draft, and a Day of Denials

By
ERIC LICHTBLAU
December 23, 2006
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 — As the de facto media contact for the Selective Service System, Dick Flahavan is the Maytag repairman of government press people. With the military draft out of business since 1973, the Selective Service just doesn’t get a lot of calls these days.

But by midday Friday, Mr. Flahavan’s office had fielded dozens of inquiries, not just from reporters but from some anxious parents as well, all with some variation of the same urgent question: Are you reinstituting the draft?

So adamant was the denial that Mr. Flahavan, a bit beleaguered, had his staff members post an unplanned update Friday morning at the top of Selective Service’s Web site: “No Draft on Horizon!”

What prompted all this was a Hearst wire service article noting that the Selective Service was making plans for a “mock” draft exercise that would use computerized models to determine how, if necessary, the government would get some 100,000 young adults to report to their local draft boards.

The mock computer exercise, last carried out in 1998, is strictly routine, Selective Service officials said, and it will not actually be run until 2009 — if at all. The exercise has been scheduled several times in the last few years, only to be scuttled each time because of budget and staffing problems, and Mr. Flahavan said he would not be surprised if it was canceled this time around, too.

No matter. With President Bush saying that he wants to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, the military strained near the breaking point and the secretary of veterans affairs suggesting publicly this week that a reconstituted draft could “benefit” the country, even the notion of a mock exercise seemed to strike a nerve.

Since the start of the war in Iraq, some Democrats and Internet bloggers have been stirring up talk of a “secret plan” by the Bush administration to resume the draft, and the mere mention of the idea summons Vietnam-era images of birthday-generated draft lotteries and draft evaders fleeing to Canada.

Mr. Flahavan, an associate director of the Selective Service who has worked there for nearly two decades, has seen fears of a draft enflamed before — most notably at the start of the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and the start of the Iraq war in 2003, as anxious parents would call to ask what effect their son’s heart murmur would have on his draft status. He said he understood the anxiety caused by this week’s latest round of reports, even if he found the whole thing somewhat irksome.

“People think, ‘Aha, they’re having an exercise, dusting off the plans, a draft must be right around the corner,’ ” he said.

The reality, said Mr. Flahavan, who spent most of Friday tamping down the fears, is that “this is much ado about nothing.”

“None of that is accurate,” he said.

White House officials did their part to dampen the speculation as well.

“The president’s position has not changed,” said Trey Bohn, a spokesman for the White House. “He supports an all-volunteer military, and the administration is not considering reinstating the draft.”

Although senior military officers agree that the armed forces are stretched, they also agree that a return to the draft is not the best way to fill the ranks. Draftees, they say, are not as motivated as volunteers, and tend to leave as soon as possible, after spending much of their time in costly training. Re-enlistment rates are much higher among volunteers.

Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, has championed the idea of bringing back the draft, calling attention to what he sees as social and economic inequities in the volunteer military. The House rejected his bill in 2004, by 402 votes to 2. Mr. Rangel has said he will try again, but other Democratic leaders have been cool to the idea.

The exercise planned for 2009 would run computerized models to assign random lottery picks by birthday and simulate the processes for notifying those selected and for lodging conscientious objector claims.

William A. Chatfield, director of the Selective Service, said Friday that “we try to send out a signal of strength that we’re prepared.” The Selective Service, he said, needs to be ready “if something totally unforeseen should come upon us.”

But for now, the chances of that happening are “very, very, very low,” Mr. Chatfield said. “There’s nothing even being discussed in a remote fashion, but you have people trying to create fear when there’s nothing there.”
Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/washington/23draft.html?ex=1167541200&en=cf8f5af529c6ea23&ei=5059&partner=AOL
............... .

[Saundra Hummer]

.
:: :: :: :: ::
In Praise of Impeachment
Pelosi may have put it “off the table,” but it’s not her decision anyway
By
John Nichols
December 13, 2006
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2937/

The question is not: Where does Pelosi stand at the opening of this session of Congress? Rather, it is: Where do the people stand?
Share Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine A lot of progressives were perturbed when, immediately after the American people handed the House Democratic Caucus the power to check and balance the Bush presidency, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) repeated her enthusiasm-dampening pledge that “impeachment is off the table.”

But there is nothing new about a Democratic Speaker of the House shying away from the “I” word, even when the leader knows that a Republican president merits official sanction. The same thing happened after Richard Nixon vanquished George McGovern in the 1972 election.

Grassroots Democrats and a few bold members of Congress began suggesting that issues raised by the Watergate burglary and related matters were serious enough to merit discussion of impeachment. House Speaker Carl Albert, House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill and most of their compatriots in the Democratic Party knew at the time that, despite the president’s protestations, Nixon was indeed a crook—and by extension, that he and his nefarious inner circle had committed acts that gave definition to the deliberately amorphous term “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Yet, they too took impeachment off the table—and kept it off—until the evolution of the scandal and the popular outcry it inspired forced them to put the most powerful tool in the arsenal of the republic back where it belonged.

Surely, Pelosi’s reticence is frustrating to patriotic Americans who know that we have reached the moment when, to borrow a thought from a Constitutional scholar named James Madison: “it may … be found necessary to impeach the President himself.” But history tells us that Pelosi’s pronouncement ought not be taken seriously, as she is, at best, a bit player in what could yet be an epic drama. Pelosi is a politician of the most cautious school. As such, her post-election assertion ought to be taken about as seriously as George Bush’s pre-election declaration that he wanted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to remain at the Pentagon until the end of the administration’s second term.

Why should we dismiss the Speaker-to-be’s adamant dismissal of impeachment as mere wordplay? Not because Pelosi is secretly plotting impeachment. Rather, because any meaningful movement to impeach a president—and, in the case of the Bush-Cheney administration, a vice president—does not come from the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is, in fact, often the last to know that the Constitutional moment has arrived.

Impeachment is an organic process, imagined as such by the founders. Its seed is not naturally planted in Washington, nor nurtured there. When an impeachment initiative is little more than a manifestation of inside-the-Beltway partisanship, as was the case with the Clinton impeachment of the late ’90s, its proponents invite an appropriate rebuke from the citizenry. But when proposals for impeachment are grounded in popular concern for the republic in general and the application of the rule of law in particular—as are moves to sanction Bush and Cheney for illegal war making and wiretapping—the process will begin at the grassroots and grow until it cannot be denied by Washington.

Madison, George Mason and the other founders—who so highly valued the tool of impeachment that they mentioned it six times in the Constitution they crafted—did not think of the impeachment and trial of a sitting president as some sort of political coup. They thought of it as a popular response to executive excess, which would be carried out by the representatives of the people—sitting in the House and Senate—with the purpose of ending the abuses, disempowering an out-of-control president and restoring a proper balance of powers.

Thomas Jefferson, who corresponded regularly with Madison regarding impeachment during the period when the Constitution was being drafted, dreaded the prospect that the president would become nothing more than an “elected despot” or “a king for four years.” While the Constitution handed Congress the power to officially check such despotism, Jefferson and his colleagues fully expected the American people to be the champions of the application of the rule of law to an errant executive.

So the question is not: Where does Pelosi stand at the opening of this session of Congress? Rather, it is: Where do the people stand?

Polling tells us that Americans are a good deal more enthusiastic about holding this president to account than are the leaders of what is sometimes euphemistically referred to as an opposition party. A majority of Americans surveyed last fall in a national poll by the respected firm Ipsos Public Affairs, which measures public opinion on behalf of Associated Press, agreed with the statement: “If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him.”

It was not entirely surprising that 72 percent of the Democrats were inclined toward impeachment. What was more interesting was that 56 percent of self-described Independents were ready to hold the president to account, as were 20 percent of Republicans. For comparison sake, it’s worth noting that polling around the same time found that only 43 percent of Americans thought the Bush administration’s flawed No Child Left Behind law—which Pelosi and her fellow Democratic leaders will be quick to tell you is most definitely on the table—was a major problem that needed to be addressed.

But polls are easily dismissed, even by the politicians who live by them. Harder to neglect are the signals from around the country, where citizens have been asked to vote on the question of whether impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney is needed. Pelosi might want to take note of the message her own constituents sent on the same day that the Democrats’ victory reversed a dozen years of Republican control of the House.

San Franciscans were asked on Nov. 7 to vote “yes” or “no” on Proposition J, a measure calling on the city’s elected representatives to “use every available legal mechanism to effect the impeachment and removal from office of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for committing high crimes and misdemeanors in violation of the United States Constitution.” The measure won with more than 58 percent of the vote. Pelosi’s hometown wasn’t the only city to vote for impeachment on November 7. Calls for impeachment won voter approval from Cunningham Township, Illinois, to Berkeley, California, adding the names of those communities to the list of two-dozen municipalities nationwide that have now officially adopted impeachment resolutions.

Another measure of popular sentiment regarding impeachment—one that Pelosi should understand—came in the congressional elections of Nov. 7. More than three-dozen Democratic members of the House faced the voters as explicit advocates for keeping the impeachment option on the table. Thirty-eight members of the House signed on over the past year to H. Res. 635, a measure sponsored by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. It proposed the establishment of a select committee to investigate whether members of the Bush administration made moves to invade Iraq before receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.

H. Res. 635 explicitly states that the select committee would be charged with making recommendations regarding grounds for the possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

So how did supporters of the “dangerous” principle that impeachment should be kept “on the table” fare at the polls?

One co-sponsor of the resolution, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was elected to the Senate. Every other member of the House who signed on for an impeachment inquiry and faced the voters on Nov. 7 was reelected, in many cases with increased percentage of the vote.

It should come as no surprise that, when offered the option of impeachment, voters opt for it. Outside of Washington, there are still a lot of Americans who recognize impeachment not as the “Constitutional crisis” that so much of the political class and the media fear, but as the cure for the crisis. This was as the founders intended when they inserted all those references to impeachment into a Constitution that does not mention God, corporations or the two-party system. They wanted Americans to know that they had a tool for challenging the tyranny of an “elected despot.”

So, it falls to the people to restore a proper understanding of the necessity of impeachment: by voting for local resolutions, working through state legislatures, passing petitions and protesting. The process will be helped along by the investigations of Bush administration misdeeds that will, as did the initial investigations of Watergate-related wrongs, provide steady re-confirmation of the crisis.

Before the House Judiciary Committee weighed the articles of impeachment against Nixon, a congressional break sent federal legislators back to their home districts. Many, including Tip O’Neill, went with some trepidation. They feared that the people would tell them that Congress had gone too far in questioning the authority and actions of the president. Instead, as O’Neill told a reporter for Time magazine, they found that the people were asking: “What are you waiting for?” As Time noted in that Watergate summer of 1974, members of the House learned from their constituents that “impeachment is good politics.” Indeed, it became increasingly clear to Democrats, as well as smart Republicans, that it was riskier to refuse to impeach than it was to embrace the Constitutional imperative.

Nancy Pelosi and her compatriots may say that impeachment is off the table now. But, soon enough, if the people lead as Jefferson and Madison intended, congressional Democrats will again learn that impeachment remains good—and necessary—politics.

John Nichols is a fellow with The Nation Institute who writes “The Beat” column and covers national politics for The Nation. He is also an associate editor for the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin and a regular contributor to In These Times and The Progressive. He is the author, most recently, of Jews for Buchanan: Did You Hear the One About the Theft of the American Presidency?
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The Godless Fundamentalist
In The Root of All Evil, biologist Richard Dawkins reveals his own lust for certainty
By
Lakshmi Chaudhry
December 8, 2006

Religion fucking blows!” declares comedian Roseanne Barr in her latest HBO special. Her pronouncement, both in its declarative certainty and self-congratulatory defiance, could easily serve as the succinct moral of Richard Dawkins’ documentary, The Root of All Evil.

The big-screen version of a two-part British television series follows the noted biologist as he embarks on a global road-trip to the veritable bastions of theological conviction—the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a Christian conservative stronghold in Colorado Springs, a Hassidic community in the heart of London—bullying, berating and heckling the devoutly faithful he encounters along his way.

Confronting cancer patients who have traveled to Lourdes in hopes of a cure, Dawkins tells the viewer in the first scene, “It may seem tough to question the beliefs of these poor, desperate people’s faith.” By the end of the documentary, Dawkins’ bravado is not in doubt. When talking to Ted Haggard, a New Life Church pastor (more recently infamous for his predilection for crystal meth and gay prostitutes), after witnessing one of his sermons, Dawkins tells him, “I was almost reminded of the Nuremberg rallies … Dr. Goebbels would have been proud.” To a hapless guide at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, he taunts, “Do you really believe that Jesus’ body lay here?” And then there’s his remark—”I’m really worried for the well-being of your children”—to a Hassidic school teacher, Rabbi Herschel Gluck, whom Dawkins accuses of brainwashing innocent kids.

As he storms his way around the world in the state of high dudgeon, Dawkins’ attitude can be best described as apocalyptic outrage. The effect is in turns bewildering, embarrassing, grating and even unintentionally comic, as we watch the distinguished Oxford University Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science channel his inner Borat. When the astonished rabbi exclaims, “You are a fundamentalist believer,” even a sympathetic, true-blue San Francisco audience cannot help but chuckle in assent.

As his rabbinical nemesis rightly suspects, Dawkins’ fondness for sweeping generalizations reflects his own deep-seated fundamentalism, a virulent form of atheism that mirrors the polarized worldview of the religious extremists it claims to oppose. “They condemn not just belief in God, but respect for belief in God. Religion is not just wrong; it’s evil,” writes Gary Wolf in his Wired Magazine cover story, “The New Atheism,” whose leading exponents include—in addition to Dawkins—Daniel Dennett, a philosophy professor at Yale, punk rocker Greg Graffin and Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. These are the self-styled “Brights,” the moniker of choice for Dawkins to describe “a person whose worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements.”

The “bright” worldview is also remarkably free of complexity. Dawkins’ view of faith can be summed up thus: Religion is dangerous because it requires that we suspend our powers of reason to place our faith in the shared delusion that is God. This, he asserts, is the first step on that “slippery slope” to hatred and violence.

When we cede our “critical faculties” to believe in the idea of a higher power, Dawkins claims, we are immediately invested in a panoply of increasingly ludicrous propositions: that the Virgin Mary ascended directly to heaven, Moses parted the seas, God created the world in seven days, or beautiful virgins await good Muslims in heaven. Why not, he asks, believe in fairies or hobgoblins?

Faith, in his universe, is interchangeable with superstition, eccentricity, madness, and, at its most benign, infantilism. Religious conviction is a marker of human backwardness, both in a historical and psychological sense. According to Dawkins, human beings invented religion as a “crutch” for ignorance. Without science to help us understand the world around us, we turned to gods/faith/superstition to cope with our sense of helplessness. Today, religion remains a source of succor to those unable to outgrow their childish desire to see the world in terms of “black and white, as a battle between good and evil”—unlike atheists who are “responsible adults and accept that life is complex.”

“We’re brought from cradle to believe that there is something good about faith,” says Dawkins, as he compares this belief to “a virus that infects the young, for generation after generation.” Fortunate are the “responsible adults” who grow up to shake off these beliefs, unlike the rest of humanity who remain trapped in their infantile desire to be taken care of by an all-powerful deity.

Unlike fairytales, however, our religious beliefs are not harmless, says Dawkins, they instead lay the foundation for the murder and mayhem inevitably wreaked by true believers. His evidence: the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the 9/11 attacks, and less spectacular crimes against humanity like suicide bombers, anti-abortion killers, and so on.

This broad-stroked caricature of faith is delivered with a breathtaking disregard for historical context, in which social, political or economic conditions are simply ignored or discounted. “[Dawkins] has a simple-as-that, plain-as-day approach to the grandest questions, unencumbered by doubt, consistency, or countervailing information,” writes Marilynne Robinson in the November Harpers’, while reviewing his bestselling book, The God Delusion. And on screen he is no different. Of course, there are sound political causes for the Palestinian conflict, Dawkins hurriedly acknowledges—only to assert in the same breath that the real culprit is religion, which teaches its adherents to think, “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

Not unlike the religious simpletons he claims to disdain, Dawkins sees the world in terms of a battle of Good vs. Evil, cloaked here as Science vs. Religion. Where Religion is corrupt, tyrannical and false, Science offers intellectual integrity, freedom and truth. As Robinson notes, Dawkins fails to acknowledge Science’s less admirable achievements, be they eugenics, Hiroshima, or the more mundane travesties committed by unethical doctors or fat-cat researchers in service of corporate funding.

“Dawkins implicitly defines science as a clear-eyed quest for truth, chaste as an algorithm, while religion is atavistic, mad, and mired in crime,” Robinson writes.

In this version of atheist theology, Science attains the same status as Dawkins’ loathed “alpha male in sky,” whose laws rule all things known and unknown. If we do not quite understand how the universe was created or the human brain works—or the competing, contradictory claims about the virtues of, say, table salt—all we need to do is wait and keep faith in the scientific method, which will reveal all in good time. The ways of Science are no less sacred or mysterious than that of God.

Like his fellow fundamentalists, Dawkins has no use for moderation or its practitioners. The people of faith featured in his documentary are strict, true believers, who adhere to the most rigid interpretations of their respective faiths. There are no Muslim doctors, church-going geneticists or Catholics who support abortion rights. Anyone who believes in evolution and God is just as deluded or in denial, and, as he tells Wired, “really on the side of the fundamentalists.”

Nothing less than a complete renunciation of all things spiritual will suffice. “As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers,” he writes in The God Delusion, in an eerie echo of President Bush’s post-9/11 point of view: “You’re either with us or against us.”

It would be silly to argue that the new atheists’ crusade is as dangerous as the so-called war on terror, but that crusade does give aid and comfort to fundamentalists everywhere by affirming their view of faith: one, science and religion are mutually opposed and exclusive worldviews; two, religion is immutable and outside history; and therefore, three, the Bible (or the Quran, for that matter) must be taken literally, and is not open to interpretation. For both camps, ignoring one law or moderating a single injunction is the first step toward rejecting the faith in its entirety.

This great war of ontologies, seductive though it may be in our beleaguered times, becomes immediately absurd if we remind ourselves of one simple fact: Science and Religion are historical in the richest sense of the word. They both inform and reflect our changing ideas about ourselves and the world around us. From the practice of throwing a woman on her husband’s funeral pyre in India to determining intelligence by the shape of person’s skull in Europe—both of which seem hateful today—religious and scientific beliefs ebb, rise and transmute themselves over time. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the vast bulk of what we call History, which the Brights seem just as willing to rewrite as their theological adversaries.

As innately human endeavors, religion and science are therefore as unreasonable, noble, immoral, kind, tyrannical, odious, compassionate—in other words, irredeemably human—as the people who literally embody them. Yes, the laws of nature and those of God might still exist without human beings, but there would be no one to name or know them as such, or act on that knowledge. Taken together, they express our need to both submit and to control, to know and to believe, to be in the visible world and to transcend it.

That the vast majority of us would find it difficult to choose between the two should be hardly surprising. The antidote to fanaticism is not a new puritanism of reason, but the contradictory, ambiguous, compromised reality of ordinary human experience..

Lakshmi Chaudhry has been a reporter and an editor for independent publications for more than six years, and is a senior editor at In These Times, where she covers the cross-section of culture and politics
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NBC is featuring Live Jazz showcasing Ice Skating right now, not sure how much longer it will be on, but so far, Anita Baker and Koz, and Koz himself in a solo with a skater. It's beautiful if nothing else. Very enjoyable, at least the two performances I've seen parts of are.

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Newt's free-speech ideas fail the laugh test

Joe Conason
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The New York Observer

12.22.06 - The flimsy philosophizing of Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and aspiring Presidential candidate, isn't designed to bear any great weight. For many years, he has been willing to say anything that would win him the public attention and political power he still craves. Yet in the mainstream media and among Republicans, his intellectual pretensions are often taken seriously -- and when he promotes authoritarian "solutions" to national problems, that must be taken seriously too.

His latest insight is that America can only survive if we impose severe curbs on freedom of speech.

At a recent event in New Hampshire -- where he shows up often these days -- Mr. Gingrich explained why he believes that the First Amendment must be reconsidered in these trying times. He chose to deliver these remarks at an annual dinner held in memory of the late publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader, honoring individuals who stand up for free speech.

He told the stunned audience that we are facing a "long-term war," or what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called "the Long War," which requires new strategies and tactics to thwart Islamic jihadism. We confront an existential threat "that will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every Web site that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons."

He went on to advocate measures that "use every technology we can find to break up [the terrorists'] capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us, to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us."

Such vague prescriptions sound sensible enough. Certainly no sane person wants terrorists using the Internet, and nobody wants them recruiting young suicide bombers on the Internet, either. The problem is in the details. Exactly how the former Speaker would deter the enemies of freedom from using free speech was anything but clear.

About a week after his New Hampshire speech, he expanded on his remarks in an article for the ultraconservative Union-Leader newspaper. "The fact is that not all speech is permitted under the Constitution," he wrote. He noted the ominous remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the outreach by Hezbollah to sympathizers in Latin America, and the stated determination of Islamist militants to "use the Internet for the sake of jihad." He suggested that the government be empowered to shut down Web sites that recruit suicide bombers and urged "an expeditious review of current domestic law to see what changes can be made within the protections of the 1st Amendment to ensure that free speech protection claims are not used to protect the advocacy of terrorism, violent conduct or the killing of innocents."

That's only a sample of the many big mouthfuls of rhetoric emanating from Mr. Gingrich on this topic, but you get the idea.

When he appeared on Meet the Press on Dec. 17, host Tim Russert asked him how his fantasy would work. Who would define such murky offenses as "advocacy of terrorism" or "violent conduct"?

Mr. Gingrich seemed to be annoyed by the question. His answer was not only unimpressive but also unintentionally funny.

"You close down any Web site that is jihadist," he said.

"But who makes that judgment?" insisted Mr. Russert.

"Look, I -- you can appoint three federal judges if you want to and say, 'Review this stuff and tell us which ones to close down.' I would just like to have them be federal judges who've served in combat," replied Mr. Gingrich.

Considering the source, that was a remarkably weird response. A panel of three judges who've served in combat? As a qualification for making crucial decisions about combating terrorists, combat service would surely eliminate Mr. Gingrich -- a certified chicken-hawk who loves war but successfully avoided the Vietnam draft -- from running for President.

Logic aside, he has offered at least one example of how he would apply his new set of speech standards. He believes that the six Muslim scholars who were removed from a plane in Minneapolis last month for such suspicious behavior as praying in the airport "should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists."

That ridiculous assertion could only have thrilled the leadership of Al Qaeda. Nothing they can ever put on a Web site or videotape will be nearly as effective in encouraging young Muslims to hate America and reject freedom as Mr. Gingrich's cloddish demagogy.

COPYRIGHT (c) 2006 THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer and Salon.com.
For more Conason columns, see his archive.
E-mail Conason at jconason@observer.com.
URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21792
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Bush can't kick the habit
Robert Scheer
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Original story by Truthdig

12.22.06 - Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?
Even as government statistics now show marijuana is America's No. 1 cash crop, it is important to remember that militarism is the most dangerous drug threatening our sanity. Yet even formerly sober folks -- first Colin Powell and now new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -- get a contact high from cozying up to the walking hallucinogen that is our president.

Succumbing to the Bush fantasy that freedom is fertilized by firepower, a vision that has mucked up Iraq beyond recognition, Gates told CBS that "as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for generations to come."

This from a man who recently made sense, during his confirmation hearings, when he told members of Congress that we are not winning this war, despite having committed, proportionally, as many troops as we did in Vietnam. But now, as a rising chorus of obsessed hawks calls for a "surge" in U.S. troop deployment in Iraq -- a call echoed even by some prominent Democrats -- Gates endorses the staying-the-course strategy for compounding the Iraq failure rejected by the voters. A member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) who had apparently supported its unanimous findings that the military strategy was bankrupt is suddenly blinded by Bush's Iraq victory myopia.

In a sign of just how out-there Bush is on Iraq, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff are in "unanimous disagreement" with "White House officials aggressively promoting the concept ... . (T)he Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission (in Iraq)."

All this despite the fact that the ISG report correctly underscored that the real failures in the Mideast have clearly been political, not military. The accurate subtext of the report is that the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq is the key source of chaos in the region -- inflaming religious fanaticism from Beirut to Baghdad and leaving the United States dependent on the tyrants in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to now bail us out.

So with Bush rejecting the sage advice of a commission headed by his father's secretary of state to cut our losses, is there any hope the Democrats who now control Congress will stop playing the role of enabler to these war junkies? After all, it was the Democratic congressional leadership that provided Bush with bipartisan cover for his irrational "anti-terrorism" invasion of a country that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Some, like John Kerry, now recognize that folly, and even Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, in her appearance on NBC's "Today" show Monday, finally expressed her regrets for supporting the war and opposed a "surge" in U.S. troops for Iraq.

But other Democrats continue to play the dangerous game of supporting Bush's escalation. Particularly alarming were the remarks on Sunday of incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid endorsing a buildup as long as it aims at getting the troops home by 2008: "If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we'll go along with that."

Reid's strategy is as obvious as it is opportunistic: This is a Republican war, goes the thinking, and the Dems will give the Republicans all the rope they need to hang themselves in '08. This seems a deeply cynical position, when you consider that the Pentagon just announced that attacks on American and Iraqi targets are at their highest levels, with a 22 percent leap from just this summer. The difference between taking a position and positioning oneself is what determines leadership -- if the Dems fail to provide real leadership on ending this war, they will deservedly lose the next election.

The convenient lie behind all of this is that U.S. military occupation is the indispensable agent of Mideast enlightenment. No, we have become the enablers of Iraqi madness, be it in the form of torture or the ascendancy of religious tyranny in Iraq, where daily life has been reduced to an unmitigated horror.

Yet, like a junkie who needs one more hit to get his life in order, Bush is hooked on the drug of military might. If the Democrats continue to feed his dangerous habit, they will only help Bush visit greater mayhem upon Iraq while undermining the core values of our own country.

(c) 2006, Truthdig.com

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21795
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James Brown Dead at 73
Posted on Dec 25, 2006

abc.net.au

The legendary innovator and icon died early Christmas morning after being hospitalized for pneumonia in Atlanta. When it comes to his influence on American culture, the “Godfather of Soul” said it best himself: “Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown. You know what I’m saying?”

AP: (Go on-site for photo's,and links or to leave a comment: http://www.truthdig.com/eartothegrou...wn_dead_at_73/

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson, among others. Songs such as David Bowie’s “Fame,” Prince’s “Kiss,” George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” and Sly and the Family Stone’s “Sing a Simple Song” were clearly based on Brown’s rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown’s claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

“James presented obviously the best grooves,” rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told the Associated Press. “To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one’s coming even close.”

Brown’s classic singles include “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” “Out of Sight,” “(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,” “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud,” a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.

Read more: Go on-site

Comments: 4 Published. Add Yours
Comment #43682 by leftdog on 12/25 at 10:36 am

Here is an excerpt of an editorial that appeared in Billboard Magazine in 1968 - days following the riots that occured in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King:

Hail, James Brown
Billboard Magazine Editorial
April 27, 1968

Amid the looting and rioting in Washington., Brown came to the people and told a live television audience, “Get off the streets. Go home. Nothing can be gained by looting and burning, only sorrow and misery.” A few hours later, those who were not at home to see Brown make an appeal, were at home watching the continuous rebroadcast of Brown’s plea. Washington and the rioters withdrew into their homes taking the advice of James Brown, who is not a politician but a singer. Brown went to Washington at his own expense just as he went to Boston and other riot torn cities… .....
Comment #43673 by Quy Tran on 12/25 at 9:32 am

Just rest in peace ! No more FRIENDS or FOES!
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Comment #43655 by Socrates on 12/25 at 5:06 am

"To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one’s coming even close.”
And no one ever will.
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Comment #43653 by James Brown Fan on 12/25 at 4:24 am

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO .

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A Parable For Our Times
Bill Moyers
December 22, 2006
Bill Moyers is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. The center's senior fellow, Lew Daly, was his accomplice in this essay, written exclusively for TomPaine.com.

The Christian story begins simply: A child is given, a son. He grows up to be a teacher, sage, healer and prophet. He gains a large following. To many he is a divine savior; to the rich and powerful he is an enemy. They put him to death in brutal fashion, befitting his humble beginnings in peasant Galilee and his birth in a stall thick with the raw odor of animals.

Toward the end of his life, Jesus preached in the Temple to large crowds, reaching the height of his power. There he told the parable that likely sealed his fate. He said there was a man who created a prosperous vineyard and then rented it to some tenants while he went away on a journey. At harvest time, the owner of vineyard sent a servant to collect a portion from the tenants, but they beat the servant and sent him away empty-handed. Another servant came, and they struck him on the head. Another they killed. Finally, the owner sent his own son to collect the back payments. “They will respect my son,” he thought. But when the tenants saw the son, and knew him to be the heir, they saw their chance to take full possession of the harvest. And so they killed the son, thinking now they would owe nothing from the vineyard to anyone.

The listeners understood the symbolism: God, of course, is the owner of the vineyard, and the vineyard is Israel or the covenant, or, more broadly, the whole creation. It is all that God entrusts to the leaders of his people. And what is in question is their stewardship of this bounty.

In the parable, the “tenants” are the leaders of Israel. They hoard the fruits of the vineyard for themselves, instead of sharing the fruits as the covenant teaches, according to God’s holy purposes. And the holiest of God’s purposes, ancient tradition taught, is helping the poor, and the fatherless, and the widow, and the stranger—all who do not have the resources to live in a manner befitting their dignity as creatures made in God’s image, as children of God.

When he finished the story, Jesus asked the people what the owner of the vineyard will do when he comes back. “He will kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others,” Jesus tells them. In the Gospel of Matthew, the people themselves answered: “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

Political dynasties fall from negligent stewardship. One thinks of the upward redistribution called “tax relief”; of the Iraq invasion sold as critical to the “War on Terror"; of rising poverty, inequality, crime, debt, and foreclosure as America spews its bounty on war and a military so muscle-bound it is like Gulliver. It would be hard to imagine a more catastrophic failure of stewardship, certainly in the biblical sense of helping the poor and allocating resources for the health of society. Once upon a time these errant stewards boasted of restoring a culture of integrity to politics. They became instead an axis of corruption, joining corporate power to political ideology to religious self-righteousness.

• • •

The story is told of the devil and a companion walking along the streets. The companion saw a man reach down and pick up the truth from the sidewalk. "You're finished," the companion said to the devil. "I just saw that man pick up the truth from the street, and that means you are finished." The devil smiled and answered, "Don't worry. He's a human, and in 15 minutes he will have turned the truth into a concept and no one will know what it is."

From theories stubbornly followed in defiance of truth on the street comes ruin. Laissez-faire was never a good idea; in practice it is ruinous.

This is the season to recall Walt Whitman. He wrote in Democratic Vistas, around 1870:

The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will be a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general comfort—a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth. As the human frame, or, indeed, any object in this manifold universe, is best kept together by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the necessity, exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality, occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling property owners.

How prophetic to see anything like that in the aftermath of the Civil War, in which Whitman had volunteered as a nurse. But in a time of great upheaval, countered by popular mobilization after mobilization, the great poet’s took hold in the people's imagination. Whitman’s liberalism had neither the cultural elitism of those identified with the term on the left, nor the laissez-faire extremism of the free-market “liberals” on the right. Liberalism meant “the safety and endurance of the aggregate of middling property owners.” Its consummation was the New Deal social compact we inherited from five presidents and from substantial voting majorities for a generation after the Great Depression, and the result was the prospect of a fair and just society—a cohesion—that truly made us a democratic people.

Equality is not an objective that can be achieved but it is a goal worth fighting for. A more equal society would bring us closer to the “self-evident truth” of our common humanity. I remember the early 1960s, when for a season one could imagine progress among the races, a nation finally accepting immigrants for their value not only to the economy but to our collective identity, a people sniffing the prospect of progress. One could look at the person who is different in some particular way—skin color, language, religion—without feeling fear. America, so long the exploiter of the black, red, brown, and yellow, was feeling its oats; we were on our way to becoming the land of opportunity, at last. Now inequality—especially between wealth and worker—has opened like an unbridgeable chasm.

Ronald Reagan once described a particular man he knew who was good steward of resources in the biblical sense. “This is a man,” Reagan said, “who in his own business, before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan, before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn’t work. He provided nursing care for the children of mothers who worked in the stores.”

That man was Barry Goldwater, a businessman before he entered politics. It’s incredible how far we have deviated from even the most conservative understanding of social responsibility. For a generation now Goldwater’s children have done everything they could to destroy the social compact between workers and employers, and to discredit, defame, and even destroy anyone who said their course was wrong. Principled conservatism was turned into an ideological caricature whose cardinal tenet was of taxation as a form of theft, or, as the libertarian icon Robert Nozick called it, “force labor.” What has happened to us that such anti-democratic ideas could become a governing theory?

• • •

Of course it’s hard to grasp what really motivated this movement. Many of the new conservative elites profess devotion to the needs of ordinary people, in contrast with some of their counterparts a hundred years ago who were often Social Darwinists, and couldn’t have been more convinced that a vast chasm between the rich and poor is the natural state of things. But after 30 years of conservative revival and a dramatic return of the discredited “voodoo economics” of the 1980s under George W. Bush, it’s reasonable to follow the old biblical proverb that says by their fruits you shall know them. By that realistic standard, I think the Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow’s analysis sums it up well: What it’s all about, he simply said, is “the redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful."

I grew up in East Texas, in a county that once had more slaves than any other in Texas. It is impossible to forget that as the slave power grew in the South and King Cotton catapulted the new nation into the global marketplace, the whole politics of the country was infected with a rule of property that did not—indeed could not—distinguish the ownership of things from the ownership of human beings. Drawing from the Hebrew prophets and the Book of Revelation, the abolitionists simply said this: the rule of law has become moral anarchy. God’s light clarified that the rule of law had become moral anarchy.

Something was wrong in the very foundation of things, and so the foundation had to be rebuilt on sounder principles. But no mere parchment of words divulged the principles that ultimately preserved the union. They were written in blood—thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dead Americans. And so by untold sacrifice the rule of law was righted to exclude human property. Then, of course, the slave power simply rejected the rule of law and established rule by terror. The feudal south became the fascist south. It did happen here, to answer Sinclair Lewis’s famous riddle of the 1930s.

What is finally at the root of these reactionary forces that have so disturbed the social fabric and threatened to undo the republic? If a $4 billion dollar investment in chattel labor was worth the price of civil war and 600,000 dead in 1860, is it really any wonder that the richest Americans would not suffer for too long a political consensus that pushed their share of national income down by a third, and held it there—about at the level of their counterparts in “socialist” Europe—for a generation? Make no mistake about it, from the days of the American Liberty League in 1936 (the group Franklin Roosevelt had in mind with his crowd-pleasing battle cry, “I welcome their hatred!”) they never gave up on returning to their former glory. They just failed to do it. Ordinary people had powerful institutions and laws on their side that thwarted them—unions, churches, and, yes, government programs that were ratified by large majorities decade after decade.

The scale of the disorder in our national priorities right now is truly staggering; it approaches moral anarchy. Alexander Hamilton, the conservative genius of the financial class, warned this could happen. Speaking to the New York State legislature in 1788, he said:

As riches increase and accumulate in few hands; as luxury prevails in society; virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature: It is what, neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is common misfortune, that awaits our state constitution, as well as others.

Conservatives who revere the founding fathers tend to stress the last point—that there is nothing to be done about this "common misfortune." It is up to the rest of us, who see the founding fathers not as gods but as inspired although flawed human beings—the hand that scribbled "All men are created equal" also stroked the breasts and thighs of a slave woman, whom he considered his property—to take on "the tendency of things " to "depart from the republican standard," and hold our country to its highest, and most humane, ideals.

As stewards of democracy, we, too, have a covenant—with one another.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/22/a_parable_for_our_times.php ~~~ .

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No money to treat 9/11 workers, $3 billion a week to fight Iraq?

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Dec 20, 2006, 03:14
Commentary Last Updated:
Dec 21st, 2006 - 14:52:11

Is this a new 9/11 conspiracy The New York Times is reporting? That “roughly $40 million that was set aside by the federal government to treat rescue workers, volunteers and firefighters who became ill after helping with the 9/11 cleanup and recovery will run out in months, physicians and federal officials said yesterday.” And the fund goes broke while the war meter ticks in Iraq at nearly $3 billion a week?

On top of that, that sanctimonious Contra criminal, Robert Gates, sworn in Monday as defense secretary warns us that failure in Iraq would be a “calamity” that would haunt the United States for years. Well Bobby, we’ve got a “calamity” here in New York (still part of the United States) that has haunted us for five years and won’t go away. So take your “commanders' assessments” “unvarnished and straight from the shoulder” and you know where to put ‘em.

Members of Congress from New York and New Jersey had to fight to secure $75 million a year ago to pay for health expenses, which included $40 million for drugs and medical procedures, for some 32,000 workers who reported a variety of illnesses after working at Ground Zero. You remember GZ, don’t you, where some special ops helpers blew up the Twin Trade Towers?

Yes? No? Well, remember this. The two major monitor/treatment programs, one run by Mount Sinai Medical Center, the other by the Fire Department, said at the present spending rate, treatment money runs out by spring or summer. They told us top federal health officials said that unless more money was forthcoming, they’d have to notify thousands of patients their treatment could end soon. What and just let them be sick or die?

This while you, Mr. Gates, call for a big surge of fresh flesh, blood and cash to feed the Iraq canons, while these 32,000 heroes languish unto death. Your federal officials tell us if all the workers who needed treatment got it, the bill would be $250 million a year; a bill we’re told that “may meet with resistance from lawmakers in Washington, who are facing intense budget pressures.” We’ve got some intense budget pressures right here. So get real, Mr. Gates. You want to play war, try the computer game: SOCOM3 USNavy Seals, it’s a killer.

You want to be human and smart, get those US asses back to the masses. Save yourself the trip to Iraq and the taxpayer money. Adjust your “war strategy” to pay your war bills, first for the first responders. Don’t wave the flag and make speeches like Bush, then turn your back on the wounded and dying. Use your position, make a decision, do something for them.

We’ve got your co-payment: $256.6 million right here. It includes “$163.6 million in direct medical expenses for 19,200: $91.2 million for 9,6000 patients with respiratory or digestive disorders, $58 million for 8,000 patients with 9/11 related mental illnesses and $14.4 million for 1,600 patients with musculoskeletal conditions. Medications account for more than half of the treatment cost.”

The numbers are from The Times, Secretary Gates. I didn’t make it up like Dick Cheney made up Weapons of Mass Destruction and their imminent use to get us into Iraq in the first place, or that Saddam sat on Osama’s lap and hummed al Qaeda in his ear all night. Or like Miss Rice lied, she didn’t want to see a mushroom cloud on the horizon. I have a feeling somebody there is ingesting mushrooms. Let me bring you back to reality, bro, and you, sister Condi.

We’ve got “$49.1 million a year in administrative costs, $6 million for translation services and an as-yet-undetermined figure for ‘emerging issues’ like complicated orthopedic diseases and disorders that may not become evident for many years, including certain lung and autoimmune diseases and cancers,” you know like Gulf War syndrome, where ex-military good guys and girls, and/or members of their families or kids drop like flies over the years.

I hope you don’t think I’m talking apples and oranges here? Like it’s two different things, 9/11 and Iraq? Uh huh! It’s all about sick and dying Americans and making things better not worse. Unfortunately, the Fire Department or Mount Sinai Medical Center are not into drug or gun running or money-laundering like you and the boys were into in Nicaragua and with the Iranians, so we have to rely on our real government, not the shadow government, to pay up.

You need to give that “honest advice” to President Bush. And don’t let him stonewall you with “we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East,” because the US is failing miserably in New York, never mind the Middle East. And that is haunting our nation, right now. Like now, this minute, tomorrow.

Even Mrs. Clinton, the ex-first lady -- even Mrs. Clinton thinks what the federal government has done for Ground Zero fighters has been “too little too late.” And she said, “I am not going to say where the money should come from, I’m merely saying that this should be a national priority. It is not just a New York priority.” She’s right.

And if the president is short on cash, maybe he could call a buddy at the Fed and have them pack the $250 million and ship it to his favorite bank, like they usually do when things get tight.

I suggest that because Dr. John O. Agwunobi, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Dr. John Howard, the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which prepared the estimate, are co-chairmen of a task force to examine 9/11 health issues. And they made no promises, no commitments about the funds coming to New York.

Holly Babin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, wasn’t even familiar with the estimate, duh. But she said they were looking at several approaches, options and models. I say cash is best, real money like the kind used to buy weapons, or pay for contractors in Iraq, or for soldiers’ lives and limbs. That’s what we need here in little old war torn New York, five years after the dastardly deed. Remember, Bob? Cash: $250 million.

What’s more, the health folks have to move their bureaucratic butts, because this $250 million has to get into the president’s budget. We can’t sit on it while engaging in studies. Study this: those people are sick and some are going to die. Get one of these wart heads to put the item in the budget, and get a plan to get it sold, because we have felt the stakes in the “War on Terror.” They were driven, like the Twin Towers, right through our hearts. But that’s war, right Mr. Secretary? That’s war.

The question is how sick are you and all the rest of the neocons that you want more and more of it? Remember Vietnam: 58,000 dead. And we went home with our tails between our legs, because it was a no-win, war from the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident. So don’t let this war, contrived from the start, suck us into moral and financial bankruptcy. Speaking of that, our big city mayors and friends have been paying medical disability benefits with retirement money. And now there’s a whole new hole that’s growing.

In fact all over America, you would find cities with holes in them, in their budgets, their schools, their roads, their social services, their families who are going broke from exported jobs, old wars, the new war, and all hell turned loose on them. So be a hero. Tell the president to change his plan. Put America’s pieces back together again. Heal the sick and dying from 9/11. Bring the soldiers home. And stop making that dumb speech, “Failure in Iraq will haunt the U.S.” You and yours have been haunting us for 40 years. Enough is enough.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.
Copyright © 1998-2006 Online Journal
Email Online Journal Editor$$$$$$$ .

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Cannon fodder at Christmastime
By Gabriele Zamparini
Online Journal Guest Writer
Dec 22, 2006, 02:02

Santa Claus Bush is preparing to deliver his special Christmas’ gift: “We do need to increase our troops”

The Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon unanimously disagreed but hey, do you want to question the Clown in Chief who hid into the Texas National Guard (and even there he was an AWOL) to avoid fighting in the Vietnam war? (That’s probably the only good thing this scam has done in all his life, at least he didn’t kill anybody, THEN!)

Even war criminal Powell -- the clown of the UN show just before the invasion -- “said the U.S. Army is ‘about broken’ from the Iraq conflict and cast doubt on whether the military could or should boost the number of troops in the country. ‘There really are no additional troops'’ to send, Powell said on CBS's ‘Face the Nation’ program. ‘The current active Army is not large enough and the Marine Corps is not large enough for the kinds of missions they are being asked to perform.’"

But the propaganda machine is working full time.

On Thursday he [Defense Secretary Robert Gates] had breakfast with ordinary soldiers to sound out their views on troop levels, a timeline for training Iraqis, sectarian leanings in the Iraqi security forces and the "caliber and discipline" of Iraqi soldiers and their military leaders.

"Sir, I think we need to just keep doing what we're doing," Specialist Jason Glenn told Gates. "I really think we need more troops here. With more presence on the ground, more troops might hold them (the insurgents) off long enough to where we can get the Iraqi army trained up."

.....No soldier present said U.S. forces should be brought home, and none said current troop levels were adequate, as some commanders have argued.

A young US soldier’s mother recently wrote (LINK ON SITE): “Two weeks ago he called by satellite phone, awakening Amy and me in the dead of the night. Machine gun fire was all around him, the sound of war filling our ears and hearts with grief and fear of loss. ( . . . ) He says that this war cannot be won! He has no faith in the politicians who sent him there.”

In Basra, the greatest liar since the times of Pinocchio met the young British troops he has sent to kill and torture people who had done nothing to them and their country. Once again the butcher of London brainwashed the youth (Link.O-S) “Our country and countries like it are having to rediscover what it means to fight for what we believe in. All over the world the same struggle is going on and if we don't stand up and fight for the people of tolerance and moderation who want to live together, whatever their fate, then the people of hatred and sectarianism will triumph."

We must take much more care of our youth and not allow this gang of pedophiles to abuse and send them to foreign countries as cannon fodder. Those who have their sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan should read A letter to an American G.I.Link O-S) written by an Iraqi woman. Link O-S This letter would be the most important Christmas gift for your children. Send it to them!

Gabriele Zamparini is an independent filmmaker and freelance writer living in London. He's the producer and director of the documentaries "XXI CENTURY" and "The Peace!" DVD and author of "American Voices of Dissent" (Paradigm Publishers). He can be reached at:info@thecatsdream.com. More about him and his work on: http://TheCatsDream.com.

Copyright © 1998-2006 Online Journalhttp://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1558.shtml

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
^^^^^^^^^ .

[Saundra Hummer]

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First lady's missed chance
Tue Dec 26, 8:04 AM ET
Would you tell your friends about your medical condition - be it cancer, heart disease or something else - if you thought it might help them avoid the same thing? Such person-to-person communication is one of the most effective ways to spread potentially lifesaving knowledge.


Now let's rephrase the question: What if you could warn the entire nation at once?


The answer seems obvious, but it wasn't for first lady Laura Bush, who decided to keep her skin cancer a secret until reporters started asking about a bandage on her leg. The White House then disclosed that she had had a squamous cell skin cancer removed shortly after the November elections.

Spokesman Tony Snow bristled at questions about why Mrs. Bush hadn't disclosed the condition, insisting that the cancer was no big deal, that she's a private citizen with no requirement to disclose, and that other first family members had similarly declined to reveal medical conditions over the years.


It's true that Mrs. Bush's condition, squamous cell carcinoma, like basal cell carcinoma, a similar looking form of skin cancer, is relatively easy to spot and treat. The first lady had a nickel-sized sore on her leg that wouldn't heal. Neither is it as serious as melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Even so, squamous cell can be fatal in a tiny percentage of cases if left untreated; it kills up to 2,500 people a year, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

More than 1 million Americans are diagnosed with some form of skin cancer every year, and nearly 11,000 die. The first lady could have reminded everyone: Watch your sun exposure, check your skin and have a doctor look at anything suspicious. (For more information, see:
http://www.skincancer.org/.)

Prominent people, particularly White House occupants, have an extraordinary bully pulpit for spreading public health messages. Bill Clinton's disclosure of his heart bypass surgery after he had left office prompted thousands of men to get needed checkups, and other first ladies have not been nearly so shy about using their stature to promote health. Nancy Reagan, Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter all disclosed their breast cancer or preventive surgery while in the White House.

Laura Bush is not subject to the same disclosure imperatives as her husband is, but she hardly leads a "private" life: She has a staff of about 20 paid for by tax dollars, travels the world at public expense, and courts the news media for her own projects. She had no obligation to disclose her condition, but she missed an opportunity to educate.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20061226/cm_usatoday/firstladysmissedchance

Maybe she is of the same school as her in-laws, it's the sins of her father being visited upon her. They used to think this way according to my uncle who worked with GHW Bush. Maybe they still do? SRH
XXX .

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:: :: :: :: :: :: ::We Fight for Liberty
by
Having More Liberty and Not Less

By
Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Thursday 30 November 2006

And finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about free speech, failed speakers, and the delusion of grandeur.

....."This is a serious long term war," the man at the podium cried, "and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country."

.....Some, in the audience, must have thought they were hearing an arsonist give the keynote address at a convention of firefighters.

.....This was the annual Loeb First Amendment Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire - a public cherishing of Freedom of Speech - in the state with the two-fisted motto "Live Free Or Die."

.....And the arsonist at the microphone, the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was insisting that we must attach an "on-off button" to Free Speech.

.....He offered the time-tested excuse trotted out by our demagogues, since even before the Republic was founded: widespread death, of Americans, in America, possibly at the hands of Americans.

.....But updated, now, to include terrorists ... using the internet for recruitment ... end result, quote "losing a city."

.....The Colonial English defended their repression with words like these.

And so did the Slave States.

And so did the policemen who shot strikers.

And so did Lindbergh's America-First crowd.

And so did those who interned Japanese-Americans.

And so did those behind the Red Scare.

And so did Nixon's Plumbers.

The genuine proportion of the threat is always irrelevant.

The fear the threat is exploited to create ... becomes the only reality.
....."We will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find," Mr. Gingrich continued about terrorists formerly Communists formerly Hippies formerly Fifth Columnists formerly Anarchists formerly Redcoats.

.....".... to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech."

.....Mr. Gingrich, the British 'broke up our capacity to use free speech' in the 1770's.

.....The pro-slavery leaders 'broke up our capacity to use free speech' in the 1850's.

.....The FBI and CIA 'broke up our capacity to use free speech' in the 1960's.

.....It is in those groups where you would have found your kindred spirits, Mr. Gingrich.

.....Those who had no faith in freedom, no faith in this country, and, ultimately, no faith even in the strength of their own ideas, to stand up on their own legs, without having the playing-field tilted entirely to their benefit.

..... "It will lead us to learn," Gingrich continued, "how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear and biological weapons."

.....That we have always had 'a very severe approach' to these people is insufficient for Mr. Gingrich's ends.

.....He wants to somehow ban the idea.

.....Even though everyone who has ever protested a movie or a piece of music or a book has learned the same lesson:

Try to suppress it, and you only validate it.

Make it illegal, and you make it the subject of curiosity.

Say it cannot be said - and it will instead be screamed.
:: :: :: :: ::
.....And on top of the thundering danger in his eagerness to sell out freedom of speech, there is a sadder sound, still - the tinny crash of a garbage can lid on a sidewalk.

.....Whatever dreams of internet-censorship float like a miasma in Mr. Gingrich's personal swamp, whatever hopes he has of an Iron Firewall, the simple fact is - technically, they won't work.

.....As of tomorrow they will have been defeated by ... a free computer download.

.....Mere hours after Gingrich's speech in New Hampshire, the University of Toronto announced it had come up with a program called "Psiphon" to liberate those, in countries in which the internet is regulated ...

.....Places like China, and Iran, where political ideas are so barren, and political leaders so desperate, that they put up computer firewalls to keep thought and freedom out.

.....The "Psiphon" device is a relay of sorts that can surreptitiously link a computer user in an imprisoned country to another in a free one.

.....The Chinese think the wall works, yet the ideas - good ideas, bad ideas, indifferent ideas, pass through anyway.

.....The same way the Soviet Bloc, was defeated by the images of Western Material Bounty.

.....If your hopes of thought-control can be defeated, Mr. Gingrich, merely by one computer whiz staying up an extra half hour and devising a new "firewall hop," what is all this apocalyptic hyperbole for?

....."I further think," you said in Manchester, "We should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism, which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules, that allow us, to protect civilization by defeating barbarism ..."

.....Well, Mr. Gingrich, what is more 'massively destructive' than trying to get us, to give you our freedom?

.....And what is someone seeking to hamstring the First Amendment doing, if not "fighting outside the rules of law"?

.....And what is the suppression of knowledge and freedom, if not "barbarism"?

.....The explanation, of course, is in one last quote from Mr. Gingrich from New Hampshire ... and another, from last week.

....."I want to suggest to you," he said about these internet restrictions, "that we right now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't for the scale of the threat."

.....And who should those "impaneled" people, be?

.....Funny I should ask, isn't it, Mr. Gingrich?

....."I am not 'running' for president," you told a reporter from Fortune Magazine. "I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen."
:: :: :: :: ::

.....Newt Gingrich sees, in terrorism, not something to be exterminated, but something to be exploited.

.....It's his golden opportunity, isn't it?

..... 'Rallying a nation,' you might say, 'to hysteria, to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make Martial Law seem like anarchy.'

.....That's from the original version of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate" - the chilling words of Angela Lansbury's character, as she first promises to sell her country to the Chinese and Russians, then reveals she'll double-cross them, and keep all the power herself, waving the flag every time she subjugates another freedom.

.....Within the frame of our experience as a free and freely argumentative people, it is almost impossible to conceive that there are those among us, who might approach the kind of animal-wildness of fiction like that - those who would willingly transform our beloved country into something false and terrible.

.....Who among us can look to our own histories, or those of our ancestors who struggled to get here, or who struggled to get freedom after they were forced here, and not teer up when we reed Frederick Douglass's words from a century-and-a-half ago: "Freedom must take the day"?

.....And who among us can look to our collective history, and not see its turning points - like the Civil War, like Watergate, like the Revolution itself - in which the right idea defeated the wrong idea on the battlefield that is the marketplace of ideas?

.....But apparently there are some of us who cannot see, that the only future for America is one that cherishes the freedoms won in the past, one in which we vanquish bad ideas with better ones, and in which we fight for liberty by having more liberty, not less.

..... "I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen."

.....What a dark place your world must be, Mr. Gingrich, where the way to save America, is to destroy America.

.....I will awaken every day of my life thankful I am not with you in that dark place.

.....And I will awaken every day of my life thankful that you are entitled to tell me about it.

.....And that you are entitled to show me what an evil idea it represents - and what a cynical mind.

.....And that you are entitled to do all that, thanks to the very freedoms, you seek to suffocate.

:: :: :: :: ::


Gingrich Wants to Restrict Freedom of Speech?

By
Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown
Thursday 29 November 2006

Legal expert looks at constitutionality of former House Speaker's comments.
.....Newt Gingrich called for a reexamination of free speech at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire this week, saying a "different set of rules to prevent terrorism" are necessary.

.....Gingrich's call to restrict free speech is mainly focused on the Internet.

.....Keith Olbermann discussed the constitutionality of this with George Washington University law professor and constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley.

This is a transcript from the show.
.....It's in the quintessential movie about this city, "Chinatown." Morty the Mortician turns to Jack Nicholson's character and says, "Middle of the drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A." Tonight, a real-life equivalent. Middle of a dinner honoring the sanctity of the First Amendment, and the former speaker of the House talks about restricting freedom of speech. Only in the Republican Party.

.....Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, it might have been his first attempt to fire up his base for a possible presidential run, or it might have been something more ominous. But Newt Gingrich has actually proposed a different set of rules and invoked the bogeyman of terror.

.....Gingrich was the featured speaker at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire, Monday night, where he not only argued that campaign finance reform and the separation of church and state should be rethought, because they allegedly hurt the First Amendment, but he also suggested that new rules might be necessary to stop terrorists using freedom of speech to get out their message.

Here is his rationalization:

Newt Gingrich, Former House Speaker: My view is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that we use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us, to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

Olbermann: If you're going to destroy freedom of speech, bub, you've already lost all the cities.

To paraphrase Pastor Martin Noemuller's poem about Germany in the ‘30s and ‘40s: First they came for the Fourth Amendment, then they came for habeas corpus, then came for free speech, and there was no one allowed to speak up.

The politics in a moment.

Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law Experts, George Washington University: Thanks, Keith.

Olbermann: So the conventional wisdom on this is, he's to breathe life into the same scare tactics that worked so well for the president and the vice president until four weeks ago. But could this be more nefarious than just politics? Could any president really gut free speech in the name of counterterrorism?

Turley: They could. I mean, it's bizarre it would occur in a First Amendment speech. God knows what he'd say at a Mother's Day speech.

But, you know, this really could happen. I mean, the fact is that the First Amendment is an abstraction, and when you put up against it the idea of incinerating millions of people, there will be millions of citizens that respond, like some Pavlovian response, and deliver up rights. We've already seen that.

People don't seem to appreciate that you really can't save a Constitution by destroying it.

Olbermann: We asked Mr. Gingrich's office for the full speech. To their credit, they provided most of it to us, late relative to our deadline. But let me read you a little bit more of this that we've just gotten, Jonathan.

"I want to suggest to you that we right now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of, if it were not for the scale of this threat." That's one quote.

"This is a serious, long-term war," Gingrich added, "and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country. It will lead us to learn how to close down every Web site that is dangerous."

Jonathan, are there not legal methods already in place to deal with such sites that do not require what Mr. Gingrich has here called "supervision that we would never dream of?"

Turley: Well, there are plenty of powers and authorities that could be used to monitor truly dangerous people. But what you see here, I think, is the insatiable appetite that has developed among certain leaders for controlling American society.

We saw that with John Ashcroft not long after 9/11, when he said the critics were aiding and abetting the terrorists. There is this insatiable appetite that develops when you feed absolute power to people like Gingrich.

And people should not assume that these are just going to be fringe candidates, and this could never happen. Fear does amazing things to people, and it could a sort of self-mutilation in a democracy, where we give up the very things, the very rights that define us, and theoretically, the very things that we are defending.

Olbermann: Also, when you talk about closing down Internet sites, who is the one who's going to decide which those are? I mean, it could be the Daily Kos, it could be Citizens for Legitimate Government, it could be the sports Web site Dead Spin, for all we know, if he doesn't like any one of them in particular.

Turley: Well, what these guys don't understand is that the best defense against bad ideas, like extremism and terrorism, is free speech. That's what we've proven. That's why they don't like us, is that we're remarkably successful as a democracy, because we've shown that really bad ideas don't survive in the marketplace, unless you try to suppress them, unless you try to keep people from speaking. Then it becomes a form of martyrdom. Then you give credence to what they're saying.

Olbermann: Last question, the specific idea about the Internet. There was a story just today out of Toronto that researchers at a Canadian university developed some software that will let users in places like China that have Internet restrictions, the phrase they used were, "hop over government's Internet firewalls." Might it be that the technology will be our best defense against the Newt Gingriches of this country?

Turley: It may be. We may have to rely on our own creativity to overcome the inclinations of people like Newt Gingrich.

Olbermann: George Washington University law professor and constitutional law expert, and, I think it's fair to say, friend of the Constitution, Jonathan Turley. Great thanks, Jon.

Turley: Thanks, Keith.
Go on-site for the audio, etc.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120106S.shtml

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Lies and Obfuscations
By
Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Friday 22 December 2006

A look back at some of the biggest falsehoods of 2006.


.....In the spirit of holding our political leaders accountable, this year-end review will tabulate the worst lies told by Bush and company, along with several stories that were underreported in the media. Much of what was generated got lost in the fog of war, but the long arm of history will retrieve these moments. As the president said in his news conference this week, if they're still writing about No. 1 - George Washington - there's plenty of time before the historians can properly evaluate No. 43. Judging by the mess in Iraq, it could be 200 or 300 years - if ever - before Bush is vindicated.

.....Bush has shifted his rhetoric in deference to the grim and deteriorating reality on the ground in Iraq. Asked by a reporter on Oct. 25 if we are winning the war, Bush said, "Absolutely, we're winning." Offered the opportunity at his press conference to defend that statement, Bush has adopted a new formulation. He now says, "We're not winning, but we're not losing." That sounds like the definition of a quagmire.

.....Exploitation of the war gained Republicans seats in '02 and got Bush a second term in '04, but it wasn't enough in '06. Karl Rove decided the best way for Republicans to retain control of the House and Senate was to embrace the war in Iraq and run against the Democrats as "Defeatocrats" and "Cut and Runners." It might have worked, had not most Americans decided they did indeed want to cut and run. Not right away - the voters want an orderly exit - but they weren't buying Bush's big lie about the Democrats.

.....Bush campaigned this fall as though the Democrats were the real enemy, not the terrorists. "They [Democrats] think the best way to protect the American people is wait until we're attacked again…If you don't want your government listening in on terrorists, vote for the Democrats." Now that the Democrats have won, watch Bush try to off-load blame for the failure in Iraq. If the Democrats won't go along with whatever cockamamie scheme he comes up with, he can always accuse them of losing the war.

.....Days after giving Defense Secretary Rumsfeld a ringing endorsement, declaring he would be there until the end, Bush fired him. It was the most obvious lie of his presidency. And it tripped so easily off Bush's tongue. There was none of the stammering that usually accompanies his public utterances. It was as big a lie as Rove's assertion on National Public Radio that all the public polls pointing toward a rout for the GOP were wrong. "I have the math," Rove proclaimed. A lot of people believed Rove, but the voters didn't.

.....The administration had the media snookered much of the time. Stories that were underreported largely because they ran counter to administration spin include:

.A study that shows the death toll among Iraqis has reached as high as 655,000. Extensively researched by teams of doctors commissioned by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., the study - and the controversy over its sampling methodology - was given scant attention by the media because it was so far out of line from the administration's projection of perhaps 50,000 civilian deaths. That's still a horrendous death toll of innocents in a country the size of Iraq. Now, 100 bodies routinely turn up every day in Baghdad's morgues, the victims of sectarian violence, and the report, published in October in The Lancet medical journal, seems to be closer to the truth than anything the Bush administration has acknowledged.


.Private contractors in Iraq. There are 100,000 government contractors in Iraq, a number that rivals the 140,000 U.S. soldiers in the country. It's dangerous work; some 650 contractors have died there. They do a lot of the jobs the military used to do, everything from providing security and interrogating prisoners to cooking meals for the soldiers. They work for military contractors like KBR and DynCorp International, which are helping train the Iraqi police force. This is the largest contingent of civilians ever operating in a battlefield environment, and there's been no congressional oversight or accountability. That should change with the Democrats taking over the investigative committees on Capitol Hill. The abuses may be just waiting to be uncovered.


.America's secret torture prisons, whose existence Bush acknowledged as part of his tough-guy campaigning this fall. Set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely, the legality, morality and practicality of these so-called "black sites" have come under scrutiny. After a brief flurry about the use of torture tactics like "water boarding," where a prisoner is made to feel he's drowning, the story of these CIA-operated overseas prisons faded. Yet they contributed to the central tragedy of the Bush administration, the collapse of America's standing around the world.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122406A.shtml
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Ghost reading with the Prez
Sean Gonsalves - Cape Cod Times

12.26.06 - Just in time for the traditional birthday of the Prince of Peace, President Bush says he'll give us all a great big post-Christmas war gift sometime next month. He calls it "a new way forward" in Iraq.

In an interview with The Washington Post last week, he acknowledged the obvious: we are not winning in Iraq. He also dismissed the idea that the midterm elections meant voters wanted to see fewer U.S. boots on the ground. Predictably, he interpreted the election results to mean American voters are simply "not satisfied with the progress," which means send more troops -- even though, short of genocide, there is no military solution to a guerilla insurgency, a.k.a. a popular uprising.

Basically, the president went on to reiterate his belief that the continued occupation of Iraq in the name of "freedom and democracy" -- despite the majority of "liberated" Iraqis who want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation -- is somehow going to lead to an Iraq "that can govern, sustain and defend itself."

Then comes the interesting part of the interview. The president said he couldn't understand why so many people think he doesn't read books. Honestly, I'm not making this up. (Remember, it was GW Bush himself who told us about his not reading, his not watching television, and on and on he went. Now he says this? SRH).

"Clad in a gray suit and red tie, Bush was relaxed and engaged during the 25-minute interview, going out of his way to say how much he enjoys his relationship with the media despite indications to the contrary. At the end, he talked a bit about recent books -- he mentioned having just finished 'King Leopold's Ghost'," the Post reports.

President Bush just finished reading "King Leopold's Ghost"?! If you haven't read Adam Hochschild's riveting retelling of the Belgian genocide-for-rubber campaign in the Congo, you might want to check it out. Back then, Belgian society was cooking up more than just waffles.

See, back in the 1880s, when Europe was plundering Africa like nobody's business, King Leopold happened to be ruling the Congo with an iron fist called the Force Publique, who took particular delight in the use of the chicotte -- "a whip of raw, sun-dried hippopotamus hide, cut into a long sharp-edged cork-screw strip."

Leo's other fist had a stranglehold on Congo's cash cows. First it was the ivory, and then, in 1890, John Dunlop invented the inflatable bicycle tire, kicking off a global rubber boom. It just so happens that part of Africa was full of rubber trees, or "the wood that weeps," as they were euphemized back then.

The book explains how King Leopold convinced the undoubtedly "well-informed" people of Belgium of the need to liberate the backward but freedom-hungry black Africans from a bunch of crazy Arab slave traders and to expand "free-trade." Sound familiar?

Anyway, as Hochschild tells it, a few brave Englishmen and a handful of courageous black Americans stirred up a nonviolent regime change movement that led to the downfall of the Belgian billionaire.

Though the book is insightful and inspiring, I think Zachary Karabell's Salon review makes a good point. He points out how during King Leopold's rule of the "Free Congo State," half the population was killed over a natural resource.

"While it would be reassuring to believe that Leopold's violence stopped as a result of intrepid crusaders, ... the violence started to ebb only when the population declined to the point that labor got expensive and killing people by intent or neglect meant less profit.

"Viewed through a less idealistic lens, the Congo's history tells us that evil isn't only banal; it can also be profitable, and it often goes unpunished.... Hitler committed suicide; the Japanese were routed after Nanking; but Leopold died in his bed, vastly enriched by the suffering of millions."

Hmmm. Let's see. The president is reading a book about a foreign occupier using violence to "liberate" the occupied from Arabs and establish "free trade" in a land that just happens to overflowing with a coveted natural resource.

I don't question whether the president reads. My question is: What lesson will he draw from the book? Who does he see as the liberating force -- King Leopold or those who fought against him?

There's reading, and then there's reading comprehension.

(c) 2006, Cape Cod Times

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21799
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Military considers recruiting foreigners
Expedited citizenship would be an incentive

By
Bryan Bender
Globe Staff
December 26, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks -- including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer -- according to Pentagon officials.

Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans' willingness to serve in uniform.

The idea of signing up foreigners who are seeking US citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.

The proposal to induct more noncitizens, which is still largely on the drawing board, has to clear a number of hurdles. So far, the Pentagon has been quiet about specifics -- including who would be eligible to join, where the recruiting stations would be, and what the minimum standards might involve, including English proficiency. In the meantime, the Pentagon and immigration authorities have expanded a program that accelerates citizenship for legal residents who volunteer for the military.

And since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of imm igrants in uniform who have become US citizens has increased from 750 in 2001 to almost 4,600 last year, according to military statistics.

With severe manpower strains because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and a mandate to expand the overall size of the military -- the Pentagon is under pressure to consider a variety of proposals involving foreign recruits, according to a military affairs analyst.

"It works as a military idea and it works in the context of American immigration," said Thomas Donnelly , a military scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a leading proponent of recruiting more foreigners to serve in the military.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, the Pentagon has warned Congress and the White House that the military is stretched "to the breaking point."

Both President Bush and Robert M. Gates, his new defense secretary, have acknowledged that the total size of the military must be expanded to help alleviate the strain on ground troops, many of whom have been deployed repeatedly in combat theaters.

Bush said last week that he has ordered Gates to come up with a plan for the first significant increase in ground forces since the end of the Cold War. Democrats who are preparing to take control of Congress, meanwhile, promise to make increasing the size of the military one of their top legislative priorities in 2007.

"With today's demands placing such a high strain on our service members, it becomes more crucial than ever that we work to alleviate their burden," said Representative Ike Skelton , a Missouri Democrat who is set to chair the House Armed Services Committee, and who has been calling for a larger Army for more than a decade.

But it would take years and billions of dollars to recruit, train, and equip the 30,000 troops and 5,000 Marines the Pentagon says it needs. And military recruiters, fighting the perception that signing up means a ticket to Baghdad, have had to rely on financial incentives and lower standards to meet their quotas.

That has led Pentagon officials to consider casting a wider net for noncitizens who are already here, said Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty , an Army spokesman.

Already, the Army and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security have "made it easier for green-card holders who do enlist to get their citizenship," Hilferty said.

Other Army officials, who asked not to be identified, said personnel officials are working with Congress and other parts of the government to test the feasibility of going beyond US borders to recruit soldiers and Marines.

Currently, Pentagon policy stipulates that only immigrants legally residing in the United States are eligible to enlist. There are currently about 30,000 noncitizens who serve in the US armed forces, making up about 2 percent of the active-duty force, according to statistics from the military and the Council on Foreign Relations. About 100 noncitizens have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent change in US law, however, gave the Pentagon authority to bring immigrants to the United States if it determines it is vital to national security. So far, the Pentagon has not taken advantage of it, but the calls are growing to take use the new authority.

Indeed, some top military thinkers believe the United States should go as far as targeting foreigners in their native countries.

"It's a little dramatic," said Michael O'Hanlon , a military specialist at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and another supporter of the proposal. "But if you don't get some new idea how to do this, we will not be able to achieve an increase" in the size of the armed forces.

"We have already done the standard things to recruit new soldiers, including using more recruiters and new advertising campaigns," O'Hanlon added.

O'Hanlon and others noted that the country has relied before on sizable numbers of noncitizens to serve in the military -- in the Revolutionary War, for example, German and French soldiers served alongside the colonists, and locals were recruited into US ranks to fight insurgents in the Philippines.

Other nations have recruited foreign citizens: In France, the famed Foreign Legion relies on about 8,000 noncitizens; Nepalese soldiers called Gurkhas have fought and died with British Army forces for two centuries; and the Swiss Guard, which protects the Vatican, consists of troops who hail from many nations.

"It is not without historical precedent," said Donnelly, author of a recent book titled "The Army We Need," which advocates for a larger military.

Still, to some military officials and civil rights groups, relying on large number of foreigners to serve in the military is offensive.

The Hispanic rights advocacy group National Council of La Raza has said the plan sends the wrong message that Americans themselves are not willing to sacrifice to defend their country. Officials have also raised concerns that immigrants would be disproportionately sent to the front lines as "cannon fodder" in any conflict.

Some within the Army privately express concern that a big push to recruit noncitizens would smack of "the decline of the American empire," as one Army official who asked not to be identified put it.

Officially, the military remains confident that it can meet recruiting goals -- no matter how large the military is increased -- without having to rely on foreigners.

"The Army can grow to whatever size the nation wants us to grow to," Hilferty said. "National defense is a national challenge, not the Army's challenge."

He pointed out that just 15 years ago, during the Gulf War, the Army had a total of about 730,000 active-duty soldiers, amounting to about one American in 350 who were serving in the active-duty Army.

"Today, with 300 million Americans and about 500,000 active-duty soldiers, only about one American in 600 is an active-duty soldier," he said. "America did then, and we do now, have an all-volunteer force, and I see no reason why America couldn't increase the number of Americans serving."

But Max Boot, a national security specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the number of noncitizens the armed forces have now is relatively small by historical standards.

"In the 19th century, when the foreign-born population of the United States was much higher, so was the percentage of foreigners serving in the military," Boot wrote in 2005.

"During the Civil War, at least 20 percent of Union soldiers were immigrants, and many of them had just stepped off the boat before donning a blue uniform. There were even entire units, like the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry [the Scandinavian Regiment] and General Louis Blenker's German Division, where English was hardly spoken."

"The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come," Boot added.

"No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period, in return for one of the world's most precious commodities -- US citizenship. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune."

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.

© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/12/26/military_considers_recruiting_foreigners/
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U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq,
Bush Says for 1st Time

President Plans to Expand Army, Marine Corps to Cope With Strain of Multiple Deployments

By
Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer

12/20/06 "Washington Post" -- -- President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.

As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."

In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point.

"We need to reset our military," said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer. Gates, who was sworn in Monday, arrived in Baghdad this morning for several days of meetings with U.S. military commanders and Iraqi officials.

In a wide-ranging Oval Office interview that also focused on Bush's domestic agenda, the president said he did not interpret the Democratic election victories six weeks ago as a mandate to bring U.S. involvement in Iraq to an end. Instead, he said, he considers the outcome a call to find new ways to make the mission there succeed. Bush confirmed that he is considering a short-term surge in troops in Iraq, an option that top generals have resisted out of concern that it would not help.

A substantial military expansion will take years and would not immediately affect the war in Iraq. But it would begin to address the growing alarm among commanders about the state of the armed forces. Although the president offered no specifics, other U.S. officials said the administration is preparing plans to bolster the nation's permanent active-duty military with as many as 70,000 additional troops.

A force structure expansion would accelerate the already-rising costs of war. The administration is drafting a supplemental request for more than $100 billion in additional funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of the $70 billion already approved for this fiscal year, according to U.S. officials. That would be over 50 percent more than originally projected for fiscal 2007, making it by far the costliest year since the 2003 invasion.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has approved more than $500 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for terrorism-related operations elsewhere. An additional $100 billion would bring overall expenditures to $600 billion, exceeding those for the Vietnam War, which, adjusted for inflation, cost $549 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

For all the money, commanders have grown increasingly alarmed about the burden of long deployments and the military's ability to handle a variety of threats around the world simultaneously. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, warned Congress last week that the active-duty Army "will break" under the strain of today's war-zone rotations. Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CBS News's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that "the active Army is about broken."

Democrats have been calling for additional troops for years. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) proposed an increase of 40,000 troops during his 2004 campaign against Bush, only to be dismissed by the administration. As recently as June, the Bush administration opposed adding more troops because restructuring "is enabling our military to get more war-fighting capability from current end strength."

But Bush yesterday had changed his mind. "I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops -- the Army, the Marines," he said. "And I talked about this to Secretary Gates, and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea."

In describing his decision, Bush tied it to the broader struggle against Islamic extremists around the world rather than to Iraq specifically. "It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace," he said.

Bush chose a different term than Powell. "I haven't heard the word 'broken,' " he said, "but I've heard the word, 'stressed.' . . . We need to reset our military. There's no question the military has been used a lot. And the fundamental question is, 'Will Republicans and Democrats be able to work with the administration to assure our military and the American people that we will position our military so that it is ready and able to stay engaged in a long war?' "

Democrats pounced on Bush's comments. "I am glad he has realized the need for increasing the size of the armed forces . . . but this is where the Democrats have been for two years," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the new House Democratic Caucus chairman. Kerry issued a statement calling Bush's move a "pragmatic step needed to deal with the warnings of a broken military," but he noted that he opposes increasing troops in Iraq. Even before news of Bush's interview, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters that the military is "bleeding" and "we have to apply the tourniquet and strengthen the forces."

The Army has already temporarily increased its force level from 482,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 to 507,000 today and soon to 512,000. But the Army wants to make that 30,000-soldier increase permanent and then add between 20,000 and 40,000 more on top of that, according to military and civilian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Every additional 10,000 soldiers would cost about $1.2 billion a year, according to the Army. Because recruitment and training take time, officials cautioned that any boost would not be felt in a significant way until at least 2008.

Bush, who has always said that the United States is headed for victory in Iraq, conceded yesterday what Gates, Powell and most Americans in polls have already concluded. "An interesting construct that General Pace uses is, 'We're not winning, we're not losing,' " Bush said, referring to Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs chairman, who was spotted near the Oval Office before the interview. "There's been some very positive developments. . . . [But] obviously the real problem we face is the sectarian violence that needs to be dealt with."

Asked yesterday about his "absolutely, we're winning" comment at an Oct. 25 news conference, the president recast it as a prediction rather than an assessment. "Yes, that was an indication of my belief we're going to win," he said.

Bush said he has not yet made a decision about a new strategy for Iraq and would wait for Gates to return from a trip there to assess the situation. "I need to talk to him when he gets back," Bush said. "I've got more consultations to do with the national security team, which will be consulting with other folks. And I'm going to take my time to make sure that the policy, when it comes out, the American people will see that we . . . have got a new way forward."

Among the options under review by the White House is sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops to Iraq for six to eight months. The idea has the support of important figures such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and has been pushed by some inside the White House, but the Joint Chiefs have balked because they think advocates have not adequately defined the mission, according to U.S. officials.

The chiefs have warned that a short-term surge could lead to more attacks against U.S. troops, according to the officials, who described the review on the condition of anonymity because it is not complete. Bush would not discuss such ideas in detail but said "all options are viable."

While top commanders question the value of a surge, they have begun taking moves that could prepare for one, should Bush order it. Defense officials said yesterday that the U.S. Central Command has made two separate requests to Gates for additional forces in the Middle East, including an Army brigade of about 3,000 troops to be used as a reserve force in Kuwait and a second Navy carrier strike group to move to the Persian Gulf.

Gates has yet to approve the moves, which could increase U.S. forces in the region by as many as 10,000 troops, officials said. The previous theater reserve force, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was recently moved to Iraq's Anbar province to help quell insurgent violence. Gen. George W. Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, has called for the additional brigade -- likely the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division -- to be positioned to move into Iraq hotspots if needed.

The additional carrier strike group would give Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the Central Command, more flexibility in a volatile region, said one official. While such a move would certainly send a pointed message to Iran, the official said it would also allow additional strike capabilities in Iraq.
Staff writers Robin Wright, Lori Montgomery, Josh White, Ann Scott Tyson, Michael Abramowitz and Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Go on-site for other interesting and informative information, just click on the following link:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15954.htm ...................
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Will Stinky Cut The Big One?
Posted by Sheila Samples
in
Editorials & Other Articles
Mon Dec 25th 2006, 12:49 AM
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
~~
McBeth, Act V, Scene V
It's almost painful to watch the disintegration of George W. Bush and what's left of his murderous administration. Those who haven't fled are racing blindly through the halls of power, lurching into one another in a desperate attempt to distance themselves from Bush and to escape reaping what they have sown.

Even cutting a bit of slack, it's still inconceivable that any thinking person could spend more than five minutes in the presence of Bush without the shock of recognizing what a total idiot this country has as its president. Other than breaking stuff, killing anything in his path, refusing to admit mistakes, and making an obscene mess of anything he touches, apparently the only thing Bush can do with any success is break wind --pass gas -- fart.


First Fart Boy
In his Aug. 20 U.S. New & World Report "Washington Whispers" under the heading "Animal House in the West Wing," Paul Bedard wrote that Bush not only loves to cuss, but "... the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes...can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides..."

Bedard also told the Boston Herald's Margery Eagan that he’s heard about Bush’s full-salute “Austin Greeting” when new aides arrive. "He likes to gas a couple, and then bring the aide in and see what the kid’s face looks like.” Eagan, who admitted she was grossed out, commented, "Naturally, the aide can’t accuse the President or grimace or hold his nose. This dilemma apparently drives the presidential funny bone wild."

Most of us stopped laughing at Bush's coarse antics long ago. The boastful sound and fury of hot air blasting from both ends of this crude, immature thug as he rips one windy flatulent speech after another while saying absolutely nothing is not only vulgar, but is indescribably evil. The stench of Bush's lies mingles with, and hovers over the growing mounds of mangled and broken bodies of innocent men, women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan -- swirls around coffins laden with American service members sneaked back in-country with no fanfare.


CNN -- The Most Twisted Name in News

Each day, more and more soldiers and marines are blown to bits. Each morning the streets of Iraq's cities are strewn with hundreds of shackled, tortured, beheaded Sunni and Shiite civilians. Yet, for the past year, the hypocritical Congress, corporate media and crusty retired military "experts" sat around gleefully playing politics and fiercely debating whether the Iraqi quagmire was a civil war. It was a rabid debate -- with all participants forced by Bush and Cheney's claims of success to argue but one side with no pretense of delving into the reality of Bush's mad adventure.

Until Nov. 26 when Michael Ware, CNN's Baghdad correspondent, startled the world and brought the civil-war debate to a screeching halt. Kitty Pilgrim, sitting in for Lou Dobbs, asked Ware, "The Iraqi government and the U.S. military in Baghdad keep saying it's not a civil war -- what are you seeing?"

Ware, a seasoned war correspondent who is no stranger to civil wars and has covered the war in Iraq for both Time Magazine and CNN since it began, responded intensely, "Well, it's easier to deny it's a civil war when you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country -- the Green Zone -- and that's where the prime minister, the national security advisor and the top military commanders live. However," Ware continued, "as for the people living on the streets, or Iraqis in their homes -- if this is not a civil war, then they do not want to see what one looks like."

Ware went on to describe the stark inhumanity of neighbor against neighbor, family on family, ethnic cleansing, "institutionalized" Shiia death squads in legal police uniforms who roam the streets, dragging Sunni families from their homes never to be seen again -- Sunnis plunging car bombs into marketplaces...Ware said the recent surge in violence was a result of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr boycotting the Nouri al-Maliki puppet government and parliament as a result of Maliki meeting with "the criminal Bush."

A national dead silence followed Ware's outburst of truth. The next evening, Wolf Blitzer gave Ware a second chance to join the "best political team in journalism" by reigniting the debate. After sternly warning Ware that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Iraq was "almost -- almost in a civil war," and that the White House, Bush administration and PM Maliki flatly deny it, Blitzer asked, "Is it a civil war?"

Again, without hesitation, Ware reiterated that the horrors exploding around him were nothing if not a civil war. He said, "the debate about whether there is a civil war is fueled either by the luxury of distance -- those who aren't here on the ground -- or by the spin of those with a political agenda to deny its existance."

A week later, Annan set Blitzer straight. He not only said Iraq was indeed in a civil war, but that Iraqis were "better off when a brutal dictator ruled their land."

Michael Ware is no longer in Iraq.


Decisions...Decisions...
The Iraq Study Group (ISG) report was a swat across Bush's rump, and a confirmation that this nation's foreign policy is run by corporate committee. Some thought Poppy Bush and Uncle Jim (James Baker, III) were stepping in yet again to pull Stinky's cajones out of the fire by helping him to save face for the mess he had made. However, those familiar with the Group's Iran-Contra power-brokers know why they stepped out of the shadows now, after three years of bloody violence. The report basically said -- You screwed up again, Junior -- big time. Iraq is so broke, you can't own it, you can't fix it and you can't leave it. You're stuck there, which is fine, because you can't leave until you get the oil, which is why we put you in office and sent you over there in the first place. Get that oil law finalized so we can get the oil contracts before China, India and Russia get there.

Bush is overtaken with strategies and plans from those who sense his confusion and assume he is weakening. Anyone who thinks Bush will admit his mistakes and support the troops by rescinding their death sentences doesn't know Jack about George. During the nine-month gestation period (Mar-Nov) of the ISG Report, 633 coalition troops were blown to bits -- 592 of them Americans. In the month since the ISG strategy died aborning, 80 troops have been slaughtered -- all of them Americans -- three of them today, Christmas Eve. Tonight, 12 families will kneel and pray for their childrens' lives, unaware that they are already dead.

And so we wait while Bush struts and frets on the world stage and rips one brain fart after another, all signifying nothing. He's gonna weigh the options -- listen to the voices...take the generals' advice...surge up briefly before pulling out...double-punch 'em with a double down and keep on truckin' -- before he announces his decision to stay the course, or achieve the objective or accomplish the mission -- whatever.


The Big One
Bush reminds us often that he's The Decider. Nobody has the right to question his decisions -- not even him -- because history has called him to action, and he is delivering God's gift of freedom to every individual on earth whether they want it or not.

Who can forget the profound deliberation that preceeded Bush's decision to invade Iraq? On 9-11, he announced, "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." And, in March 2002, a full year before invading Iraq, his decision was, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out!"

When asked during a press conference last week if he questioned his own decisions, Bush replied confidently, "No, I haven't questioned whether or not it was right to take Saddam Hussein out, nor have I questioned the necessity for the American people -- I mean, I've questioned it; I've come to the conclusion it's the right decision. But I also know it's the right decision for America to stay engaged, and to take the lead, and to deal with these radicals and extremists, and to help support young democracies. It's the calling of our time .... And I firmly believe it is necessary."

We're losing in Iraq, but Bush says that doesn't bother him -- it just means we're going to win if we expand the armed forces, put more and more troops on the streets of Baghdad, and stay the course.

Bush is a brutal, pathological liar -- arguably a homicidal maniac. After losing two wars against helpless, unarmed nations, he's bored. The Decider is moving on to greater things, and those who know how to listen to him know the decision to nuke Iran has already been made. Before he leaves office, Bush plans to spread the same freedoms throughout Iran that Iraq is presently enjoying, only this time he has decided to attack a huge, oil-rich, armed-to-the-teeth nation which has the capacity not only to defend itself, but to wreak death and destruction upon its attackers.

Will Stinky cut the big one on his way out? Or is he just whistling past the graveyard -- yodeling past the skull orchard -- as he goes mano-a-mano with Poppy?

Where's Michael Ware when you need him?

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Sheila%20Samples/11
**?**

[Saundra Hummer]

^
The dunce
His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush not just as a terrible student but as spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar.
By
Mary Jacoby

September 16, 2004 | For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.

"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."

The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi's macroeconomic policies and international business class in the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972 to August 1976; today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College in New York.

Trading as usual on his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for a two-year program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest son's "nomadic years" -- partying, drifting from job to job, working on political campaigns in Florida and Alabama and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama National Guard.

Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students' in-class performances, "you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students reveal," he said.

One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now the seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics, and he didn't try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a principled conservative." (Though clearly a partisan one. On Wednesday, Cox called for a congressional investigation of the validity of documents that CBS News obtained for a story questioning Bush's attendance at Guard duty in Alabama.)

Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"

If Cox had been in the same class, Tsurumi said, "I could have asked him to challenge that and he would have demolished it. Not personally or emotionally, but intellectually."

Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."

Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup.

"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I didn't know his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.

The Vietnam War was still roiling campuses and Harvard was no exception. Bush expressed strong support for the war but admitted to Tsurumi that he'd gotten a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard through his father's connections.

"I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the war."

Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his famous smirk and huffed off."

Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion," he said.

In recent days, Tsurumi has told his story to various print and television outlets and appears in Kitty Kelley 's exposé "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." He said other professors and students at the business school from that time share his recollections but are afraid to come forward, fearing ostracism or retribution. And why is Tsurumi speaking up now? Because with the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and Osama bin Laden still on the loose -- not to mention a federal deficit ballooning out of control -- the stakes are too high to remain silent. "Obviously, I don't think he is the best person" to be running the country, he said. "I wanted to explain why."

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/09/16/tsurumi/print.html?pn=1
^^^^^^^

[Saundra Hummer]

.
*******


Ex-US President Gerald Ford dies

Former US President Gerald Ford has died aged 93, his wife, former First Lady Betty Ford has said.
Last month Gerald Ford had become the longest-living US president when he passed 93 years and 121 days, the record held by Ronald Reagan.

Mr Ford, born in Omaha, Nebraska, was the only unelected US president - taking office after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate in 1974.

Mr Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election.

Gerald Ford lived with Betty, 88, at Rancho Mirage in southern California.

The former president suffered ill health this year and was taken to hospital four times for tests and angioplasty. He suffered a stroke in 2000.
*

[Saundra Hummer]

.*******
Ex-US President Gerald Ford dies
Gerald Ford served as president for more than two years
Former US President Gerald Ford has died aged 93, former First Lady Betty Ford has said.
Last month Gerald Ford had become the longest-living US president when he passed 93 years and 121 days, the record held by Ronald Reagan.

Mr Ford took office after Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal in 1974. But he lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.

President Bush paid tribute, praising his "integrity and common sense".

Gerald Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and lived with Betty, 88, at Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles (210km) east of Los Angeles in southern California.

The former president suffered ill health this year and he was taken to hospital four times for tests and angioplasty. He suffered a stroke in 2000.

His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.

Betty Ford

*Gerald Ford: Obituary

A statement from Betty Ford said: "My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, has passed away at 93 years of age."

The statement did not give the cause of death.

In a statement from the White House, President George W Bush said he was "greatly saddened" at the news.

"With his quiet integrity, commonsense and kind instincts, President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the presidency," Mr Bush said.

"Our 38th president will always have a special place in our nation's memory."

Vietnam War

Gerald Ford was the only US president never to win a national election.

He was chosen as Richard Nixon's vice-president in 1973, when Spiro Agnew resigned amid corruption charges.


Ford succeeded Nixon and brought honesty to the White House

Mr Ford then succeeded to the top office when Nixon became embroiled in Watergate.

Mr Ford declared the "national nightmare" of the Nixon scandal over but soon after he granted his former boss a pardon for any crimes committed as president.

Analysts believe in the short term it may have cost him the 1976 election, but in the long term the decision was praised.

Mr Ford was in office as the US accepted its defeat in the Vietnam War, with the fall of Saigon in April 1975.

He said it was time to "bind up the nation's wounds".

The opposite of Nixon, Gerald Ford was known for his openness, sunny disposition and most important, his honesty.

Wife Betty became a national figure in her own right, crusading against drug and alcohol addiction.

Following his stroke, Gerald Ford slipped further from the limelight.

However, he did join Jimmy Carter, George Bush Snr and Bill Clinton at a memorial shortly after the 11 September attacks in 2001.

He was also at the funeral of Ronald Reagan in June 2004.
*
.

[Frank Mullen]

There have been parallels before, but this one takes the cake. More and more it seems that we are following the patterns of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" . If you haven't read this in its complete form, you can find shortened versions. You will find it anything but the dull book it has been made out to be. Gibbon has a vicious sense of humor that comes through, particularly in his footnotes. :lol:

[Saundra Hummer]

.:: :: ::
KATRINA

A Buzz Flash Interview
with
Doug Palast
December 22, 2006

"The White House knew [the levees broke] because the Army Corps of Engineers sent them photographs. Again, I want to emphasize that the White House had the photographs of the levees breaking, and didn't tell state and local officials who had stopped the evacuation because the hurricane missed New Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but the White House didn't tell anybody the levees broke and were drowning the city." -- Greg Palast

*****
Greg Palast is just unstoppable, and after you watch his remarkable new DVD, "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Drowning of New Orleans," you'll understand why. You have read about the Katrina disaster for more than a year now, but you'll see it in a new light after watching Greg Palast's reporting.

In an expanded documentary that now includes a half-hour interview with Amy Goodman, Palast, in his usual bold style, reveals new factual details about the Bush Administration complicity in the deaths of Katrina victims. You'll be convinced by the end of watching "Big Easy to Big Empty" that what we are dealing with here is criminal negligence.

*****
BuzzFlash: Greg your new DVD, "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans" is absolutely shocking because all of the footage you shot was one year after Katrina hit New Orleans. After all the devastation, virtually nothing has happened to recover from Katrina, and the residents have been left to fend for themselves.

Greg Palast: It's unbelievably ugly. You will see in the film mile after mile of destroyed houses. The 9th Ward looks worse than Berlin after the war because there's hardly a building standing. And this was just filmed a couple months ago! This was filmed one year after the flood. In Indonesia, they have rebuilt after the tsunami. The only thing they are rebuilding here is a Disneyland on the Mississippi to recreate a new, white, conservative city.

And don't forget, keeping African-Americans from coming back into New Orleans is amazing political gerrymandering. This is going to be crucial to keeping Louisiana in the Republican column in 2008. That's really part of the story.

BuzzFlash: Sometimes I'll see you on TV or read something by you and I'll think to myself, there goes Greg again, saying something crazy -- Greg's saying they want to destroy the public housing in New Orleans to build new condos and keep the African Americans out.

But let me read you this from the Washington Post from December 7th: "Public housing officials decided Thursday to proceed with the demolition of more than 4,500 government apartments here, brushing aside an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina who said the move was intended to reduce the ability of poor black people to repopulate the city." (Read the Washington Post Article)


Well, you were right again.

Greg Palast: Understand -- I used to work for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. The most beautiful housing in New Orleans are the townhouses near the French Quarter. And as Malik Brahim, an African-American leader there, says, "They just don't want them poor black people back." That's a crucial part of the film. It's about keeping the working class black people out of the city.

They're talking about knocking down 4,000 public townhouses. These are dry, safe, good houses. That's why they're still there. They literally want to bulldoze these homes because they don't want those "black people back."

You'll see in the film a woman, Patricia Thomas. We help break into her home because they've boarded it up. Everything is dry. You could eat the dry cereal. They've shuttered up their houses with steel bars. Katrina didn't do this, she says, "Man did this." And "the man" is in the White House and in the Mayor's Mansion.

BuzzFlash: Why do you think the rebuilding effort and relief effort in New Orleans has just come to a complete halt?

Greg Palast: It's not stalled. This is the plan. This is another White House gimmick to hide their evil intent in the clothing of incompetence.

The same with Iraq -- oh, we screwed up? We didn't get all the cheap oil that Wolfowitz promised in his congressional testimony, when he said the price of oil would decline. Well, it's gone up. Golly gee, who funds the Bush Administration but the oil companies and Saudi Arabia? Who profits when the price of oil goes up? That's "Mission Accomplished."

Look to New Orleans. Golly gee, the black folks haven't come back. There are no labor unions anymore in New Orleans. There are no public schools. It's all vouchers. Worker wages have gone down. It's "Mission Accomplished." This is the plan. This is the program.

The idea that this is just a screw-up, or a delay, or a stall is wrong. This is the plan. You're seeing it in effect. They don't ever want those people back. You still have 73,000 POWs - prisoners of "W."

New Orleans residents are locked in these "aluminum Guantanamos," also known as FEMA trailers, as you'll see in the film. There are a thousand mobile homes next to the Mobil Oil refinery. These trailers are in the middle of nowhere, and there's no way those people can get any jobs. It's a cycle. Some businesses and homeowners would like to rebuild New Orleans, but they can't get workers, and those who would like to work live too far away to get any jobs.

Families are not even allowed to move their trailer to their own home property. It's a deliberate program of ethnic and class cleansing in the City of New Orleans.

BuzzFlash: One of your big scoops in "Big Easy to Big Empty" was you found a company, "Innovative Emergency Management," that gave large donations to the Republican party, to create an evacuation plan in case of a hurricane. No one seems to be able to find that plan.

Greg Palast: The most innovative thing about their emergency management is that they had no plans that anyone knew about.

When I went and talked to "Innovative Emergency Management," they called security. I just went in and said where's the plan? What makes you qualified to do an evacuation plan besides your relations to the Republican Party?

These people had zero qualification to do this planning. We were told that the main problem was that they had no plan for getting people out without cars. I mean, their whole plan was "jump in your car and drive like hell."

But what if you didn't have a car? We had one guy who didn't have his car with him, and he was abandoned for four days in the rising water, standing on the overpass. He told us how he closed the eyes of a grandfather who had died giving his last bottle of water to his kids. The guy died of dehydration.

That's a story that no one has reported. Forget Anderson Cooper and his tears. By the way, we can't find Anderson Cooper after the fact.

BuzzFlash: Have you been able to find "Innovative Emergency Management's" evacuation plan yet?

Greg Palast: Actually, I finally got the contract that said they were "supposed to create" an evacuation plan. FEMA had withheld the documents we requested for a year and a half. FEMA was keeping it secret and was telling us it's a national security document until we threatened to sue.

I worked on an evacuation plan in Long Island, New York, for a hurricane. And you know what the key part about an evacuation plan is? You have to have it. Cops have to have it. Emergency workers have got to have it. The bus drivers have got to have it.

The most important thing is that we found out from the experts at the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University that they had a detailed evacuation plan.

BuzzFlash: Do you think part of the reason is that they may have had an evacuation plan for a hurricane, but not necessarily for a breach of the levees or a major flood?

Greg Palast: That's part of the problem, because they had no plan in case of a breach. Number one, the LSU Hurricane Center told the White House before the flood -- and I want to reemphasize this -- before the flood -- that New Orleans would be under water on a class 3 hurricane, that the levees were deficient, and that they were 18 inches short. The White House completely ignored their warnings.

You have to understand that the LSU hurricane experts actually spoke directly to the White House about this and what they saw as an emergency situation.

You should also know that the White House knew for nearly a full day that the levees had in fact been breached, and were about to drown the people left in the city. The emergency crews and police stopped the evacuation because they thought the city had survived Hurricane Katrina because the storm missed New Orleans. The hurricane watch center didn't realize that the levees had started to crack.

The White House knew it because the Army Corps of Engineers sent them photographs. Again, I want to emphasize that the White House had the photographs of the levees breaking, and didn't tell state and local officials who had stopped the evacuation because the hurricane missed New Orleans. Everyone thought they dodged a bullet, but the White House didn't tell anybody the levees broke and were drowning the city.

BuzzFlash: What explanation could anyone have for that kind of "criminal negligence," as a City Councilman says in the film.

Greg Palast: It is criminal negligence. Remember, I was a racketeering investigator.

The levees are federal property. If the federal levees failed, then it becomes a federal evacuation issue, and Bush and his gang did not want to be responsible.

Even more important is that they are financially responsible for all the homes lost, because the levees were deficient.

The original story coming out of the White House was that the Mississippi River and the lake north of New Orleans simply overflowed, right? Just big waves crash over the city and later the levees broke. Uh-uh. The city flooded because the levees broke.

Ivor van Heerden of the Louisiana State University hurricane center said he flew over those levees and he counted 28 levee breaks.

He said the White House, when they knew that the city was about to drown, said that there was one break. And he found 28. As he said, "That's not an act of God. That's an act of negligence."

BuzzFlash: You have a lengthy interview with Amy Goodman as part of the bonus features of the DVD. At one point, you spoke about the wetlands and the marshes that protect New Orleans from storm surges and floods. You place at least part of the blame on the oil industry, which is continuing to drill off the coast.

Greg Palast: The oil industry laid pipelines and canal routes through the marshlands. People say, "How come these people live in a city that's below sea level?" Well, they weren't anywhere near the sea, is the answer, except that over this past century, the oil industry has drained and destroyed the marshes. Now the Gulf of Mexico has come real close to the city.

BuzzFlash: What needs to happen to turn the situation around, when you have so many people and families displaced and so much profiteering going on? How do you ever break the deadlock?

Greg Palast: A couple things. One, people have to know what the hell's going on. That's why they should get the film, invite friends and family, and have a screening so people can get informed. If you don't know what's going on, you can't solve it. This is like the war in Iraq. Once people figured out what's going on, they started wanting to get our troops the hell out.

And second, we have to allow the people of New Orleans to rebuild their homes. We need to give the people back their homes, and give them the jobs to rebuild their homes. And that will take care of it.

In fact, I show an example of a group called "Common Ground" which is rebuilding homes with the residents with their own sweat equity and a few bucks for materials. And this week, they're being evicted.

You have a group which has already put 115 families into homes that they've built themselves, and now they're being evicted this week. And by the way, all the money -- the million dollars of material and the hundred thousands of hours of sweat equity -- are all being stolen away from them by developers who are saying "Oh, you didn't have the right to rebuild those houses, we own them." And they're literally stealing their houses. That's what's happening.

And that's all with the grand approval of the Bush Administration. It's all with the grand approval of the Mayor of New Orleans, who is doing nothing about the mass evictions of people who have rebuilt their homes, and now their properties are being seized by banks and land speculators.

BuzzFlash: Greg, as always, thank you for speaking with us.

Greg Palast: Thank you.
* * *
Interview conducted by BuzzFlash Senior Editor Scott Vogel. :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
.

[Saundra Hummer]

There have been parallels before, but this one takes the cake. More and more it seems that we are following the patterns of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" . If you haven't read this in its complete form, you can find shortened versions. You will find it anything but the dull book it has been made out to be. Gibbon has a vicious sense of humor that comes through, particularly in his footnotes. :lol:

I find it stupifying that we are where we are today. We had every opportunity to do things up right, but, look at the road these men have "decided" to take, it's just dumbfounding, like it's some sort of destiny that none of us have any control over. It doesn't make the least bit of sense.

I haven't read the book, and have always wanted to, but not from the library, it's the type of book you need to pour over at your own pace, and about Gibbons long take on it all, it couldn't be as dull as the books I read a couple of years back, one about Franco, and the other about J. Edgar Hoover. There were only a few chapters in them that I myself found interesting; the two dullest books I've ever read in my life, and usually, biography's are what I find the most interesting, but they were the dullest books I've ever come across, and they were about two interesting people, not likeable, but interesting.

[Saundra Hummer]

.
~~~~~~~
Researchers: Baking impacts Puget Sound

Tue Dec 26, 7:41 PM ET

Researchers at the University of Washington say all that holiday baking and eating has an environmental impact — Puget Sound is being flavored by cinnamon and vanilla. "Even something as fun as baking for the holiday season has an environmental effect," said Rick Keil, an associate professor of chemical oceanography. "When we bake and change the way we eat, it has an impact on what the environment sees. To me it shows the connectedness."

Keil and UW researcher Jacquelyn Neibauer's weekly tests of treated sewage sent into the sound from the West Point treatment plant in Magnolia showed cinnamon, vanilla and artificial vanilla levels rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, with the biggest spike right after Thanksgiving.

Natural vanilla showed the largest increase, "perhaps indicative of more home baking using natural vanilla," Keil and Neibauer wrote.

"This conjecture is weakly supported by a verbal communication between Rick Keil and an employee of the Wallingford QFC (supermarket) who felt that natural vanilla peaked during the holiday seasons," the scientists' preliminary report says. "This will be investigated more thoroughly."

So far, the research has turned up no evidence that snickerdoodles are harming sea creatures, but their research does lead to some serious environmental questions. Fish rely heavily on their sense of smell to locate food, for example, and, in the case of salmon, to find their way back to their home stream to spawn.

"All the spices have odors associated with them, so it's interesting to ask whether they are there in sufficient concentration (for fish) to smell them," Keil said.

Using benchmarks from a published scientific study, they were able to estimate that people in Seattle and a few outlying areas served by the sewage plant scarfed down the daily equivalent of about 160,000 butter- or chocolate-chip-type cookies and about 80,000 cookies containing cinnamon during the Thanksgiving weekend.

The county did not spend any money on the study, but officials at King County's Wastewater Treatment Division said they were happy to cooperate because they expected the results to reinforce their message: What goes down the drain has to come out somewhere.

That goes both for pesticides and industrial chemicals as well as vanilla and cinnamon.

"It's an ability to look at a whole population's behavior through one pipe," said Randy Schuman, a county science and technical support manager who helped arrange the wastewater testing.

Keil's findings present a light side of what scientists say is potentially a serious situation. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies have documented that antibiotics, contraceptives, perfumes, painkillers, antidepressants and other substances pass through the sewage system into waterways.

King County researchers several years took caffeine measurements to try to learn whether the city's coffee drinking habits had any effect on the sound. Caffeine was found in more than 160 of 216 samples in water as deep as 640 feet.

"It was everywhere," Schuman said. "There's an effect (from) humans on the sound and it's almost ubiquitous. It's not just at the end of the (discharge) pipe."___ Information from: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, http://www.seattle-pi.com/
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ~~~~~~~ .

[EdByrne]

There have been parallels before, but this one takes the cake. More and more it seems that we are following the patterns of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" . If you haven't read this in its complete form, you can find shortened versions. You will find it anything but the dull book it has been made out to be. Gibbon has a vicious sense of humor that comes through, particularly in his footnotes. :lol:

Very cool. . . also, read Machiavelli's The Prince. For a tremendous contrast, read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations--a student of Aristotle and a Stoic, the greatest emperor gives himself great advice (to paraphrase): Do the right thing because it's the right thing: You don't need the carrot or the stick.

[Saundra Hummer]

.
~~~~~~~

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."

Howard Zinn
historian and author

~~~

"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."

Noam Chomsky

~~~

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

Bertrand Russell, (1872-1970)
philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate

~~~

"Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong"

James Bryce

~~~~~ .

[Saundra Hummer]

:: :: :: :: :: :: ::
A Look Back and Ahead In An Age of Neocon Rule

By
Stephen Lendman

12/27/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Borrowing the opening line from Dickens' Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." He referred to the French Revolution promising "Liberte, egalite and fraternite" that began in 1789, inspired by ours from 1775 - 1783. It ended a 1000 years of monarchal rule in France benefitting those of privilege and established the nation as a republic the way ours did for us here a few years earlier.

That was the good news. The bad was the wrong people came to power. They were the Jacobins who at first were revolutionary moderates and patriots until they lost control to extremists like Maximilien Robespierre who ushered in a "reign of terror" (The Great Terror sounding a lot like today's "war on terror") characterized by brutal repression against perceived enemies from within the Revolution who didn't get a chance to prove they weren't. In the name of defending it, individual rights were denied and civil liberties suspended. Laws were passed that allowed charging those designated counter-revolutionaries or enemies of the state with undefined crimes against liberty.

It resulted in justice being meted out to thousands for what Orwell called "thoughtcrimes" or for their freely expressed opinions and actions judged hostile to the state under a system of near-vigilante justice by the Paris Revolutionary (kangaroo) Tribunal with no right of appeal. It led to the public spectacle of an inglorious trip to and quick ending from the death penalty method of choice of the times - the guillotine that was barbaric but quick, and a much easier, less painful way to die for its victims than the use of state-inflicted torture-murder in the commonly drawn out lethal injection process used in 37 of the 38 death penalty states and by the federal government making the condemned endure a slow agonizing death unable to cry out while they're being made to suffer during their last moments of life. Instances of this barbarity aren't exceptions. They're the rule, the exception being this time a report or two of what really happens slipped out and made news.

Fast forward to the past year and the previous five under George Bush and ask: sound familiar? French Revolutionary laws during the "reign of terror," like the Law of Suspects, were earlier versions of our Patriot I and II and Military Commission Acts today. The Revolutionary Tribunal, with no chance for justice or right of appeal, was no different than our military courts today, and too many civil ones, in which any US citizen may now be tried anywhere in the world, with no habeas right of appeal or hope for due process and from which those sent there won't fare any better than the French did, doomed to meet their unjust fate - even though much in these laws today is unconstitutional and one day will be reversed by a High Court upholding the law instead of the extremist rogue one now empowered that scorns it.

What May Lie Ahead As the New Year Approaches

At the end of the sixth horrific year under the reign of the Bush modern-day extremist Jacobin-neocons, we can now look ahead, but to what. We have an administration in charge for another two years one longtime analyst characterizes as "a bunch of crooks, incompetents and perverts" with the president's approval rating plunging as low as 28% in some independent polls and a growing number of people in the country demanding his impeachment and removal from office.

It's not likely from the new Democrat-led Congress arriving in January, as their DLC leadership took it off the table and so far only promises more of the same failed policy other than some minor tinkering around the edges to create an illusion of change no different than the deceptive kind of course correction proposed by the Baker "Gang of Ten" Iraq Study Group
(ISG) that guarantees none at all. It doesn't leave members of the body politic with much hope for the new year that will likely just deliver more of the same rogue leadership and policy engendering growing public discontent and anger but not at a level so far to scare the those in power enough to want to address it.


The heart of the problem is the unpopular illegal war of aggression in Iraq, the cesspool of corruption and scorn for the law in Washington, and the assault on human rights and civil liberties in the country justified by the so-called "war on terror" now rebranded a "long war" against "Islamofascism" and "radicals and extremists" (who happen to be Muslims.) It's the same failed policy using the kind of deliberately provocative language intended to deceive the public to think a threat great enough exists to justify any state action in the name of national security including waging wars of aggression and all the horrors associated with them at home and abroad.

After the Baker "bob and weave,'' the now you see a change of course and now you don't, disingenuously suggesting a drawdown and exit strategy, the New York Times on December 16 reports "Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more."

The article goes on to say one option is to boost the force level by up to 50,000 even though any increase greater than 20 - 30,000 would be "prohibitive" - but it won't deter the Pentagon, on administration orders, from extending tours of duty even longer for forces now there and calling up thousands of reservists and greatly extended National Guard units to get into this quagmire even though it's recognized their presence will only make things worse as well as place an unfair burden on those called up, who've served before, and their families.

As of December 27, it's somewhat less clear what Iraq troop strength policy will emerge in January following comments by incoming Democrat chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, who just stated "I totally oppose this surging of additional American troops into Baghdad. It's contrary to the overwhelming body of informed opinion, both inside and outside the administration." Senator Biden will hold hearings on Iraq on January 9, and at that time things may heat up a bit at least in rhetoric if not in final policy.

Additional heat may be created in January after George Bush admitted for the first time on December 19 that the US isn't winning the war even though two weeks before the November mid-term elections he said emphatically "absolutely, we're winning in Iraq." He wouldn't acknowledge what most every honest observer knows including the Pentagon Joint Chiefs - that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are lost. They can't be won and won't be. No military solution is possible now or any time ahead.

The president is living in a state of denial, obsessed with his messianic mission fed him by the vice-president and hardest of his hard line neocon allies, and it shows in the outlandish solutions he proposes to an insoluble problem - send in more troops
(that will only make things worse) and increase the overall size of the military (that guarantees a permanent state of war).

It also clearly sounds a lot like the first official hint from the chief executive that a draft is needed and will come at some unspecified time ahead - likely following another "made in Washington" 9/11 calamity severe enough to get the public to go along with something now thought intolerable. The president's sentiment was echoed on December 21 by administration Veterans Affairs secretary Jim Nicholson who
(incredibly) said that "society would benefit" if the US reinstated the military draft. He didn't say for whom. He did go further when asked in a press conference whether it should include women saying: "I think if we bring back the draft, there should be no loopholes for anybody who happens to be drafted." Maybe, to his thinking, it should include pregnant mothers as well and single ones with small children.

Such openness by the VA secretary apparently was too much, too soon, and too clear for the White House that quickly got the Department of Veterans Affairs to issue a separate follow-up statement from Nicholson saying: "Let me be clear, I strongly support the all-volunteer military and do not support returning to a draft." Let the reader choose which message to believe, but, with the nation in a permanent state of war, it looks like the trial balloon and hint of a draft now being floated is the opening round to instituting one at some designated time ahead. That likelihood looms even greater as the Selective Service System announced it's planning a comprehensive test of the military draft machinery, which it hasn't done since 1998 while, at the same time, saying the agency isn't gearing up for a draft. But what else would they say as they make plans to do this on orders from the administration.

It all amounts to an increasing level of insanity from a power-crazed administration as well as sounding much like Benjamin Franklin's wisdom who said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." In the case of Iraq, doing it with more troops on the ground is even more insane as a greater occupying force there only guarantees a stronger resistance to it presenting more targets to aim at with virtually no chance for a peaceful resolution of the conflict short of a full unconditional withdrawal of all occupying forces, no strings attached, that won't happen. In the case of a future draft, now seeming more likely, it only guarantees this nation plans to stay in a permanent state of war against future enemies to be chosen with those in or to be included in the "axis of evil" heading the target list at some point ahead.

George Bush and others floating these lunatic schemes have no regard for the lives of those affected, and why should they. For now, their aim is to buy time, and as long as they can get away with it, they and their well-connected cronies and corporate friends stand to gain from the price everyone else has to pay - a huge one including the thousands of lives lost each week and the many more thousands of survivors whose lives will never be the same again.

Think what it means as the new year approaches. The nation is at war on two fronts, it's likely more ahead are contemplated by some in the administration, no substantive effort is being made to change course, and the condition at home is a relentless march toward becoming a full-blown national security police state we're already perilously close to. It's because the neocon-dominated Bush administration is reckless in ambition, out-of-control in policy, and the embodiment of a relentless and ruthless "weapon of mass destruction" unleashed on all humanity in its way.

It's underpinned by an extremist ideology based on rule by savage capitalism that's frighteningly close to and borders on the tipping edge of the classic definition of fascism combining corporatism with strong elements of patriotism and nationalism, a claimed messianic Almighty-directed and blessed mission, and characterized by authoritarian rule backed by the iron fist of militarism and 'homeland security" enforcers, illegally spying on everyone, and intolerant of dissent and opposition in an age where the law is what the chief executive says it is and all semblance of checks and balances no longer exist. In a word - despotism, but cloaked in the deceptive rhetoric of a modern democracy falsely claiming to serve the needs of all its people.

It's also an age of extreme greed and corruption infesting government and corporate boardrooms with the gap between rich and poor at levels greater than since the 19th century "Gilded Age" of the "robber barons." It's something economist Paul Krugman calls "entirely unprecedented" under George Bush that "For the first time in our history, so much (of the nation's economic growth has gone) to a small, wealthy minority" while the great majority can't stay even as inflation-adjusted wages fail to keep up with rising prices and poverty is growing in an age of affluence affecting tens of millions in the richest country ever in the world.

The grossness of this disparity was on the online business pages of the New York Times on Christmas Day in a story titled "Wall St. Bonuses" So Much Money, Too Few ($250,000) Ferraris. The article highlights that "The 2006 bonus gold rush has re-energized some luxury markets" like Manhattan real estate that had softened earlier in the year and echoed the lament of a real estate broker about a "dearth of listings for two clients trying to spend $20 million on Manhattan properties" while mentioning some of the Wall Street wealthy already in their luxury nests are buying $5 million apartments for their children and private resort vacation homes to boot.

The same ugly data is there overall worldwide in a newly released study by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University that shows the richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of its wealth compared, on the other end, with the assets of about half the world's population accounting for barely 1% of global wealth - lumps of coal only for them and a "Ba Humbug" dismissal for their plight by those with everything wanting still more.

The Cost to a Society Based on Predatory Capitalism and Out-of-Control Greed, Corruption and Militarism The societal breakdown in the US is a national disgrace and affects many millions. A sampling of some of it is listed below:


-- 47 million Americans can't afford basic health insurance.

-- Over 80 million in total have no health coverage during some portion of each year and most of them are employed.

-- The Bush administration just proposed sweeping cuts in payments to pharmacies to reduce the Medicaid benefits 50 million poor in the country rely on, can't afford to make up the difference for on their own, and may have to forego medications they vitally need if pharmacies won't fill prescriptions at lower prices.

-- The US ranks 41st in infant mortality, and the World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the country 37th in the world in "overall health performance" and 54th in the fairness of health care despite spending at a current level overall of around $2 trillion a year or about double the amount per capita of the OECD countries that deliver superior health care overall to their citizens as a national priority.

-- Well over 12 millions Americans struggle daily to feed themselves, and many thousands across the country can't afford housing and are forced to sleep on the streets including in winter cold.

-- A just released December 14 US Conference of Mayors report said these conditions continue to worsen based on a survey of 23 cities showing 7% more requests for food aid in 2006 following a 12% jump in 2005 during a period of economic growth.

-- The same report showed requests for shelter rose 9% in 2006 with requests from families with children rising 5%.

-- Public education is deliberately being eroded with illiteracy in basic reading, math and computer skills shamefully high and rising.

-- The US prison population is the highest in the world at 2.2 million and increasing by 1000 a week, half of those in it are black, and half of the total prison population is there for non-violent offenses half of which are drug-related. The US prison system is a shameful Gulag and an affront to humanity. The appalling conviction and sentencing of first-time drug offender Weldon Angelos is but one of countless examples. He was convicted of three sales of marijuana in 2004 while in possession of a gun unrelated to the sale. Under the insane federal mandatory sentencing laws, he was sentenced to five years for the first offense and 25 years each for the other two totaling 55 years in federal prison or a likely life sentence if he's forced to serve it all because he possessed and sold a few "joints" of a substance less harmful than legal cigarettes that kill millions yearly while it's not known marijuana ever killed anyone using it. Only in America.

-- The true state of things overall is suppressed by the dominant corporate-controlled media (including the NPR and PBS parts of it) functioning as a national thought-control police controlling all mass communication and depriving the public of any real information vital to a healthy democracy and their welfare.

-- Racial segregation is as great as in the 1960s, and the national sport almost is demonizing Muslims as "terrorists, radicals, extremists and Islamofascists" and impoverished "people the color of the earth" Mexicans and Latin Americans as "illegal immigrant invaders polluting" our white western European society and culture, mindless that they only come el norte in desperate search of work because of the devastating effects of NAFTA on their lives that destroyed their ability to support their families.

Data from the Oakland Institute think tank specializing in social, economic and environmental issues shows that heavily subsidized US corn exports to Mexico have tripled since NAFTA came into force forcing two million Mexican corn farmers out of business, something that was predicted in advance but allowed to happen anyway. It also led to suicides but at a rate nowhere near the level globalized trade US-style had on farmers in India where as many as
100,000 of them have taken their own lives because "New World Order" indebtedness caused them to lose their farms and then everything else.

-- Childhood poverty in the US ranks 22nd and next to last among developed nations when there should be virtually none tolerated in the richest country in the world or toleration of any of the other listed abuses.

-- An alarming number of high-paying and other jobs have been exported abroad in a process that's gone on for decades but picked up in momentum since the 1980s and especially in recent years. Mckinsey Global Institute estimates the volume will grow 30 - 40% a year for the next five years. Forrester Research estimates 3.3 million white-collar jobs will be lost by 2015 with most affected areas in financial services and information technology, and University of California researchers estimate that "up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing."

It adds up to a nation in decline, losing its industrial base and becoming primarily a service-oriented economy mainly offering low-skill, low-pay jobs with the better, higher-paying ones growing scarcer, making a college degree in areas outside of critical skills almost worthless. Exporting jobs to low-wage countries is a boon for corporate bottom lines in an age of "globalized free trade" never characterized as fair for the harm it does to millions of wage earners at home or in the developing countries on the receiving end being exploited by capital that sucks out their wealth and impoverishes their people, many of whom work for near-slave-rate wages in a modern era of serfdom in countries around the world in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin and Central America.

-- Worker outrage around the world in protest is growing in response to these abuses (unreported in the US) because most governments are doing little or nothing to ameliorate them. It showed up on November
22 in South Korea when over 200,000 workers belonging to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) staged a general strike protesting in 17 cities against the bilateral US-Korea Free Trade Agreement currently being negotiated that will do to their members and farmers what NAFTA did to Mexicans and India's agricultural trade policies did to their small farmers. It continued on the streets in the days following and spilled over to the Big Sky Ski Resort in Big Sky, Montana where negotiations are being held in seclusion but are still unable to escape the daily protests held against them there.

-- It happened as well in Cebu City, Philippines where President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (closely allied to the failed Bush agenda and elected through fraud) had to cancel two Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) meetings in December attended by 19 countries including the US and Canada. It was an abrupt ending to the meeting held to ratify trade and security agreements because of the mass protests by workers, farmers and others against their harmful effects forcing thousands in the country to leave daily to go abroad for work paying enough to support their families at home.

-- Workers almost everywhere have been harmed, including in the US, as union clout and worker rights here have declined in an age where the social contract government once had with its working people has been dismantled with less than 13% of the work force (the lowest in the industrialized world) unionized today compared to one-third of it in 1958. In an age of modern-day "robber barons," the middle class bedrock of a democratic state is slowly disappearing as the nation moves closer to becoming a banana republic at a time when 51 of the world's largest economies are corporate giants, most of them US-based.

It all goes on with no redress or sign of change in an age of out-of-control militarism and outlandish budgets supporting it that began ratcheting up under Ronald Reagan, along with big budget deficits to pay for it, and have gone wild under George Bush. The White House just approved a fiscal year 2008 near $470 billion Pentagon budget on top of an additional $100+ billion off-the-books amount minimum more that will boost this year's war budget for Iraq and Afghanistan to a yearly record of about $170 billion. It also needs tens of billions annually for "Homeland Security" and tens of billions more for the "spy agencies" totaling numbers in the range of well over $700 billion a year and rising - while social spending continues to be slashed to pay for it all in a heartless society scorning its people and their essential needs as long as the interests of capital are served along with the militarists in it profiting from its blood money.

Since WW II, when the US emerged as the only dominant nation left standing, Washington, instead of disarming and fostering peace, embarked on a now long-running program of militarization to maintain the country's political, economic and military preeminence over all others. It takes a lot of military spending to do it, that could have been used far more productively investing in human capital (like health and education) and physical capital (like essential infrastructure) as well as promoting non-military related business and industry that over time pay back far greater dividends than the short-term gains from building weapons and having large standing armies, navies and air forces that only exist to kill and destroy.

Productive spending also pays off in creating a society free from a dominant military culture like now exists out-of-control and hard to contain in the Pentagon that scorns civil liberties and democratic principles and values that have nearly vanished. The course this nation chose 60 years ago led to today's corrupted society armed to the teeth for endless wars with the most destructive weapons in human history deployed on over 800 known military bases in about 155 of the 192 countries of the world. It cost an unimaginable amount creating this monster as documented by the Center for Defense Information. It reported this country spent an estimated $21 trillion in constant dollars since 1945 on defense, the numbers continue to rise sharply, and the mindset of most of the nation's leaders, especially George Bush, is when you've got the might, you have to throw it around to prove it as well as scare off potential challengers.

Shamefully the US stands as a modern-day Sparta glorifying war and those put in charge to wage it. Witness the retirement ceremony for Army Major General Geoffrey Miller last summer when Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody awarded the man who supervised the infamous US Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib torture-prisons with the Distinguished Service Medal
(DDSM). This award was established by Richard Nixon in 1970 so the Secretary of Defense could reward officers of the US Armed Forces "whose exceptional performance of duty and contributions to national security or defense have been at the highest levels."

Witness also the December 16 retirement ceremony at the Pentagon for unindicted war criminal and torture-authorizer Donald Rumsfeld complete with pomp and circumstance, George Bush and Dick Cheney in attendance for the spectacle, and a 19 round cannon salute that might have been better aimed. In open defiance of growing public anger over the war, speakers, including the president, shamelessly lauded Rumsfeld for the war of aggression he directed and his leadership in doing it. The galling scene showed Bush hugging Rumsfeld saying: "This man knows how to lead, and he did. And the country is better off for it." He failed to say for whom, but it got worse with Dick Cheney saying: "I believe the record speaks for itself - Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense this nation ever had."

Contrast those spectacles with the fate of extraordinary people like Lynne Stewart prosecuted for her crime of courage, honor and resisting tyranny. She was unjustly charged under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act with four counts of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and violating Special Administration Measures (SAMS) imposed by the US Bureau of Prisons, which included a gag order on Sheik Abdel Rahman whom she represented as counsel for the defense in his 1995 trial because former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark asked her to take the case.

Lynne took it in the same spirit she spent her entire 30 year professional life as a courageous champion for the rights of the poor, underprivileged and those in society never afforded due process unless they're lucky enough to have an advocate like her. She broke no law, and her trial was a gross miscarriage of justice. Still, the Justice Department asked for a harsh 30 year sentence. It wasn't for any crime committed. It was to send a clear message to all in the legal community not to represent "unpopular clients" and not to afford them their legal right of due process with competent counsel when the government wants them put away.

Lynne for the present had the last word being vindicated in court on October 17 when Judge John G. Koeltl rejected the prosecution's case in the 28 month sentence he handed down allowing Lynne to remain free pending her appeal to a higher court, acknowledging it might overturn her conviction and effectively rebuking the Justice Department for their prosecution of a courageous woman who spent a lifetime fighting for justice.

The outcome was painfully different in an age of Muslim demonization and persecution shown in the prosecution of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, a Muslim American of Iraqi descent and practicing oncologist until his license was unjustly revoked as a prelude to the greater outrage committed against him. Dr. Dhafir was charged and tried in another US "kangaroo court" for what Katherine Hughes called and wrote his "crime of compassion." Katherine followed the trial daily in court for 17 weeks and remains his champion, continuing to work tirelessly for his vindication and release.

Dr. Dhafir was convicted and is now serving a 22 year sentence in federal prison for violating the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations (the IEEPA) having used his own funds and what he could raise from others to bring desperately needed humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, to Iraqi people unable to get them because of the punitive, harsh and unjust sanctions imposed prior to the 2003 war. He did it through his Help the Needy charity, and for it was convicted of violating the sanctions, tax fraud, money laundering, and mail and wire fraud - a total of 60 counts and found guilty on 59 of them.

The verdict sent another chill through the Muslim community, and as Katherine explained on her web site - dhafirtrial.net - "If we can get Rafil Dhafir, we can get anyone." Not quite, as Lynne Stewart's vindication proves. But it proves something else too. In the age of George Bush, the chance of prevailing against injustice as a white American is a lot better than for a "not-as-white" Arab Muslim, even an American one, especially one courageous enough to take on a mission of mercy in defiance of state policy unjustly prohibiting it.

Dr. Dhafir was confined at the federal prison in Fairton, NJ until December when he was transfered further away from his family, who weren't told. He's now at what's been described as the hellhole in Terre Haute, IN, in an area of right wing extremism and KKK influence, in a deliberate act of further barbaric vengeance to break his spirit, restrict his access to legal help and his family, and cause him undue pain and suffering in an age of US-sanctioned and authorized torture as a method of social control and inhumanity and because no dissenting authority has the courage to challenge Washington's willingness to go against the most basic principles of equity and justice.

A Look Back to Find Direction Ahead

A look back to an important anniversary just reached should have been duly noted and reflected on in the major media, but it passed nearly unnoticed. It was the December 15 anniversary of the Bill of Rights of
1791 to the Constitution framed in 1787. It gave us unimaginable freedoms up to that time written into the law of the land that overall was a great democratic experiment never tried before outside of ancient Athens for a few decades before it ended. It gave people the rights of free expression, religion and peaceable assembly; protection from illegal searches and seizure; the right of due process, against double jeopardy and to remain silent if accused; to a speedy trial by jury if charged with the right to counsel and to be able to call witnesses; protection from any cruel and unusual punishment and more.

Most of the credit for this historic achievement goes to James Madison who drafted the first 10 amendments and with his perseverance got the other Framers to go along. He then managed to get the needed two-thirds vote from both Houses of Congress and ratification by the required three-fourths of the states in 1791 to have them become the law of the land - a major landmark achievement today being defiled by those in power who have contempt for the freedoms the Founders gave us.

Madison is thought of by some to be the "Father of the Constitution," but it's more accurate to call him its Godfather as he had a lot of help from the other 54 Founders who met in the Philadelphia State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 years earlier, to frame this historic document for the new republic they hoped would last into "remote futurity" - if we could keep it as Ben Franklin warned at the time and would shudder now at how things turned out and condemn those in power responsible.

Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were serving abroad as envoys to France and Britain and weren't in Philadelphia for this historic gathering. When they were back later on, Jefferson and Madison wanted twelve initial amendments to the Constitution instead of the original 10 that were adopted. Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, however, opposed the Bill of Rights entirely and managed to exclude from them the other two that included "freedom from monopolies in commerce," or what are now giant corporate predators, and "freedom from a permanent military," or today's standing armies waging wars of illegal aggression.

Imagine what might have been, what was lost, and how the country might be governed today had Jefferson and Madison prevailed. Still they deserve our gratitude for what they accomplished, and it's disconcerting at the least to wonder how much worse off we'd be now if they hadn't gotten any of the Bill of Rights freedoms in our founding law that although lost under neocon rule may one day be restored if we can survive in the meantime.

A Look Ahead In An Age of State-Sponsored Terror Under Neocon Rule

It's time to pause at year's end to give thanks for our blessings but reflect that the spirit of the season demands that the madness of Bush neocon rule be stopped and ended before it's too late. Six years is more than enough to know the administration's agenda at home and abroad is roguish, corrupted by greed and contempt for the law, ruthless in its pursuit of world dominance through the barrel of a gun, and arrogant enough to think it can get away with it because who'll challenge those in charge.

Internally, there no longer are checks and balances as the three branches of government under Republicans and Democrats are united for a common purpose, and their agenda to carry it out is hostile to the public interest. It's the ultimate expression of Lord Acton's dictum that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Positively it does in the age of George Bush and a culture obsessed with power, the lust for more of it, and the worship of the wealth and privilege that comes with it. It wreaks of the Vince Lombardi philosophy that "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing," and the only rules are the ones those now in power make up as they go along justifying whatever they choose to do, regardless of its consequences always harmful to the great majority.

It's also based on might making right but not the way Abe Lincoln meant it when he said in his February, 1860 Cooper Union speech prior to his July presidential nomination that year: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." He later expressed a spirit of reconciliation with the South and kind of humanity George Bush has contempt for in his second inaugural address in March, 1865 when he spoke of "malice toward none (and) charity for all" only weeks before his life was taken by an assassin's bullet. Imagining that language from George Bush, and meaning it, would be to imagine the unimaginable from a man who likely doesn't even understand it.

What is imaginable in the year ahead and thenceforth is a world without George Bush and his neocon extremist administration leading the nation on a path to hell. Those wanting justice demand the Congress act to impeach him and the vice-president and then remove them from office allowing for the chance charges will be brought against them both and others in their administration so they'll be held to account in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague or another judicial venue where officials may be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. They committed them all and more against the people of Iraq, at least two of the three in Afghanistan, and a legion of others against the people of the United States and its Constitution.

It'll only happen if it comes from the bottom up, from enough public outrage bubbling to the surface vocally demanding justice be served and the rule of law restored and again respected. No one at any level in public or private life should ever be allowed to get away with the kind of reckless and gross criminality that's been rampant and out-of-control in Washington for the past six years under Republican neocon rule.

It's long past time to put an end to this criminal class of rogues in charge, running the country like their private fiefdom in a culture of galling corruption and scorn for the law that exceeds anything here ever preceding their tenure. Already there's a groundswell of growing outrage slowly building in size and intensity. As the new year approaches, it remains to be seen if a combination of those people of conscience can unite with enough others in the body politic to give us all what everyone should want and demand - an end to wars, a renewed respect for the law, accountability for those in government who violated it, and a commitment to serve the public interest with equity and equal justice for all in the true spirit of a real democracy restored from the grave and once again respected and cherished.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16003.htm
Go on-site to access war casualties, and the costs, as the clock ticks.
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Tale of Two Sisters:

Why Is HUD Using Tens of Millions of Katrina Money to Bulldoze 4534 Public Housing Apartments in New Orleans When It Costs Less to Repair and Open Them Up?
By
Bill Quigley.

12/28/06 "ICH' --- - Gloria Williams and her twin sister Bobbie Jennings are 60 years old. They are two of the over 4000 families who lived in public housing in New Orleans before Katrina struck who are still locked out of their apartments since Katrina. Their apartments are two of 4534 apartments that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced plans to demolish. Demolition is planned even though it will cost more to demolish and rebuild many fewer units than it does to fix them up and open them. Ms. Williams and Ms. Jennings, and thousands of families like them, are fighting HUD, they want to return.

Gloria and Bobbie started working early. As children they picked cotton, strawberries, snap beans and pecans before and after grade school every day in rural Louisiana. “We were raised up to work,” they said.

They moved to New Orleans after their father drowned. Their home was marked by regular domestic violence. A few years later, their mother was murdered by a boyfriend.

As teens they moved in with an abusive relative. They ran away, came back, and stayed with other relatives. They can even remember nights when they slept under their aunt’s bed in a hospital while waiting for her to recuperate.

As young women they continued working. They worked in restaurants before starting careers as Certified Nursing Assistants. Then they worked for years in nursing homes and in private homes caring for the elderly and disabled. They fed people, cleaned people, bathed people, cared for people. Each married and raised children and grandchildren. Like 25% of the households in New Orleans, neither owned a car.

Both sisters are now 60. In the past few years, their years of physical work took its toil and they could not longer work. Ms. Jennings had back surgery and suffers with high blood pressure. Ms. Williams has heart and lung problems, high blood pressure, and clots in her legs that prevent her from standing or walking for long periods. Each lives solely on about $600 a month from disability. No pensions.

When Katrina hit, they had been living in the C.J. Peete apartments for years. Ms. Bobbie Jennings had been there for 34 years. Her twin sister, Ms. Gloria Williams lived there for over 18 years.

Their combined families, 18 in all, evacuated to Baton Rouge to ride out the storm. When it was clear they would not be going home any time soon, their host family told them it was time to move on. In September 2005, the family of 18 moved into one daughter’s damaged home in Slidell, about 30 miles away from New Orleans – all sleeping on the first floor because the roof was still damaged.

One of their sisters, Annie, was in the hospital with cancer when Katrina hit. It took the family weeks before the finally found her in a hospital in Macon, Georgia.

When the city opened, they got rides into town and checked on their apartments. No water had entered their apartments at all. But their doors had been kicked down and all their furnishings were gone. The housing authority told them they could not move back in for a couple more months while their apartments were secured and fixed up. The housing authority started fixing up and painting apartments in her complex, but abruptly stopped after a few weeks.

Slidell was getting tight, so they accepted an offer to relocate to California. After a month, they returned. Being 3000 miles apart from family was too heartbreaking. A four day bus ride brought them back to Slidell in January 2006. After hitching rides into New Orleans, Ms. Williams found a subsidized apartment. The only way the landlord would accept her, though, was if she paid him an extra $400 under the table. Otherwise, he would rent it to someone else who would.

So Ms. Williams paid the extra money and moved in with her grandchildren while she waited for her old apartment to reopen. She used FEMA money to buy new furniture.
In late February 2005, Ms. Williams was hospitalized for three weeks for surgeries on her legs.

In June 2005, HUD announced they were not going to let any residents back in her apartment complex and three others (Lafitte, St. Bernard and BW Cooper) because they were going to be demolished. Over one hundred maintenance and security workers for the housing authority were let go. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago and all these decisions are being made in Washington DC.

The demolished buildings would make way for much newer and many fewer apartments which would be built by private developers. The demolition and private development would be financed by federal funds and federal tax breaks designed to help Katrina victims!

Nearly $100 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds were designated for the private developers. Another $34 million in Katrina Go-Zone tax credits were also donated to the developers.

In July 2005, Ms. Williams apartment caught fire and again she lost everything. Her landlord did not want to let her out of her lease. He told her that she and her grandson could still live there, all they had to do was clean the soot off the walls and ceilings.

At this, Ms. Williams broke down and went back into the hospital.

Ms. Jennings got an apartment and allowed her daughter and her grandchildren to live there because they have no place to stay. She also took her in her little sister, Annie, who was dying of cancer. Annie died on August 17, 2005.

Both sisters have severe problems every month making ends meet. Utility bills eat up most of their monthly checks. With no car and their apartments across the river from New Orleans, they cannot get to the doctor.

Christmas was very tough. Ms. Williams said "We didn't have a Christmas. We didn't have food to put on the table." Her grandson went to her sister’s house to get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Ms. Jennings cried as she said “Behind Katrina and my little sister dying, my life just stopped. This is the second year we didn’t have a Christmas. It is so hard to try to start over. I let my daughter and her two grandchildren sleep on the bed. I sleep on a pallet on the floor. Before Katrina I was on blood pressure medicine once a day. Now I take 4 blood pressure pills three times a day. I also take pills for depression, nerves and stress.”

“We just want to go home,” Ms. Williams said. “People knew us in our neighborhood. They never messed with us. I could leave my back door open when I went to the grocery. People don’t understand that was our home. We want to go home.”

Why would people want to go back into public housing? Aren’t the developments dangerous and crime-ridden? Isn’t this an opportunity to start over and make something better?

Public housing residents know full well the problems of public housing, but still they want to return.

Why? Start with the fact that New Orleans is in the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War. Tens of thousands of houses still remain in ruins after Katrina. Rents for the rest have gone up 70-80 percent since Katrina. Even before Katrina, there was a waiting list of 18,000 families seeking to get into public housing – now it is much, much worse.
HUD’s demolition plans target 4,534 apartments of public housing in the community. They plan to demolish 1546 apartments in BW Cooper, 723 in C.J. Peete, 1400 in St. Bernard, and 865 in Lafitte.

These are not the dense high-rise towers. Public housing in New Orleans is made up of development clusters of mostly two and three story buildings with six to eight apartments in each.
New York Times Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, criticized plans to demolish these apartments, saying on November 19, 2006: “Modestly scaled, they include some of the best public housing built in the United States….Solidly built, the buildings’ detailed brickwork, tile roofs and wrought-iron balustrades represent a level of craft more likely found on an Ivy League campus than in a contemporary public housing complex.”

Most of the public housing apartments rented for very modest rents tied to the resident’s incomes. Most did not pay separate utility charges. Leases were essentially for life, unless someone in the family was caught breaking the law.

HUD initially said they had to demolish because the buildings were so damaged they were dangerous to the residents.

That was not true.

John Fernandez, an Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, inspected 140 of these apartments and concluded in papers filed in court that “no structural or nonstructural damage was found that could reasonably warrant any cost-effective building demolition…Therefore, the general conclusions are: demolition of any of the buildings of these four projects is not supported by the evidence of the survey, replacement of these buildings with contemporary construction would yield buildings of lower quality and shorter lifetime duration; the original construction methods and materials of these projects are far superior in their resistance to hurricane conditions than typical new construction and with renovation and regular maintenance, the lifetimes of the buildings in all four projects promise decades of continued service that may be extended indefinitely.”

Residents promise to fix up their apartments themselves if given the chance. “I clean for a living,” said one young woman resident at a recent public hearing where 100% of the residents opposed demolition. “I clean for a living and I am proud of it. I clean every body else’s houses, I will sure clean up my own house – just let me back in to do it!”

After it the public understood that the buildings were not actually in such bad shape, the authorities then said it would cost much more to repair the buildings than to demolish and start over.

That too was not true.

The housing authority’s own documents show that Lafitte could be repaired for $20 million, even completely overhauled for $85 million while the estimate for demolition and rebuilding many fewer units will cost over $100 million. St. Bernard could be repaired for $41 million, substantially modernized for $130 million while demolition and rebuilding less units will cost $197 million. BW Cooper could be substantially renovated for $135 million compared to $221 million to demolish and rebuild less units. Their own insurance company reported that it would take less than $5000 each to repair each of the CJ Peete apartments.

HUD suggests that less-dense “mixed income” communities are the way to go.

But residents and the community knows that if HUD has its way, only about 20% of the families who lived in these developments will be allowed to return.

New Orleans has suffered through the experience of HUD’s “mixed income” policies before. The St. Thomas housing development, once home to 1510 families, was demolished with promises that people would be returning to a beautiful redeveloped community. Instead, there is now a Wal-Mart on the site and hundreds of cute gingerbread pastel houses. How many of the 1510 families who used to live in St. Thomas have been allowed to move back in? About a hundred. A few of these families have had to force their way in with litigation by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. The demolition of St. Thomas is hailed as a mostly-good outcome by nearby developers and some of the young professionals who moved into the surrounding neighborhood knowing what was coming. What do the 1400+ families who were moved out and not allowed to return think? Don’t ask – no one else is.

HUD has the same plans for the neighborhoods where they are trying to demolish housing. According to documents filed with the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency:
St. Bernard will go from 1400 apartments to 595 apartments, only 160 of which will be for low-income public housing residents. There will be 160 tax credit mixed income and 145 market rate units;
CJ Peete will go from 723 units to 410, 154 will be public housing eligible, 133 mixed income and 123 market rate;
BW Cooper will go from 1546 to 410, 154 public housing eligible, 133 tax-credit mixed income, and 123 market;
And Lafitte will downsized in the same way.

As a result HUD plans to spend tens of millions of Katrina assistance funds to end up with far fewer affordable apartments.

The new Congress is looking into this. Representatives Barney Frank and Maxine Waters chair the committee and subcommittee with oversight of HUD. There is also a federal class action lawsuit filed by the Advancement Project, Jenner & Block, and local attorneys.

Residents of the St. Bernard housing development and their allies plan are not waiting any more. On Martin Luther King day, January 15, 2007, they are going in with or without permission. “What better way to celebrate Martin Luther King day than to risk going to jail for justice?” says Endesha Jukali, a neighbor who lived and worked in St. Bernard for years.

But the clock is still ticking. HUD, who has not “officially approved” its own announcement, says the demolition needs to get started to take advantage of the Katrina tax credits. Neither the Congress nor the federal courts have yet stepped in to stop the demolitions.

What do the sisters think about this? Ms. Jennings says: “I lived there for 34 years. That is my home. I just cannot afford to live outside the development. I don’t know how else to explain it. I have the tears, but I do not have the words.” Her twin sister, Ms. Williams cries and says: “That was my home for over 18 years. I never gave them no trouble. My home never flooded. I will clean it myself, just please let me back in. I wish I could make people understand. I just want to go home.”

For more information about this matter see www.justiceforneworleans.org or contact the Advancement Project at (202) 728-9557.

Bill is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill is one of the lawyers representing thousands of families who want to return to their apartments in New Orleans. You can contact him at Quigley@loyno.edu
Go on-site to view this article and several others about this issue, in their archives and to access other topical stories of the day. Just click on the following URL:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16008.htm
It could be for several reasons which this report doesn't cover, such as unstable ground, mold, but oftentimes it is just the government being wasteful or setting things up for those in the business of demolition, and/or rebuilding. It may be quicker and faster, as well as more economically feasible to do it like they're doing, but knowing how the government does things, it's very likely that this report is correct. SRH $$$$$$$$$

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VotersForPeace
The power to end the war and prevent future wars of aggression

Dear Saundra R.,

In just one week, Congress begins the 2007 session with new leadership ready to take the reigns. The problem is, the new Congress doesn't look very different than the old Congress that we supposedly voted out of office. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is promoting a troop increase, Nancy Pelosi said that she won't defund the war, and now President Bush is asking for at least $127 billion more to waste on our failed venture in Iraq. Although voters expressed a clear mandate to end the war in Iraq, Democratic Congressional leaders are already on record promising to continue the violence in our name and with our tax dollars.

We think this is an unacceptable betrayal of American voters, so on January 4th, VotersForPeace is working with several peace organizations to remind the new Congress that we will no longer tolerate destroying lives and wasting money for war. We will congratulate them for their win and then demand that they defund Bush's war effort.

HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP:
In Washington, DC: If you are in the DC area, join us in delivering the message to Congress that we don't want to spend another penny for war.
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/vfp/signUp.jsp?key=1860
...
Outside of the DC-metro area: Deliver this statement to your members of Congress at their district office. Fax, mail, or hand deliver the message, and then let us know that you've made your voice heard! If you're unable to hand deliver the message, email it to your member of Congress.
http://www.votersforpeace.us/openingdayletter.html
...
For your local paper: Send a letter to your local media outlet, echoing the sentiment that voters no longer support spending tax dollars for killing in Iraq. Let us know if your letter is published!

You will be joining tens of thousands of other peace voters in putting peace at the top of the agenda from Day One. If you can't join us on January 4th, there will be plenty of other opportunities as we continue to send our message to Congress throughout January. Also be sure to mark your calendars for the March on Washington on January 27th. Plan your travels now to join thousands of Americans from all across the country in Washington, DC in an act of solidarity!

Sincerely,

Linda Schade
Executive Director
VotersForPeace.US
...Go on-site to view the several links and to sign-on to this effort by clicking the following link/links:
http://www.VotersForPeace.org .......

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Giant Ice Shelf Snaps Free Near North Pole
By
ROB GILLIES, AP

TORONTO (Dec. 29) - A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a "major" reason for the event.

NASA / AP
The ice shelf, at center of this satellite photo, was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic. They are packed with ice that is more than 3,000 years old. To view photo and to access any links: Go on-site by clicking on the link at the bottom of post.

The Ayles Ice Shelf - all 41 square miles of it - broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.

Scientists discovered the event by using satellite imagery. Within one hour of breaking free, the shelf had formed as a new ice island, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and couldn't believe what he saw.

"This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years," Vincent said. "We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead."

The ice shelf was one of six major shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic. They are packed with ancient ice that is more than 3,000 years old. They float on the sea but are connected to land.

Some scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in Canada in 30 years and that climate change was a major element.

"It is consistent with climate change," Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906. "We aren't able to connect all of the dots ... but unusually warm temperatures definitely played a major role."

Laurie Weir, who monitors ice conditions for the Canadian Ice Service, was poring over satellite images in 2005 when she noticed that the shelf had split and separated.

Weir notified Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa, who initiated an effort to find out what happened.

Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as seismic data - the event registered on earthquake monitors 155 miles away - Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005.

Copland said the speed with which climate change has effected the ice shelves has surprised scientists.

"Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly," he said.

Derek Mueller, a polar researcher with Vincent's team, said the ice shelves get weaker and weaker as temperatures rise. He visited Ellesmere Island in 2002 and noticed that another ice shelf had cracked in half.

"We're losing our ice shelves and this a feature of the landscape that is in danger of disappearing altogether from Canada," Mueller said.

Within days of breaking free, the Ayles Ice Shelf drifted about 30 miles offshore before freezing into the sea ice. A spring thaw may bring another concern: that warm temperatures will release the new ice island from its Arctic grip, making it an enormous hazard for ships.

"Over the next few years this ice island could drift into populated shipping routes," Weir said.

12/29/06 06:40 EST

Copyright 2006 The Associated
http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/giant-ice-shelf-snaps-free-near-north/20061229064309990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001 XXXXXXX .

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More Dangerous Than Smoking? Death by Soda
By Joshua Frank, AlterNet
Posted on December 27, 2006,
http://www.alternet.org/story/45498/
This article has appeared previously on counterpunch.org and countercurrents.org.

We are a country of overweight people. Americans are tipping the scales in record numbers, with approximately 130 million who are presently considered overweight or obese. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, half of all women aged 20 to 39 in the United States are included in these figures. Many factors contribute to the growing problem, from our sedentary lifestyles to our overindulgence in high-energy, low nutritional foods. Dealing with the crisis is not easy. The marketing of energy dense foods is a multi-billion dollar industry, and manufacturers of such products go to great lengths to ensure their shareholders continue to profit from the sales of nutrition-less foods.

Despite the barrage of marketing to the contrary, sales pitches, and misinformation, consumption of soda has been directly linked to both obesity as well as type 2 diabetes. Soft drinks are packed full of sugar and refined carbohydrates, both of which are undeniably correlated to these factors. Type 2 diabetes is also associated with a poor diet that is laden with high-fructose corn syrup and low in fiber. Research indicates that soft drinks largely contribute to this growing epidemic, with high school and college age kids being the most likely to consume sugar laden soda beverages on a regular basis.

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are bad news, according to health experts, because they contribute to the obesity epidemic by providing empty calories, that is, calories that provide little or no nutritional value. Meaning, a person who slugs down too much soda is swallowing more than their body can handle. And this added energy isn't healthy energy -- it's energy derived from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), i.e., highly refined sugar that has been chemically processed in order to excite your taste buds. It has been argued that too much HFCS in one's diet may offset the intake of solid food, yet does not produce a positive caloric balance. In turn, this over-consumption contributes to the slow development of obesity because the person is consuming more calories than their body can burn. And these days, people are drinking more soda than ever before. Perhaps not surprisingly, as portion sizes for soft drinks have increased, so have American waistlines.

Too put this dangerous pattern in to perspective, one regular 12-ounce can of sugar-sweetened soda contains approximately 150 calories with close to 50 grams of sugar. If this is added to the typical American diet, one can of soda per day could lead to a weight gain of 15 pounds in one year. Currently the consumption of soda accounts for about 8%-9% of total energy among children and adults, and studies suggest that it is most certainly having a negative effect on the people who consume it in such vast quantities. So what's so wrong with being overweight then, you ask? So what if soda has been linked to causing obesity? What's wrong with that? Well, plenty say scores of medical, health and public nutrition experts.

For starters, obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bowel cancer as well as high blood pressure. Type 2 diabetes alone can contribute to cardiovascular disease, retinopathy (blindness), neuropathy (nerve damage), nephropathy (kidney damage), and other health complications. So if type 2 diabetes is highly associated with individuals who are obese, and obesity is linked to SSBs, then type 2 diabetes is highly associated with the consumption of SSBs because the consumption of SSBs is so highly associated with causing obesity. In short, if one consumes SSBs on a regular basis, they are more at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, which itself may cause many ailments. That's why being overweight is not a good thing for one's health. And that's why drinking copious amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to poor wellbeing byway of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

On top of causing one to gain unhealthy weight and spurring type 2 diabetes, SSBs may also contribute to the loss of bone density, which may cause one to be more susceptible to bone fractures. It has been argued that low bone density may be a result of high levels of phosphate, which is found in elevated amounts in sugar-sweetened cola. Such large amounts of phosphate may alter the calcium-phosphorus ratio in people whose bodies are still developing, or people who are most likely to consume SSBs, and consequently this can have a toxic effect on their bone development. If a growing individual has a low calcium intake it could jeopardize bone mass, which may then contribute to hip fractures and other bone related disorders later in life. Drinking a lot of SSBs while your body develops could have lasting, deadly effects on your health. So while it is clear that soda isn't good for you, it is also obvious that soda is downright bad for your health. It can make you overweight, suck the calcium out of your bones, and increase risk of type 2 diabetes, a leading cause of blindness. But that's not the kind of news the profiteers of big soda would ever want you to hear.

The marketing firms that barrage consumers with ads for their mouth-watering soft drinks hope to encourage you to drink more of their harmful products, not less of them. Indeed they have a financial incentive to do so. Their annual revenues are billions of dollars. To protect their interests, as Prof. Marion Nestle of NYU notes, the soda industry shells out tons of money to convince people to consume their products in mass quantities. In the late 1990s, Coca-Cola spent about $1.6 billion dollars in global marketing, with over $850 million spent in the United States alone. With that kind of lavish spending, it is little wonder why Coca-Cola is such a household name. Clearly, those who advocate for cutting down on the consumption of SSBs because of their negative health impacts are up against a very well financed opposition -- not unlike the anti-smoking activists who take on the shenanigans and deceit of Big Tobacco.

Nevertheless, Coca-Cola, like its competitors, is extremely savvy. They have inundated schools with their products. As Michele Simon, the author of Appetite for Profit, writes, "A 2003 government survey showed that 43 percent of elementary schools, 74 percent of middle schools, and 98 percent of high schools sold food through vending machines, snack bars, or other venues outside the federally supported school meal programs ... With public schools so desperate for funding, districts are lured into signing exclusive contracts (also known as "pouring rights" deals) with major beverage companies -- mainly Coca-Cola and PepsiCo".

In other words, these multinational corporations give millions of dollars to schools so that their districts and vending machines exclusively carry their goods. In reality, however, it comes down to one big clever marketing ploy: In the end these big corporations have hooked kids on their products while fooling people into believing they are virtuous corporate citizens because they support education.

Fortunately there is a growing movement across the country to ban sodas from schools. Indeed the feisty Killer Coke campaign, which focuses on the company's labor abuses and not Coke's negative health implications, has been successful is banning the product from over 10 major universities in the United States. But it would be wise to not just focus on the company's alleged murders in Colombia, and instead broaden the struggle against the soda industry by pointing out their complicity in the obesity epidemic worldwide.

Because death truly is the "real thing."

Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits http://www.BrickBurner.org.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
..... View this story online at:

http://www.alternet.org/story/45498/
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Bush Could Usher in a Very Dangerous New Year
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on December 26, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/45852/

The first two or three months of 2007 represent a dangerous opening for an escalation of war in the Middle East, as George W. Bush will be tempted to "double-down" his gamble in Iraq by joining with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair to strike at Syria and Iran, intelligence sources say.

President Bush's goal would be to transcend the bloody quagmire bogging down U.S. forces in Iraq by achieving "regime change" in Syria and by destroying nuclear facilities in Iran, two blows intended to weaken Islamic militants in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

The Israeli army and air force would carry the brunt of any new fighting albeit with the support of beefed-up U.S. ground and naval forces in the Middle East, the sources said. Bush is now considering a "surge" in U.S. troop levels in Iraq from about 140,000 to as many as 170,000. He also has dispatched a second aircraft carrier group to the coast of Iran.

So far, however, Bush has confronted stiff opposition from the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff to the plan for raising troop levels in Iraq, partly because the generals don't think it makes sense to commit more troops without a specific military mission.

But it's unclear how much the generals know about the expanded-war option which has been discussed sometimes in one-on-one meetings among the principals -- Bush, Olmert and Blair -- according to intelligence sources.

Since the Nov. 7 congressional elections, the three leaders have conducted a round-robin of meetings that on the surface seem to have little purpose. Olmert met privately with Bush on Nov. 13; Blair visited the White House on Dec. 7; and Blair conferred with Olmert in Israel on Dec. 18.

All three leaders could salvage their reputations if a wider war broke out in the Middle East and then broke in their favor.

Bush and Blair spearheaded the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that has since turned into a disastrous occupation. In summer 2006, Olmert launched offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, drawing international condemnation for the deaths of hundreds of civilians and domestic criticism for his poorly designed war plans.

The three leaders also find themselves cornered by political opponents. Bush's Republican Party lost control of both the House and Senate on Nov. 7; Blair succumbed to pressure from his own Labour Party and agreed to step down in spring 2007; and Olmert is suffering from widespread public disgust over the failed Lebanese war.

Yet, despite these reversals, the three leaders have rebuffed advice from more moderate advisers that they adopt less confrontational strategies and consider unconditional negotiations with their Muslim adversaries.

Most dramatically, Bush spurned a bipartisan Iraq Study Group plan that was co-authored by the Bush Family's long-time counselor, former Secretary of State James Baker.

Instead of heeding Baker's advice to begin a drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq and start talks with Iran and Syria, Bush rejected the notion of a "graceful exit" and then set unacceptable preconditions for talks with Iran and Syria.

In other words, Baker tossed a life preserver to Bush who threw it back.


Victory agenda
Bush has continued to insist on "victory" in Iraq and has again ratcheted up his rhetoric. He now talks about waging a long war against Islamic "radicals and extremists," not just the original goal of defeating "terrorists with global reach."

At his news conference on Dec. 20, Bush cast this wider struggle against Islamists as a test of American manhood and perseverance by demonstrating to the enemy that "they can't run us out of the Middle East, that they can't intimidate America."

Bush suggested, too, that painful decisions lay ahead in the New Year.

"I'm not going to make predictions about what 2007 will look like in Iraq, except that it's going to require difficult choices and additional sacrifices, because the enemy is merciless and violent," Bush said.

Rather than scale back his neoconservative dream of transforming the Middle East, Bush argued for an expanded U.S. military to wage this long war.

"We must make sure that our military has the capability to stay in the fight for a long period of time," Bush said. "I'm not predicting any particular theater, but I am predicting that it's going to take a while for the ideology of liberty to finally triumph over the ideology of hate. ...

"We're in the beginning of a conflict between competing ideologies -- a conflict that will determine whether or not your children can live in a peace. A failure in the Middle East, for example, or failure in Iraq, or isolationism, will condemn a generation of young Americans to permanent threat from overseas."

So, rather than looking for a way out of the Iraq quagmire, Bush -- now waist deep in the muck -- is determined to press on.

Bush's dilemma, however, is that time is working against him. Not only are the American people increasingly angry about U.S. troops caught in the middle of a sectarian civil war in Iraq, but Bush's domestic and international political bases continue to erode.

Blair, who is widely derided in the United Kingdom as "Bush's poodle," is nearing the end of his tenure, and Bush's Republican Party is worried about Election 2008 if American soldiers are still dying in Iraq in two years.

Plus, few military analysts believe a temporary troop "surge" alone will stop the steady deterioration in Iraq. Bush acknowledged as much at his news conference.

"In order to do so ['the surge'], there must be a specific mission that can be accomplished with more troops," Bush said. "That's precisely what our commanders have said, as well as people who know a lot about military operations. And I agree with them that there's got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished with the addition of more troops before I agree on that strategy."

Though not making much sense as a way to quell the civil strife in Iraq, a U.S. military buildup could help protect American interests in Iraq if Israeli attacks on Syria and Iran touch off retaliation against U.S. and British targets.


Wider war
For Bush, this idea of expanding the war outside Iraq also is not new. Since spring 2006, Bush reportedly has been weighing military options for bombing Iran's nuclear facilities, but he has encountered resistance from senior U.S. military officers.

As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, a number of senior U.S. officers were troubled by administration war planners who believed "bunker-busting" tactical nuclear weapons, known as B61-11s, were the only way to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities buried deep underground.

A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they're shouted down," the ex-official said.

By late April 2006, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.

"Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning," one former senior intelligence official said.

But -- even with the nuclear option off the table -- senior U.S. military officials worried about the political and economic fallout from a massive bombing campaign against Iran. Hersh wrote:

"Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President's plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran's nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States."

Hersh quoted a retired four-star general as saying, "The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don't want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, 'We stood up.' "

Beyond the dangers from Iran's nuclear program, the Bush administration views the growing Shiite crescent across the Middle East as a threat to U.S. influence.

Washington Post foreign policy analyst Robin Wright wrote that U.S. officials told her that "for the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East."

By summer 2006, Israeli sources were describing Bush's interest in finding a pretext to hit back at Syria and Iran. That opening came when border tensions with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon led to the capture of three Israeli soldiers and a rapid Israeli escalation of the conflict into an air-and-ground campaign against Lebanon.

Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the Israeli-Lebanese conflict as an opportunity to expand the fighting into Syria and achieve the long-sought "regime change" in Damascus, Israeli sources said.

One Israeli source told me that Bush's interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered "nuts" by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Olmert generally shared Bush's hard-line strategy against Islamic militants.

In an article on July 30, 2006. the Jerusalem Post also hinted at the Israeli rejection of Bush's suggestion of a wider war into Syria. "Defense officials told the Post ... that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria," the newspaper reported.

In August 2006, the Inter-Press Service provided additional details, reporting that the message was passed to Israel by Bush's deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who had been a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

"In a meeting with a very senior Israeli official, Abrams indicated that Washington would have no objection if Israel chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor, leaving the interlocutor in no doubt that the intended target was Syria," a source told the Inter-Press Service.

In December 2006, Meyray Wurmser, a leading U.S. neoconservative whose spouse is a Middle East adviser to Vice President Cheney, confirmed that neocons in and outside the Bush administration had hoped Israel would attack Syria as a means of undermining the insurgents in Iraq.

"If Syria had been defeated, the rebellion in Iraq would have ended," Wurmser said in an interview with Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet Web site. "A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah. ... If Israel had hit Syria, it would have been such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and (changed) the strategic map in the Middle East."

In early 2007, the revival of this neoconservative strategy of using the Israeli military to oust the Syrian government and to inflict damage on Iran's nuclear program may represent a last-ditch -- and high-risk -- gamble by Bush and the neocons to salvage their historic legacy.

If that is the case, then Bush will approve "the surge" in U.S. forces into Iraq, which likely will be followed by some provocation that can be blamed on Syria or Iran, thus justifying the expanded war.

Betting the lives of American soldiers and countless civilians across the Middle East, Bush will follow the age-old adage of gambling addicts: in for a dime, in for a dollar.

Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved......View this story online at:http://www.alternet.org/story/45852/ ^^^^^^^

[Saundra Hummer]

.
:: :: :: :shrug: :: :: ::
Most Outrageous Right Wing Comments of 2006
By , Media Matters for America
Posted on December 28, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/45983/

.......How extreme were conservative commentators in their remarks this year? How about calls to nuke the Middle East and an allegation that a "gay … mafia" used the congressional page program as its own "personal preserve." Right-wing rhetoric documented by Media Matters for America included the nonsensical (including Rush Limbaugh's claim that America's "obesity crisis" is caused by, among other things, our failure to "teach [the poor] how to butcher a -- slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter"), the offensive (such as right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel's question about "Barack Hussein Obama": Is he "a man we want as president when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?"), and the simply bizarre (such as William A. Donohue's claim that some Hollywood stars would "sodomize their own mother in a movie"). Since there were so many outrageous statements, we included a list of honorable mentions along with the top 11, which, if not for Ann Coulter, we might have limited to 10.

The top 11 (in chronological order):

William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: "Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn't care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face." [2/9/06]

Fox News host John Gibson: "Do your duty. Make more babies. That's a lesson drawn out of two interesting stories over the last couple of days. First, a story yesterday that half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic. You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic. Why is that? Well, Hispanics are having more kids than others. Notably, the ones Hispanics call 'gabachos' -- white people -- are having fewer." [5/11/06]

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on the New York Times' decision to report on the Bush administration's warrantless domestic wiretapping program and a Treasury Department financial transaction tracking program: The Times had done "something that could have gotten them executed, certainly did get the Rosenbergs (Julius and Ethel) executed." [7/12/06]

Coulter responding to Hardball host Chris Matthews' question, "How do you know that [former President] Bill Clinton's gay?": "I don't know if he's gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore -- total fag." [7/27/06]

Nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage: "That's why the department store dummy named Wolf Blitzer, a Jew who was born in Israel, will do the astonishing act of being the type that would stick Jewish children into a gas chamber to stay alive another day. He's probably the most despicable man in the media next to Larry King, who takes a close runner-up by the hair of a nose. The two of them together look like the type that would have pushed Jewish children into the oven to stay alive one more day to entertain the Nazis." [8/7/06]

Coulter on Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., an African-American: "Congresswoman Maxine Waters had parachuted into Connecticut earlier in the week to campaign against [Sen. Joseph I.] Lieberman because he once expressed reservations about affirmative action, without which she would not have a job that didn't involve wearing a paper hat. Waters also considers Joe 'soft' on the issue of the CIA inventing crack cocaine and AIDS to kill all the black people in America." [8/9/06]

Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, blaming America's "obesity crisis" on "the left," "liberal government," and "food stamps": "Because we are sympathetic, we are compassionate people, we have responded by letting our government literally feed these people to the point of obesity. At least here in America, didn't teach them how to fish, we gave them the fish. Didn't teach them how to butcher a -- slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter. The real bloat here, as we know, is in -- is in government." [8/29/06]

Coulter on Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I.: "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln." [8/30/06]

Conservative pundit and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan: "Look, [Rep. Jim] Kolbe [R-Ariz.] is gay. He is an out-of-the-closet gay. [Rep. Mark] Foley [R-Fla.] was gay. The House clerk who was in charge of the pages [Jeff Trandahl] was gay. Foley's administrative assistant, Mr. [Kirk] Fordham, the New York Times tells us, was gay. You hear about a lot of others. What's going on here, Joe [Scarborough, MSNBC host], is basically these, this little mafia in there looked upon the pages, I guess, as their -- sort of their personal preserve. And it stinks to high heaven what was done. And it stinks to high heaven that it was not exposed and these types of people, thrown out by the Republican Party." [10/9/06]

CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck to Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn.: "OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. … With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, 'Let's cut and run.' And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' " [11/14/06]

Right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel on Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.: So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian … is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as president when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?" [12/18/06]

Honorable mentions (also in chronological order):

Beck: "Cindy Sheehan. That's a pretty big prostitute there, you know what I mean?" [1/10/06]

Republican strategist Mary Matalin: "I mean, you know, I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists. And they're keeping constituency, they're keeping their neighborhoods and their African-American brothers enslaved, if you will, by continuing to let them think that they're -- or forced to think that they're victims, that the whole system is against them." [2/8/06]

Pat Robertson, host of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club: "But it does seem that with the current makeup of the court, they still don't have as many judges as would be needed to overturn Roe [v. Wade]. They need one more, and I dare say before the end of this year there will be another vacancy on the court." [3/7/06]

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and host of the daily Christian radio show The Albert Mohler Program: "Well, I would have to say as a Christian that I believe any belief system, any world view, whether it's Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or dialectical materialism for that matter, Marxism, that keeps persons captive and keeps them from coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, is a demonstration of satanic power." [3/17/06]

Nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz on Rep. Cynthia McKinney's (D-Ga.) hairstyle: "She looks like a ghetto slut. … It looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory. … She looks like Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence. … She looks like a shih tzu!" [3/31/06]

Boortz on McKinney's hairstyle (again): "I saw Cynthia McKinney's hairdo yesterday -- saw it on TV. I don't blame that cop for stopping her. It looked like a welfare drag queen was trying to sneak into the Longworth House Office Building. That hairdo is ghetto trash. I don't blame them for stopping her." [3/31/06]

Limbaugh discussing a videotape released by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the then-leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq: "[I]t sounds just like the DNC (Democratic National Committee) is writing his scripts now." [4/26/06]

Beck: "Blowing up Iran. I say we nuke the bastards. In fact, it doesn't have to be Iran, it can be everywhere, anyplace that disagrees with me." [5/11/06]

Jonathan Hoenig, managing member of Capitalistpig Asset Management LLC, on Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto: "I think when it comes to Iran, the problem is we haven't been forceful enough. I mean if you -- frankly, if you want to see the Dow go up, let's get the bombers in the air and neutralize this Iranian threat." [6/5/06]

Fox host Geraldo Rivera: "I've known [Sen.] John Kerry [D-Mass.] for over 35 years. Unlike me, he is a combat veteran, so he gets some props. But in the last 35 years, I've seen a hell of a lot more combat than John Kerry. And for a smart man like that in a political ploy to set a date certain only aids and abets the enemy, and the Democrats are at their own self-destructive behavior once again." [6/22/06]

Savage: "I don't know why we don't use a bunker-buster bomb when he comes to the U.N. and just take [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] out with everyone in there." [7/21/06]

Boortz: "I want you to think for a moment of how incompetent and stupid and worthless, how -- that's right, I used those words -- how incompetent, how ignorant, how worthless is an adult that can't earn more than the minimum wage? You have to really, really, really be a pretty pathetic human being to not be able to earn more than the human wage. Uh -- human, the minimum wage." [8/3/06]

Syndicated columnist and Fox News host Cal Thomas on businessman Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate: "It completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing. … [T]hey have now morphed into Taliban Democrats because they are willing to 'kill' one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe." [8/10/06]

Fox News host Sean Hannity, two months before the November midterm elections: "This is the moment to say that there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi [D-Calif.] doesn't become the [House] speaker." [8/29/06]

Beck: "The Middle East is being overrun by 10th-century barbarians. That's what I thought at 5 o'clock this morning, and I thought, 'Oh, geez, what -- what is this?' If they take over -- the barbarians storm the gate and take over the Middle East (this is what I'm thinking at 5 o'clock in the morning) -- we're going to have to nuke the whole place." [9/12/06]

Savage: "My fear is that if the Democrats win [in the November midterm elections], and I'm afraid that they might, you're going to see America melt down faster that you could ever imagine. It will happen overnight, and it could lead to the breakup of the United States of America, the way the Soviet Union broke up." [10/13/06]

Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Nancy Pelosi's appearance: "I always use the line for Nancy Pelosi, 'You get one shot at a facelift. If it doesn't work the first time, let it go.' " [10/31/06]

Limbaugh on the Middle East: "Fine, just blow the place up." [11/27/06]

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly (on his radio show): "Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq? No. I don't care. Let's get our people out of there. Let them kill each other. Maybe they'll all kill each other, and then we can have a decent country in Iraq." [12/5/06]

New York Post columnist Ralph Peters on Iraq Study Group co-chairman James Baker: "The difference is that [Pontius] Pilate just wanted to wash his hands of an annoyance, while Baker would wash his hands in the blood of our troops." [12/7/06]

Conservative syndicated radio host Michael Medved on the animated movie "Happy Feet": The film contains "a whole subtext, as there so often is, about homosexuality." [12/11/06]


Fox captions
Additionally, although these are not examples of specific conservative commentators making outrageous comments, we would be remiss if we did not mention that Fox News made a regular practice of attacking Democrats or repeating Republican talking points in on-screen text during its coverage of political issues. Some examples:

"All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" [2/23/06]

"Attacking Capitalism: Have Dems Declared War on America?" [2/18/06]

"Dems Helping the Enemy?" [5/22/06]

"A Lamont Win, Bad News for Democracy in Mideast?"

"Have the Democrats Forgotten the Lessons of 9/11?"

"Is the Democratic Party Soft on Terror?" [8/8/06]

"The #1 President on Mideast Matters: George W Bush?" [8/14/06]

"Is the Liberal Media Helping to Fuel Terror?" [8/16/06]
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
.....View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/45983/
:: :: :: .

[Saundra Hummer]

^^^^^^^Poll: Bush, Britney Get Thumbs-DownPOSTED: 2:08 pm EST December 28, 2006
UPDATED: 4:54 pm EST December 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Bad guy of 2006: President George W. Bush. Good guy of 2006: President George W. Bush.

Survey: Bush: Hero Or Villain?
When people were asked in an AP-AOL News poll to name the villains and heroes of the year, Bush topped both lists, in a sign of these polarized times.

Among entertainment celebrities, Oprah Winfrey edged out Michael J. Fox as the best celebrity role model while Britney Spears outdistanced Paris Hilton as the worst.

Bush won the villain sweepstakes by a landslide, with one in four respondents putting him at the top of that bad-guy list. When people were asked to name the candidate for villain that first came to mind, Bush far outdistanced even Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader in hiding; and former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who is scheduled for execution.

The president was picked as hero of the year by a much smaller margin. In the poll, 13 percent named him as their favorite while 6 percent cited the troops in Iraq.

On the question of celebrity role models, a pop singer's bad behavior claimed worst honors.

When asked to choose from a list of names, nearly three in 10 adults, or 29 percent, bestowed the honor of worst celebrity of the year on Spears.

The 25-year-old pop singer and mother of two young sons recently filed for divorce from Kevin Federline, her husband of two years. She then followed with highly publicized nights out with party girls Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, including photographic evidence of Spears wearing no underpants, which raised questions about her fitness as a parent.

Spears apologized on her Web site, saying she probably went "a little too far" with her newfound freedom.

Second-worst celebrity billing went to Hilton, 18 percent. The 25-year-old celebutante was arrested for drunken driving in Los Angeles in September while, she has said, she was on a late-night hamburger run.

Mel Gibson, 50, was third-worst celebrity with 12 percent, surely the result of his anti-Semitic tirade at police in Malibu, Calif., during his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving. He later apologized and said he harbored no animosity toward Jews.

In the best celebrity role model category, 29 percent of adults chose talk-show host Winfrey.

The philanthropist and entertainment mogul contributed $40 million toward the establishment of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, which is scheduled to open next month.

Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, finished second with 23 percent. He recently was criticized by conservatives for political ads that showed his body shaking as he urged support for a ballot measure promoting stem cell research and for the Democratic Senate candidate over the Republican.

Actor George Clooney, who's been advocating for refugees in the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, finished third with 12 percent.

Eight percent chose Angelina Jolie over boyfriend Brad Pitt, 2 percent. Newlyweds Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes tied at 2 percent.

Rounding out the worst celebrity role model category were Cruise, 9 percent; former "Seinfeld" star Michael Richards, 6 percent; Nicole Richie, 5 percent; Federline, 4 percent; Lohan, 3 percent; and Jolie, 2 percent.

Jolie and Cruise were the only celebrities to land on both the best and worst lists. But more people named Jolie best celebrity role model, and more people named Cruise worst.

Bush was the choice of 43 percent of Democrats for villain, and 27 percent of Republicans for hero.

The telephone poll of 1,004 adults was conducted Dec. 19-21 by Ipsos, an international polling firm. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. .

[Saundra Hummer]

.............

A dictator created then destroyed by America

By
Robert Fisk

12/30/06 "The Independent" -- -- Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
Go on-site to view this article and others by clicking on the following link:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16014.htm
.......

[Saundra Hummer]

.***********Saddam:
The questions that will live on
By
Andrew Buncombe
in
Washington

12/30/06 "The Independent" -- -- So why did George Bush decide to invade Iraq? Nearly four years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, the reasons appear both as obvious and as elusive as they were in the spring of 2003.

The official reasoning was always straightforward. Key among the claims included in the so-called Iraq War Resolution passed by Congress in October 2002 was that Iraq "poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region". It added that Saddam's regime harboured chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to develop a nuclear arsenal.

In an address to the nation just three days before the invasion, Mr Bush declared: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

It quickly became clear that central claim was not true, and it became equally clear the administration had been manipulating uncertain and "caveated" intelligence to make the case for a war that had been decided on long before. The famous Downing Street memo suggests that as early as July 2002 " intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". Indeed, within hours of the attacks of 9/11, senior elements within the administration were seeking for a strike against Iraq even though there was no evidence it was involved.

But if the alleged threat of WMD was based on manipulated intelligence – some provided by Iraqi exiles such as Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress - what else motivated the US? Many remain convinced the overwhelming factor was a desire to control Iraq's oil supplies, the second largest proven reserves in the world. Such a view has been reinforced by recent recommendations of Iraq Study Group which said: " The United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganise the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise, in order to enhance efficiency, transparency, and accountability."

Veteran dissident Noam Chomsky said: "It is glaringly obvious that Iraq is estimated to have the second largest energy reserves in the world and is right at the heart of the world's major energy producing region, and that establishing a client state in Iraq would considerably enhance policies that go back to the dawn of the oil age, and in particular to the post-war period when the US was taking over global domination, and established as a very high and natural policy principle the need to control this ‘stupendous source of strategic power'."

He added: "It takes remarkable obedience to authority to believe that the US would have 'liberated' Iraq - or taken revenge - if its main exports were lettuce and pickles, and the major petroleum resources were in the South Pacific."

Some point out that a desire among some in government to oust Saddam predated 9/11, and suggest in the aftermath of those attacks, a climate existed in which it was easier to pursue an invasion. Indeed, among the signatories to the 1998 letter from the neo-con Project for the New American Century calling on President Clinton to take on Saddam were former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

Mr Wolfowitz later said: Saddam's alleged possession of WMD was just one of many reasons for invading. "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," he said.

David Swanson, a founder of afterdowningstreet.org, a coalition of peace and activist groups, said: "The one thing we know is that the reasons they told us were false. they wanted an Iraq that looked free but isn't and they wanted to control it¿They wanted the oil and the power that comes with controlling that oil and making profits for British and US oil companies."

Did other factors influence Mr Bush? Was he seeking revenge against "the guy who tried to kill my dad" – a reference to an alleged plot to kill the president's father during a visit to Kuwait in 1993 or was there even a broader strategic rationale, one that would benefit Israel – something claimed by peace activist Cindy Sheehan.

What does seem certain is that there was a confluence of factors and interests coming together in the aftermath of 9/11 that allowed Mr Bush to proceed to war with little opposition from the Congress, or indeed, the media.

[I]There are article's after article's on this site about Saddam Hussein and his death, as well as our involvement with him, much, much more to learn of. Just click on the following link to access:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16020.htm
************* .

[Saundra Hummer]

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The Black Bull died today
By
Mirza Yawar Baig

12/30/06 "Information Clearing House"-- -- They did it. They gave this Ummah a sacrifice on the day of Eid ul Adha. What an unforgettable Eid!! A human sacrifice. Not a sheep or goat. What a message!! Wow!! What a powerful message that I am sure has shaken all the thrones of the puppets who are watching the events. Poor puppets!!

Saddam Hussain, they say, is dead. The news reporting is one good example of the pimp press in full swing. If anyone who is not suffering from amnesia can recall, 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' was a phrase coined by American foreign policy experts to lie to their own nation and the world and justify their invasion of Iraq. Then their lie was exposed but by then their objective of looting Iraq's oil had also been accomplished. They had control of the oil fields. And in the process a few hundred thousand Iraqis died at the hands of Americans; well that is inevitable - collateral damage. As they say Weapons of Mass Deception - which of course the pimp press is responsible for and continues to perpetrate on the world.

Death is not the "item" in the news. It is the death of the myth of American justice and freedom. So now we can all breathe freely as we see the true nature of the animal before us. Even those who continued to insist on living in doubt can deny it no longer. But watch out!! This news item and a million like it, floating on the net or shouting themselves hoarse on the TV are all focused on trying to make you and me distracted from the reality of what we are seeing here. So they talk about how brutal Saddam was and how many people he killed and how he 'started' the Iraq-Iran war.

The issue of course is none of those things. If these were in fact issues, then we would see Bush and all his cronies and most of their puppets sitting on thrones in their gilded prisons, swinging from the gallows long before Saddam came anywhere near them. The issue is America's right to invade a sovereign nation. Any country's right to invade and occupy another sovereign nation and loot its wealth. That is the issue. Are we, the people of the world saying that it is the right of America or anyone with the power to do so, to take by force what they want from whoever they want? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the rapist to rape? Are we, the people of the world, saying that it is the right of the bandit or the highway robber to hold you up and take from you what he wishes by force? Because in my opinion, by remaining silent, that is exactly what we will be saying. You decide what you want to do. I have already made my decision as you can see.

The pimp press and all those who it serves want you and me to forget these issues. And they believe that if they make enough noise, we will.

Remember O People! The name of the animal is Empire. And you and I have a choice. Sell your soul and bow your head in submission to the King. Or raise your head and it will be cut off. It's as simple as that. Freedom is as it will be defined for you. Justice is as will be given to you. Democracy is as is approved for you. If you elect Hamas as your party of choice, that is not democracy. It will be sabotaged and ever willing pimps will be put in the place of the people you really wanted. If you have any sense you will see the writing on the wall and next time around you will elect Abbas. If not the Empire has unlimited power, money and people to enforce its will. All that will happen is that a 100 of you will die for every American soldier who comes to enforce the will of the Empire. That is a price that the Empire can and will extract. After all it did not get to where it is today by being made of sugar candy, did it?

Resources are for those who can take them and use them. Where they happen to be located is immaterial. Their owners are still the same. Those who come in the way because they happen to be located physically on those resources have a choice; move away quietly and maybe you will even be paid something. If not, you will be moved by force...not sideways...but 6 feet below. Now even the dumbest in the world should be able to understand that, no??

But no!! There are those who are dumber than the dumb. They are those who believe in their right to determine how they will live, by what code. They are those who believe that it is their right to live by their laws in their lands without apology to anyone. They are those who believe in their right to choose who will lead them. They are those who believe that foreigners can't dictate to them, who they should elect to their councils. They are those who believe in their right to use what they own, to sell it to who they want, in whatever currency they choose to sell and at whatever price. They are those who believe that it is the right of the owner of a property to decide to sell or not and at what price. They believe that the buyer can't dictate those terms to them. They are those who believe that all humans are equal irrespective of race, color or religion. They believe that a lack of melanin in the skin is not a sign of human superiority just as a surfeit of it is not. They believe that if this life is to be lived, then it must be lived with honor. They believe that a death with honor is far more preferable than a life without honor. They believe that enslavement is in the mind. And that until they accept in their minds and hearts that they are slaves, they cannot be enslaved. And such people will never be enslaved. No matter how many they kill.

What they don't understand is that every head that is cut off to terrorize only strengthens the resolve that injustice must be removed from the face of the earth. And whatever price is to be paid, is worth the result. The plant of justice is fertilized by the blood of martyrs.

As I write this post I am reminded of the Arabic legend of the White Bull: At Thawr il Abyadh

Once upon a time three bulls lived in the forest. One white, one brown and one black. They were brothers and lived together in harmony. In that forest also lived a tiger who had his eye on the bulls. But every time he attacked one of them the others came to his aid and together they drove the tiger away.

The tiger decided that he needed to change his strategy. So one day when the Black Bull was away, he went to the other two and said, "You know, the Black Bull is black and dirty and evil. Why do you keep him with you? His is a disgrace to you. You are beautiful and noble. If the Black Bull is no longer there, you will have all the grazing to yourself. He takes away your food and adds no value to you." The two bulls listened to the tiger's spiel and said, "Well, you know, he is our brother. What can we do?"

"You need not do anything at all," said the tiger. "I am your friend. I will do what needs to be done. Just don't come to the aid of the Black Bull when he calls you." The others agreed.

The next day, they heard the voice of the Black Bull calling for help in anguish and fear. They listened to him and went back to their grazing. Gradually the calls stopped. The two brothers could not look each other in the eye but then, nice green grass wipes away memories and after a little while it was as if the Black Bull never existed.

Then one day the tiger came to the White Bull when he was alone and said, "So are you happy with the advise I gave you? Didn't I advise you well? Now here is another advise. You are the real king of the forest. You are White and clean and pure and holy and beautiful. You are wise and good. You deserve to live in solitary splendor like a king. Not with some dirty brown trash who you have to share your food with. Why do you need him? He is a liability and an embarrassment to you."

"Well, what should I do?"

"You know the score. Nothing at all. I am there to take care of everything for you. Just relax."

Next day, the White Bull heard the dying screams of the Brown Bull and closed his ears and went back to his grazing.

The White Bull lived for a few days all by himself, grazing where he wanted and drinking from the clean streams of the forest. Then one morning the tiger came again. From the look in his eyes, the White Bull knew that this visit was different. All his life flashed before his eyes. He recalled the time when the three brothers stood together, shoulder to shoulder. Then he recalled all the incidents since then. As the tiger sat before him, not in any hurry, knowing that the result was pre-determined, the White Bull said to him, "I have one last wish. Will you grant it to me?"

"Anything at all my friend", said the tiger.

The White Bull then climbed a hill and when he got to the top of it, he called out to the people of the forest, "O! People, I do not die today. I died the day the Black Bull died."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16019.htm
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[Saundra Hummer]

Iraqi Government Executes Former Dictator

By
CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and QASSI
AP
Updated:2006-12-30 14:57:56
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Dec. 30) - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners before dawn Saturday. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm.

Defiant to the End
Jump Below: Watch Video: Go on-site to access:
http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/iraqi-government-executes-former/20061229140609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

More Coverage:
· Joy and Outrage in Iraq
· Bush Reacts to Execution
· Deadliest Month for U.S. Troops

Obituary: A Life of ViolenceIn a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes. Go on-site to access.

Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."

"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

Watch Video of Saddam's Life, Death
Bloody Rise to the Top
History of Saddam Dictator Dead (Graphic)
Final Moments More Video:
Bush's Reaction
Witness to Execution
U.S. Muslims Rejoice
Fall From Power

Life of Luxury, Cruelty Ex-Dictator's Goodbye Dujail Revisited
The post-execution footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.

Al-Arabiya satellite television reported Saturday night that a delegation including the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam's clan retrieved his body from Baghdad and took it for burial near the executed dictator's hometown of Tikrit. The broadcaster reported the burial would take place Sunday. The report could not immediately be verified.

Earlier, in Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. Some hanged an effigy of Saddam. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

The execution took place during the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice "is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror."

He said that the execution marks the "end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops" and cautioned that Saddam's death will not halt the violence in Iraq.

Within hours of his death, bombings killed at least 68 people in Iraq, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad.


Saddam's Life

Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam's death.

"Now all the victims' families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence," said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad.

But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.

"The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior," said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets of Tikrit, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air, and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.

A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker.

In a statement, Saddam's lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, "the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles."

"He did not lie when he declared his trial null," they said.

Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.

"We wanted him to be executed on a special day," National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television.

Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the AP that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.

He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck.

Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.

"Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood," al-Askari said. "Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: 'God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.'"

Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam's neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.

Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital's most important Shiite shrine - the Imam Kazim shrine.

The Iraqi prime minister's office released a statement that said Saddam's execution was a "strong lesson" to ruthless leaders who commit crimes against their own people.

"We strongly reject considering Saddam as a representative of any sect in Iraq because the tyrant only represented his evil soul," the statement said. "The door is still open for those whose hands are not tainted with the blood of innocent people to take part in the political process and work on rebuilding Iraq."

The execution came 56 days after a court convicted Saddam and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims from Dujail. Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal Monday and ordered him executed within 30 days.

A U.S. judge on Friday refused to stop Saddam's execution, rejecting a last-minute court challenge.

U.S. troops cheered as news of Saddam's execution appeared on television at the mess hall at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad. But some soldiers expressed doubt that Saddam's death would be a significant turning point for Iraq.

"First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then when there were none, it was that we had to find Saddam. We did that, but then it was that we had to put him on trial," said Spc. Thomas Sheck, 25, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "So now, what will be the next story they tell us to keep us over here?"

At his death, he was in the midst of a second trial, charged with genocide and other crimes for a 1987-88 military crackdown that killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. Experts said the trial of his co-defendants was likely to continue despite his execution.

Many people in Iraq's Shiite majority were eager to see the execution of a man whose Sunni Arab-dominated regime oppressed them and Kurds. Before the hanging, a mosque preacher in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Friday called Saddam's execution "God's gift to Iraqis."

In a farewell message to Iraqis posted Wednesday on the Internet, Saddam said he was giving his life for his country as part of the struggle against the U.S. "Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs," he said.

One of Saddam's lawyers, Issam Ghazzawi, said the letter was written by Saddam on Nov. 5, the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal in the Dujail killings.

Najeeb al-Nauimi, a member of Saddam's legal team, said U.S. authorities maintained physical custody of Saddam until the execution to prevent him being humiliated publicly or his corpse being mutilated, as has happened to previous Iraqi leaders deposed by force. He said they didn't want anything to happen to further inflame Sunni Arabs.

"This is the end of an era in Iraq," al-Nauimi said from Doha, Qatar. "The Baath regime ruled for 35 years. Saddam was vice president or president of Iraq during those years. For Iraqis, he will be very well remembered. Like a martyr, he died for the sake of his country."

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

In the months after he seized power on July 16, 1979, he had hundreds of members of his own party and army officers slain. In 1996, he ordered the slaying of two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan but returned to Baghdad after receiving guarantees of safety.

Saddam built Iraq into a one of the Arab world's most modern societies, but then plunged the country into an eight-year war with neighboring Iran that killed hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wrecked Iraq's economy.

When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Iraqis had been transformed from among the region's most prosperous people to some of its most impoverished.

Associated Press Writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.
http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/iraqi-government-executes-former/20061229140609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
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[Saundra Hummer]

Go on-site to view who we lost this year, from the fabulously interesting to the infamous, many beloved people left this year.

This site has their photo's, alongside the Saddam Hussein article.

Deaths: 2006

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/iraqi-government-executes-former/20061229140609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

[jonesy]

A Dictator Created Then Destroyed by America
By Robert Fisk
The Independent UK

Saturday 30 December 2006

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbade any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.

"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.

It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.

But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".

When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.

But we will have got away with it.

[Saundra Hummer]

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~~~~~~~
"True compassion, is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Martin Luther King Jr.

~~~

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these."

George Washington Carver


~~~

"To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development."

Felix Adler:

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"...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings."

Sogyal Rinpoche

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[Saundra Hummer]

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:: :: :: :: :: :: ::
He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal
By
Robert Fisk

12/31/06 "The Independent"
-- --
We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.

"Mr Fisk... at the very beginning of the war, in September of 1980, I was invited to go to the Pentagon," he said. "There I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank revetments - thousands of them - all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more than this. And I travelled with these maps from Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were very, very grateful!"

I was with Saddam's forward commandos at the time, under Iranian shellfire, noting how the Iraqi forces aligned their artillery positions far back from the battle front with detailed maps of the Iranian lines. Their shelling against Iran outside Basra allowed the first Iraqi tanks to cross the Karun within a week. The commander of that tank unit cheerfully refused to tell me how he had managed to choose the one river crossing undefended by Iranian armour. Two years ago, we met again, in Amman and his junior officers called him "General" - the rank awarded him by Saddam after that tank attack east of Basra, courtesy of Washington's intelligence information.

Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis "was not a matter of deep strategic concern".

I saw the results, however. On a long military hospital train back to Tehran from the battle front, I found hundreds of Iranian soldiers coughing blood and mucus from their lungs - the very carriages stank so much of gas that I had to open the windows - and their arms and faces were covered with boils. Later, new bubbles of skin appeared on top of their original boils. Many were fearfully burnt. These same gases were later used on the Kurds of Halabja. No wonder that Saddam was primarily tried in Baghdad for the slaughter of Shia villagers, not for his war crimes against Iran.

We still don't know - and with Saddam's execution we will probably never know - the extent of US credits to Iraq, which began in 1982. The initial tranche, the sum of which was spent on the purchase of American weapons from Jordan and Kuwait, came to $300m. By 1987, Saddam was being promised $1bn in credit. By 1990, just before Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, annual trade between Iraq and the US had grown to $3.5bn a year. Pressed by Saddam's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to continue US credits, James Baker then Secretary of State, but the same James Baker who has just produced a report intended to drag George Bush from the catastrophe of present- day Iraq - pushed for new guarantees worth $1bn from the US.

In 1989, Britain, which had been giving its own covert military assistance to Saddam guaranteed £250m to Iraq shortly after the arrest of Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft in Baghdad. Bazoft, who had been investigating an explosion at a factory at Hilla which was using the very chemical components sent by the US, was later hanged. Within a month of Bazoft's arrest William Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office minister, said: "I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed if we play our diplomatic hand correctly... A few more Bazofts or another bout of internal oppression would make it more difficult."

Even more repulsive were the remarks of the then Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, on relaxing controls on British arms sales to Iraq. He kept this secret, he wrote, because "it would look very cynical if, so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales".

Saddam knew, too, the secrets of the attack on the USS Stark when, on 17 May 1987, an Iraqi jet launched a missile attack on the American frigate, killing more than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the vessel. The US accepted Saddam's excuse that the ship was mistaken for an Iranian vessel and allowed Saddam to refuse their request to interview the Iraqi pilot.

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.
'The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East' by Robert Fisk is now available in paperback http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16031.htm :: :: :: :: ::
.

[Saundra Hummer]

My post above pretty well echoes your's Jonesy. What a deal.

Tin horn dictators take notice, once you've out lived your usefulness, you're fair game, and you will lose.

The "dung heap of history" is full of such men; men who have done our bidding, thinking they were in the cat bird seat, but what a big mistake to have believed this way. SRH



From Jonsey:
( See Post #4065 for complete article)

A Dictator Created Then Destroyed by America
By Robert Fisk
The Independent UK

Saturday 30 December 2006

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

[Saundra Hummer]

.
:: :: :: :: ::
Joel Rosenberg: Apocalyptic man
Bill Berkowitz
-
WorkingForChange

12.29.06 - In a recent blog post datelined Jerusalem, Joel Rosenberg wrote: "The buzz here in the last few days is that Israel is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and ballistic missile sites." Given Israel's less than sterling performance against Hezbollah this past summer, Rosenberg wasn't convinced that Israel "has the capacity -- or the will -- at the moment to neutralize the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile threat."

However, with "a new Hitler rising in Iran," it is up to President Bush, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Washington in mid-November, to deal with the Iranian threat: "If President Bush believes Iran needs to be neutralized (and I believe he does), and he is convinced that military action is the only way (I don't believe he is there right now), then the U.S. should take the lead."

After all, wrote Rosenberg "If anyone is going to stop Iran from threatening the world with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, it has to be soon, perhaps no later than the end of 2007. After all, 2008 is an American election year. 2009 will be the start of a new administration. By then it may be too late. The thermonuclear genie may be out of the bottle."

The Israeli/Hezbollah war led several cable television news networks to raise questions about whether the crisis in the Middle East was a signal that the "End Times" were approaching. Rosenberg, the bestselling Christian author of such apocalyptic/political thrillers as "The Copper Scroll," "The Ezekiel Option," and "The Last Jihad," was invited to appear on CNN and the Fox News Channel.

Earlier this fall, Rosenberg was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, speaking at two churches. His topic; "Are We Living In The Last Days?" "We examined current events in Russia, North Korea and the Middle East in the light of Bible prophecy," Rosenberg pointed out.

Rosenberg's visit to Albuquerque was the 22nd city on his book tour. However, his speaking engagements extend beyond church appearances and book signings. In a recent appearance with host Glenn Beck on his CNN Headline News program, Rosenberg pointed out that he had made several visits to "speak at a White House Bible study" and had conversations with "a number of congressional leaders and Homeland Security, Pentagon [officials] about my novels, which are based on Bible prophecy."

Rosenberg told Beck that "the question that's been most interesting among these various administration and congressional officials is, 'Are you saying that the Bible talks about an alliance between Iran, Russia, and a group of Middle Eastern countries to attack Israel at some point?' And the answer is yes."

Rosenberg was an important but mostly behind-the-scenes figure in the conservative movement until his first novel "The Last Jihad" became a bestseller. A Jew who converted to Christianity more than 30 years ago, he had worked for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, U.S. business magazine magnate Steve Forbes, and right-wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. He is also a former Heritage Foundation staffer.

"The Last Jihad," completed before the 9/11 Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, propelled Rosenberg into the spotlight. The novel featured a hijacked jet making a kamikaze-like attack against the President of the United States, simultaneous terrorist strikes on the US, London, Paris and Saudi Arabia, an oil deal between Israel and the Palestinians that threatened to unleash a war with Iraq, and a possible preemptive nuclear strike. Helped along by endorsements from popular conservative talk show hosts Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and G. Gordon Liddy, the book hit the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com.

Rosenberg's second book, "The Last Days," opens with the death of Yasser Arafat and a U.S. diplomatic convoy ambushed in Gaza. Wikipedia notes that "Two weeks before 'The Last Days' was published, a U.S. diplomatic convoy was ambushed in Gaza. Thirteen months later, Yasser Arafat died." "The Last Days" also spent time on the New York Times best-seller list, hit number five on the Denver Post list, and hit number eight on the Dallas Morning News list. According to Wikipedia, both books have been optioned by motion-picture producers.

In a late-October interview with the Washington Times, Rosenberg told reporter Chrissie Thompson that he didn't think that his novels "were going to predict the future. ... I was basing them on a series of Bible prophecies, but when [they] started to come true ... that has been striking for all of us, myself included."

Another of his novels, "The Ezekiel Option," is described by Rosenberg as "a political thriller about the threat of a Russian-Iranian alliance to destroy Israel based on the Biblical prophecies found in the Book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39." These prophecies, according to Rosenberg, "describe what Bible scholars call the war of Gog and Magog. Russia and Iran form a military alliance with Lebanon, Syria and a group of other Middle East countries to destroy Israel in what Ezekiel described as the last days"

In recent months Rosenberg has suggested that Russia be added to the Bush administration's "axis of evil":

"Under [Vladimir] Putin's leadership," Rosenberg wrote, "Russia has also joined the 'axis of evil.' It is selling billions of dollars worth of missiles and high-tech weaponry to Iran, Syria, Algeria, and other radical Islamic and Arab regimes. It is building nuclear facilities for Iran, training Iranian nuclear scientists, and running political interference for Iran at the UN to prevent the West from imposing sanctions despite the fact that Iran's leader has called for the United States and Israel to be wiped 'off the map.'"

Rosenberg describes his new non-fiction book "Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future" -- which hit the New York Times hardcover best seller list, logging in at #19 in mid-November 12 -- as "the nonfiction version of these prophecies, explaining what ... the prophecies mean and what's really going on in the world that suggests that we may be closer to the fulfillment of those prophecies than most people realize."

Asked about the growing relationship between Iran and Russia, Rosenberg pointed out that "Russia is clearly building a military alliance with Iran today. In December of last year, Russia signed a $1 billion arms deal with Iran. Russia is building Iran's nuclear facilities. Russia has trained over a thousand Iranian nuclear scientists, and Russia is running political interference for Iran at the United Nations to prevent the U.S. and Europe from slapping sanctions on Iran."

"Identifying Iran in Ezekiel 38 is" easy said Rosenberg. "The country mentioned is Persia, and until 1935, the official name of Iran was Persia. Where we get Russian from is that a dictator emerges in a land called Magog, according to Ezekiel 38:2. ... When you do the detective work ... you find out this is the people group that settled north of the Black Sea in what we now call Russia."

Recently, Rosenberg, and his wife Lynn, co-founded The Joshua Fund, which according to its website, "is partnering with evangelical ministries in the Middle East to provide desperately needed resources to Christians in the region to bless their neighbors in need in the name of Jesus. This is a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate the love of Christ to those who need it most."

According to Richard Bartholomew, the Fund's two "humanitarian aid" efforts are called the "Project to Bless Israel" and the "Project to Bless Lebanon."

"Lebanese refugees will get "Bags of Blessing," to be distributed by Campus Crusade for Christ and local evangelicals," Bartholomew reported. The "Bags" will, according to The Joshua Fund's materials, "include non-perishable food items such as beans, rice, pasta, canned meat, processed cheese, oil, and powdered milk. In addition, each Bag will contain basic supplies such as soap, candles, matches, and aspirin, and a Jesus film DVD in Arabic."

Bartholomew also pointed out that while the Lebanese refugees will receive the Jesus DVD, the Israelis "will be spared a similar Jesus DVD in Hebrew, for obvious political reasons."

(c) 2006 Working Assets Online. All rights reserved

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21813 [B]:: :: ::
.

[Saundra Hummer]

.
~~~~~~~
"Another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard - every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals, which they serve."

Eric Fromm

~~~

"In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed."

Eduardo Galeano

~~~
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

Bishop Desmond Tutu
(1931- )
Nobel Prize for Peace 1984

~~~

"It's not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely."

Leo Buscaglia,
author and university professor
(1924-1998)

~~~~~
.

[Saundra Hummer]

:: :: :: :: ::
A Lynching...
By
Riverbend
-
Iraqi Girl Blog

12/31/06 "Baghdad Burning" -- -- It's official. Maliki and his people are psychopaths. This really is a new low. It's outrageous- an execution during Eid. Muslims all over the world (with the exception of Iran) are outraged. Eid is a time of peace, of putting aside quarrels and anger- at least for the duration of Eid.

This does not bode well for the coming year. No one imagined the madmen would actually do it during a religious holiday. It is religiously unacceptable and before, it was constitutionally illegal. We thought we'd at least get a few days of peace and some time to enjoy the Eid holiday, which coincides with the New Year this year. We've spent the first two days of a holy holiday watching bits and pieces of a sordid lynching.

America the savior… After nearly four years and Bush's biggest achievement in Iraq has been a lynching. Bravo Americans.

Maliki has made the mistake of his life. His signature and unhidden glee at the whole execution, especially on the first day of Eid Al Adha (the Eid where millions of Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca), will only do more to damage his already tattered reputation. He's like a vulture in a suit (or a balding weasel). It's almost embarrassing. I kept expecting Muwafaq Al Rubaii to run over and wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth as he signed for the execution. Are these the people who represent the New Iraq? We're in so much more trouble than I ever thought.

And no- not the celebrations BBC are claiming. With the exception of a few areas, the streets are empty.

Now we come to CNN. Shame on you CNN journalists- you're getting lazy. The least you can do is get the last words correct when you write a story about an execution. Your articles are read the world over and will go down in history as references. You people are the biggest news network in the world- the least you can do is spend some money on a decent translator. Saddam's last words were NOT "Muqtada Al Sadr" as Munir Haddad claimed, according to the article below. If anyone had seen at least part of the video they showed on TV, you'd know that.

"A witness, Iraqi Judge Munir Haddad, said that one of the executioners told Hussein that the former dictator had destroyed Iraq, which sparked an argument that was joined by several government officials in the room.

As a noose was tightened around Hussein's neck, one of the executioners yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr," Haddad said, referring to the powerful anti-American Shiite religious leader.

Hussein, a Sunni, uttered one last phrase before he died, saying "Muqtada al-Sadr" in a mocking tone, according to Haddad's account."

From the video that was leaked, it was not an executioner who yelled "long live Muqtada al-Sadr". See, this is another low the Maliki government sunk to- they had some hecklers conveniently standing by during the execution. Maliki claimed they were "some witnesses from the trial", but they were, very obviously, hecklers. The moment the noose was around Saddam's neck, they began chanting, in unison, "God's prayers be on Mohamed and on Mohamed's family…" Something else I didn't quite catch (but it was very coordinated), and then "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada!" One of them called out to Saddam, "Go to hell…" (in Arabic). Saddam looked down disdainfully and answered "Heya hay il marjala…?" which is basically saying, "Is this your manhood…?".

Someone half-heartedly called out to the hecklers, "I beg you, I beg you- the man is being executed!" They were slightly quieter and then Saddam stood and said, "Ashadu an la ilaha ila Allah, wa ashhadu ana Mohammedun rasool Allah…" Which means, "I witness there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is His messenger." These are the words a Muslim (Sunnis and Shia alike) should say on their deathbed. He repeated this one more time, very clearly, but before he could finish it, he was lynched.

So, no, CNN, his last words were not "Muqtada Al Sadr" in a mocking tone- just thought someone should clear that up. (Really people, six of you contributed to that article!)

Then again, one could argue that it was a judge who gave them that false information. A judge on the Iraqi appeals court- one of the judges who ratified the execution order. Everyone knows Iraqi judges under American tutelage never lie- that explains CNN's confusion.

Muwafaq Al Rubai was said he was "weak and frightened". Apparently, Rubai saw a different lynching because according to the video they leaked, he didn't look frightened at all. His voice didn't shake and he refused to put on the black hood. He looked resigned to his fate, and during the heckling he looked as defiant as ever. (It's quite a contrast to Muhsin Abdul Hameed's public hysterics last year when the Americans raided his home.)

It's one thing to have militias participating in killings. This is allegedly the democracy the Americans flaunt. Is this how bloodthirsty and frightening we've become? Is this what Iraq stands for now? Executions? I'm sure the rest of the Arab countries will be impressed.

One of the most advanced countries in the world did not help to reconstruct Iraq, they didn't even help produce a decent constitution. They did, however, contribute nicely to a kangaroo court and a lynching. A lynching shall go down in history as America's biggest accomplishment in Iraq. So who's next? Who hangs for the hundreds of thousands who've died as a direct result of this war and occupation? Bush? Blair? Maliki? Jaffari? Allawi? Chalabi?

2006 has definitely been representative of Maliki and his government- killings like never before and a lynching to end it properly. Death and destruction everywhere. I'm so tired of all of this…

COMMENTS:
Who hangs for the hundreds of thousands who've died as a direct result of this war and occupation? Bush? Blair? Maliki? Jaffari? Allawi? Chalabi?
****
****
All of the above since they committed the same crime of killing civilians..
Dr. Zak | 01.01.07 - 1:56 pm | #
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..... Would that the USA were a shining beacon of freedom, democracy and justice.
..... It has become a reflex for me, when someone mentions CNN, to say "the propaganda channel?"
yrjo | 01.01.07 - 1:57 pm | #
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..... Someone should hang for the 600,000 Iraqi dead.
jazmine | 01.01.07 - 1:59 pm | #
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..... In spite of the crimes which were commited by saddam,he died TALL.
Those who hanged him and heckled at him have shown to be VERY SMALL men.
.....It is said that Ahmed Chalabi too was there.
.....After all what we see is that:The Americans-usa,are damocratically!! creating an islamic theocratic state with that criminal mukhtada the leader.
.....One dictator gone,another,probably worse,steps in.
How ironic!!!A great achievement by the usa at a VERY HIGH cost too.
.....Any more countries to be democratised in the same way?
ibtheos | 01.01.07 - 2:02 pm | #
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..... To anyone who has watched the video, the message was clear. Your holidays and holy days be damned, Bush is the Decider and the Executioner! May God have mercy on us; "citizens" of a terrorist gang.
Michael Emmons | 01.01.07 - 2:20 pm | #
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.....If the neocon crazies in the White House only did ONE SINGLE THING right, it should have been this: a proper trial, under proper laws, in a proper courthouse. That might have meant something. It might have stood as a monument to their good intentions, if nothing else.
.....But of course there were no good intentions.
gandhi | Homepage | 01.01.07 - 2:29 pm | #
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.....I can't help thinking that a deal must have been done. The USA hands Saddam over to these dogs, saying "Do what you want to him." In return, they get - what?
gandhi | Homepage | 01.01.07 - 2:32 pm | #
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.....Every post from Riverbend, all I can say is thank Gods she's alive.
.....God, thanks for keeping Riverbend alive. Keep up the good work.
You know who | 01.01.07 - 2:53 pm | #
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.....Someone did hang for the Iraqi dead, Saddam and his buddies.
Anonymous | 01.01.07 - 2:55 pm | #
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Anonymous,
.....Brave and daring Zionists such as yourself would probably be more comfortable chatting with Rush or O'Rielly. Why are you here?
swampfox | 01.01.07 - 3:01 pm | #
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..... Saddam was hanged for his crimes. Who will be hanged for over 600,000 dead Iraqs? Will Bush, Blair et al be hanged for their crimes? No justice no peace.
Fooz | 01.01.07 - 3:09 pm | #
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swampfox,
.....You know why he is here !
.....He is the divider for the decider!!
step/hen | 01.01.07 - 3:11 pm | #
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.....THe Iraqi River dog shills "Muslims all over the world (with the exception of Iran) are outraged"
.....Has Iraqi Safe-in-the-rear with Hanna and Chilabi River Dog ever been to Iraq!
.....Every one is outraged - yet this lop ear fruit bag interjects her one redeeming attribute to the "House of Zion" by excluding Iran from the outrage.
.....She don't know squat - she's Fistme's diesle dike maid!
.....lets be clear before we drift into more Zio-Fairy Tales.
.....In the illegal invasion called desert storm - where Stubby Dubby's Daddy murdered a 100,000 Iraqi conscripts as they retreated from Kuwaitte under a cease fire - in that war - where did Saddam hide his airforce. Who gave him permission to park Iraqi assets (planes) so the Zio-war criminals incineration devices could not destroy them - who - river dog - who?
.....The Nation of Iran did you zero brained Zio-Twitt - that's who. And they did it just just months out from the US-Zio contrived war between Iraq and Iran.
.....Iran was against the invasion of Iraq ZioDog River Biach!
.....This Iraqi Girl River Dog is full of poopy - the "except for Iran" LIE should tell you where's she's comming from.
.....Selling death to the Iranians with a kindly girlish river dog touch!
.....The only thing River Dog Girl knows is where that INC propaganda check she's been given can be cashed!
.....River Dog Girl is DC Wr Crime shill!
Cadavre | 01.01.07 - 3:13 pm | #
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.....It is all very sad .
.....Sad to see the country that once stood for justice, sanctuary and hope morph into this ugly monster led by their stunted dispicable shell of a man. A threat to all freedom loving people and a blight on this earth.
Juno | 01.01.07 - 3:19 pm | #
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Cadavre |
.....I think that u r either a sick iranian ass licker or an ignorant sod !
......Riverbend was chosen for many international prizes for her contribution without even knowing her real name ! Who r u scumbag to judge her !
mojoetrex | 01.01.07 - 3:25 pm | #
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Bytheway, it was Muwafak Al Rubaie, the iraqi national security adviser who filmed the whole lynching of Saddam with his mobile phone !
mojoetrex | 01.01.07 - 3:30 pm | #

---
Mojorex -
.....Riverbend is a cheap Zio-droid whore ready to polish bombs to murder Iranians.
.....That's all she is - a lot of a-holes win awards - thats because their lips are planted firm on the bung that feeds them US tax dollars to write propaganda for sheeples - like you - and me.
.....No my dear MojoRex - RiverGirlDog is a shill selling justification to murder Iranians.
.....AT the most she's a Kurd - an Israeli house keeper that gets a few moments on the master's `puter!
.....Be careful of those who exclude groups from our common humanity - be careful to avoid these kinds of idolotry.
Cadvre | 01.01.07 - 3:52 pm | #
--- Cadvre
.....Can u please tell me where u got this information ! Because I have been reading all along her blogs and it will be so disturbing to me to know that she is a hoax !
mojoetrex | 01.01.07 - 4:04 pm | #
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.....I don't suppose the person who took the real film of this lynching meant to do so but perhaps an interview the pro-war New York Times journalist said it best last night in an interview with ABC Australia - "every person of conscience should be ashamed".
.....This was a wild west lynching of the lowest order done by barbaric thugs no better than the thug they hanged who died with more dignity than Bush, Bliar and Coward have shown to date as they have, bombed, pillaged, smashed and slaughtered their way through a country of 26 million innocent human beings.
.....Consider this cadavre 2 million have left, 1 million are displaced and nearly 1 million are dead.
.....That is one hell of a lot of disaster for a lynching.
.....I would suggest readers get hold of a copy of the 1969 movie called "They Shoot Horses don't they"? because the concept of morality is the same.
.....In the film the hordes came like spectators to cheer or taunt the desparate as danced themselves to death and the closer to death they got the more crazed the spectators became.
.....Riverbend, I have Iraqi friends who read your work and love you and know you are real.
Marilyn | 01.01.07 - 4:16 pm | #
*************
Go on-site to view this article and others as well as any new incoming comments. Just click on the following link:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16040.htm :: :: :: .

[Saundra Hummer]

.........Conveniently forgotten

Saddam committed most of his crimes when he was an ally of those who now occupy his country

By Tariq Ali

01/01/07 "The Guardian" --- It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. The trial was so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch had to condemn it as a travesty. Judges were changed on Washington's orders, defence lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nuremberg was a relatively dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam Hussein's trial was the crudest and most grotesque to date.

The great thinker-president's reference to it "as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy" is as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger. The leaders of the European Union, supposedly hostile to capital punishment, were passive, as usual.
Although some Shia factions celebrated in Baghdad, the figures published by a fairly independent establishment outfit, the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, reveal that more than 80% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before it was occupied. (The ICRSS research is based on detailed house-to-house interviewing carried out during the third week of November.) Only 5% of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003; 12% felt things had improved and 9% said there was no change. Unsurprisingly, 95% felt the security situation was worse than before.

Add to this the figures supplied by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees: 1.6 million Iraqis (7% of the population) have fled the country since March 2003, and 100,000 leave every month - Christians, doctors, engineers, women. There are 1 million Iraqis in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 150,000 in Cairo. These are refugees who do not excite the sympathy of western public opinion, since the US - EU-backed - occupation is the cause. Perhaps it was these statistics, and estimates of a million Iraqi dead, that necessitated the execution of Saddam.

That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who are now occupying the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington and the poison gas supplied by what was then West Germany that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this.

The double standards applied by the west never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto, who presided over a mountain of corpses, was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam.

And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Falluja; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad; the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantánamo. Will Bush and Blair ever be tried for war crimes? Doubtful. And former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar? He is currently employed as a lecturer at Georgetown University, in Washington, where the language of instruction is of course English - of which he hardly speaks a word.

Saddam's lynching might send a shiver down the spines of the Arab ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged, so can the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, the Hashemite joker in Amman and the Saudi royals - as long as those who topple them are happy to play ball with the United States.
Tariq Ali is the author of Bush in Babylon: the recolonisation of Iraq - tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16044.htm ... .

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Rings of War
By
Charley Reese

01/01/06 "Lew Rockwell" --- - Think of a war as a violent center of a circle with concentric rings of people surrounding it. At the center are the soldiers who have to fight the war. In the next ring are the people whose loved ones are doing the fighting. In the third ring, at a safe distance, are the politicians who started the war.

The fourth ring includes journalists, to whom the war is just another story. They get paid to write and talk about something, and a war is a long-lasting topic.

The fifth ring includes the self-anointed experts, who love to do sound bites on television and participate in panel discussions.

The sixth ring includes the arms industry, which, wisely, keeps a low profile. Arms merchants, after all, view the war as a permanent holiday sale. The longer it lasts, the more profits they make. There is a distinct advantage in products that self-destruct with one-time use, such as bullets, missiles, bombs and artillery rounds. Even the big-ticket items like vehicles don't last too long.

The seventh and final ring of people includes the majority of Americans, who have no direct interest in the war. They are not in the military, they have no loved ones in the military, and they don't work in the arms industry.

To these people, a war in a distant place is like a television show that they can watch in the comfort of their living room. If they get bored, they can make it go away with a flick of their remote control. The war has no effect on their lives, which go on as if there were no war – as indeed there isn't, so far as they are concerned.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem with undeclared foreign wars. The great majority of Americans are excluded from participation. Politicians start wars, and politicians are the only ones who can end them. The fewer people involved in the war, the less pressure there will be on the politicians to end it. That leaves them free to posture on either side of the issue without actually doing anything.

President Bush has no interest in ending the war. Before the terrorist attack in 2001, he was at odds and ends and didn't seem to know what he wanted to do. But now he enjoys being a war president. It's given him a role to play. He's not going to give that up.

Congress, of course, could stop the war by cutting off the funds. That is one of the great checks and balances the founders wrote into the Constitution. Congress has 100 percent of the responsibility for and control of all federal expenditures. There is nothing the executive branch can do about it.

The soldiers can't declare peace. The people of Iraq can't declare peace. Only the American politicians can end this war, and they can't end it by sending more Americans to the killing fields. That ploy didn't work in Vietnam, and it won't work in Iraq.

So, if you want to spare lives, bombard your representatives with letters urging them to end the war now. In the future, we should insist on a declaration of war with a 10 percent surtax on income and a 10 percent war tax on goods and services, both to expire with the cessation of hostilities.

That would force everyone, even those in the seventh ring, to participate in the war and give everyone an incentive to end it. A pay-as-you-fight war would be whole lot less tolerable to most Americans. As long as we force soldiers to bleed, we should bleed financially.
January 1, 2007

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
COMMENTS
The Fourth Ring includes the journalist for whom the war is just another story. No, not just another story, sorry, this depends on the Journalist. There are many whores who call themselves Journalists and they are paid to write what their employers want.
Dante | 01.01.07 - 1:59 pm | #
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..... "There is a distinct advantage in products that self-destruct with one time use..."-great point.
fireskool | 01.01.07 - 2:55 pm | #
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Dante,
.....Yours is a quick response regarding journalists, supposedly as well confirmed as your statement that Robert Fisk is a Jew. I spent a few years with American and European news agencies (UPI, AFP, Reuters) during the tail end of Vietnam in the 70s. Most wire service journalists, at least, don't get imaginative or bigoted in their reports, and bureau chiefs who red line and blue line copy from desk reporters also get their byline taken from them once their reports hit the wire and are absorbed by news outlets, such as newspapers. I can at least agree that the "high ups" determine the content of the story and its "proper" slant put out to the public. But to malign journalists who do an honest job is not fair. We never wrote what "our employers wanted," period. It's how our copy got handled after we turned it in. Why not save your criticism, instead, for the "expert" pundits on TV or published in op/ed pages in newspapers and magazines? They are the ones who are highly paid and specialize in manipulating public opinion.
Paul W Darby | 01.01.07 - 2:55 pm | #
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.....Oh, so the great Paul W. Darby follows me across the forum to chastize me for having asked if the bitching over Fisk is because he's a Jew! Obviously you've a lot of time in your hands Paul Darby, maybe you should then be embedded with the troops in Iraq and reporting things as you see them.
All you need to do is read the pap that newspapers publish day after day. Should I begin to list the title of all the non-articles just where I live at the moment?
.....Please don't tell me what to do! why don't YOU save the criticism you're wasting on me and challenge the non reporting of the news?
Btw SO WHAT IF FISK IS A JEW? So what if he isn't? Obviously to you it means a lot that he may be.
Dante | 01.01.07 - 3:16 pm | #
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.....Also, read my comment Paul Darby, I very clearly stated "Depends on the Journalist"
.....But you were very quick to get off your knickers and jump into a bare assed attack.
Dante | 01.01.07 - 3:18 pm | #
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.....Reese is one of the great columnists because he raises issues that go way past the immediate question.
.....Such as --
..... "...the problem with undeclared foreign wars... *is* ... The great majority of Americans are excluded from participation... The fewer people involved in the war, the less pressure there will be on the politicians to end it..."
.....This is equally true of immigration, deindustrialization, Free Trade, and on and on down the list.
.....Logic tells me that even if a few penalties are tossed in, 300 million Americans will have no say anyway.
.....The United States is living proof that multiethnic empires of near-continental size just plain don't work. They cannot work.
.....The Iraq War is as much a symptom of citizen helplessness as the destruction of America's industrial infrastructure was.
.....Democracy was a sham, empires only fall, and that's where we are.
..........Happy New Year.
Franz | 01.01.07 - 3:31 pm | #
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Dante,
.....Actually I am not the "great Paul W. Darby," but just somebody with a news background interested in the twists and turns in the media, which I no longer trust, but also am unable to correct or modify to suit myself and/or all those who truly hate what our media have become. So, yes, I think it does make a big difference if Fisk is a Jew because his influence goes far and wide, and his criticisms of Arabs/Muslims of any stripe, such as Syrian, Iranian and Hizbollah, can't be taken as Fox News would say, "fair and balanced."
.....Anyway, again, your original statement was: "Seems that everytime there's an article written by Fisk, that more time is spent finding fault with the writer than discussing what he says. Could it be 'cause he's Jewish?" That is not a question; it is a statement. It was no better qualified than that. You were not clear when you added, "depends on the journalist."
.....What does that mean, actually?
.....But thanks for letting me know that Dante has a temper. I can understand why: you must be used to getting a black eye from one poster or another. If you sent your copy out for professional editing before posting, though, it might improve your style.
Paul W Darby | 01.01.07 - 4:08 pm | #
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Darby, I know that's not your name, and your intense chase and attack is not casual either. Why is it so important to you that Fisk is or isn't a Jew?
Dante has a temper? And what Paul Darby has? certainly a lot of vile and very little substance. You took offense over my remark over Fisk, take it as you wish, a question or an assertion, I won't split hairs with you. But tell me "Paul" what proof have you offered to the contrary? And why is it that important to you. Oh please stop writing bullshit, about professional editing! Just worry about your haste to jump into the fray to chastize and prosecute.
You're another one of those posters that jumps in with different names whenever they need to attack someone and have not the balls to use the old trite handle everyone recognizes. No, I don't have a temper, no more than you have wit.
Dante | 01.01.07 - 4:30 pm | #
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.....Reese is correct that this war is not hurting the people who are gaining finacially from it. Why doesn't Congress say that all future financing of the war will come from the elimination of the tax cuts for the rich that Bush put into effect. For example. lets increase the Capital Gains tax back to where it was under Clinton. Then we'll see how long the war lasts.
Roger Gambert | 01.01.07 - 4:39 pm | #
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.....Pay as you fight war. It already is a Pay as you fight war. Don't you think we would not be in the stone age of mentality if 40% of all tax dollars were not used to pay for results of past wars, presnt wars and wars not fought yet. It is just that nobody realizes they are throwing the treasure chest, lives and future away.
.....Pay as you fight war? | 01.01.07 - 5:09 pm | #
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16045.htm <<<O>>> .

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The fault lines of civilizations
H.D.S. Greenway
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
BOSTON

The old year closed with the murderous musketry of a new war. Ethiopia holds to the legend that it was founded by King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba's first son, Menelik, 3,000 years ago. Christianity came in the fourth century with Ethiopia's first bishop, Frumentius of Tyre. Seventeen centuries later, Ethiopia spent Christmas bombing the airfields of Mogadishu in neighboring Somalia.

It appears that Ethiopia, long ruled by Christians, does not want to see Somalia ruled by radical Islamists, and is therefore hard at work putting Somalia's warlords back in power. America's role in this conflict has not been adequately explained.

Long antagonists, Ethiopia and Somalia were divided during the Cold War by the ideological fault lines of the American-Soviet rivalry. "During the Cold War a country could be nonaligned, as many were, or it could, as some did, change its alignment from one side to another," Samuel Huntington wrote 10 years ago in his eerily prophetic book "The Clash of Civilizations." Ethiopia and Somalia were classic examples of the latter, abruptly changing alliances. Ethiopia switched from being America's ally to the Soviet bloc, inviting in Russian advisers and Cuban soldiers to help fight Somali rebels.

Today, the fault lines are more cultural and religious, as Huntington predicted. "In the new world order ... cultural identity is the central factor shaping a country's associations and antagonisms. While a country could avoid Cold War alignment, it cannot lack an identity. The question, 'Which side are you on?' has been replaced by the much more fundamental one, 'Who are you?"' Thus Ethiopia sees its war against its old antagonist as a fight against militant Islam, and therefore is helping the old lords of Somalia, who are thought to be more moderate in their religion if not their murderous behavior.

Although these same Somali warlords humiliated the United States during the Clinton administration, the Bush administration is backing them against the Islamists. But, as Jeffrey Gettleman wrote in The New York Times, since the United States became bogged in Iraq, there is the "Africa-wide sense" that "the United States is not the kingmaker it once was."

When he wrote his book, Huntington had the Balkan wars of the '90s as a vivid example. The Cold War threat of the Soviet Union taking back its errant Communist province kept Yugoslavia together under the strong, if undemocratic hand, of Josip Broz Tito. But no sooner had Tito died, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, than Yugoslavia fell to pieces largely along religious and cultural lines — Roman Catholics vs. Eastern Orthodox vs. Muslims.

A decade earlier had been the Lebanese civil war, which pitted Shiite Muslims vs. Sunni Muslims vs. Christians, with a dash of Druze thrown into the mix, all vying to protect or increase their power.

And today, the Israel-Palestinian struggle, which used to be a quarrel over land, is increasingly transmogrifying into a religious struggle with all the intractability that entails with the ascendancy of Hamas.

Ten years ago Huntington wrote: "The West's universalist pretensions increasingly bring it into conflict with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China ... The most dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness." So far, rivalry with China has been kept in check.

The arrogant, universalist pretensions he feared, however, have not, and the desire to "make the world like America" has led us into Iraq. "The central problem in the relations between the West and the rest is, consequently, the discordance between the West's — particularly America's — efforts to promote a universal Western culture and its declining ability to do so," Huntington wrote.

When Huntington first published his thesis in Foreign Affairs, some scholars said modernity would trump religious and ethnic antagonisms. This has not yet come to pass, however, and Iraq is breaking up Balkan-style: Sunnis vs. Shiites vs. Kurds.

The late president Gerald Ford put America's pretensions into perspective when he said: "I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security." He might have added, especially if the hellfire and damnation is going to make us less secure.

Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune

www.iht.com

http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=4077201
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Ethiopia plans to pull troops from Somalia

JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia

The prime minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, said today that his country, one of the poorest in the world, could not afford to keep its troops in neighboring Somalia much longer, and that Somalia's stability depended on the quick injection of foreign peacekeepers.

In a speech to parliament, in which his tone alternated between humble and triumphant, Mr. Meles said that Ethiopia had accomplished its mission to wipe out Somalia's Islamist forces, which just two weeks ago controlled a large chunk of the country and were regarded as a regional menace.

"We will now leave as soon as possible - it could be weeks, it could be months," he said. "We don't have the money to take this burden individually."Mr. Meles said his soldiers were not peacekeepers. They already seem to be paying the price for stepping in to Somalia's messy, violent internal politics.

Several residents in Jilib, a town in southern Somalia, said today that two Ethiopian soldiers were killed there in an ambush.

Diplomats in the region are now hurrying to cobble together an African peacekeeping force to take the place of the Ethiopian forces. But despite murmurs of commitment from several countries, including Uganda, South Africa and Nigeria, no force has yet materialized.

Somalia is far from stable now, with many heavy weapons still in the hands of warlords and anti-government forces, and the country's reliable level of turmoil is likely to dissuade many nations from volunteering to send troops.

Ali Mohammed Gedi, Somalia's transitional prime minister, repeated his plea today for all weapons to be turned in to his government, but it seemed that very few people were heeding him. The collection points set up across Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, remained empty, and many young men in the city vowed to keep their guns.

Meanwhile, Islamist fighters continued to flee south from Kismayo, the port city near the Kenyan border that had been their last stronghold before Monday, when the Islamist movement collapsed and its remaining followers scattered into the marshy coastland.

Kenyan authorities said that 10 fighters were apprehended on Monday trying to slip across the border into Kenya disguised as refugees. Eight had Eritrean passports, while two had Canadian passports, said Alfred Mutua, a spokesman for the Kenyan government; all