A Controversial and/or Informative Site [Archive] - Page 21

Saundra Hummer

May 27th, 2007, 04:30 PM

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When Oil and Water Mix
By
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
05/26/07 "ICH" -- -- -The concoction becomes lethal. America’s relentless drive to dominate the Middle East and its oil, blends well with Israel’s insatiable appetite for water and unstoppable expansion. It is said that oil and water do not mix – but when they do, it becomes a lethal concoction with no easy solution. The fatal blend engulfing the Middle East today seems to have no end in sight other than darker clouds showering more innocent blood.

The relationship between war and resources is nothing new. “One drop of oil,” said Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France in the second half of World War I, “is worth one drop of blood of our soldiers.” Today, the U.S. policy makers seem to think that one drop of oil is worth one drop of blood of soldiers and the slaughter of thousands of Arab and Muslim lives. However, to cover their racist ambitions, they disguise their greed as ‘war on terror’ or ‘democratization’. Knowing that by controlling the world's energy resources in conjunction with the superiority of the U.S. military, the United States would be able to intimidate and coerce the world more effectively, oil policy--wars or covert actions -- have become the overriding determinant of the American foreign policy.

In a New York Times article on February 24, 2006, “Ted Koppel responded to what he described as the Bush administration's "touchiness" about the charge that we are in Iraq because of oil by stating the obvious, though often unsaid, truth, "Now that's curious. Keeping oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz has been bedrock American foreign policy for more than half a century." Today control over the world's oil supply is at the forefront of Washington policy makers' thinking, even if the president and his team deny any such intent and talk publicly of reducing dependence on Middle East oil by three-quarters of present levels, an absurdly impossible goal. Two-thirds of the oil in the world is in the Middle East, much of it under Iraq and Iran, the axis of oil, the current targets of the U.S. War on Terrorism. Control of oil is integral to Washington's official goal of world domination, a goal stated this baldly in national security documents.”[i]

While oil is the primary motive for the United States, water ideology and expansion are Israel’s motives for giving the Bush administration reason for war, leaving Israel room to benefit from the Bush administration’s ambitions.

[ii]In an astonishing interview, the world renowned Israeli military strategist, Martin Van Creveld, whose books are required reading for the U.S. Army officers, revealed that there was “no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons. And it works beautifully: Thanks to Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from U.S. and Germany. I think some people in Israel are deliberately exaggerating our fears because it prompts the response, "Oh, those poor Jews. They're going to have the Holocaust again. Give them weapons"[iii].
Israel needs weapons for wars of aggression and expansion. In its nascent stages, Zionism not only advocated a return to Palestine, but also the redemption of the Jewish people through agrarian physical labor, “and the transformation and rebirth of the ‘wasteland’ of Palestine into a ‘land of milk and honey’”. The goal of the early Zionist leadership became not only to secure all water resources, but control them at their sources.[iv] Following independence, the same doctrine continued. Israel continued its policy of establishing Jewish settlements in areas of Arab majority (e.g. Galilee) as well as peripheral areas alongside the borders of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Negev. Saul Arlosoroff, Chairman of the Israel-Water Engineers Association says:

“The whole philosophy of the Zionist movement was that you maintain control of the land, over your country, by working there and being there. There’s no doubt that if they move out of the border with Lebanon, somebody else will be there, and that somebody is Arabs, not Jews, and the government of Israel doesn’t want Arabs to be there on the border, because the border will move further and further south. The same is true in the Negev.”
Although today Israel imports most of its food staples from the US, and while agriculture is economically insignificant, in territorial-political terms it is of utmost importance. In July 2006, Israel bombed and destroyed Lebanon for 33 days as the world stood by. This was oil and water mixing. Israel did not want Arabs on the border, the United States wanted Hezbollah disabled, a fact readily admitted by then ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton[v].

In January the Jerusalem Post announced that Israel the Israeli Air Force had plans to buy military equipment from the United States that would help transform regular missiles into precision, satellite-guided weapons. Israel is busy bombing and destroying Palestine and the Gaza at the moment. While on the other hand, it would seem that even a year is too long for the people of Lebanon to recover from destruction and death. Lebanon is being subjected to internal conflict; Arab is being set up against Arab. After the renowned investigative reporter Sy Hersh revealed that the United States, the Saudis, and the Siniora government are engaged in covert operations in funding and supporting the Jihadist movements in Lebanon in a fight against Hezbollah, the Bush White House had to reveal that it was sending military aid to the Lebanese army[vi]. Once the administration is assured of a full scale civil war which will no doubt engage Hezbollah, the U.S. will attack Iran.

The stage has been set. As nine more U.S. warships enter the Persian Gulf threatening Iran, and with news leaked (informative leak in this writer’s opinion) that the Bush administration has authorized new covert actions against Iran, it is undoubtedly a sign that Bush & Co. hope to provoke a strong reaction from Iran in an attempt to justify a military attack. Having convinced the world that Iran’s nuclear program is an existential threat to Israel, and outrageous accusations abound, where even the once reputable paper The Guardian is repeating the warmongers allegations of linking Iran with al-Qaeda, the only enemy recognized by the less savvy global citizen, and those thought to have been responsible for 9/11- given that perhaps differentiating between Sunni and Shiite may be too much of a burden for some to consume,[vii] the U.S. seeks to commit mass murder for the sake of power and greed while Israel will expand unhindered.
One has to wonder how many more millions have to be slaughtered before the collective consciousness of humanity is stirred into action. Has the ongoing stench of the genocidal concoction obscured our compassion? Perhaps the fatal potion brings with it another message - shame? Or perhaps even a glimmer of hope that there is still time.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has lived and studied in Iran, the UK, France, Australia and the US. She obtained her Bachelors Degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and she is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Middle East Studies concentrating in Political Science. She has done extensive research on US foreign policy towards Iran and Iran’s nuclear program.

[i] Tabb, William, K. “Monthly Review.” New York:Jan 2007. Vol. 58, Iss. 8, p. 32-42
[ii] Levin, R. “Reality Fights: The Future of War, A talk with military theorist Martin Van Creveld” Playboy Magazine. June 2007, pages 52-53
[iii] http://img158.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=68991_VanCreveld_122_899lo.jpg
[iv] Selby, Jan. “Water, Power & Politics in the Middle East: The Other Israel-Palestinian Conflict” Palgrave & MacMillan NY:2003 pp65-69
[v] http://news.bbc.co.uk:80/2/hi/middle_east/6479377.stm
[vi] UPI
[vii] Guardian
Go on-site to gain access to this article, and others which discuss the issues of the day, as well as being able to see the stats on the Iraqi War, monitary as well as the human toll. Just click on the following URL:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17772.htm ^^^

Saundra Hummer

May 27th, 2007, 04:40 PM

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How Can Bush Bring Freedom and Democracy to Iraq When He Brings Tyranny to America?
By
Paul Craig Roberts

05/26/07 "ICH" -- -- The Washington, DC, think-tank, The American Enterprise Institute, camouflages its purpose with its name. There is nothing American about AEI, and the organization’s enterprise is fomenting war in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies. Its real name should be The Likud Center for Middle East War.

AEI has the largest collection of warmongers in America. AEI “scholars” have agitated for war in the Middle East for years. A moronic president and 9/11 gave them their opportunity.

Now that the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have failed, the AEI warmongers are conspiring with Vice President Cheney to foment war with Iran.

Writing in The Washington Note, Steven C. Clemons reports that Cheney is working with the AEI warmongers to short-circuit the efforts of Bush’s secretaries of defense and state to find a diplomatic solution. Clemons reports that one former high level national security official describes the Cheney-AEI conspiracy as possibly an act of “criminal insubordination” against President Bush.

Now that the Democrats have betrayed their mandate of last November to end Bush’s war against Iraq and given Bush carte blanche to continue the gratuitous bloodshed, the neoconservative plan, spearheaded by Vice President Cheney, to initiate aggression against Iran is back on the front burner.

Disinformation is being fed to the media that Iran is responsible for attacks on US troops in Iraq. This disinformation is routinely reported without skepticism by the American media in the face of challenges from experts. For example, a recent British report concludes: “few independent analysts believe Tehran is playing a decisive role in the sectarian warfare and insurgency.”

While the Cheney/AEI conspirators strive to whip up American anger at Iran with lies and disinformation, they are doing everything possible to provoke Iran. The warmongers have planted the story in the media that the US is conducting covert operations against Iran. The US Navy is conducting “exercises” off Iran’s coast. The US military in Iraq has violated diplomatic privilege and kidnapped Iranian officials in Iraq despite protests from the Iraqi and Iranian governments. The US government is stirring up more trouble in Lebanon by setting extremists Sunnis against Iran’s Hezbollah ally. In short, the US government is doing everything possible to start a war with Iran. Bombing Iran, perhaps after a contrived “false flag” operation, is the next step.

Bush continues to tell his favorite lies that he is bringing “freedom and democracy to Iraq” and that Muslims hate us because of our “freedom and democracy.” He continues to make these inane assertions even as he ignores the will of the American people and destroys habeas corpus, the foundation of civil liberty.

Bush ignores the will of the people as expressed in last November’s congressional elections and as expressed in opinion polls. The New York Times/CBS News poll released May 24 shows another sharp drop in public support for Bush and his war. America is “seriously off on the wrong track” was the response of 72 percent of the public.

President Bush, the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party have proved to the entire world that the American people have no voice. The American people have no more ability to affect their government’s policy than inmates in a gulag would have.

What do people in other countries think when they hear Bush prattle on about “freedom and democracy” while he ignores opinion polls and election results and detains people without warrants, tortures them, and puts them before military tribunals in which they are denied even knowing the evidence against them? Bush has contrived a situation for defendants in which no defense is possible. In Bush’s America, people can be executed on the basis of hearsay and secret evidence.

If this is “freedom and democracy,” what is tyranny?

Recent polls show that the majority of the American people are no longer fooled, no matter what politicians say and media report. The election last November demonstrated the electorate's lack of support for continuing the war.

The problem is in implementing the will of the people. Democrats in Congress are not only recipients of AIPAC, oil industry, and military- security complex payoffs just as the Republicans are, Democrats are also behaving very cynically. They believe that it is Bush's policy that gave them control of Congress in November and that by continuing to let Bush prevail, they will clean up on a larger scale in 2008. They believe that their antiwar base has nowhere else to go.

Their cynical logic is probably correct as far as it goes. Bush is being blamed for the war and its failure. The longer this goes on, the worse the situation for the Republicans. Prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, I wrote in a column that the unintended consequences of an invasion would be the destruction of Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement. It has taken longer than I thought, largely because of Americans’ blind desire for revenge for 9/11, but the prediction is on track.

The problem with the Democrats’ cynical logic is that allowing Bush to prolong the war in Iraq increases the chances that Cheney, Israel, and the neoconservatives can contrive a war with Iran. Most experts, and many in our own military, think that a war with Iran would go very badly for us, endangering our troops in Iraq by exposing them to more intense attacks from the more numerous Shiites, who would be armed with Iranian weapons that can neutralize our tanks and helicopters, leaving our fragmented and divided troops isolated and cut off from supplies and retreat routes.

The pending disaster would play into Cheney's hands. With America faced with the loss of an army, Cheney and the neoconservatives would likely succeed in convincing Bush to nuke Iran. Cheney and Rumsfeld have already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack against non-nuclear powers. Surprised by the inability of the US military to prevail in Iraq and by Israel's military failure against Hezbollah, the neocons concluded that the only way to establish US/Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East is to nuke Iran. The neocons believe that using nuclear weapons against Iran will demonstrate to the Muslim world that they have no alternative but to submit to US hegemony.

The Democrats are far from being alone in lacking the vision to see the abyss into which their cynicism is leading us. With the corporate media serving as propaganda ministry for the administration, Cheney will be able to whip up enough fear and anger to convince the American people that the use of nuclear weapons was imperative.

Bush’s popularity will return as he prevails over the enemy and tells Americans how he saved them from Iran’s nuclear weapons. The Democrats’ cynicism will have destroyed them and opened new avenues to destruction and violence.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17773.htm :: :: :: :: ::
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Saundra Hummer

May 28th, 2007, 10:05 AM

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LETTER FROM BERLINShaken By Doping Scandal, Germany Mourns Death of Fair PlayBy
David Crossland in Berlin
Tearful confessions of doping by a host of cycling heroes has plunged Germany into a crisis of confidence. The scandal coincides with corruption probes at some of the country's most famous companies, and has left Germans wondering where the rot stops.

DPA (PHOTO)
Bert Dietz, one of the Team Telekom racers who admitted to doping last week, in better days. (Go on-site to view photo)The triumphs of Team Telekom during the 1990s triggered a cycling craze in Germany. Little boys wanted to get racing bikes and grow up to be like Jan Ullrich, whose victory in the Tour de France in 1997 vaulted him into the hallowed ranks of German sporting heroes alongside Boris Becker, Michael Schumacher and Franz Beckenbauer.

Packs of amateur cyclists dressed like the pros in clinging lycra outfits whizzed down country roads. TV channels fought each other for the right to broadcast races live, and the then chief executive of team sponsor Deutsche Telekom AG, Ron Sommer, liked to be photographed alongside Ullrich, a symbol of success, dynamism, true grit, just what Germany needed.

That's all over and has been for a while. Persistent allegations that doping is endemic in professional cycling across Europe have done irreparable damage to the sport. But until now the cyclists, their doctors and trainers maintained a code of silence.

That silence was broken at the end of April by Belgian cycling masseur Jef D'hont, who worked for a host of cycling outfits and spent the years 1992 through 1996 at Team Telekom. In an article published in DER SPIEGEL, he described how doping has been commonplace in the sport for more than 40 years.

His revelations led to last week's avalanche of confessions by six former Team Telekom cyclists and two team doctors. It provoked a moral outcry from politicians, cycling federation chiefs and the media, and has left the country wonder what other sports may be infested with doping.

One Süddeutsche Zeitung commentator drew parallels with recent corruption scandals in German business such as the one that has engulfed Siemens AG, one of Germany's biggest and most venerable companies.

"It's the same with doping as it is with corruption: as long as everyone does it, those who go clean are the losers, while the dirty ones win," the paper wrote.

"The sport has failed dramatically. And nobody should be so naïve amid all the promises of improvement to believe that the sport will change its ways. The Spanish, Italians, and French have already experienced a scandal like that now being experienced by the Germans -- without anything having changed."

It's not just German cycling. The sport is reeling from two major doping scandals involving 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis and Giro d'Italia champion Ivan Basso. Both have deny any wrongdoing.

Rotten to the Core?
The former president of the German Cycling Federation, Sylvia Schenk, said the whole cycling scene was "morally rotten."

Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a strong statement calling for a rigorous investigation. "There has evidently been systematic and continued manipulation of unimaginable proportions in professional cycling," the chancellor said. "The confessions and investigations undertaken so far aren't sufficient to clean the sport up." All "doping sinners" now had the opportunity to come clean and help the sport to start again, she said.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said he was "appalled that there has been lying and deceit on this scale." He said he had set up a task force to check whether taxpayers' money had been misused in the process and would push hard for a rapid passage through parliament of a new anti-doping-law already drafted. The law permits house searches and telephone tapping in doping investigations as well as lenient treatment for people who come forward to testify.

"My big fear is now that the doping revelations won't stay confined to cycling," said Schäuble. A survey by the Forsa institute showed most Germans agree with him, with 59 percent saying they don't think there's a performance sport in which doping doesn't happen.

Deutsche Telekom, 32-percent-owned by the German government, may now come under pressure from Berlin to withdraw its sponsorship of the team following the confessions, business daily Handelsblatt reported last week. It quoted one government official as saying the public relations damage was a "disaster."

Real Change Seems Far Off
But so far, despite the tearful confessions, nothing concrete has happened to suggest there will be any real change.

Team T-Mobile, which succeeded Team Telekom in 2004, announced last week it won't fire its sport director Rolf Aldag, even though he was among the six cyclists who had admitted to doping.

Aldag told a news conference last Thursday that he had bought EPO on the Internet. "In 1997, for the first time I began to have a guilty conscience,'' said Aldag. "Of course I feared the side-effects, but I never felt any."

Until last week he had always vehemently denied doping. As recently as January 2007, when he had been asked by Tour magazine if he had ever taken EPO, he said: "Nooo, for God's sake! I wouldn't have been able to sleep soundly ever again. No one contacted me to offer me anything."

Fellow confessor Erik Zabel said he only took EPO for one week in 1996 before abandoning it because of the side-effects. A test for EPO, which boosts oxygen-rich red blood cells to lift stamina, wasn't introduced until 2000. Zabel struggled to hold back tears when he spoke about his son. "I can't keep on lying to my son if I expect him to become a good person. I lied to him and I want to apologise."

Many critics were unimpressed by the tears.

Schenk, the former cycling federation president, told the Stuttgarter Zeitung: "The logic that we need the worst doping offenders to wage war on doping now is pure cynicism."

The confessions didn't amount to any kind of radical turnaround, she said. "Everyone's just trying to save his skin. It's a bait and switch tactic: they only admit everything in tiny slices, and only when there's no alternative."

Peter Danckert, chairman of the German parliament's sports committee, called on Germany's public TV networks, ARD and ZDF, to stop covering sports where doping is known to take place, and said public funding of medical treatment at international events should be cut if there's even a whiff of malpractice hanging over the sport.

Fallen Idol Silent
And what of Jan Ullrich, who was fired by the T-Mobile team on blood doping allegations last July and who quit the sport in February saying allegations against him were wrong?

The fallen star remains steadfastly silent. "We have nothing to say on the matter," said his manager Wolfgang Strohband. "You won't be hearing a denial from me and there's no news conference planned either," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Sunday.

The pressure on Ullrich to make a statement is likely to grow by the day. But for the sport of cycling, it won't make a difference whether he speaks or forever holds his tongue.

With reporting by SPIEGEL staff
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,485296,00.html:: :: :: :: :: .

Saundra Hummer

May 28th, 2007, 12:18 PM

For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
May 26, 2007

Vice President's Remarks at the United States Military Academy Commencement
West Point, New York

9:17 A.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. General Hagenbeck; members of Congress; Military Academy faculty and staff; distinguished guests; officers, cadets, members of the Class of 2007:

Thank you all for the welcome to West Point. I'm delighted to be here again, and to join in today's ceremony, and to stand before the newest graduates of the greatest military academy in the world. (Applause.)

Today the Class of 2007 leaves behind its leadership duties to the Corps of Cadets, and takes up leadership duty to the United States of America. As a class they've brought honor to Cadet Gray. As commissioned officers they'll bring the same honor to Army Blue. Graduates, this is a proud moment in your life, and in the life of our country. I count it a privilege to be in your company, and I bring warmest congratulations from our Commander-in-Chief, President George W. Bush. (Applause.)

There is one item of business to take care of today. Apparently some members of the Corps of Cadets are still on restriction for minor offenses. And I guess you're looking for a little compassion. Such matters are to be decided by the President himself, and so he and I had a discussion about it. He took the strong view that we ought to be lenient. Me, I could have gone either way. (Laughter.) But the President is in charge, so at his direction, I hereby grant amnesty for all cadets on restriction for minor conduct offenses. (Applause.) Now here's the fine print: For the definition of "minor offenses," you've got to check with General Hagenbeck. (Laughter.)

Like every Academy graduate who came before, each of you will leave here with a rucksack full of memories. After you've gone out Thayer Gate for the last time, I have a feeling you'll cherish above all the friendships you've made here. You'll remember the training and testing that you've faced together, as well as the challenges you faced alone. Wherever you go in life, you'll hear the voice of the BTO telling you to keep your elbows off the table. (Laughter.) You'll think of Lake Frederick whenever you get soaked in the rain. And of course, you'll think of your dean, General Finnegan, every time you see a pair of "really cool running shoes." (Laughter.)

A friend of mine, General Norman Schwarzkopf, once said that if you "ask any West Pointer what day they remember best ... almost all of them will say it's that first day" -- R-Day -- maybe the longest in your cadet life. You didn't know any of your classmates, you weren't sure of all that lay ahead of you in Beast Barracks. If you had doubts, you overcame them. If you had fears, you mastered them. Inside of you was a basic confidence -- a sense of who you were, and of the officer you hoped to become.

But your making as an officer didn't really begin on R-Day. The process started out much further back, over many years of guidance from the ones who know you best and care about you the most. For them, too, this is an incredibly proud day. So may I suggest a grateful round of applause for the moms and dads of the Class of 2007. (Applause.)

I wish that all Americans could visit and see with their own eyes our service academies. Year in and year out, the academies prepare the finest of young Americans to protect our people, to defend the land we call home, and to serve the ideals that define this nation. In an often cynical age, the armed forces and their academies are all the more exceptional. The values of a military education -- the sense of rectitude, the devotion to duty, and the daily acceptance of personal responsibility -- are a credit to the students and to the instructors, and an example for our entire country.

Of course, as West Pointers, you belong to the very first of all of our academies, a place in steady service to the United States for more than two centuries. There's a saying here -- that "much of the history we teach was made by the people we taught." By training the senior leadership of the Army, this institution has been absolutely critical to fighting and winning America's wars. If there had never been a Long Gray Line, I doubt that America would still be a free nation today. Dwight Eisenhower, class of 1915, stated the case perfectly. "West Point," he said, "is a national asset beyond all price."

It is rare in West Point history for a class to join during wartime, and to graduate in the midst of that same war. But this, too, is part of the story of the Class of 2007. You came here knowing these four years would pass; the courses would be finished; this day of commissioning would arrive -- and you would then become responsible for the well being of men and women under your command. You are trained and prepared for battlefield leadership. And you follow in the path of many alumni already in the fight. More than 25 graduates of this Academy now on active duty have earned the Silver Star. And in Iraq, the Multinational Force is led by a superb officer, General Dave Petraeus, class of 1974. (Applause.)

In the group that graduates today, and among the cadets watching from the stands, we have dozens of future officers that are already combat veterans. You've been to Iraq and Afghanistan. You've seen the enemy and his tactics. You've been part of an Army that has faced unprecedented challenges; an Army at war that is, without question, the finest ever fielded by the United States of America. (Applause.)

We're fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard. Scarcely 50 miles from this place, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens murdered, and 16 acres of a great city turned to ashes. Others were killed within view of the White House, at the headquarters of our military at the Pentagon. Many heroes emerged that day, both on board an aircraft over Pennsylvania and among the rescue teams, and they, too, died in the hundreds.

These are events we can never forget. And they are scenes the enemy would like to see played out in this country over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Al Qaeda's leadership has said they have the right to "kill four million Americans, two million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands." We know they are looking for ways of doing just that -- by plotting in secret, by slipping into the country, and exploiting any vulnerability they can find.

We know, also, that they're working feverishly to obtain ever more destructive weapons, and using every form of technology they can get their hands on. And this makes the business of fighting this war as urgent and time-sensitive as any task this nation has ever taken on. As the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, said recently, "The time needed to develop a terrorist plot, communicate it around the globe, and put it into motion has been drastically reduced. The time line is no longer a calendar, it is a watch."

For nearly six years now, the United States has been able to defeat their attempts to attack us here at home. Nobody can guarantee that we won't be hit again. But we've been safe because a lot of very dedicated professionals have been working relentlessly to protect the homeland. Our government has used every legitimate tool to counter the activities of an enemy that likely has cells inside our own country. We've improved our security arrangements, reorganized intelligence capabilities, surveilled and interrogated the enemy, and worked closely with friends and allies to track terrorist movements.

All of these steps have been necessary to harden the target and to protect the American people. But we've also understood, from the early hours of September 11th, that we cannot wage this fight strictly on the defensive. We have to go after the terrorists, shut down their training camps, take down their networks, deny them sanctuary, and bring them to justice. In that effort, some of the most difficult and dangerous work has been carried out by the U.S. Army. America is the kind of country that stands up to brutality, terror, and injustice. And you are the kind of people we depend on to get the job done. (Applause.)

The standards of this Academy only highlight the deepest and most fundamental difference between the United States and our sworn enemies. A month ago, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Pace, spoke to this class about each officer's duty to follow a moral compass in all of his or her actions. In these four years you have learned the rules of warfare and professional military ethics. You've studied the tenets of morality. You've reflected on the seven Army values: of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. You have lived by a code of honor, and internalized that code as West Point men and women always do.

As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away. These are men who glorify murder and suicide. Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it. They have given themselves to an ideology that rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience, and demands that women be pushed to the margins of society. The terrorists are defined entirely by their hatreds, and they hate nothing more than the country you have volunteered to defend.

The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it. By force and intimidation, they seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to their ideology. Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield and they yearn to hit us again. And now they have chosen to make Iraq the central front in their war against civilization.

In Iraq today, the al Qaeda network that struck America is one of the elements trying to destroy a democratic government. They are surging their capabilities, attacking Iraqi and American forces, and killing innocent civilians. America is fighting this enemy in Iraq because that is where they have gathered. We are there because, after 9/11, we decided to deny terrorists any safe haven. We are there because, having removed Saddam Hussein, we promised not to allow another dictator to rise in his place.

And we are there because the security of this nation depends on a successful outcome. The war on terror does not have to be an endless war. But to prevail in the long run, we must remove the conditions that inspire such blind, prideful hatred that drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us on 9/11. We know from history that when people live in freedom, answering to their own conscience and charting their own destiny, they will not be drawn to the ideologies of hatred and violence. We know, as well, that when people are given the chance to live in freedom, most of them will make that choice.

The people of Iraq now have a chance to secure their country's future. More than 300,000 of them have joined security forces -- despite all the threats, and murders, and car bombs at recruiting stations. And when it was time for national elections, the Iraqi people defied the killers and voted at a higher rate of turnout than we have here in the United States. In the struggle against terror, no country has had more battlefield deaths, or lost more civilians, than Iraq itself. They and their elected leaders are striving to preserve democracy against direct attack by merciless enemies. And they can know that our country, as in other times and other places, stands firmly for the cause of democracy.

The stakes are high on both sides, and it is still tough going in that country. General Petraeus has said the operational environment is the most complex and challenging he's ever seen. Yet there's reason for confidence as more locals get into the fight, as more good intelligence comes in, as the government stays focused on the hard work of national reconciliation.

There is another reason for confidence in this effort. The single most reliable fact of this war is the skill and courage of the American soldiers fighting it. You're about to become leaders in an amazing Army -- an all-volunteer force that has carried out tough missions in a time of great need for our country. They have endured long deployments, separation from family, and loss of comrades. They have fought boldly and courageously, from the cold mountains of Afghanistan to the dust and heat of the Middle Eastern desert. Now they're going to look to you for leadership, and it'll be your job to provide that leadership and to take care of them.

With your commissions, a great deal will be expected of you. And you're entitled to expect some things in return. You deserve the tools and the backing to do your work, wherever duty takes you. At the same time, you deserve the support that makes life easier for your loved ones, because uniformed service is a shared commitment, and nobody in America shows more patience and understanding than our military families. (Applause.)

Down in Washington, D.C., we air differences and argue back and forth on matters of policy. It's always that way, and there's nothing wrong with it. But we need to remember that when all the speeches are given, and the debates fall silent, and the decisions are made, it falls to men and women like you to bear the battle. May all of us who sit at desks and set policy never fail to appreciate that. (Applause.)

Last night, President Bush signed into law the war supplemental that we worked hard to achieve. As we look to the future, I want to say this to the graduates, and to all the men and women of the Corps, and to the families gathered in this stadium today: Whatever lies ahead, the United States Army will have all the equipment, supplies, manpower, training, and support essential to victory. I give you this assurance on behalf of the President. You soldier for him, and he will soldier for you. (Applause.)

With each man and woman who passes through this Academy, the mission of West Point -- to build a "leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the nation". Today, the 26th of May, 2007, West Point has again fulfilled that mission, with nearly one thousand exceedingly well prepared second lieutenants.

Many in this country dream of becoming commissioned officers in the United States Army. Yet of these, only a small fraction ever reach that goal. The ones who have done so today have chosen a motto for their class: "Always Remember, Never Surrender." Those are not idle words for a group in which more than 70 percent are going into combat arms. And it makes everyone in this stadium all the more proud to witness your commissioning. (Applause.) We admire the Class of 2007 for the men and women you are, and for the officers you've now become.

As we meet, members of the United States armed forces are serving in nearly 80 different countries -- from the broader Middle East, to Europe, to Southeast Asia, to Latin America, and to Africa. At every post, they serve honorably to keep the commitments of our great nation. We're a country that proclaims high ideals. And more than that, we're a country that stands up for those ideals, by defending the innocent, bringing hope and relief to the helpless, and confronting the violent. This world we live in is a better place for the power, and influence, and the values of the United States of America. Americans are rightly proud of our country. We're a patriotic people, and we show that devotion in many different ways. And the bravest way of all is to take up the profession of arms.

On your first day of Army life, each one of you raised your right hand and took an oath. And you will swear again today to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is your vow, that is the business you're in. Your country has prepared you, and now your country is counting on you. I know that each one of you will serve with skill, and carry yourself with honor, and take care of your soldiers, because that is the way of the West Point officer.

Thank you for your service. Godspeed to the United States Military Academy Class of 2007. (Applause.)

END 9:38 A.M. EDT

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return to this article at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070526-1.html

the magnificent goldberg

May 28th, 2007, 02:48 PM

Bosh!

MG

Saundra Hummer

May 28th, 2007, 08:44 PM

Bosh!

MG

This one part alone just floors me:
Last night, President Bush signed into law the war supplemental that we worked hard to achieve. As we look to the future, I want to say this to the graduates, and to all the men and women of the Corps, and to the families gathered in this stadium today: Whatever lies ahead, the United States Army will have all the equipment, supplies, manpower, training, and support essential to victory. I give you this assurance on behalf of the President. You soldier for him, and he will soldier for you. (Applause.)

Saundra Hummer

May 29th, 2007, 02:05 PM

.* * *

MAN QUARANTINED WITH RARE CASE OF TB. FIRST QUARANTINE ORDERED BY GOVERNMENT SINCE 1983.TB Case Brings Warning to Air Passengers
Health Officials Say Man With Rare Tuberculosis Could Have Infected Airline PassengersBy
MIKE STOBBE
The Associated Press
ATLANTA
A man with a rare and exceptionally dangerous form of tuberculosis has been placed in quarantine by the U.S. government after possibly exposing passengers and crew on two trans-Atlantic flights earlier this month, health officials said Tuesday.

This marks the first time since 1963 that the government issued a quarantine order. The last such order was to quarantine a patient with smallpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC urged people on the same flights to get checked for tuberculosis.

The infected man flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. He returned to North America on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 104 from Prague to Montreal. The man then drove into the United States.

He cooperated with authorities after learning he had an unusually dangerous form of TB. He voluntarily went to a hospital and is not facing prosecution, officials said.

The man is hospitalized in Atlanta in respiratory isolation, according to the World Health Organization.

He was potentially infectious at the time of the flights, so CDC officials recommended medical exams for cabin crew members on those flights, as well as passengers sitting in the same rows or within two rows.

The man was infected with "extensively drug-resistant" TB, also called XDR-TB. It resists many drugs used to treat the infection. Last year, there were two U.S. cases of that strain.

Because of antibiotics and other measures, the TB rate in the United States has been falling for years. Last year, it hit an all-time low of 13,767 cases, or about 4.6 cases per 100,000 Americans.

Tuberculosis kills nearly 2 million people each year worldwide.

A friend flew to Prague a while back with layups and stopovers in the areas being mentioned. She flew with a few of her girlfriends in a group. Upon arrival in Prague, she died at the airport. An autopsy showed her death was caused by a blood clot; a new fear when flying for an extended period of time. I wonder if any of her friends were on the planes which this man had been on. Her husband then flew over there to handle the enormous amounts of red tape, it taking forever to have her ashes flown home. Even if the man's who's infected wasn't on the plane, the recirculated air, seating areas and the restrooms could have had this germ about. I hope no one else catches this terrible disease. I hope he has a recovery as well. SRH

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3222797 * .

Saundra Hummer

May 29th, 2007, 04:02 PM

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* * * * * * *
Costa Rica Seizes Tainted Toothpaste May 25, 2007 - 11:51pm
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) - Health officials said Friday they have seized more than 350 tubes of Chinese-made toothpaste tainted with a deadly chemical reportedly found in tubes sold elsewhere in the world.

Health Secretary Maria Luisa Avila said 56 tubes of toothpaste containing diethylene glycol, a chemical commonly used in antifreeze and brake fluid, were found in the northern city of Liberia, and 306 more were seized from a warehouse in the capital of San Jose.

Avila also said her department issued a nationwide alert although there have been no reports of anyone falling ill.

China has formed a government task force to investigate after contaminated toothpaste was also found in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

Diethylene glycol, or DEG, is a thickening agent used as a low-cost _ but frequently deadly _ substitute for glycerin, a sweetener commonly used in drugs.

DEG was blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in Panama last year after it was mixed into cough syrup, another case with possible ties to China.
* * * * * * * * *
Chinese made Mr. Cool tainted toothpaste is displayed for the camera at the control and registry office of the Ministry of Health in San Jose, Friday May 25, 2007. China on Wednesday said it was investigating reports that toothpaste containing a potentially deadly chemical had been exported to Central America, the latest in a series of scandals involving tainted Chinese products. The Costa Rican Health Ministry has ordered the removal of Chinese toothpaste Mr. Cool and other brands from store shelves.(AP Photo/Kent Gilbert) SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) - Health officials said Friday they have seized more than 350 tubes of Chinese-made toothpaste tainted with a deadly chemical reportedly found in tubes sold elsewhere in the world.

Health Secretary Maria Luisa Avila said 56 tubes of toothpaste containing diethylene glycol, a chemical commonly used in antifreeze and brake fluid, were found in the northern city of Liberia, and 306 more were seized from a warehouse in the capital of San Jose.

Avila also said her department issued a nationwide alert although there have been no reports of anyone falling ill.

China has formed a government task force to investigate after contaminated toothpaste was also found in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

Diethylene glycol, or DEG, is a thickening agent used as a low-cost _ but frequently deadly _ substitute for glycerin, a sweetener commonly used in drugs.

DEG was blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in Panama last year after it was mixed into cough syrup, another case with possible ties to China.
* * * * *
.....Why wasn't the situation in Panama front page news? Why wasn't it the lead in our electronic media outlets? Perhaps I just missed it when my computer was in the shop for about two months off and on, but I didn't pick up on it on TV, or in news magazines either.

We aren't living in a box canyon and any number of us travel and are in countries where things like this can, and does happen, so why weren't we warned about it? Why have things like the pet food and the cough syrup tragedy been allowed to occur once again? Some big changes need to be made, and I for one will not buy Chinese products again as they're too risky. It's not worth taking the chance. Accidents are always happening, but this seems more than that don't you think? SRH .....

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=106&sid=1150903
* * * .

Saundra Hummer

May 30th, 2007, 11:30 AM

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. . . . . . .
KATRINA
Weathering the Storm
Occurring only 18 months after Hurricane Katrina, the devastating tornadoes in Greensburg, KS this month again prompted the question of whether our government can adequately respond to another Katrina-like storm. For residents of New Orleans, that question will be particularly pressing this summer, as the hurricane season officially begins this Friday. Hurricane prediction experts expect a "very active" tropical storm season for 2007, estimating "the probability of a major hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast at 49 percent, compared to last century's average of 30 percent." To prepare for another Katrina, the federal government needs to develop an adequate response system, including the rejuvenation of a shattered emergency response network in New Orleans. Unfortunately, the government has failed to provide this system, leaving the residents of New Orleans again woefully unprepared for the active hurricane season on the horizon.

AILING PUBLIC SERVICES: Nearly two years after Katrina, much of New Orleans's public infrastructure is under reconstruction and stretched dangerously thin. General infrastructure repairs, "which by law are to be funded by federal sources, continue to be mired in red tape." As of April, 298 "essential public buildings" remain unusable, as "bureaucratic hurdles impede the dispersal of allocated federal funds." For example, 70 public schools remain closed, crippling the ability of families to regain their footing. The area is struggling with only 64 percent of health care facilities open and no state-licensed hospitals reopening since Oct. 2006. The effects of a broken health care system permeate the city. With psychiatric hospital closures since Katrina causing overcrowded emergency rooms, Terry Ebbert, director of the New Orleans's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, sees "a crisis in emergency mental health care." "Of the 200-plus psychiatric beds that existed in the city prior to Katrina, only 20 are in service at the moment." Police and ambulance drivers now must wait "hours" with these patients to bring them adequate emergency care, "depriving the city of essential crime fighters and first responders." Subsequently, the murder and violent crime surged in the last year, "clearly outpac the city's population growth."

IRAQ LIMITS EMERGENCY RESPONSE: "To put it bluntly, the members of the Guard cannot protect us here if they are fighting over there," said Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb this week. "Countless lives were lost" waiting for help when Katrina struck in 2005, as "the combat brigades of Louisiana and Mississippi and their equipment were in Iraq and Afghanistan." While most of the state's National Guard will remain at home for this hurricane season, Iraq has absorbed vehicles and equipment necessary for hurricane response in New Orleans. Come storm season, "the Louisiana National Guard still lacks hundreds of military troop trucks that can forge high water. ... [T]he 256th Infantry Brigade's yearlong combat tour in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 gets the blame for the vehicle shortage." With a shortage of 200 to 300 vehicles, "We're below 50 percent for authorized equipment" said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, Louisiana Guard spokesman. "Do I have enough for a major event? No. For a smaller event, yes." And the federal government "still lacks a formal structure for coordinating a national response," said Coast Guard head Adm. Thad Allen yesterday. According to Allen, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is still "reworking its national response plan to incorporate the lessons of Katrina and other incidents." To train and equip the necessary units, "the president should ask the Congress to increase the budget of the DHS by at least $10 billion, the cost of one month's operations in Iraq."

STILL UNREADY TO HANDLE THE STORM: According to a recent investigation from National Geographic, "flaws in New Orleans' repaired levee system could leave the region vulnerable to another disastrous breach." Even a less powerful storm than Katrina "could breach the levees if it hit this season." In rebuilt levees by the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel, which broke in more than 20 places during Katrina and led "to devastating flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish," engineers found several areas where storms have eroded the newly constructed levees. The engineers also found that, currently, "water appears to be seeping under the stout new floodwall erected along the Industrial Canal to protect the Lower Ninth Ward." A recent report from the Government Accountability Office revealed that water pumping systems installed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2006 would only be operating -- at best -- at 82 percent of maximum capacity, with the total capacity still not meeting the "drainage needs to keep the city from flooding during a hurricane." One engineer who works with the corps said "that in the next big storm the [flood gates and pumps] may be 'doomed to fail' as the gates lack any mechanism to remove debris that could keep them from closing in advance of a storm. The corps is currently depending on divers to clear obstructions."

CELEBRATING DANGER: The federal government is more concerned with fanfare and glitz rather than real preparedness for the vigorous storm season ahead. National Hurricane Center director Bill Proenza said recently that the administration is "spending millions of dollars on a publicity campaign that could be used to plug budget shortfalls hurricane forecasters are struggling with." The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is spending up to $4 million to publicize a 200th anniversary celebration while the agency has cut $700,000 from hurricane research, Proenza said. "No question about it, it is not justified. ... It is using appropriated funds for self promotion." "It's part of our responsibility to tell the American people what we do," a NOAA spokesman said in defense. "It's inaccurate and unfair to just characterize this as some sort of self-celebration."

UNDER THE RADARINTERNATIONAL RELATIONS -- ZOELLICK TAPPED TO LEAD WORLD BANK IN WAKE OF ETHICS SCANDAL: President Bush will announce today that he has selected Robert Zoellick, "a career diplomat and trade negotiator," to replace the ousted Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank. Zoellick, who is "widely respected in foreign capitals," served previously in the Bush administration as the "United States Trade Representative...and then as deputy secretary of state until last July" and "was a top aide to Secretary of State James A. Baker III in helping negotiate terms of reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall." The Washington Post reports that Zoellick is "clearly part of the Bush administration's inner circle," but is "not seen as ideologically rigid," contrasting sharply with the outgoing neo-conservative Wolfowitz. Some non-governmental aide organizations like the Global AIDS alliance have, however, expressed disappointment in Zoellick's candidacy. Dr. Paul Zeitz, Executive Director of the Alliance said yesterday that Zoellick is a "terrible choice" for Bank president because of his history as a "close friend to the brand-name pharmaceutical industry." Zeitz added that "the bilateral trade agreements [Zoellick has previously] negotiated effectively block access to generic medication for millions of people." The Alliance expressed fears that as Bank president, Zoellick may work to limit client countries' ability to use Bank "aid to purchase generic medications." The European members of the Bank's Board of Directors are likely to support the President's nomination, but "some lingering unease over the way the United States treated the board [as an] afterthought" is expected.

ETHICS -- CHENEY'S LAWYER ORDERED SECRET SERVICE TO AVOID KEEPING VISITOR LOGS: In Sept. 2006, Shannen W. Coffin, counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote a letter to the chief counsel of the United States Secret Service (USSS) ordering that the "USSS shall not retain any copy" of documents and information pertaining to visitors to the Vice President's residence. The letter was disclosed last Friday as part of "a lawsuit by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at his official residence." The release was "accompanied by an 18-page Secret Service document revealing [that] the agency's long-standing practice has been to destroy printed daily access lists of visitors to the residence." In the letter, Coffin claims logs for Cheney's residence are subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA), a designation that prevents the public from learning who visited the Vice President. The agreement between the Office of the Vice President and the Secret Service that visitor logs fall under the PRA, and are thus not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, is similar to an "agreement quietly signed between the White House and the Secret Service a year ago when questions were raised about visits to the executive compound by convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff." The White House has also previously instructed the Secret Service to destroy visitor logs. "The latest filings make clear that the administration has been destroying documents and entering into secret agreements in violation of the law," said Anne Weisman, CREW's chief counsel.

IRAQ -- BUSH ADMINISTRATION IGNORING 'MORAL OBLIGATION' TO HELP IRAQ REFUGEES: A U.N. Refugee Agency report released this week revealed that approximately 822,810 Iraqis are displaced within their own country as a result of escalating sectarian violence, in addition to the more than four million Iraqis who have fled Iraq throughout the war. Hundreds of these refugees once worked for the United States "and have since been targeted by insurgents because of their service." The New York Times reported yesterday that the situation is particularly dire for female refugees, as "many girls and women in 'severe need' turn to prostitution." As one young Iraqi woman explained, "If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available." Despite these grim conditions, the Bush administration denied the problem even existed until recently "for political reasons...because of the psychological message it would send, that [Iraq] is a losing cause," according to Bush's former assistant secretary of state for refugee affairs. Though the Department of Homeland Security finally announced that it has approved a process to admit as many as 7,000 Iraqis by Sept. 30, last month it admitted only one refugee. This one refugee brought the total for the year to 69, an embarrassingly small amount compared to the approximately 8,000 refugees admitted by Sweden -- a nation uninvolved in the invasion of Iraq -- in February and March alone. In an effort to expedite and expand the admissions process, Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) recently introduced a bill that would "increase by at least 20,000 the number of Iraqi refugees eligible for resettlement in the United States in 2007 and 2008" and "admit 15,000 "special immigrant status" Iraqis and their families for each of the next four years." Ken Bacon, president of Refugees International, hopes the bill will soon gain bipartisan support, as it "addresses the group to which we have a moral obligation."

THINK FAST
The Bush administration is "nearing completion of a long-delayed executive order that will set new rules for interrogations" by the CIA. The order is expected to "ban the harshest techniques used in the past," including waterboarding, "but to authorize some methods that go beyond those allowed in the military by the Army Field Manual."

"More than a month after the Office of Special Counsel announced it will establish a task force to mount a government-wide investigation of alleged violations of the law that limits political activity in federal agencies, the group's formation remains in the preliminary stages."

"The Taliban has merged its propaganda and field operations with those of the global al Qaeda network led by Osama bin Laden," enabling the Taliban to "develop from a xenophobic, home-grown Islamist movement into a more outward looking force that is helping to advance al Qaeda's global interests."

Activists say President Bush's Darfur sanctions announced yesterday are "too little, too late." The sanctions "target three people with suspected links to the violence as well as about 30 companies" in Sudan. "Three people? After four years? And not one of them the real ringleader of the policy to divide and destroy Darfur?" asked John Prendergast of the Enough Project.

The New York Times finds that some conservatives in Congress are "struggl[ing] to appease increasingly restless constituents" over Iraq. "I think this is the most expensive, stupidest thing ever done," one Republican and former "staunch backer" of President Bush now says.

"Even 'moderate additional' greenhouse emissions are likely to push Earth past 'critical tipping points' with 'dangerous consequences for the planet,' according to research conducted by NASA and the Columbia University Earth Institute."

President Bush scolded opponents of the immigration reform legislation, saying they "haven't read the bill" and are offering "empty political rhetoric." Conservatives bristled at his remarks. "I don't think name-calling does any good at this point," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "No yelling and screaming by the administration is going to change our minds," said another conservative.

"The United States is better prepared to deal with a major disaster like Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf region in 2005, but still lacks a formal structure for coordinating a national response, the head of the U.S. Coast Guard said on Tuesday."

And finally: "You go to the club with the yacht you have..." Now that Donald Rumsfeld is no longer Defense Secretary, he has time for his "other hobbies" -- skiing, squash, and yachting. He and his wife have joined the Miles River Yacht Club in St. Michaels, MD, which is "considered one of the more exclusive boating clubs on the Eastern Shore." But the Examiner notes that Rumsfeld will likely do little yachting because his "membership is mainly for socializing."

DAILY GRILL
The Department of Justice has "posted the initial workings of its foreign lobbyist database online," which links "to substantial documents, such as contracts between lobbyists and foreign governments as well as advocates' reports listing contacts between them and policymakers."

NEW YORK: At $14,119, "New York again leads all other states in school spending per pupil."

TEXAS: A couple's court case over custody of frozen embryos could threaten Roe v. Wade.

FLORIDA: Since March 13, only one person has applied for the job of U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida.

THINK PROGRESS: Photos of the planned $592 million U.S. embassy in Iraq.

A TINY REVOLUTION: New book reveals the CIA ordered analysts to cherry-pick intel for Iraq war.

MEDIA MATTERS: "Left Behind: The skewed representation of religion in major news media."

LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY: The Supreme Court's decision yesterday in Ledbetter v. Goodyear protects gender discrimination.

"The CIA sources described a list of six 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe."
-- ABC News, 11/18/05

VERSUS

"The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture -- 'enhanced interrogation techniques' -- is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death."
-- The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, 5/29/07

[I] MAY 30, 2007
by
Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, and Matt Corley
http://www.americanprogressaction.org
Go ON-SITE to gain access to the NUMEROUS links within this article . . . . .
.

Saundra Hummer

May 30th, 2007, 05:23 PM

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<<<<<O>>>>>

Does 'The Decider' Decide on War?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Has Congress given George Bush a green light to attack Iran?

For he is surely behaving as though it is his call alone. And evidence is mounting that we are on a collision course for war.
--Iran has detained several Iranian-Americans, seemingly in retaliation for our continuing to hold five Iranians in Iraq.

--The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says Iran is making progress in the enrichment of uranium and denying it access to Iran's nuclear sites.

--Bush is calling on Russia and China to toughen sanctions.

-- A flotilla of U.S. warships, including the carriers Stennis and Nimitz, has passed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf.

--U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell has told CNN there is "very credible intelligence" Iran is funding Sunni extremists engaged in the roadside bombing of U.S. troops.

--CBS reports the United States has engaged in the industrial sabotage of Iran's nuclear program by making the equipment Iran acquires on the black market unusable or destructive.

--ABC reports that Bush has authorized the CIA to mount a "black" operation to destabilize Iran, using "non-lethal" means. The absence of White House outrage over the leak suggests it may have wanted the information out.

--ABC.com reports U.S. officials are supporting a militant group, Jundallah, in the "tri-border region" of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jundallah, a Sunni Islamist group seeking independence for Baluchistan, claims to have killed hundreds of Iranians.

While U.S.-Iran discussions have begun, there are reports Vice President Cheney and the neo-con remnant, along with the Israelis, are opposed to talks and believe that the only solution to Iran's nuclear program is military. Whether this is part of a good-cop, bad-cop routine to convince Tehran to suspend enrichment, we do not know.

But this much is sure. If the U.S. government is aiding Islamic militants who are killing Iranians, and Iran is providing roadside bombs to Iraqi militants, Sunni or Shia, to kill Americans, we are in a proxy war. And it could explode into a major war.

So the questions come. Where is the Congress, which alone has the power to take us to war? Why are the Democratic candidates parroting the "all-options-are-on-the-table!" mantra, when as ex-Sen. Mike Gravel noted in the first Democratic debate, this means George W. Bush is authorized to attack Iran.

Why does Congress not enact the resolution Nancy Pelosi pulled down, which declares that nothing in present law authorizes President Bush to launch a pre-emptive strike or preventive war on Iran -- and before launching any such attack, he must get prior approval from both houses of Congress?

If we are going to war, is it not imperative that, this time, we know exactly why we must go to war, what exactly the threat is from Iran, what are the likely consequences of a U.S. attack on a third Islamic country and what are the alternatives to war?

For there are arguments against war, as well as for war -- and the former are not receiving a hearing, as both parties compete in their fulminations against Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler of the Middle East.

What are those arguments?

On Iran's nuclear progress, there is a real question as to whether they are producing purified uranium. Iran's refusal to let the IAEA see what it is doing suggests it may be covering up failure.

Second, though Iranians sound bellicose, Iran has not started a single war since the revolution of 1979. Indeed, Iran was the victim of a war launched by Saddam Hussein, whom we secretly supported. Not within living memory has Iran invaded or attacked another country.

But in the last 110 years, peace-loving Americans have fought Spain, Germany twice, Austria-Hungary, Japan, Italy, North Korea, North Vietnam, Iraq twice and Serbia. We have intervened militarily in the Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Lebanon and Grenada. We bombed Libya. Now, a case can be made for most of these wars, whose fallen we honor on Memorial Day.

But the point is this. Why would Iran, with no air force or navy that can stand up 24 hours against us, no missile that can reach us, no atom bomb, and no ability to withstand U.S. air and sea attack, want a war with us that could mean the end of Iran as a modern nation and possible breakup of the country, as Iraq is breaking up?

Whether one is pro-war or antiwar, ought we not -- if we are going into another war -- do it the right way, the constitutional way, with Congress declaring war? Or does the Democratic Congress think that what is best for America is to let "the decider" decide?

Because that is what George Bush is doing right now.
Pat Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative magazine, and the author of many books including State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America .

Be the first to read Pat Buchanan's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.
Go on-site to view this article and others about this situation in Iraq, and Iran as well as the thoughts of others concerning this area and our policies there, by clicking on the following URL:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
©Creators Syndicate <<<0>>>.

Saundra Hummer

June 1st, 2007, 11:24 AM

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:: :: :: :: ::
The day without farm workers
Prairie Writer's Circle
05.23.07 - Last year for one day, no one came to work in my peach orchard. A row of ladders stood empty. This was my day without immigrant labor. Without workers, I cannot farm. If I cannot farm, my organic heirloom peaches and raisins won't reach people's dinner tables.

Without passage of immigration reform, I can't get enough help to harvest my fruits. This work is transient and something most Americans won't do, even with higher wages. Under the current system, which gives so many immigrants illegal status, good workers from south of the border are forced to hide in the shadows, constantly fearful of deportation.

As the debate over undocumented workers unfolds, the growing of food seems to be left out. This debate isn't just about citizenship. It's also about who works the fields and how crops are grown. And it's about working conditions and treating workers fairly -- something that I and other small farmers try to do as we labor side by side with our workers.

Immigration reform needs to grant some form of legal status to the nearly 2 million illegal workers on farms and acknowledge their contribution to the farm economy and rural communities. At the very least, we should grant undocumented workers a guest worker status, ensuring fair treatment for their hard work.

Specialty fruits and vegetables depend on these hands. Now more than ever, a labor shortage threatens these crops.

I almost lost my raisin crop two years ago. Last year, pear farmers in Northern California were forced to let fruit rot on trees because there were not enough workers. I try to ripen my peaches to perfection, but lose many when I can't get pickers; some of my best fruits fall from my trees.

Without labor, agriculture will mechanize the process as much as possible, substituting technology and capital for people on the land. This shift is not simply about the invention of a machine, but rather a dramatic change in how things are grown. It means rewarding plant breeders not for great flavor, but instead for fruit that works with machines.

I can imagine the ideal machined peaches of the future. Design them so they will simultaneously ripen. (My crews revisit a single tree four to five times, picking only what is ripe at the moment.) Breed a peach with a stem that snaps easily, so a tree can be shaken by a machine. Manufacture fruit that won't bruise when harvested, picked rock hard to survive a handless system.

But there is no technology that can replace the human touch without sacrificing good taste.

Sustainable and organic fruit farming demands constant attention and response to nature each season: Our systems are labor intensive. I need the human element on my farm.

Farming is an inexact science. There's an art to pruning and growing a perfect peach that requires years of practice and many hands. Without workers, I'll have no choice but to farm differently: The politics of undocumented immigrants can change the flavor on my farm.

But agriculture is morally wrong if the sole goal is to create a new pipeline of cheap labor. Farmers must acknowledge the value of the people in their fields.

Undocumented workers have labored like ghosts -- invisible, hidden, secluded. Immigration reform would shed light on them, revealing their worth.

As these new Americans are recognized, wages, working conditions and health benefits must be addressed. This will challenge farmers and the old ways of doing business. Agriculture has openly acknowledged the need for labor: We also must accept responsibility for these workers.

I farm with a social contract -- a network of honorable, mutually supporting relationships that contribute to the quality I seek. My work can't be done by machines. I want to grow "face food," produce with faces and their stories, keeping alive the legacy of good, authentic food.

Undocumented workers are part of this food system. We all have a stake in immigration reform, and the need to recognize the important role of all food workers. We need to support farming that contributes true flavors to life.

(c) 2007, Prairie Writers Circle
URL:http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=22361 :: :: :: .

Saundra Hummer

June 1st, 2007, 11:32 PM

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Wars are seldom caused by spontaneous hatreds between people, for peoples in general are too ignorant of one another to have grievances and too indifferent to what goes on beyond their borders to plan conquests. They must be urged to the slaughter by politicians who know how to alarm them."

H.L. Mencken
~~~
"The ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle, home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics, he feels himself master of his fate. But otherwise he simply lies down and lets things happen to him."

George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair]
(1903-1950)
British author Source: Inside the Whale, 1940
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"I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. My oath of office is to protect and defend America's laws and its people. By refusing unlawful orders for an illegal war, I fulfill that oath today."

U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada
~~~
"I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

Elie Weisel
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"Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice...Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed...but it is sure as life, it is sure as death."

Thomas Caryle
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Saundra Hummer

June 1st, 2007, 11:43 PM

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Questions About High Gas Prices
By
Nieman Watchdog.

PHOTO:An oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, in May 2007.
Why aren’t refineries meeting the demand for gas? Go on-site to view.
By
Henry Banta
henrybanta@aol.com
By any standard the media coverage of the current gasoline price increases leaves much to be desired. The gap between what is reported in the more sophisticated business press and what comes out in the popular media seems to grow wider.

As any reader of the Wall Street Journal knows, there is information available. And there are other good sources; Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post consistently provides first rate analysis. But the popular media, network television in particular, abandon all pretense at serious journalism when dealing with gasoline prices. What passes for coverage is usually a microphone stuck in the face of a motorist who confirms what we all know, prices have gone up. This is followed by a brief interview with an expert who invokes the notion that it is all a matter of supply and demand, as if that ended the discussion. This is followed, no doubt for sake of “balance,” by someone labeled a “consumer advocate” who invokes the even more useless notion of “price gouging.” There the matter is left to rest. Even “in depth” coverage rarely gets beyond further interviews with experts from the window-shade-school of economic analysis: this number will go up; that one down; this one down; that one up.

What is lost in this ritual is some basic journalism. There are some simple common sense questions that are not asked. Start with the question of supply. Gasoline prices are up because refineries do not have the capacity to meet demand. It is frequently pointed out that no new refinery has been built since the late 1970s (implying that the problem is the fault of environmentalists.) But this fact alone raises a host of questions. Certainly gasoline demand has grown considerably since the late 1970s. Until now the industry has been able to meet demand growth with the expansion of existing refineries? Why not now?

Granted Hurricane Katrina did considerable damage to the refining industry, but Katrina was almost two years ago. Has not there been time to line up more gasoline imports? Surprisingly, the head of the Energy Information Agency recently told Congress that imports were down. If refining capacity was a problem, why were imports down? If, as has been occasionally suggested, there is a worldwide shortage of refining capacity, why is the explosion of refined product prices limited to the United States? The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “American refiners have made a pretax profit of roughly $30 on each barrel of oil they use to produce gasoline, more than three times the margin in Singapore, a major Asian refining center.” Wouldn’t a world wide shortage of refining capacity drive up refining margins in Singapore?

A component of the supply problem is the amount of gasoline held in inventory. Not surprisingly a drop in inventories is cited as contributing to the high gasoline prices. Yet no one seems curious about why the industry has been reducing its gasoline inventories for more than a decade. In 1990 the industry carried enough gasoline inventory to cover about 30 days supply. By 2000 it fell to 23.8 days. We are now precariously close to the 20 days of supply considered a bare minimum to keep the system working. Surely this raises obvious questions. In a period of rising demand and allegedly constrained refining capacity, the industry cuts inventories – with the predictable effect of price spikes every time there is a crimp in the supply. Each such price spike has produced a massive windfall for the companies. If this doesn’t cry for further questions, what does?

Oil industry profits have always been an issue. One would think that by now we would have a firm grasp on the concept. Apparently not so. The industry flacks seem to be quite confident that they can get away with comparing the oil industry’s return on sales with the sales returns of firms in other industries. Profit is, and always has been, what investors get back on their investment. Comparisons of returns on sales are misleading gibberish. If sales returns mattered, GM would be doing better than Wal-Mart. Doesn’t the resort to such blatant nonsense require the question, why?

Now for the claim that the industry needs high prices and profits in order to make the investment needed for the future. To meet future energy demand, the major companies claim to be investing billions of dollars. This is true; but certainly not the whole truth. Christopher Palmeri of Business Week found that Exxon did reinvest nearly $20 billion, which roughly amounted to 40% of its cash flow, but this was down from the 50% reinvested in 2000. In fact, Exxon spent 60%, or $29 billion, of its cash flow on the repurchase of its own stock in 2006. He found that the industry as a whole spent $52.4 billion on stock repurchases last year – almost double the amount in 2005. In short, the current price run-up has transferred billions from consumers to shareholders. Nice work Mr. Palmeri. Does anybody read Business Week?

All of this raises some interesting questions about competition in the industry. If everybody in the industry is holding back on refining investment or reducing inventories, why didn’t one firm spot a profit opportunity and behave more aggressively? What kept one firm from expanding its inventory in order to take advantage of the next price run-up? Isn’t that what competition is about?

The question of competition has the ability to send the industry propaganda machine into overdrive like no other (which by itself should be a red flag). The industry constantly points to the myriad of investigations that have failed to catch them at anything illegal, as if that disposed of the issue. Granted it is bit complicated, but is it too much to ask journalists to understand the distinction between what violates the antitrust laws and what indicates a failure of competition in the economic sense? As the Supreme Court recently reminded us, the antitrust laws prohibit firms from doing certain things – like actually colluding on price. If they don’t get caught together in the electronic version of the smoke-filled room, there is not much the antitrust agencies can do. That, however, does not end the atter. Competition can exist in many degrees. The notion that industries dominated by large companies behave like local hardware stores is ludicrous. Surely there are question here that need to be asked.

Exploring these questions does not require a PhD in economics or petroleum engineering. It does require some intellectual curiosity and certainly hard work. But this issue deserves it. This is more than a news story about annoyed motorists. It involves fundamental questions about how well our market system is working in the energy area. The shift of billions of dollars from average Americans to the shareholders and managers of oil companies is important news, as are the reasons behind it. This deserves far better coverage than it has gotten.

– Henry M. Banta is a partner in the Washington, DC, law firm of Lobel, Novins & Lamont.
E-mail: henrybanta@aol.com
Go on-site to view this sites struggle to stay online and to keep the internet free, to keep it from being taxed and charged for. It's an important cause regardless if you lean to the left or to the right. Media Channel.org and Media Savy is a terrific site, with lots of good information and informed comments by it's subscribers, such as Walter Cronkite, college professors and others in the academic field. Just click on the following link:
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/06/01/questions-about-high-gas-prices/ $$$ .

Saundra Hummer

June 2nd, 2007, 01:01 AM

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^^^^^^^
Spamming Political Polls
By Free Market News.
Presidential candidate and Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) has been banned, or threatened with a ban, from several online polls now. In addition, top GOP-ers have threatened to bar him from the national GOP debates – a public posture that recently proved insupportable.
http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=41541
The most recent reported banning, not yet confirmed by FMNN, is by “GOPBloggers” - which posts the online GOP presidential straw poll. According to FMNN feedbacker “Ray,” those who run the site have indicated “they will ban him from future polls because his supporters were spamming.”

http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=42139&fb=1#17311
Paul leads all other candidates on the site by a large margin at this point. Internet polls show repeatedly that many believe he is winning the debates as well. He has been offered, and accepted, numerous high-profile media appearances, including several on Bill Maher’s Real Time program on HBO, and an upcoming appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=42448
The question arises, as regards spamming, why aren’t supporters of other candidates doing the same thing? The answer seems to be – among his critics, anyway - that Ron Paul’s supporters are more “passionate.” As a result they are more prone to antisocial acts, including “spamming” than those of other candidates.

But to maintain this subjectively, without any objective evidence other than pro-Paul Internet polls themselves, is to support a seeming logical fallacy. Ron Paul’s current success cannot itself justify an interpretation that his supporters are more prone to “spamming” than others. Where is the proof - other than the results? The logical is seemingly circular. One would actually have to calibrate the emotional state of Ron Paul supporters and then compare that state to others to fairly make such a claim.

The only polls that do not buttress Ron Paul’s leading position at this time are mainstream media ones. But these are easy to manipulate, depending on how questions are asked, critics maintain. Additionally, when an individual does not have a high national profile, and Ron Paul does not, then those being polled are likely to mention names they’ve heard of, and indicate a favorable response to them.

A lack of a national profile is not necessarily itself a signifier of a marginalized candidacy. In fact, Ron Paul’s positions and candidacy are firmly mainstream, supporters maintain. He is campaigning on a platform of smaller and less intrusive government with a less aggressive foreign policy, less power over monetary policy and less taxing authority. A majority of Americans would probably agree with one or more of these stances, supporters believe.

Ron Paul’s campaign is neither “populist” nor “conservative” in the modern-day context, these supporters add. He is firmly grounded in the Jeffersonian tradition of classical liberalism and votes a straight “constitutional” line in the House, where he has served as a Texas Congressman for some 10 terms.

FMNN’s previous report on the GOPBloggers straw poll, entitled “Landslide,” can be seen here:
http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=42294

Visit Home page by clicking here:
http://www.mediachannel.org/
^^^
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/06/01/spamming-political-polls/
^^^^^^^^^ .
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Saundra Hummer

June 2nd, 2007, 04:35 PM

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BREAKING NEWS
Friday, June 1, 2007, 2:42 AM PDT

MADRID, Spain (AP) Officials say Iran has offered to stop blocking a U.N. probe of its past suspicious nuclear activities in an attempt to evade new Security Council sanctions.

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Saundra Hummer

June 2nd, 2007, 04:48 PM

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Congress Wants Ashcroft's Testimony
By
Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Friday 01 June 2007

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have asked the former attorney general to testify about his role in a dramatic showdown over a controversial eavesdropping program. Will he play ball?

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program, according to congressional and administration sources.

The sources, who asked not to identified talking about sensitive matters, said the Senate Intelligence Committee has tentatively scheduled a closed-door hearing for later this month. The panel plans to question Ashcroft, his former chief of staff David Ayres and former deputy attorney general James Comey about a heated dispute with the White House that roiled the Justice Department three years ago. The House committee is also planning a separate closed-door hearing with Ashcroft, according to a spokeswoman for Ashcroft.

The requests for Ashcroft's testimony reflect the mounting frustration on the part of committee leaders in both chambers who feel they have been denied vital information about the wiretapping issue by the Bush administration. Despite having received numerous private briefings from senior administration officials over the last year, members were stunned to learn just how deeply troubled the Justice Department was about aspects of the program - a glimpse they got only when Comey publicly testified about the program at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month.

The invitation from Capitol Hill could also create a dilemma for Ashcroft, who prides himself on his loyalty to President Bush - despite clear tensions that arose with the White House over wiretapping and other issues related to the war on terror. Ashcroft, 65, now a Washington lobbyist, has steadfastly refused to make any public comment about the eavesdropping dispute. While confirming the House request, his spokeswoman, Juleanna Glover Weiss, said he was out of town and would be unavailable to discuss the matter until next week.

Administration officials and congressional staffers say Ashcroft will have difficulty finding a reason to refuse to talk about it at this point - especially in closed-door hearings, given that Comey has already publicly recounted the dispute. Although Ashcroft is a private citizen, Justice officials expect that he will likely seek their guidance on how far he can go in discussing the issue. A meeting has been scheduled for this Monday by Senate Intelligence Committee aides and Justice Department officials to discuss the "contours" of the testimony, one official said. If Ashcroft declined to cooperate, the committees could ultimately issue subpoenas.

In startling testimony May 15, Comey recounted how Alberto Gonzales, then White House counselor, and Andrew Card, then White House chief of staff, went to George Washington University Hospital on the evening of March 10, 2004, in an attempt to persuade a barely conscious Ashcroft, who had just undergone emergency surgery for gallstone pancreatitis, to sign a document recertifying what Comey called a "particular classified program." (He indicated that a just-completed internal Justice review had led him to conclude that the department could no longer certify its legality.)

But Ashcroft refused - and deferred to Comey as the acting attorney general, according to Comey - who said that when President Bush reauthorized the program anyway the next day, he, Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were all prepared to resign. A story in this week's NEWSWEEK magazine reported that as many as 30 senior Justice Department officials would have resigned over the matter. "This was a showdown," a former senior Justice official was quoted as saying in the story.

Comey refused discuss publicly the nature of the disagreement. But he indicated that, after a meeting with Mueller, President Bush subsequently agreed to changes that the Justice Department was prepared to accept. But that has still left the two intelligence committees - which have oversight responsibility for the surveillance program - with a host of unanswered questions.

In December 2005, The New York Times first publicly disclosed that after September 11 the White House began a highly classified program designed to intercept phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens speaking to Al Qaeda suspects abroad without seeking approval from a special foreign-intelligence surveillance court. In the aftermath of that disclosure, the administration downplayed reports that there were any legal disagreements over what was being done. Michael Hayden, who headed the National Security Agency when the program began, told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that the Justice Department and the White House had given "consistent" guidance that the program was legal. Gonzales, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last February, said that, "there has not been any serious disagreement ... about the program that the president has confirmed."

At the same time, the Senate committee has been consistently rebuffed in their requests to obtain key documents related to the program - including memos and opinions about the program from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and the actual presidential orders authorizing the eavesdropping, according to a report released by the panel this week accompanying its passage of a new authorization bill for the intelligence community. Although the Justice Department has turned over internal OLC memos to Congress in the past, and frequently makes them public on its Web site, they have refused to do so in the case of the wiretapping program under orders from the department's client: the White House. Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the panel's chairman, said the committee will refuse to consider the president's request to revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to accommodate the wiretapping program until it receives the documents it is seeking. A Justice Department spokesman declined comment, but pointed out that in a public statement following Comey's testimony, the department said Gonzales had acknowledged there had been "disagreements about other intelligence activities" and that "the fact and nature of such disagreements have been briefed to the Intelligence Committees.
Go on-site to gain access to this article and others by clicking on the following URL: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060207A.shtml[:: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

June 2nd, 2007, 05:00 PM

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An Interview With David Iglesias
By
Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 30 May 2007
VIDEO Go on-site to view by clicking on the URL at the bottom of this post. Last week, a day after Monica Goodling testified before Congress about her role in the US attorney scandal, I sat down for an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with David Iglesias to discuss the implications of that testimony.

Iglesias, the former US attorney for New Mexico, was one of eight US attorneys fired in December for reasons that appear to have been motivated by partisan politics. Goodling is the former White House liaison for the Justice Department.

Iglesias discussed Goodling's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, and how what she had told lawmakers about the scandal might lead to a criminal investigation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty. Goodling had accused both men of misleading Congress during their testimonies earlier this year. Iglesias told me the Congressional investigations might lead to a criminal probe that could net Gonzales and McNulty on perjury and/or obstruction of justice charges.

McNulty has announced that he will resign later this summer.

Iglesias told me that, while we still do not know how he and his colleagues were placed on the termination list, he does believe a "smoking gun" exists that will lead directly to Karl Rove and blow the scandal wide open.

"I believe somewhere on an RNC computer - on some server somewhere - there's an email from Karl Rove stating why we need to be axed," Iglesias told me in an hour-long interview.

Iglesias said Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and perhaps other officials are likely responsible for placing his name and the names of his colleagues on a list of US attorneys to be fired, because he had refused to launch federal investigations and prosecute individuals purely for partisan reasons.

"If the Justice Department didn't have anything to do with placing presidential appointees such as me and my colleagues on a list to be terminated, the only other possible place would be the White House," Iglesias said. "Harriet Miers, Karl Rove or some of their underlings."

Iglesias also told me that, beginning in 2005, his office had come under pressure when a close confidant of Karl Rove had alleged there was widespread voter fraud in New Mexico. Iglesias said he had investigated those allegations tirelessly and found zero evidence to back them up. He added that, based on evidence that had surfaced thus far and "Karl Rove's obsession with voter fraud issues throughout the country," he now believes GOP operatives had wanted him to go after Democratic-funded organizations in an attempt to swing the 2006 midterm elections to Republicans.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/053007J.shtml ~~~~~ .
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Saundra Hummer

June 2nd, 2007, 05:24 PM

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White House Follows New Path to Secrecy
By Pete Yost
The Associated Press
Friday 01 June 2007

Washington - A newly disclosed effort to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's visitor records secret is the latest White House push to make sure the public doesn't learn who has been meeting with top officials in the Bush administration.

Over the past year, lawyers for President Bush and Cheney have directed the Secret Service to maintain the confidentiality of visitor entry and exit logs, declaring them to be presidential records, exempt from a law requiring their disclosure to whoever asks to see them.

The drive to keep the logs secret, the administration says, is essential to assuring that the president and vice president receive candid advice to carry out their duties.

Cabinet officers often don't want to give up their meeting calendars to journalists. They have no choice under the Freedom of Information Act, which provides public access to some records kept by federal agencies.

But the FOIA disclosure law, which doesn't apply to Congress, also doesn't apply to presidential records.

The Bush administration has exploited that difference, triggering a battle in the courts.

The administration is seeking dismissal of two lawsuits by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, demanding Secret Service visitor logs.

In trying to get the cases thrown out, the Justice Department has filed documents in court outlining a behind-the-scenes debate over whether Secret Service records are subject to public disclosure. The discussions date back at least to the administration of President Bush's father and involve the Justice Department and the National Archives as well as the White House and the Secret Service.

The government's court filings show that the Bush White House focused on the issue in the months before Election Day 2004.

Discussions moved into high gear when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal prompted news organizations and private groups to demand that the administration turn over Secret Service records of visitors to the White House complex and the vice president's residence.

There was precedent for the demands.

During the Clinton administration, Republican-controlled congressional committees obtained Secret Service visitor logs while conducting investigations of the president and first lady.

Christopher Lehane, a former special assistant counsel to President Clinton and press secretary to then-Vice President Al Gore, points out the political implications of the Bush administration campaign to close off access to the records.

"The question it raises is 'what are these guys hiding?'" said Lehane, now a Democratic consultant. "They can live with it because they've only got a year or so left, but it doesn't do a lot for public confidence in open government."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Thursday, "I can't comment on a case in litigation, and I can't speak to the decisions made by other administrations."

The Bush administration says it is standing on principle.

"It is important that the president be able to receive candid advice from his staff and other members of the administration," Fratto said. "To ensure that he receives candid advice, it is essential as a general matter that the advice remains confidential."

In a declaration filed in court a week ago, Cheney's deputy chief of staff, Claire O'Donnell, stated that "systematic public release of the information regarding when and with whom the vice president and vice presidential personnel conduct meetings would impinge on the ability of the OVP (office of the vice president) to gather information in confidence and perform its essential functions, including assisting the vice president in his critical roles of advising and assisting the president."

In May 2006, the Secret Service and the White House signed a memorandum of understanding designating visitor records as presidential.

They are "not the records of an 'agency' subject to the Freedom of Information Act," says the agreement that was not disclosed until months later, in late 2006. The records are "at all times under the exclusive legal custody and control of the White House."

Four months after the memorandum of agreement, Cheney's counsel wrote the Secret Service, stating that visitor records for the vice president's personal residence "are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody and control of OVP."

The Sept. 13, 2006, date on the Cheney letter coincides with requests by The Washington Post seeking records on the vice president's visitors under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law enforcement agency "shall not retain any copy of these documents and information upon return to OVP," stated the letter to the Secret Service's chief counsel.

"If any documents remain in your possession, please return them to OVP as soon as possible," the letter added.

The Justice Department filed the Cheney letter last Friday in one of the lawsuits brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is invoking the FOIA law in seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited the White House complex and the vice president's residence. The group, which represents Valerie Plame and her husband in their lawsuit against Cheney and other key administration figures in the leak of Plame's CIA identity, also is seeking White House visitor logs in the Abramoff scandal.

According to government documents, the Secret Service routinely destroyed five of eight categories of information relating to visitors to Cheney's residence. Of the records it retained, the Secret Service regularly turned over handwritten visitor logs to Cheney's office.

The Secret Service stopped the destruction in June 2006 because of lawsuits by various groups, according to the court papers. The law enforcement agency also is retaining copies of the material, contrary to the directive in the September 2006 letter from Cheney's counsel.

The court filings by the government show that:.On three occasions late in the administration of the first President Bush and during the first term of President Clinton, the Secret Service proposed treating copies of White House visitor documents as non-presidential records. In its court filings, the current Bush administration opposes releasing details of the Secret Service proposals, saying this "poses a substantial risk of creating public confusion" because the proposals were never adopted.
.In January 2001, as Clinton prepared to leave office, White House lawyers proposed the transfer of visitor records from the Secret Service to the White House. The proposal was entitled "Disposition of certain presidential records created by the USSS," or the Secret Service. The records are now at the Clinton library in Little Rock, Ark., the National Archives confirmed Thursday. .In September 2004, a lawyer for the Bush White House and a special assistant to the director of the Secret Service proposed "informal views on one way to address the disposition" of visitor records, according to court documents. The unnamed associate White House counsel and the Secret Service assistant jointly authored a July 29, 2004, document bearing the same title as the Clinton administration document from 3 1/2 years earlier.
. In July 2005, the Secret Service gave a presentation on the issue to the White House counsel's office, the Justice Department and the National Archives.
.On May 11, 2006, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel provided a legal opinion on the issue, which is among the many documents the government is refusing to disclose. Six days later, the White House and the Secret Service signed the agreement designating the records as presidential.

Presidential records are released starting five years after a president leaves office. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, non-classified material is disclosed first, with classified documents and advice to the president released later after review by federal agencies, the White House and the former president.

Under an executive order President Bush signed in 2001, the archivist of the United States cannot unilaterally release the records without the permission of the current president, former presidents and their representatives.

"The scary thing about this move by the vice president's office is the power grab part of it," said Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, a private group which uses the FOIA law to pierce government secrecy.

"We're looking at a huge problem if the White House can reach into any agency and say certain records have something to do with the White House and they are presidential from now on," Blanton said. "This White House has been infinitely creative in finding new ways and new forms of government secrecy."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060207D.shtml
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Saundra Hummer

June 4th, 2007, 02:26 PM

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*HAPPY BIRTHDAY*CALI

:cheers

Saundra Hummer

June 4th, 2007, 02:38 PM

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*****
And the Presidency goes to...

A POLL
Take this poll by logging on to the link at the bottom of this post

Starting in early June, Fred Thompson's exploratory committee will be busy determining if he's got the right stuff to be president. Thompson is a former Tennessee senator (R) and a character actor, widely known for his role in the TV show "Law and Order" and in classic movies such as "Baby's Day Out," "Curly Sue" and "Die Hard 2: Die Harder."

The following actresses/actors have had at least some experience in politics or activism (well, most of them), so we want to see which would get your vote against Thompson in case it came down to a Hollywood head to head.

Vote wisely...you never know what could happen.

Which actress/actor is more qualified to run for president than Fred Thompson?

George Clooney

Martin Sheen

Rosie O'Donnell

Denzel Washington

Oprah Winfrey

Meryl Streep

Lindsay Lohan

Other:

Copyright © 2007 Care2.com and its licensors.

http://www.care2.com/polling/vote/190

*****

Saundra Hummer

June 5th, 2007, 01:06 PM

The pink Dell banner ad is driving me wacko, it pops up constantly, making one stop and delete it each and every time. It covers up what you're reading, or typing, and it happens constantly. This is the only ad AAJ has had that does this. Anyone else having trouble with it?

Take that back, Circuit City banner is doing the same, I guess the banner ads are all doing this now. It's distracting and annoying.

Saundra Hummer

June 5th, 2007, 07:22 PM

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FALL OF THE WILD
By
Joel K. Bourne, Jr.
Photographs by Joel Sartore

The interests of big oil, wild creatures, and native populations collide on the largest remaining piece of U.S. wilderness, Alaska's North Slope. Go on-site to National Geographic to gain access to any links and a spectacular photo of a Polar Bear. Click on the URL at the end of this article.
In the petroleum-rich wilderness Alaskans simply call "the slope," big money, power politics, and hype run as thick as the mosquitoes. It is the wildest part of the wildest state, a Utah-size swath of tundra sweeping down from the Brooks Range to the shores of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. It is also one of the richest, both in wildlife and hydrocarbons. The sprawling oil fields surrounding Prudhoe Bay produce 16 percent of the United States' domestic oil supply, along with a whopping 90 percent of Alaska's state revenues. Some 15 million acres (6 million hectares) in the middle of the slope, including the lucrative oil fields, are owned by the state. Much of the rest, save for a few sizable parcels owned by the native Inupiat, belongs to you and me.

Most of our holdings are split between the scenic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in the east, and the biggest single block of land in the federal estate, a 23-million-acre (9-million-hectare) chunk of western Arctic known as the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, or NPRA. Though it sounds like a massive oil tank that the nation taps in times of need, in reality it contains the largest piece of unprotected wilderness in the nation, along with a half million caribou, hundreds of grizzlies, wolves, and in summer more waterfowl, raptors, and shorebirds than anyone can count.

Biologists have argued for decades that areas of the petroleum reserve are more critical to wildlife than the actual wildlife refuge. But because it's also believed to hide large deposits of oil, natural gas, and coal, federal and state biologists have been warned to hold their tongues. While the battle over drilling in the refuge raged in the U.S. Congress, the Bush Administration leased vast tracts of the petroleum reserve and offshore waters to the highest bidder, a process that could transform millions of acres of wilderness into oil and gas fields, and the Beaufort Sea into a frosty Gulf of Mexico. Some of those leases include critical habitat for the geese, caribou, and bowhead whales that have sustained the Inupiat for thousands of years. With substantial communal lands on the slope, the 5,000 Inupiat scattered among seven remote villages and the town of Barrow stand to become the newest oil barons of the 21st century. But in the process they may lose what makes them Inupiat. Many are none too happy about it.

No village feels more keenly the trade-offs of oil development than Nuiqsut, a cluster of about a hundred homes overlooking the Colville River on the eastern edge of NPRA. The village began as a collection of tents in 1973 when two dozen families from Barrow moved to their traditional hunting and fishing allotments by the great river after passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. As is true of many of the tiny villages within the North Slope Borough, most of its residents now live in colorful cookie-cutter HUD houses and enjoy indoor plumbing, a diesel-fueled power plant to keep the lights and TVs on, a modern school, clinic, and fire trucks. Most are employed by the borough—benefits mostly funded by taxes on oil infrastructure.

For 20 years the industrial oil zone was out of sight, out of mind. But it's been slowly creeping toward Nuiqsut. The newest oil field, Alpine, which began operation in 2000, is located on native and state land in the river's braided delta eight miles downstream. ConocoPhillips originally touted it as a model of high-tech, low-impact oil development with no permanent roads and the use of directional drilling to tap 40,000 acres (16,000 hectares) beneath two drill sites that would disturb only 97 acres of tundra.

Then the drillers hit it big. Now five new satellite sites are under development. ConocoPhillips received an exemption from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to plop one drill pad in the middle of Nuiqsut's subsistence hunting lands. The company wants to build a bridge over a branch of the Colville to another pad, right at one of the village's ancestral fishing spots. With NPRA leases coming on line, Nuiqsut is practically surrounded by drill rigs, ice roads, and seismic teams during the long winter drilling season when heavy equipment can move around the tundra. The activity provides jobs for some in the village, but locals claim it's also pushed the caribou away, forcing them to travel ten or twenty miles farther from home to find meat for the table. Though shareholders in the village corporation each received a dividend of about $3,000 from Alpine royalties last year, the consensus on the slope and in the village is that Nuiqsut got a raw deal.

"The town is so full of anger," says Bernice Kaigelak, who teaches traditional Inupiat language and skills at the village school. "We're trying to find a balance between subsistence and the Western way of living. There are some areas we don't want them to trash, other areas we'd like them to use. I've come to the point that regardless of what we say or do, they're going to come anyway. If you work with them, you have some control."

Chester Hopson, a young hunter from the village, showed where the two worlds collide. With September temperatures hovering around freezing and winds whipping across the flat tundra, Hopson launched his 20-foot (six-meter) aluminum skiff into the wide pale-green river frothing with whitecaps. Chester's cousin Anthony Hopson worked at Alpine and wanted to pick up his paycheck, so he, brother Andrew, and their friend Joe Frank Sovalik, all in their late teens and early twenties, came along for the ride.

Soon the skiff was screaming down the bumpy river as Hopson, cheeks beet red from the wind, deftly steered through the shoals. After a few miles, a gray rectangle of gravel rose on the right bank six feet or so above the tundra. Shipping containers were stacked on the pad, ready for drilling season in the coming winter.

A drill was boring away downstream at the next pad, rising like a rust red lighthouse amid a tawny sea. Anthony's paycheck awaited in the office, so Chester nosed the boat onto a mudflat dotted with the odd grizzly and caribou track, and the young men hiked the remaining half mile (one kilometer) across the spongy tundra. Behind them the vast coastal plain stretched without relief to the horizon. The scene was oddly beautiful, almost eerie, instilling an unsettling, yet exhilarating, feeling of endless emptiness. A solitary loon bobbing in the shallows was the sole reminder of this seasonal illusion. During the summer breeding season the Colville Delta teems with wild things, including rare yellow-billed loons and spectacled eiders, which are among the species threatened by oil development.

Walking up to the big drill pad, with its blazing lights, bustling trucks, and diesel hum of activity, on the other hand, was like coming out of the desert into Vegas—so incongruous, so starkly out of place that "satellite" seemed an apt description. The young men headed for the residence complex, kicked off their boots in the mudroom, and parked themselves at a table in the cafeteria while Anthony went for his check. Food is free on the rigs, so the men helped themselves to chips, sodas, and chicken-fried steaks. In winter they bring their mothers here every week for free prime rib or to play bingo. Despite the relative proximity of high-paying jobs, few Inupiat work in the oil fields. Many complain of the two-week shift work, of low-end jobs, or of discrimination. Anthony worked as an assistant fire-watcher—which he says is one of the most boring jobs on the planet. "You just sit and watch somebody weld and make sure nothing catches on fire." Chester worked on the rigs for about six weeks, and hated it. Now he builds ice roads in winter for Nuiqsut's native Kuukpik Corporation. A driller dropped by the table to tell the guys about a roustabout job on another rig, but there were no takers.

Back in the boat, Chester and his friends headed a few miles downstream to his grandmother Nanny Woods's place, a rough plywood shack sitting on the crumbling riverbank. The door was banging open in the wind. The flotsam and jetsam of a typical Inupiat hunting camp lay strewn about: dead batteries, old cookstoves, rusting oil drums, and associated junk. This is their spot, the cousins say, their home away from home. Here they escape the growing pressures of Inupiat life, the constant buzz of four-wheelers, the incessant drone of TV, the boredom of the village, and just hunt, fish, and be free.

"The caribou herd used to come here," Chester said. "Hardly does anymore now that this pipeline is here. Oil is a good thing for the jobs, but it changes things."

"Man, I love it when the herd runs," Joe Frank said. "You can feel it in the ground just like Dances With Wolves."

There are other sounds now. They can hear the rig from here, the generators, the planes, the helicopters, and a garbage-truck-size vacuum cleaner—a "super-sucker"—for cleaning up spills. "OK," I said, "pretend I'm ConocoPhillips. I'm offering each of you ten million dollars for this cabin and the land around it. Any takers?" To a man, each said no.

"How far will ten million take you?" Andrew asked. "You can go to Vegas and blow ten million dollars in a year. But can you still come out here? This place is priceless."

"We get more from this place than money," added Joe Frank. "The land feeds you. We're rich as long as we've got the land."

As they left the shack, one of the men pointed to a lone wooden marker jutting from the tundra. "See? Our grandpa George Woods. He's buried over here." One has to wonder if that old Inupiat knew when he picked that spot that one day he'd be listening to super-suckers for eternity, or at least until the oil runs out.

Today it's the hunting lands of Nuiqsut. The next stop on the oil industry's wish list—based on where it is putting its money—isn't the coastal plain of ANWR, known by its government label as the 1002 Area. It's Teshekpuk Lake. The largest freshwater body on the slope sits in the most controversial chunk of NPRA to go on the auction block, some 4.6 million acres (1.8 million hectares) known officially as the Northeast Planning Area. The lake and its swampy borders, laced with creeks and potholes, have long been considered one of the most important molting areas for geese and other birds in the Arctic. A third of the world's black brant, for example, lose their flight feathers near the lake, along with tens of thousands of Canada geese, white-fronted geese, snow geese, and tundra swans. It's also the calving grounds for some 45,000 caribou known as the Teshekpuk herd, which serves as a veritable meat locker for four villages. Up to a tenth of the herd ends up on Inupiat tables every year.

"Teshekpuk Lake is God's country," said former borough mayor George Ahmaogak, who owns two hunting camps in the area. "Everything can be had there—waterfowl, fish, caribou. We made a good effort to keep that area closed. Now the Bush Administration comes along and says make it all available for leasing." In 1977 the Carter Administration initially designated the lake as one of three special areas within NPRA for its importance to wildlife, along with the bluffs by the Colville River, which are used by thousands of breeding peregrines, gyrfalcons, and rough-legged hawks, and the Utukok River uplands, calving grounds of the western Arctic caribou herd. That year and again in 1980, Congress instructed the secretary of the interior to ensure that any activity in these areas be conducted to "take every precaution to avoid unnecessary surface damage and to minimize ecological disturbance throughout the reserve." Even Ronald Reagan's famously anti-environmental secretary of the interior, James Watt, barred leasing on 200,000 acres (80,000 hectares) north of the lake to protect the geese. When the Clinton Administration decided to open NPRA to oil exploration in the late 1990s, it commissioned an exhaustive environmental impact statement (EIS) for the 4.6-million-acre (1.8-million-hectare) northeast block. After numerous studies of caribou and geese and countless meetings with villages that depend on game from the area, then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt expanded the protection to more than a half million acres (200,000 hectares), but opened the remaining 87 percent of the Northeast Planning Area to leasing.

Some of the hottest oil prospects, however, were in the protected 13 percent. A geologic formation known as the Barrow Arch runs near the lake, and almost every commercial oil discovery on the slope has been found within 20 miles (30 kilometers) of it. The Bush Administration decided to update the EIS, claiming the government had new information on mitigating the impacts on wildlife. Last January, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton opened the entire area to drilling, except the lake itself. The decision leaves only 6 percent of the coastal plain closed to oil exploration, the piece that lies within ANWR.

"In 1998 we came up with an agreement most of us could live with," said Geoff Carroll, a long-time wildlife biologist who studies the Teshekpuk herd. "Then it was completely up-ended. Several studies since have reaffirmed the area's impor- tance as wildlife habitat. The only new information was BLM's assumption that there's more oil there than originally thought. All the emphasis and debate has been on ANWR. To me it's a big distraction as they sweep into this area that is just as important biologically as 1002."

Part of the dilemma now facing the North Slope and its residents is the permanency of the decisions being made here, largely out of view of the rest of the nation. Oil infrastructure in the Arctic is a bit like the scar you got on the playground as a kid. It may fade, but it never goes away. Take a look at a couple of old wells on a ridge overlooking the storied oil camp of Umiat, a hundred miles (160 kilometers) upstream of Nuiqsut. It was here in the 1940s and early 1950s that the Navy drilled the first test wells in what was then called Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4, established by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 as an emergency supply for the military. Umiat's large remote airstrip was later used as a flag stop for airplanes flying from Fairbanks to Barrow, and as a base for seismic crews who scoured NPRA in great cat-train expeditions during the 1970s and 1980s. Umiat now holds two dubious distinctions: It's one of the coldest places in the U.S. (average temperature is 10.8˚F [-11.8˚C), and it's the site of a multimillion-dollar toxic cleanup.

A rusting fuel tank and a Christmas tree of valves mark Umiat Well Number 9 near the top of the ridge. From here, on a good day, you can see forever. In the distance the land rises in green plateaus and long benches all the way to the rugged Brooks Range to the southeast, while the broad valley of the Colville River opens like a gentle fold in the earth, slowly ascending on one bank to the 800-foot (340-meter) bluff known as Umiat Mountain. It's easy to forget that the military once left thousands of barrels of oil, diesel, DDT, and PCB to rot here. One morning, in bone-chilling rain, six peregrine falcons soared like stealth bombers along that bluff, hunting for the hapless gosling or rodent to feed their hungry chicks. The bluffs along the river provide some of the most important nesting areas in the Arctic for the species.

It's rugged, beautiful, wide-open country, essentially unchanged since woolly mammoths roamed these steppes. It's difficult to imagine it full of pipes, pump stations, and gravel roads. Yet somewhere beneath those foothills lie an estimated 100 million barrels of light, sweet crude—and an estimated 60 trillion cubic feet (1.7 trillion cubic meters) of natural gas, enough to satisfy the current demand in the U.S. for three years. The camp at Umiat was busy with oil-field geologists and other experts in advance of the next anticipated lease sale in NPRA and the intensive seismic work scheduled for the winter. And federal agencies are still trying to clean up the contaminated soils at Umiat, nearly 60 years after the Navy drilled it.

On a bitter September day with snow blowing horizontally off the Beaufort Sea, BP engineer Scott Digert pointed to an odd steel sculpture rising from the industrialized tundra of Prudhoe Bay. "That's the discovery well," he shouted to a small group of journalists over the howling wind—the last of a dozen exploratory wells drilled in the 1960s. The first 11 were dry holes, but on the last one ARCO and Humble Oil (now Exxon) hit pay dirt: the largest oil reservoir yet found on the continent. The historic well is now topped by a 15-foot-high (five meters) ARCO trademark, which Digert explained represents a spark inside a circle, but which looks more like giant crosshairs. Though the company merged with BP in 2000, Digert, a former ARCO man, couldn't help but beam. "Some of us former ARCO employees are pretty proud of that," he said.

Back in '68 Prudhoe was even more remote than Umiat. What started as one drill site covering 65 acres (26 hectares) has now sprawled across a thousand square miles (2,600 square kilometers) with 19 producing fields and 1,860 miles (3,000 kilometers) of pipeline, transforming a stretch of tundra the size of Yosemite into one of the largest industrial complexes on the globe. The original find was estimated at 9.6 billion barrels. Prudhoe has already produced 10 billion barrels, and BP and its partners hope to squeeze out several billion more, perhaps extending the field's life for another 50 years.

But the end of oil is in sight. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, or TAPS, which transported more than two million barrels a day in 1988, is down to 900,000 barrels a day and dropping 3 percent a year. Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski is clamoring to build a new pipeline to transport the slope's vast reservoir of natural gas to markets in the Midwest and to keep the state's coffers brimming, but so far that remains a pipe dream. Each day Prudhoe produces more gas than Canada burns in a day—some eight billion cubic feet—which is currently reinjected into the oil reservoir to keep the pressure up and the dwindling supply of oil flowing. If the gas pipeline gets approved, it will be one of the largest private construction projects the world has ever seen and will likely change the face of the slope forever.

For now, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo explained that his company is out of the exploration game on the North Slope. Instead BP is focusing on using the latest technology to squeeze every last drop out of the known formations at Prudhoe, including the estimated 23 billion barrels of heavy viscous oil that remains largely untapped.

At a new state-of-the-art well pad, with some 35 wells clustered together in small beige sheds, veteran operator Dan Hejl broke away from the hum of computers in the control room to open a small tap in one of the sheds out back. He poured about a liter of oil into a plastic container. It looked like a slightly thicker version of Guinness stout, with a gas station bouquet. "Smells like money," Hejl said.

It's hard not to be impressed by what hard work, technology, and an unseemly amount of money has carved out in one of the harshest environments on the globe. But the impacts are equally impressive. In March a corroded BP pipeline caused the largest oil spill in North Slope history—estimated at more than 200,000 gallons (760,000 liters)—one of hundreds of spills that occur there each year. Giant turbines scream day and night, pumping out more of some air pollutants than Washington, D.C. Perhaps most troubling, there are no plans to clean up the place when the oil and gas are gone. A 2003 report by the National Research Council concluded that because of exorbitant cost and lax oversight, most of the tundra will never be restored—making the stakes in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge all the higher.

"At this point, the decision to open ANWR has moved into the realm of politics," Beaudo said. "It needs to be decided by the American people. We're not going to try to influence that."

At least not anymore. After spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to open up the 1002 Area of ANWR to drilling, BP and other big oil companies have pulled out of the most vocal lobbying group, known as Arctic Power. Perhaps they believe it's time to move to the sidelines. Or perhaps it's just that the holes they've drilled near the refuge have been disappointing, while the holes drilled toward NPRA, with less political pitfalls, have paid off big-time.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be the only spot on the entire North Slope where the American public hasn't acted like absentee landlords. The folks of the village of Kaktovik, which sits on the coast just north of the refuge, bristle at this notion, because long before it was deemed "the last great wilderness" by conservationists in the 1950s, it was simply their backyard, where they fished, hunted, and camped. Their ancestors' footprints are all over it, and they named every bend of the river, every mountain, every fishing hole. Wilderness, to Kaktovik, implies no people.

The village of almost 300, however—which owns nearly 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares) of potentially petroleum-rich lands within ANWR—has long supported drilling in the refuge, putting villagers at odds with the Gwich'in south of the Brooks Range, who also depend on the Porcupine caribou herd that summers and calves along the coastal plain. The Inupiat are well aware from where the money, the jobs, the school, the power plant, and, just recently, the flush toilets came. With a rancorous debate in Congress under way, journalists from around the world descended on the tiny village last summer, leaving Mayor Lon Sonsalla feeling besieged.

"We want the same thing everybody else wants," said Sonsalla, a former Wisconsin farmer who came up north in search of work, fell in love, and stayed. "A better life for your kids and their kids. You want to be able to control your destiny somewhat. Officially, the town is still in favor of responsible onshore development. Can we stand up to the beast? They'll have to mind their p's and q's here."

Unofficially, the village seems utterly torn over the issue. Robert Thompson is one of the growing number of residents ardently opposed to oil development in the refuge. A wilderness guide who takes rafters down the shallow, gravelly rivers that tumble from the Brooks Range, Thompson recently circulated a petition against drilling and collected 58 signatures. That's significant, he said, since only 98 people voted in the last election.

"The governor of Alaska says we're doing this for the people of Kaktovik, because he doesn't want us to live like a third-world country," Thompson said from his easy chair, which was surrounded by guns, bows, and assorted outdoor gear. "We didn't get the benefits of oil money until after Anchorage got a hundred-million-dollar performing arts center. Twenty-eight years after oil production began, we just got off honey buckets. Go take a good look at that toilet. That's a million-dollar toilet right there. Most of the North Slope officials advocating for oil development have spent more time in Hawaii than in the refuge."

Surprisingly, all the arguing between pro-drilling groups and environmentalists over just how much oil actually underlies the refuge—and whether it's worth destroying its renowned wilderness character—is based on a scant amount of actual hard data. No fewer than eight different assessments of the area's oil potential have been made by various state or federal agencies since 1986, with numbers all over the map. Almost all are primarily based on a two-dimensional seismic survey done by the industry in the early 1980s. In the most recent study done by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1998, that data was recrunched in faster computers with the findings from a handful of new wells drilled along the refuge's periphery thrown in for good measure. That estimate gave the refuge a 95 percent chance of containing 4.3 billion barrels and a 5 percent chance of containing 11.8 billion barrels, with a mean estimate of 7.7 billion. The oil is now thought to lie in some 35 relatively small deposits scattered mostly in the western section of the 1002 Area, a contention contradicting USGS's stance in 1986, when most of the oil was thought to lie in the eastern section.

"Trying to estimate the amount of oil or gas is a highly uncertain business," says USGS's Kenneth Bird, a project leader for the 1998 study. "That's why we report our results in terms of probabilities. The wide range from high to low is reflective of the uncertainty."

The only way to know for sure what's in a formation is to drill it, and that's just what a consortium led by Chevron did over the winters of 1985 and 1986, on a sliver of land within the refuge owned by the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation. The company drilled more than 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) into one of the most promising formations in the refuge—a large geologic "trap" that, if full of oil, would rival those beneath Saudi Arabia. That well, known as KIC-1, was a "tight hole," oil-speak for super secret. Ever since, Chevron and the others have closely guarded the results of that well.

But KIC-1 was ultimately a disappointment, say anonymous sources familiar with the well data. The most exciting discovery, the sources said, was found just below the permafrost when they hit a layer they thought was oil but turned out to be hydrate—likely a form of frozen methane ubiquitous in the Arctic. Hydrate has been touted as one of the fuels of the future, but the technology doesn't exist to tap it. KIC-1, perhaps the most famous Alaska well since the discovery of oil at Prudhoe, is just another dry hole in the tundra.

One test well, of course, doesn't characterize an entire field—11 dry holes were drilled before they found Prudhoe—but it might explain why oil companies wanted to keep the bad news out of the highly charged political debate. When asked for comment, a Chevron spokesman would only say, "We don't make announcements about what we've found. This is a highly competitive business, and we've chosen to keep the information on that well proprietary."

Drilling proponents, like Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and Governor Frank Murkowski, have long painted the coastal plain as a bleak, frozen wasteland good for little but reducing—how-ever slightly—our dependence on foreign oil.

It's an argument that makes noted wildlife biologist George Schaller, who helped conduct one of the early wildlife surveys in the refuge, shake his head. "It is the ultimate in patriotism to leave future generations what the past reveres," he said. "Drilling in ANWR is just ecological vandalism. You have the landscape of 10,000 years compared with Prudhoe Bay, which has the landscape of New Jersey. What kind of society do we have that would destroy that for future generations for a few more gallons of gas?"

Some industry observers speculate that the oil companies aren't as interested in drilling ANWR as they are in placing pipelines and other infrastructure there to tap the massive fields thought to lie beneath the Beaufort Sea. So far, the prohibitive cost and high risks of developing such fields amid the Arctic ice have kept the oil companies close to shore. But with oil prices climbing and Arctic ice melting, it may soon be profitable to put those fields in play.

Offshore drilling has long been the Inupiat's greatest fear. Even oil company officials admit that there is no known technology for cleaning up an oil spill in the broken ice conditions that occur in spring and fall—coincidentally when some 10,000 bowhead whales are migrating just offshore. The annual spring and fall bowhead hunts and communal sharing of the whale meat have become the cultural backbone of the Inupiat in the face of the onslaught of westernization. And a spill in an area where the base of the food chain—phytoplankton and marine algae—depends on sunlight filtering through the ice could devastate the Arctic ecosystem for decades.

Bush pilot Pat Valkenburg, a retired biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, banked his little beige Super Cub low and slow over a rough square of tundra a few hundred feet below. "There it is," he said, pointing to a steel pipe poking up from the tundra. "The only test well ever drilled in ANWR. Doesn't look like much does it?" I had to agree. We'd spent the past three hours flying over some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth: The Beaufort Sea, looking like an endless white sheet cake, trimmed in cobalt blue; the buff brown tundra of coastal plain, dotted with caribou; the rolling foothills rising into the mighty Brooks Range, sparkling in the sky like the Emerald City of Oz. This, though mind-blowingly beautiful, was what I expected.

But it was that pesky little pipe that seemed to symbolize the ultimate choice of a nation: Whether to leave one corner of the wildest state the way it has been for millennia, or to leave no patch of tundra unturned to meet our insatiable desire for oil.

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0605/feature1/ .
.

papsrus

June 5th, 2007, 07:26 PM

The pink Dell banner ad is driving me wacko, it pops up constantly, making one stop and delete it each and every time. It covers up what your reading or typing and it happens constantly. This is the only ad AAJ has had that does this. Anyone else having trouble with it?

Take that back, Circuit City banner is doing the same, I guess the banner ads are all doing this now. It's distracting and annoying.

These ads might be popping up from a previous website you visited ...? I haven't noticed any pop-up ads while on the AAJ website. I have had pop-up ads from other sites follow me around though.

And thanks for the above Fall of the Wild article

Saundra Hummer

June 5th, 2007, 07:51 PM

These ads might be popping up from a previous website you visited ...? I haven't noticed any pop-up ads while on the AAJ website. I have had pop-up ads from other sites follow me around though.

And thanks for the above Fall of the Wild article

You're welcome,

and if you go to the Jazz Bulletin Board and look up About The Web Site, you'll see that I'm not the only one who had this happen. I guess it depends on who you use as your home page browser, or whatever. FireFox isn't having that problem that I know of. I wonder if I could download the program that Mike put up for it, since I do have AOL? I like the spyware and virus programs I have with them since they've fixed a lot of things, and I prefer their email system over a lot of others. Not sure what to do. Not swift with computers. I can do what I need to do as a rule, but not up on all of the little intricacies that so many of you know about.

papsrus

June 5th, 2007, 07:59 PM

You're welcome,

and if you go to the Jazz Bulletin Board and look up About The Web Site, you'll see that I'm not the only one who had this happen. I guess it depends on who you use as your home page browser, or whatever. FireFox isn't having that problem that I know of. I wonder if I could download the program that Mike put up for it, since I do have AOL? I like the spyware and virus programs I have with them since they've fixed a lot of things, and I prefer their email system over a lot of others. Not sure what to do. Not swift with computers. I can do what I need to do as a rule, but not up on all of the little intricacies that so many of you know about.

^ That might explain it, because I do use Firefox at home. And I do use the "block pop-up ads" feature as well. At work, though, I'm on Explorer and still no pop-ups, although the tech guys here may have set these browsers to block pop-ups as well. Not sure. Anyways, I'm sure there's a way you can get ride of them.
:light:

Saundra Hummer

June 5th, 2007, 11:30 PM

^ That might explain it, because I do use Firefox at home. And I do use the "block pop-up ads" feature as well. At work, though, I'm on Explorer and still no pop-ups, although the tech guys here may have set these browsers to block pop-ups as well. Not sure. Anyways, I'm sure there's a way you can get ride of them.
:light:

I believe Mike did away with the ad for a bit, until he can fix it, but I just turned on the block up function with my server, so maybe that will prevent it from happening again should that not work for Mike. Bad move on Dell and Circuit City's management. That is such a turn off, makes you not want to ever deal with them.

Saundra Hummer

June 6th, 2007, 04:02 PM

.~~~~~~~
The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference"

Bess Myerson ~~~"Each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office." :

Fyrefly1985
Niccolo Machiavelli
~~~
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self- preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."

Thomas Jefferson
to
John Colvin
1810
~~~
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

John Philpot Curran
Speech upon the Right of Election
1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
As quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations~~~
When people who are honestly mistaken learn the truth, they will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest!"

Anonymous
~~~
"I would rather have free a press and no government, than a government and no free press."

Thomas Jefferson
~~~
"The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America (is that it) has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists."

From
"Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail '72"
by
Hunter S. Thompson
~~~
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become victims of the darkness."

Justice William O. Douglas
~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

June 6th, 2007, 04:16 PM

.
. . . . . . .
If You Think Bush Is Evil Now,
Wait Until He Nukes Iran
By
Paul Craig Roberts
06/06/07 "ICH " -- -- The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Gen. Sanchez says, is “to stave off defeat,” and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Gen. Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: “I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time.”

More evidence that the war is lost arrived June 4 with headlines reporting: “U.S.-led soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on Monday.” After five years of war the US controls one-third of one city and nothing else.

A host of US commanding generals have said that the Iraq war is destroying the US military. A year ago Colin Powell said that the US Army is “about broken.” Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn says Bush has “piecemealed our force to death.” Gen. Barry McCafrey testified to the US Senate that “the Army will unravel.”

Col. Andy Bacevich, America’s foremost writer on military affairs, documents in the current issue of The American Conservative that Bush’s insane war has depleted and exhausted the US Army and Marine Corps:

“Only a third of the regular Army’s brigades qualify as combat-ready. In the reserve components, none meet that standard. When the last of the units reaches Baghdad as part of the president’s strategy of escalation, the US will be left without a ready-to-deploy land force reserve.”

“The stress of repeated combat tours is sapping the Army’s lifeblood. Especially worrying is the accelerating exodus of experienced leaders. The service is currently short 3,000 commissioned officers. By next year, the number is projected to grow to 3,500. The Guard and reserves are in even worse shape. There the shortage amounts to 7,500 officers. Young West Pointers are bailing out of the Army at a rate not seen in three decades. In an effort to staunch the losses, that service has begun offering a $20,000 bonus to newly promoted captains who agree to stay on for an additional three years. Meanwhile, as more and more officers want out, fewer and fewer want in: ROTC scholarships go unfilled for a lack of qualified applicants.”

Bush has taken every desperate measure. Enlistment ages have been pushed up from 35 to 42. The percentage of high school dropouts and the number of recruits scoring at the bottom end of tests have spiked. The US military is forced to recruit among drug users and convicted criminals. Bacevich reports that wavers “issued to convicted felons jumped by 30 percent.” Combat tours have been extended from 12 to 15 months, and the same troops are being deployed again and again.

There is no equipment for training. Bacevich reports that “some $212 billion worth has been destroyed, damaged, or just plain worn out.” What remains is in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under these circumstances, “staying the course” means total defeat.

Even the neoconservative warmongers, who deceived Americans with the promise of a “cakewalk war” that would be over in six weeks, believe that the war is lost. But they have not given up. They have a last desperate plan: Bomb Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney is spear- heading the neocon plan, and Norman Podhoretz is the plan’s leading propagandist with his numerous pleas published in the Wall Street Journal and Commentary to bomb Iran. Podhoretz, like every neoconservative, is a total Islamophobe. Podhoretz has written that Islam must be deracinated and the religion destroyed, a genocide for the Muslim people.

The neocons think that by bombing Iran the US will provoke Iran to arm the Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades and with surface to air missiles and unleash the militias against US troops. These weapons would neutralize US tanks and helicopter gunships and destroy the US military edge, leaving divided and isolated US forces subject to being cut off from supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge of losing most of its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to “save the troops” by nuking Iran.

Five years of unsuccessful war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel’s recent military defeat in Lebanon have convinced the neocons that America and Israel cannot establish hegemony over the Middle East with conventional forces alone. The neocons have changed US war doctrine, which now permits the US to preemptively strike with nuclear weapons a non-nuclear power. Neocons are forever heard saying, “what’s the use of having nuclear weapons if you can’t use them.”

Neocons have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the will of the US government. Insurgency and terrorism cannot prevail against nuclear weapons.

Many US military officers are horrified at what they think would be the worst ever orchestrated war crime. There are reports of threatened resignations. But Dick Cheney is resolute. He tells Bush that the plan will save him from the ignominy of losing the war and restore his popularity as the president who saved Americans from Iranian nuclear weapons. With the captive American media providing propaganda cover, the neoconservatives believe that their plan can pull their chestnuts out of the fire and rescue them from the failure that their delusion has wrought.

The American electorate decided last November that they must do something about the failed war and gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress. However, the Democrats have decided that it is easier to be complicit in war crimes than to represent the wishes of the electorate and hold a rogue president accountable. If Cheney again prevails, America will supplant the Third Reich as the most reviled country in recorded history.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. He is author or co-author of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon chair in political economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and senior research fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell
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Saundra Hummer

June 6th, 2007, 04:42 PM

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Could al Qaeda Attack Trigger War With Iran?
Analysis
by
Gareth Porter

06/05/07 - -- - WASHINGTON, Jun 5 (IPS) - Following revelations of a George W. Bush administration policy to hold Iran responsible for any al Qaeda attack on the U.S. that could be portrayed as planned on Iranian soil, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi warned last week that Washington might use such an incident as a pretext to bomb Iran.

Brzezinski, the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 through 1980 and the most senior Democratic Party figure on national security policy, told a private meeting sponsored by the non-partisan Committee for the Republic in Washington May 30 that an al Qaeda terrorist attack in the United States intended to provoke war between the U.S. and Iran was a possibility that must be taken seriously, and that the Bush administration might accuse Iran of responsibility for such an attack and use it to justify carrying out an attack on Iran.

Brzezinski suggested that new constraints were needed on presidential war powers to reduce the risk of a war against Iran based on such a false pretense. Such constraints, Brzezinski said, should not prevent the president from using force in response to an attack on the United States, but should make it more difficult to carry out an attack without an adequate justification.

Brzezinski's warning came a few weeks after the publication in late April of former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet's memoirs, which revealed that CIA officials had told Iranian officials in a face-to-face meeting that the Bush administration would hold Iran responsible for any al Qaeda attack on the United States that was planned from Iranian territory.

The Bush administration has made persistent claims over the past five years that Iran has harboured al Qaeda operatives who had fled from Afghanistan and that they had participated in planning terrorist actions -- claims that were not supported by intelligence analysts.

Pentagon officials leaked information to CBS in May 2003 that they had "evidence" that al Qaeda leaders who had found "safe haven" in Iran had planned and directed terrorist operations in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld also encouraged that inference when he declared on May 29, 2003 that Iran had "permitted senior al Qaeda officials to operate in their country."

The leak and public statement allowed the media and their audiences to infer that the "safe haven" had been deliberately provided by Iranian authorities.

But most U.S. intelligence analysts specialising on the Persian Gulf believed the al Qaeda officials in Iran who were still communicating with operatives elsewhere were in hiding rather than under arrest. Former national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia Paul Pillar told IPS in an interview last year that the "general impression" was that the al Qaeda operatives were not in Iran with the complicity of the Iranian authorities.

Former CIA analysts Ken Pollock, who was a Persian Gulf specialist on the National Security Council staff in 2001, wrote in "The Persian Puzzle", "These al Qaeda leaders apparently were operating in eastern Iran, which is a bit like the Wild West." He added, pointedly, "It was not as if these al-Qaeda leaders had been under lock and key in Evin prison in Tehran and were allowed to make phone calls to set up the attacks."

Although most elements in the Bush administration appear to oppose military action against Iran, Vice President Dick Cheney has reportedly advocated that course. He has also continued to raise the issue of al Qaeda officials in Iran.

Cheney told Fox News in an interview May 14, "We are confident that there are a number of senior al Qaeda officials in Iran, that they've been there since the spring of 2003. About the time that we launched operations into Iraq, the Iranians rounded up a number of al Qaeda individuals and placed them under house arrest."

Cheney did not say that the al Qaeda officials who were communicating with other operatives outside Iran were under house arrest.

As recently as last February, Bush administration officials were preparing to accuse Tehran publicly of cooperating with and harbouring al Qaeda suspects as part of the administration's strategy for pushing for stronger U.N. sanctions against Iran. The strategy of portraying Iran as having links with al Qaeda was being pushed by an unidentified Bush adviser who had been "instrumental in coming up with a more confrontational U.S. approach to Iran," according a report by the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer on Feb. 10.

As Linzer revealed, the neoconservative faction in the administration was still pushing to link Iran with al Qaeda despite the fact that a CIA report in early February had reported the arrest by Iranian authorities of two more al Qaeda operatives trying to make their way through Iran from Pakistan to Iraq.

The danger of an al Qaeda effort to disguise an attack on the U.S. as coming from Iran was raised in an article in Foreign Affairs published in late April by former NSC adviser and counterterrorism expert Bruce Reidel.

In the article, Reidel wrote that Osama bin Laden may have plans for "triggering an all-out war between the United States and Iran," referring to evidence that al Qaeda in Iraq now considers Iranian influence in Iraq "an even greater problem than the U.S. occupation".

"The biggest danger," Reidel wrote, "is that al Qaeda will deliberately provoke a war with a 'false-flag' operation, say, a terrorist attack carried out in a way that would make it appear as though it were Iran's doing."

In a briefing for reporters about the article, Reidel said al Qaeda officals have "openly talked about the advisability of getting their two great enemies to go to war with each other", hoping that they would "take each other out".

Reidel, now a senior fellow with the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, was one of the leading specialists on al Qaeda and terrorism, having served in the 1990s as national intelligence officer, assistant secretary of defence and NSC specialist for Near East and South Asia up to January 2002.

Supporting the warnings by Brzezinski and Reidel about an al Qaeda "false flag" terrorist attack is a captured al Qaeda document found in a hideout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006. The document, translated and released by the Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafek al-Rubaie, said "the best solution in order to get out of this crisis is to involve the U.S. forces in waging a war against another country or any hostile groups".

The document, the author of which was not specified, explained, "We mean specifically attempting to escalate tension between America and Iran, and America and the Shiite[s] in Iraq."

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005. (END/2007)

Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service

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Saundra Hummer

June 6th, 2007, 04:53 PM

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X X X X X
UK and US must quit Iraq quickly, says former ambassador

Tania Branigan and Rosie Lavan
Wednesday June 6, 2007

Guardian

The British and American military presence in Iraq is worsening security across the region and should be withdrawn quickly, the UK's former ambassador to Washington warned yesterday.
Sir Christopher Meyer acknowledged that leaving Iraq would be "painful", but said the mission was not worth the death of one more serviceman. "I personally believe that the presence of American and British and coalition forces is making things worse, not only inside Iraq but the wider region around Iraq. The arguments against staying for any greater length of time themselves strengthen with every day that passes," Sir Christopher said.

He added: "I think the Iraqis are in fact sorting themselves out - often bloodily - independent of what we're doing."

The former diplomat, posted in Washington in the runup to the 2003 invasion, was giving evidence to the Iraq Commission in London. The cross-party group - modelled on America's Iraq Study Group - was set up by the Foreign Policy Centre thinktank and Channel 4 to examine possible options for Britain's future role.

British commanders in Iraq have drawn up a plan for the withdrawal of almost all UK troops within 12 months, as one of several options to be presented to Gordon Brown when he takes over as prime minister. But Sir Christopher said Mr Brown was unlikely to announce a unilateral troop withdrawal that was not coordinated with the United States.

He acknowledged that foreign policy decisions were always "fraught with risk". But asked about criticisms of withdrawal, he replied: "It always seemed to me this was one of the key moral arguments in Iraq, that however bad things were ... the overriding requirement for us was to be able to say to parents and relatives in Britain, your sons and daughters did not die in vain. I think we have now crossed the line - we now have to say the mission is no longer worth another life of a British or American serviceman."

Sir Christopher's controversial book, DC Confidential, argued that the coalition failed to plan for securing and rebuilding Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion.

Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the army, said last year that the British should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".

Oliver Burch, of Christian Aid, told the commission that reconstruction efforts by the military had made the work of aid agencies harder in some ways.

It meant military operations were run alongside humanitarian work.

"For that reason those who do not like the coalition forces do not like NGOs either," he said.

The commission, chaired by Lord King, Lord Ashdown, and Lady Jay will report in mid-July after hearing evidence from a range of military and policy experts.

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Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329981704-103681,00.html X X X .

Saundra Hummer

June 6th, 2007, 05:44 PM

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:: :: :: :: ::
Document:
Iran Caught Red-Handed Shipping Arms to Taliban

June 06, 2007 6:00 PM

Brian Ross
and
Christopher Isham Report:

NATO officials say they have caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces, in what the officials say is a dramatic escalation of Iran's proxy war against the United States and Great Britain.

"It is inconceivable that it is anyone other than the Iranian government that's doing it," said former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stopped short earlier this week of blaming Iran, saying the U.S. did not have evidence "of the involvement of the Iranian government in support of the Taliban."

But an analysis by a senior coalition official, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, concludes there is clear evidence of Iran's involvement.

"This is part of a considered policy," says the analysis, "rather than the result of low-level corruption and weapons smuggling."

Iran and the Taliban had been fierce enemies when the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, and their apparent collaboration came as a surprise to some in the intelligence community.

"I think their goal is to make it very clear that Iran has the capability to make life worse for the United States on a variety of fronts," said Seth Jones of the Rand Institute, "even if they have to do some business with a group that has historically been their enemy."

The coalition analysis says munitions recovered in two Iranian convoys, on April 11 and May 3, had "clear indications that they originated in Iran. Some were identical to Iranian supplied goods previously discovered in Iraq."

The April convoy was tracked from Iran into Helmand province and led a fierce firefight that destroyed one vehicle, according to the official analysis. A second vehicle was reportedly found to contain small arms ammunition, mortar rounds and more than 650 pounds of C4 demolition charges.

A second convoy of two vehicles was spotted on May 3 and led to the capture of five occupants and the seizure of RPG-7mm rockets and more than 1,000 pounds of C4, the analysis says.

Also among the munitions are components for the lethal EFPs, or explosive formed projectiles, the roadside bombs that U.S. officials say Iran has provided to Iraqi insurgents with deadly results.

"These clearly have the hallmarks of the Iranian Revolution Guards' Quds force," said Jones.

The coalition diplomatic message says the demolition charges "contained the same fake U.S. markings found on explosives recovered from insurgents operating in the Baghdad area."

"We believe these intercepted munitions are part of a much bigger flow of support from Iran to the Taliban," the message says.

The Taliban receives larger supplies of weapons through profits from opium dealing, officials say, but the Iranian presence could be significant.

"It means the insurgency in Afghanistan is likely to be prolonged," said Jones. "It would be a much more potent force."
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/document_iran_c.html :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

June 6th, 2007, 06:16 PM

Is the best way to avoid a war with Iran is to just say Enough is enough?, To just pick up and leave? Wouldn't this be the best way to avoid another war with a soveriegn state, and, with which ever countries decide to throw their own hats into the ring on Iran's side? Wouldn't it just be best, before things escalate into a blood bath, to just leave the area to it's own people? I know, Israel is desperately wanting their water and wanting Iran removed as a threat to their existance, but it's not going to happen without a war, and then if and when there is one, they' will have to win, and with us on their side, it's likely they will, but this could be terrible, as I don't see others not thinking about stepping up and into the fray. This administrration has put us in a fine fix, and there's not a bit of light at the end of this long tunnel. Each and every day it gets more curiouser and curiouser, not to mention so very troubling, and spooky.

What are we to gain, by fighting the Iranians, as well as the Iraqi's, and perhaps anyone who chooses up sides? This too could happen.

I see lots out there to lose, but very little in benefits, and that's being generous. Actually, I see nothing at all to be gained by staying and killing more and more Iraqi's, and by having our own men and women killed as well. So they'd kill each other in a civil war if we leave, they'd kill one another in a blood lust rampage, well, what are they doing now? Do more of us have to die while standing in the middle?

Just think how much we've contributed to their suffereing. Heck, we inflicted most of it, we invaded a country for dubious reasons, and we've killed so many innocents; so many young innocent children, this after our embargos had killed thousands more.

We have no business there.

Saundra Hummer

June 6th, 2007, 06:31 PM

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.VIDEO

$$$$$$
The Petro Dollar, Iraq, Oil and Bush
9 Minute Video.

Did The U.S. Invade Iraq to protect the dollar in International markets?

06/06/07

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Saundra Hummer

June 7th, 2007, 01:15 PM

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CIVIL RIGHTS
Unfit To Be America's Doctor
The Surgeon General of the United States is supposed to be "America's chief health educator." On May 24, President Bush nominated Dr. James W. Holsinger, Jr. to serve as the next Surgeon General, promising that he will provide "the best scientific information available on how Americans can make smart choices that improve their health and reduce their risk of illness and injury." But unfortunately, it is unlikely that Holsinger will give the American public sound "scientific" advice. Holsinger has a long history of prejudice toward gays and lesbians, once writing that homosexual behavior is "intuitively" unnatural. Moreover, he believes that sexual orientation is an issue of "lifestyle," a position that nearly every major medical association has denounced. The United States needs a Surgeon General guided by sound scientific principles, not ideology.

HOLSINGER BELIEVES HOMOSEXUALITY IS 'INTUITIVELY' UNNATURAL: Since 2000, Holsinger has been a member of the United Methodist Judicial Council, the church's highest "court" that rules on "disputes involving church doctrine and policies in the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination." He has been that body's president since 2004. During his tenure, Holsinger has "opposed a decision to allow a practicing lesbian to be an associate pastor, and he supported a pastor who would not permit an openly gay man to join the church." In 1991, Holsinger wrote a document titled "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality" for the United Methodist Church's Committee to Study Homosexuality. The graphic document concludes that such relationships are "intuitively" unnatural. "In fact, the logical complementarity of the human sexes has been so recognized in our culture that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming various pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other," wrote Holsinger. Holsinger resigned from the committee in the early 1990s, when the church decided that gays are of "sacred worth" and should be welcomed. Holsinger was worried that the committee "would follow liberal lines" and warned "that acceptance of homosexuality would drive away millions of churchgoers." [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 5/26/07; Time magazine, 6/24/91]

HOLSINGER VIEWS HOMOSEXUALITY AS A 'LIFESTYLE' CHOICE: Holsinger and his wife also helped found the Hope Springs Community Church, which "ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian." Holsinger and his church take the scientifically-rejected position that sexual orientation is a "lifestyle" choice. "We see that as an issue not of orientation but of lifestyle," said Rev. David Calhoun, the pastor at Hope Springs. "We have people who seek to walk out of that lifestyle." But Holsinger's treatment has been denounced by nearly every major medical association. The administration is already making excuses for Holsinger's 1991 paper and his views on homosexuality. "It should be noted that in 1991, homosexuals were banned from the military and several years before that, homosexuality and Haitian nationality were considered risk factors for HIV/AIDS," said Health and Human Services spokeswoman Holly Babin. "Over the last 20 years, a clearer understanding of these issues has been achieved." But gays are still banned from serving openly in the military and are still disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Additionally, in 1990, the American Psychological Association already recognized "that scientific evidence does not show that conversion therapy works and that it can do more harm than good." The American Psychiatric Association's position is also that there "is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of 'reparative therapy' as a treatment to change one's sexual orientation." Rev. Troy Plummer, Executive Director of Reconciling Ministries Network of United Methodists, called the reparative therapy promoted by Holsinger "nothing short of torture of gay and lesbian people."

HOLSINGER IS UNFIT TO MAKE MEDICAL DECISIONS FOR AMERICANS: The Surgeon General is often called "Ameria's doctor." While the role is "primarily an educational one, it comes with public relations clout that can influence public policy." For example, C. Everett Koop, who served as Surgeon General from 1982 to 1989, used the position to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS and the importance of condoms and sexual education. The need for such awareness and solid scientific direction from the Surgeon General is still essential, but as National Gay and Lesbian Task force Director Matt Foreman notes, Holsinger's "record shows that his own biases will not allow him to look objectively at scientific information." The Surgeon General has responsibility for a broad range of public health issues. His authority may be undermined by his discredited view of homosexuality. Being gay is not about what you do; it is about who you are. As every modern Surgeon General has understood, whether you are gay or straight, if you engage in risky sexual behaviors you have a responsibility to take appropriate precautions. The real danger of Holsinger's mindset is that he doesn't understand that such precautions are both necessary and efficacious.

ANOTHER BUSH LOYALIST?: As Dr. Robert Garofalo, president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Taskforce noted, "The Senate should take a hard look to make sure he isn't another in a long line of ideologically driven Bush administration nominees." Bush has consistently appointed conservative loyalists who push aside science to promote a partisan agenda. In 2006, Bush appointed Eric Keroack to be the new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. Previously, Keroack had "worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as 'demeaning to women.'" Similarly, former U.S. AID director Randall Tobias, who recently stepped down after admitting that he frequented a Washington escort service, oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any U.S.-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution "loyalty oath."

UNDER THE RADAR
MILITARY -- WAR CZAR CRITICAL OF IRAQ ESCALATION TO FACE CONFIRMATION HEARING TODAY: After an extensive search, President Bush announced last month he would appoint Gen. Douglas Lute to the position of deputy national security adviser, more commonly known as "war czar," the chief overseer of U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lute's appointment was notable because of his long-standing criticism of the escalation and his advocacy for troop withdrawal. In Jan. 2006, Lute recommended withdrawal because "you have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq" in order to avoid "the dependency syndrome." Today, Lute will testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing. In written questions provided to senators, Lute confirmed yesterday that he was indeed skeptical of the escalation. "During the review, I registered concerns that a military 'surge' would likely have only temporary and localized effects unless it were accompanied by counterpart 'surges' by the Iraqi government and the other, nonmilitary agencies of the U.S. government," Lute stated. But senators are curious as to how a general opposed to the escalation would implement Bush's escalation strategy and how frank he would be with the President. "Lute's past comments on the war have been 'superficial,'" Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) said. "I think there's a lot of questions that need to be answered as far as what his role is," Levin added. "You have to ask, what is his base of authority?" said Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI). Some senators supportive of the escalation policy see Lute as a ready supporter of Bush. "I would say he's totally supportive of what we're doing now," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Watch the hearing HERE.

ETHICS -- CHENEY BLOCKED PROMOTION OF JUSTICE OFFICIAL WHO QUESTIONED LEGALITY OF WIRETAPPING PROGRAM: On May 15, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his knowledge of the U.S. attorney scandal. During the testimony, Comey revealed a "shocking" account of a 2004 incident, in which then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a midnight visit to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bed, They went in order to get Ashcroft to sign off on the reauthorization of a NSA surveillance program, "after Comey and other Justice Department officials had said they would not certify the legality of the effort." After Ashcroft refused to sign off on the program, the White House re-certified it without the department's endorsement, which caused Comey, Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and other department officials to threaten to resign. Facing mass resignations, Bush reneged and altered the program to their approval. In written responses to questions from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) released last night, Comey revealed that Vice President Cheney personally stepped in to prevent the promotion of Patrick Philbin, one of the Department officials who threatened to resign. "I understood that someone at the White House communicated to Attorney General Gonzales that the vice president would oppose the appointment if the attorney general pursued the matter," Comey wrote. "The attorney general chose not to pursue it." Philbin was also "one of two Justice Department officials who led a review of the classified program and provided some of the research that led Comey to refuse to endorse it." On the night before the midnight hospital visit, Cheney had told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to the secret surveillance program.

ADMINISTRATION -- CONSERVATIVES CONTINUE CALLS FOR LIBBY PARDON: Despite being convicted of obstructing justice, lying to federal investigators, and perjury -- with what the presiding federal judge called "overwhelming" evidence -- many prominent conservatives continue to suggest that Libby has been "unfairly railroaded," that "no underlying crime was committed" and that President Bush has no choice but to pardon Libby of his crimes. Former Bush speech writer and current fellow at the American Enterprise Institute David Frum explained, "A lot of people in the conservative world are weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness here," and added, "I don't understand it." Former Sen. Fred Thompson -- who as the Los Angeles Times noted "plays a tough district attorney on 'Law & Order'" -- referred to Libby's crimes as "some inconsistent statements that he made, allegedly" and said that "if he were president, he would pardon Libby." Former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing derided special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as "over-zealous," called his prosecution of Libby an abuse of power and complained that Fitzgerald's investigation had "no adult supervision." Mel Sembler, who leads Libby's defense fund asserted that there was only "one answer" to Libby's guilt, saying Bush "has to step up and pardon him." But such a pardon would, as one anonymous "former official" told the New York Times, "show a deep disregard for the rule of law." Indeed, the "guidelines for pardon and clemency" provided by the Department of Justice explain that "a convict should generally have to wait five years after conviction or release from confinement before being pardoned." Further, those seeking pardons are "generally expected to accept responsibility for their criminal conduct, and should be seeking forgiveness rather than vindication." As of yet, the anonymous "former official" notes, "there has been no remorse shown," and "no time has been served."

THINK FAST
"Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, disclosed in an interview that the FBI asked him to preserve records as part of a widening investigation into Alaskan political corruption that has touched his son and ensnared one of his closest political confidants and financial backers."

"Los Angeles residents were urged on Wednesday to take shorter showers, reduce lawn sprinklers and stop throwing trash in toilets in a bid to cut water usage by 10 percent" in the driest year "since rainfall records began 130 years ago."

"Federal prosecutors are investigating the Kuwaiti company building the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, probing allegations that foreign employees were brought to work on the massive project against their will and prevented from leaving the country." Former employees say they were told "they were being sent to Dubai, only to wind up in Iraq instead."

"In what many view as a near deal-killer" to the immigration reform bill, the Senate voted last night to pass a controversial amendment to sunset guest-worker provisions in the measure. The deal is reportedly "on life support heading into todayâ€™s expected vote to close off debate."

Kenneth Krieg, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, resigned Wednesday, "the latest in a recent string of high-level departures from the department."

"Six human rights groups on Wednesday released a list of 39 people they believe have been secretly imprisoned by the United States and whose whereabouts are unknown, calling on the Bush administration to abandon such detentions."

"Justice Department investigators looking into former Rep. Jim Kolbe's (R-AZ) relationships with House pages found no wrongdoing and have closed their inquiry, Mr. Kolbe says."

Global warming is "threatening cultural landmarks from Canada to Antarctica, the World Monuments Fund said Wednesday." New Orleans's historic neighborhoods, "the Church of the Holy Nativity under Palestinian control in Bethlehem, cultural heritage sites in Iraq and Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary in Peru are among the top 100 most endangered sites.

And finally: Pols kicking Paris while she's down. While arguing with a witness about soldier protection at a House Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), buoyed his point with a harsh reference to the recently jailed celebrity heiress. "It is not an issue of contending with networks, who when they finish their discussion of the active protection system or the body armor, went on to their ads for...whether or not some celebrity slut was going to jail."

Amnesty International will use satellite cameras to monitor Darfur and put the Sudanese government on notice that these and other areas in the region are being watched around the clock. (This will be available to the public according to a news report last night. SRH)
[B]* * *
NEW YORK: Citizens elect the state's first bisexual legislator.

OREGON: "Two bills to boost voter registration among young people have cleared the Oregon Legislature."

LOUISIANA: Much-needed public housing projects reopen in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

CONNECTICUT: Days after New Haven approved new ID cards to assist undocumented immigrants, federal agents arrested "at least a dozen" immigrants yesterday.

THINK PROGRESS: U.S. Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker: "I don't see an end game in sight."

CLIMATE PROGRESS: NASA administrator Michael Griffin blames NPR for his remarks saying global warming isn't a "problem."

WAR ROOM: MSNBC's Tucker Carlson thinks the Plame controversy is "bullsh*t."

DAILY KOS: "Found: Karl Rove's playbook for" politicizing the non-political parts of the federal government.

"I've told the American people I'd like to get our troops out as soon as possible."
-- President Bush, 6/9/06

VERSUS

"I don't see an end game, as it were, in sight."
-- U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, 6/6/07

http://americanprogressaction.org :: :: :: .

Saundra Hummer

June 7th, 2007, 06:37 PM

.
. . . . . . .
Six Congress Members for Impeachment
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2007-06-07 18:47.

Impeachment
By
David Swanson

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has joined Congress Members Yvette Clarke, Jan Schakowsky, William Lacy Clay, Albert Wynn, and Dennis Kucinich in cosponsoring Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney (H. Res. 333). For details, see: http://impeachcheney.org

Thank Lynn here: http://woolsey.house.gov/contactinfo.asp

Ask her to please encourage other Progressive Caucus Members to sign on.

The list of state Democratic Parties that have passed resolutions urging impeachment of Bush and Cheney has just grown to 15. Meanwhile, 11 state legislatures have introduced such resolutions, which have now been passed by at least 76 cities and towns and a growing list of labor unions and other organizations. These resolutions are all listed at http://impeachpac.org/resolutions-list

» add new comment

WOOOHOOOO!! Clarke yesterday, Woolsey today. . .
Submitted by truthpowers on Thu, 2007-06-07 18:56.
Let's keep it up!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please keep bugging your House Reps to sign on to H.Res. 333 to impeach Cheney!

It worked for us here in NYC!!

» reply | email this page
What did you do?
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2007-06-07 19:06.
What worked?

» reply | email this page
OK this is what worked for us to get our Rep to sign 333
Submitted by truthpowers on Thu, 2007-06-07 20:31.
1 - I went to DC to see my new Rep. signed in the first week in January. I hung out in her office and met her supporters, staff, campaign advisors. Just said I was a constituent interested in participatory democracy. Networked. Met her scheduler.

2 - Back home, I called her scheduler. In late Feb. the scheduler invited my Rep to my home. I set up a meeting with 35 people, including 3 Christian ministers I know (I am not traditionally religious but work part-time in a church and have met some liberal clergy).

3 - Along with just 2 other activists in my neighborhood, I had ongoing contact with her office re: the Lee bill and all the Iraq Supplemental votes and Impeachment, esp. after H. Res. 333 came up (we call between 2 and 3x a week).

4 - Attended a local Peace March where she spoke, (3/25), reintroduced myself and others. We asked her questions re: Supplemental and Oil Benchmarks, which we followed up with by email and calling.

5 - By email, we kept all who had attended the Feb. meeting, as well as all the liberal clergy, apprised of our contacts with her and encouraged them to lobby her during crucial vote times. Some of those folks were contacting her office too.

6 - One of the ministers we kept in the loop turned out to know her and when I suggested a meeting with her he was all ears. He set up the meeting on Tues. Jan 5 with Congressoman Clarke and her Chief of Staff.

7 - We prepared a 50 page packet for her including our agenda for the meeting and extensive documentation on our issue items; i.e., Supplementals, Oil Benchmarks, Unitary Executive powers, and H.Res. 333 for Impeaching Cheney.

8 - At the end of the meeting her Chief of Staff had a staffer call Kucinich's office in our presence to officially sign on to the bill! All in all there were 4 constituents there, and we got her attention for about 40 minutes.

We have plans to continue our in-district netorking with other faith-based groups and keep going with this relationship with our Representative, continuing to advocate for peace and accountability and impeachment. We also are going to share our experience with folks from nearby districts and recruit them to do their version of the same thing.

» reply | email this page
Thanks for the history
Submitted by dikyzr on Thu, 2007-06-07 22:35.
Only 200 more Dems to go. Let's not hold our breath! We need a bunch of ready-to-rock Repubs to find HR 333 soon.

» reply | email this page
Postcards for Peace
Submitted by yankhadenuf on Thu, 2007-06-07 22:54.
This was talked about on CallBox 7 (an internet radio show, http://callbox7.com ).

--------------
"If you want to do something about the occupation of Iraq and the failure of our representatives to listen to us ... read on.

We are constantly being asked to donate money to group X to help run television commercials against the occupation of Iraq . Sometimes we’re encouraged to send money to “Candidate Y” because they really need our help to get into office and help change things. Urgent e-mails fly through our inboxes weekly requesting that we send e-mail to Senator Q or Congressman D in order to make our voices heard.

Everyone seems to be watching the events unfold in Washington and asking themselves the same question: “At what point will something grab the attention of the public and our lawmakers to wake them up and get them to take action?” Some unknown force is suppressing the National will and has us all stalled and waiting – waiting for someone to do … something.

Let me tell you what I am going to do, and I am inviting you to do it with me. Tomorrow I am going to purchase 3 postcards from my local drugstore and I’m going to address them to both of my Senators and my Congresswoman. I am going to write this very simple message on the cards: “GET US OUT OF IRAQ IMMEDIATELY, OR I WILL NOT VOTE FOR YOU AGAIN.” I’m going to drop them in the mail – and I’m going to repeat this action every week in June.

I know that you might think that it is easier and faster to send e-mails instead of postcards, but there are some good reasons for it. First, e-mail takes up no physical space and is highly unlikely to be read by anyone other than a secretary – postcards on the other hand create clutter and have a tangible physical presence. Secondly, there is a very sound psychological premise behind doing what I have done – people who take the time to write postcards and mail them are people who are the most inclined to make the effort to show up at the polls and vote. Do not underestimate the power of that signal.

I would really appreciate it if you would join me in my efforts. It requires virtually no money, and it sends a very clear un-ambiguous message to our elected officials. If you need to find your representative’s addresses you can use this website: http://www3.capwiz.com/c-span/home/ It doesn't matter if you have Democratic representatives or Republicans, it doesn't matter how they have voted on Iraq issues in the past - they all need to hear this message loudly and clearly.>

Once you have mailed your postcards, send this e-mail to everyone in your address book – post it in your blog, call your local radio stations, do whatever you can to pass the word on about this.

We need to send a message and we need to take our country back!"

» reply | email this page

Comment viewing options

Go on-site to access these articles and more, to sign up and in, etc.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/23401 . . .

Saundra Hummer

June 8th, 2007, 01:21 PM

.* * * * * * * * *
Bush's Shadow Justice Department: Did the Federalist Society Have a Hand in Attorney Firings?
Washington Dispatch: The right-wing lawyers' group is the casting couch for the federal judiciary—and may have been, newly released documents indicate, for the Justice Department too.
By Daniel Schulman
June 7, 2007
Before midnight on March 7, 2005, Leonard Leo tapped out an email on his BlackBerry to Mary Beth Buchanan, then the director of the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, suggesting a candidate to replace Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. "You guys need a good candidate?" Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, wrote to Buchanan, herself a member of the influential conservative lawyers' group. "I'd strongly recommend the current GC [general counsel] of the Air Force, Mary Walker."

At the time, White House and Justice Department officials were in preliminary talks about replacing an unspecified number of "underperforming" federal prosecutors, a plan that would culminate almost two years later in the forced resignations of nine U.S. Attorneys, including Lam, and ignite a scandal that has claimed the jobs of at least four high-ranking Justice Department officials. Leo's email, written so early in the process, speaks to the close relationship that has developed between the Federalist Society—an organization whose aims include "reordering priorities" within the judicial system to fit its conservative agenda—and key Justice Department decision makers, many of whom are members of the group.

While perhaps not a prerequisite for employment at the highest echelons of Justice, membership in the society has become a standard by which political appointees at the agency identify candidates who share their agenda. Some officials at the agency view it as such an indicator of conservative virtue that membership in the society was included as a category—along with Hill and campaign experience—on a spreadsheet that was used to rank the qualifications of the 93 sitting U.S. Attorneys, a document included in the reams of Justice Department memoranda released by the House Judiciary Committee this spring.

Beyond highlighting the organization's role as the administration's de facto headhunter for conservative lawyers and judges, Leo's correspondence raises the question of what, if any, role the Federalist Society played in the prosecutor firings. Leo did not respond to messages left at his office and on his cell phone, but he told the New York Times last night that, when he emailed Buchanan, he was unaware that a plan was in the works to replace multiple U.S. Attorneys. But, he acknowledged, his recommendation was not unsolicited. "The only way I could have possibly made that recommendation is if somebody said to me, 'Gee, do you know anyone who would be good?'" he said.

Leo's email, released yesterday as part of an ongoing congressional investigation into the prosecutor firings, marks the second time in as many days that his name has been raised in connection with the probe. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Bradley Schlozman—the controversial Justice Department official who replaced Todd Graves as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri—acknowledged seeking Leo's advice on candidates to fill career positions at the agency. Unlike his former colleague, Monica Goodling, who testified that she "crossed the line" in vetting the political bonafides of job applicants, Schlozman denied subjecting potential hires to a political litmus test.

His record would suggest otherwise. Schlozman is a member of the Federalist Society, and in May the Boston Globe reported that half of the career lawyers hired during his tenure were members of the society or the conservative Republican National Lawyers Association; among the eight hires during the previous two years, none had been. According to Joseph Rich, a 37-year veteran of the Justice Department who served as the head of the agency's voting rights section until 2005, Schlozman was among a cadre of appointees who have presided over an unprecedented wave of politicization at the agency. Within the Civil Rights division, where Schlozman served until March 2006, "there appeared to be a conscious effort to remake the Division's career staff," Rich told Congress in March. He described "major" changes in hiring procedures "which virtually eliminated any career staff input into the hiring of career attorneys." As a result, he went on, the attorneys hired for the division had "little if any experience in, or commitment to, the enforcement of civil rights laws."

The politicization of Justice went well beyond hiring practices, according to Rich, extending to efforts to "influence elections." Schlozman, he says, was part of a group of political appointees that greenlighted Tom DeLay's controversial redistricting plan, which resulted in Texas Republicans winning a record number of U.S. House seats in the 2004 election. Later, while serving as the interim U.S. Attorney in Missouri, Schlozman indicted four voter registration recruiters for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on charges of voter fraud days before the mid-term elections. (During his Senate appearance this week, Schlozman maintained that he was unaware of ACORN's political leanings.)

The Federalist Society's advice has been sought not only on Justice Department hires: Leonard Leo is one of the Bush administration's go-to experts on the federal judiciary. When the time arrived for the president to fill two open Supreme Court slots, Leo took a temporary leave from the Society in order to advise the administration. The administration did end up selecting two Federalist Society members for the high court, bringing to four the number of Supreme Court justices (Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito) who claim membership in the organization.

Leo was less successful in selling Justice on his pick to replace Carol Lam. This owed, perhaps, to Mary Walker's controversial past. In addition to being accused of whitewashing an investigation of rampant sexual assault at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Walker also headed the group of Pentagon lawyers that produced a report arguing that the president was not bound by the Geneva Conventions. When Lam stepped down in February, she was replaced by one of her deputies, Karen Hewitt—also a member of the Society.

Daniel Schulman is an investigative reporter at Mother Jones.
Go on-site to gain access to the photo, and any links, as well as other articles of interest, by clicking on the following URL: http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/06/federalist_society.html?src=email&hed_20070608_ts1_bushsshadowjusticedepartment
* * * * *
.

papsrus

June 8th, 2007, 01:26 PM

^ The nightmare scenario plays out before our very eyes.

Saundra Hummer

June 8th, 2007, 01:57 PM

^ The nightmare scenario plays out before our very eyes.

What a bunch of thugs.

They're ruining us as a country and for what? Where will we all end up due to their greed and power seeking; their need to control and rule? All the while we're going down the tubes as a nation; leaving us ashamed of our own conduct. We know how the rest of the world thinks of us, it's just pitiful, yet even worse, we're coming to the same conclusions they have concerning us as a nation. It's not a feeling which is easy to deal with, much less accept

Saundra Hummer

June 8th, 2007, 02:07 PM

.
* * *Tough Luck, Ladies
[from the June 25, 2007 issue]
subject to debate by Katha Pollitt
Do you know how much your colleagues earn? I thought not. You probably know more about your co-workers' sex lives than you do about what's in their pay envelopes. Unless they volunteer the information, or leave their pay stubs lying out on their desk, it can take years to learn that someone else is being paid more than you for the same work, if you ever do. My lucky break came decades ago at another magazine when I was inadvertently mailed someone else's check. How often do the postal gods help out a worker like that?

But now, ladies--and all of you whose color, religion or national origin leave you open to prejudice--you can just quit your fussing. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Supreme Court All-Male Five just ruled that unless you figure out that you are the victim of pay discrimination within 180 days of said discrimination's commencement, it doesn't matter. You're too late. While decades' worth of previous judgments have always held that each discriminatory paycheck constituted a new act for purposes of meeting Title VII's six-month deadline, the Roberts Court holds that only the original one counts. Six months into being screwed over by your boss, pay discrimination is your own damn fault--like so much else in life! Those small initial discrepancies you suspected but accepted because you wanted the job and figured you'd fix them later when you'd made yourself indispensable? Too bad for you, Ms. Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, Mr. Gotta Show Them I'm a Team Player. You should have peeked at the white guy's paycheck sooner--much sooner. During her nineteen years at Goodyear, Lilly Ledbetter--the only woman in the group of sixteen at her level--remained unaware that her male colleagues were raking in hefty raises while she received meager ones. By the time she found out, she was close to retirement.

At least the Court recognized, albeit grudgingly, that discrimination does occur. For some time, conservatives have argued that what look like rather large pay differentials--around 75 cents on the male dollar--actually reflect women's "choices." Women earn less because they choose to become daycare workers instead of parking valets and pediatricians instead of heart surgeons; because they "opt out" of the workforce for family reasons; because even if men and women do the same work, the women show up late and go home early. They just don't care about their jobs like the men do. If you ignore everything you know about how the world actually works--something conservative economists are very good at doing--this line can even appear persuasive.

The Independent Women's Forum puts out a regular stream of disinformation to explain away unequal pay. "What they call 'choices' are not unconditioned by discrimination," Heidi Hartmann, head of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, told me on the phone. "If a woman knows a field is unfriendly to women, she is less likely to go into it. If she knows she has less chance of promotion, she may decide she and not her husband should stay home with the baby. Choices are not made in a vacuum."

True enough. But now we can forget all that obfuscatory conservative flimflam. We're back to square one: Discrimination exists--when she retired Ledbetter was making $6,700 a year less than the lowest-paid man at her level. But so what? By not figuring it out right away, by trusting your employer, by following the mossy pathways of company procedure, you've given your consent. You're almost like a woman who gets date-raped because she thought the guy was a friend. I'll bet her chances in the Roberts court wouldn't be so good either.

If we can't rely on the courts--to which George W. Bush continues to propose cave dwellers like Leslie Southwick even as I write these words (he's the one who thinks the N-word is acceptable workplace speech and that bisexual mothers should lose custody)--there's always the law of unintended consequences. A lot more women and minorities may bring suit first, rather than try to work things out politely with their employer, as right-wing antifeminists are always advising women to do if they feel, no doubt mistakenly, that they have a grievance. For those who believe the feminist movement marginalized itself by taking its eye off the dollar, this is the perfect opportunity to get back to economic issues that have cross-class appeal. Economic populists take note: You might want to add eliminating sexist and racist pay discrimination to your definition of the common good. And those who think feminism is no longer necessary might want to consider the connection between Ledbetter and the Court's upholding of the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. Putting women back in their box, anyone?

The good news is that Ledbetter is one decision that can be remedied through legislation, as Justice Ginsburg pointed out in her stinging dissent. Within days of the decision, Democrats moved to address the ruling with new legislation, with Hillary Clinton in the lead. (Hmmm, isn't she supposed to be the all-corporate big-bucks candidate who should be siding with the Chamber of Commerce on this? Maybe there's something to this sisterhood stuff after all.)

Meanwhile, wish good luck to the women of Wal-Mart in their ongoing legal battle and to the 1,500 women executives of General Electric suing the company for sex discrimination. And to Justice Ginsburg, lonely voice of sanity and justice, Centi anni!

* * * Go on-site to gain access to this article and more and to check up on, or join the fundraising for Bosnian Children who are in need. Just click on the following URL:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070625/pollitt * * * * *

Saundra Hummer

June 8th, 2007, 02:19 PM

::lll::lll::lll::
Feds to Suspend Border Passport Rule
Major post 9-11 Security Rule Swamped Government With Passport Requests
By MATTHEW LEE
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The Bush administration is poised to suspend a major post-9/11 security initiative to cope with increasingly angry complaints from Americans whose summer vacations are threatened by new passport rules.

A proposal, expected to be announced Friday, will temporarily waive a requirement that U.S. citizens have passports to fly to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda, provided the traveler can prove he or she has already applied for a passport, officials said Thursday.

The temporary lifting of the passport rule is aimed at clearing a massive backlog of passport applications at the State Department that has slowed processing to a crawl, they said. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., said the suspension would last until the end of September.

The plan had run into opposition from the Homeland Security Department, which controls U.S. border points and fears the move could make it easier for terrorists or other undesirables to enter the country, the officials said.

Instead of a passport, travelers will now be able to present a State Department receipt showing their passport application is being processed, and a government-issued ID such as a driver's license.

Homeland Security signed off on the proposal on Thursday after consultations with the State Department, the White House and members of Congress, who have been deluged with complaints from furious constituents, according to four officials at the agencies involved.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not yet been announced.

A Homeland Security spokesman declined to comment.

Under the plan, those without passports would receive additional security scrutiny when they travel, which could include extra questioning or bag checks, according to one official familiar with the discussions.

The suspension will give the State Department time to deal with a surge in applications that has overwhelmed its processing centers since the new rules took effect earlier this year.

The backlog has caused up to three-month delays in issuing passports and ruined or delayed the travel plans of untold thousands of Americans.

Frustrated lawmakers besieged with constituent complaints have demanded relief.

Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., whose district lies near the Canadian border, said White House officials have been on Capitol Hill trying to work out a compromise amid what he called a turf war between State and Homeland Security.

"White House personnel have seen the problem and they've been on Capitol Hill working with members," said Reynolds. "I expect a plan to be forthcoming that ... would not require a passport as long as you had an application receipt for filing for the passport."

The State Department has hired hundreds of new passport adjudicators, put employees to work around the clock and opened a new processing facility in Arkansas but has still been unable to meet the demand.

Initial hopes that the delays could be overcome were dashed this month when more than a million requests for new passports were dumped at once on the facilities by banks contracted to clear application fee checks, a senior State Department official said.

The passport application surge is the result of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative that since January has required U.S. citizens to use passports when entering the United States from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean by air.

The travel initiative, which next year will require either passports or yet-to-be developed wallet-sized passcards to be presented at land border crossings, is part of a broader package of immigration rules enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It has caused deep annoyance, particularly from those who live in border states and make routine, legal crossings into Canada and Mexico for business and pleasure.

Wilson, whose state is on the Mexican border, said she had been calling on State and Homeland Security to implement a suspension for two weeks.

"I said, 'You need to take action. This is completely screwed up'," she said. "To say people must have a passport to travel and not give people a passport is right up there in the stupid column."

Wilson said her office took more than 500 calls in May alone from constituents struggling to get passports and the problem has spread from border states to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas and Colorado.

Between March and May of this year, the department issued more than 4.5 million passports, a 60 percent increase over the same period in 2006, but millions more applications are waiting to be processed, according to consular affairs officials.

The demand is such that the State Department has warned applicants to allow as long as 12 weeks for their passports to be issued and up to three weeks for expedited processing at an extra fee. Previously, the maximum wait was six weeks and two weeks, respectively.

In the meantime, would-be foreign travelers stew and fret.

Angela Pezzimenti, a recent college graduate from Allegany, N.Y., barely got her passport in time to make a trip to Europe last month.

"It was nerve-racking," said the 21-year-old, who finally received her passport three days before the trip. "I was really afraid that it wasn't going to come in time. We had everything planned, our tickets were bought, and I was pretty worried."

Wendy Berry of Franklin, W.Va., applied in March for a passport for her 18-year-old son, Jonathan. But the day he was to leave to visit his sister in Peru, his passport hadn't come.

"There are two things I wish they would do," she said of the government. "The only really responsible party is the Passport Office. I wish they would be held accountable. And I wish they would staff more people. The whole system is ready to collapse."
Associated Press writer Jennifer Talhelm contributed to this report.Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2958203::lll::

Saundra Hummer

June 8th, 2007, 02:44 PM

*
Bush in "Fantasyland" BLOG
Posted 06/07/2007 @ 10:47am
Last month's failed missile defense test was categorized as a "No Test" by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). The target missile didn't fly into range of the interceptor so it was never launched.

Even though it was deemed a "No Test" by the MDA, an agency spokesman nevertheless claimed that the results of "the failed test underscored the need of the US to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar station in the Czech Republic as a defense against potential missile attack from Iran…. It showed that any missiles that Iran launched could similarly go astray and land in Europe even if Europe was not Iran's target."

Huh?

Welcome to what Joseph Cirincione – senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and author of the new book, Bomb Scare – calls, "This week's episode of President Bush in Fantasyland."

"President Bush is rushing to deploy a technology that does not work against a threat that does not exist," Cirincione says. "Iran is at least 5 to 10 years away from the capability to build a nuclear weapon and at least that far from having a missile that could hit Europe let alone the US. And anti-missile systems are still nowhere near working despite $150 billion spent since the 1983 Star Wars program started and years of phony tests staged to demonstrate ‘progress' and ‘success.'"

None of this has stopped Bush from continuing to tout his Czech Republic and Poland-based "proposed missile defense system designed to thwart a possible nuclear attack from Iran." Adding to the irony (and the outrage) is the fact that while Bush continues to frame the weapons system as indispensable to democracy – "This is aimed at a country like Iran… so they couldn't blackmail the free world" – the people of the Czech Republic and Poland continue to oppose the plans (as I initially reported here). Recent polls show that over 60 percent of Czechs are opposed and only 25 percent of Poles support the missile defense plan.

The mayor of the Czech village of Trokavec where the radar site would be located recently held a referendum and 71 of 72 votes were cast against the plan. The mayor of Stitov, Vaclav Hudec, and "most of" his village's 58 residents "are bitterly opposed" to the radar site. Hudec wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd outlining the opposition of "nearly two dozen" Czech mayors to the missile defense plan.

"This is a crisis of our own making," Cirincione says. "President Bush so fervently believes in something that doesn't exist that he jeopardizes – again – our real security interests. The fact is the Czechs don't want the radar, the Europeans don't trust his explanations and deplore his unilateralism, the Congress has already cut the funds on purely programmatic grounds. This was a dumb idea before, now it is yet another foreign policy disaster."

All of this for a system Cirincione says isn't important to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who view these programs as "expensive pet rocks."

"The Joint Chiefs were happy to cut this budget as soon as Presidents Reagan and Bush left office," he says. "In 1993 they formally wrote President Clinton and recommended spending only $2.8 billion with $2.3 billion of that devoted to short-range defenses." (We currently spend in the range of $10 billion per year.)

And while many in the mainstream media swallow the Bush Administration talking points on Russian President Vladimir Putin as if once again being spoon-fed pre-war intelligence, other experts on arms control and foreign policy suggest Putin has real reason to worry about the Bush Administration's moves.

In The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy, published in Foreign Affairs last year, Keir A. Liber and Daryl G. Press wrote: "… the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one – as an adjunct to a US first-strike capability, not as a stand-alone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal – if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes…"

Cirincione adds that he thinks Putin's response is a "clever gambit."

"There is a reason Russians are the best chess players – they know how to read the board and exploit their opportunities," he says. "President Putin thinks the US policies represent a new imperialism. Now, he sees President Bush trying to build permanent military bases on Russia's borders. Putin isn't afraid of 10 interceptors but he has to worry about what comes next – any Russian leader would. He doesn't believe President Bush and many Europeans don't either. This issue feeds into the mistrust of America that Europeans feel on a host of Bush Administration policies from global warming to Iraq."

So why is the Bush administration imposing this sucker of a weapons system that nobody wants on an already inflamed relationship with Russia? Why risk sparking a renewed nuclear arms race?

"Politics drives this deployment decision," Cirincione says. "Bush Administration officials are trying to lock in the program before they leave office. They are trying to build bases they hope the next president will find impossible to shut down."

Thank you, Mr. Bush. One more relic from your Fantasyland we could do without.

UPDATE: Today, Putin stated that he would not object if the radar-based system were placed in Azerbaijan instead of the Czech Republic. He didn't comment on the issue of the interceptors being placed in Poland.

Putin noted, "… as soon as a country, for instance, Iran, carries out its first test of its long-range missile… Three to five years will be necessary… until the system is operational. This time is fairly enough to deploy any ABM system. Therefore, no matter how long our talks are going on, we will never be late…. I'm grateful to the President of the United States for a constructive dialogue today."

"Brilliant move by Putin," Cirincione said in an e-mail. "He is basically doing to President Bush what Bush is trying to do to the Europeans on global warming: offer a counter proposal that appears to be constructive but has the effect of delaying the entire process and moving it in a completely different direction. Moving the radar to Azerbaijan both solves some of the Russian military concerns--as the radar will not be able to track Russian ICBMs from that site--and Russian geostrategic concerns by placing any radar in a country much more in their sphere of influence…. Better, the talks about where to site the radar will take months. Putin could well play out the clock on Bush's presidency. But how can President Bush refuse to talk? Isn't Putin doing exactly what President Bush had asked--that is, talk about cooperating on anti-missile systems? If he does refuse, he will look even more the aggressor, eroding what is left of his administration's credibility. President Bush has fallen neatly into Putin's trap. They may have to invent a new name for this gambit."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=203257
* * *

Saundra Hummer

June 8th, 2007, 04:02 PM

^^^^^^^^^

Blackwater Heavies Sue Families of Slain Employees for $10 Million in Brutal Attempt to Suppress Their Story
By
Daniel J. Callahan and Marc P. Miles
AlterNet
Posted on June 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/53460/
The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet. Raleigh, NC -- The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men's estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.

Following these gruesome deaths which were broadcast on worldwide television, the surviving family members looked to Blackwater for answers as to how and why their loved ones died. Blackwater not only refused to give the grieving families any information, but also callously stated that they would need to sue Blackwater to get it. Left with no alternative, in January 2005, the families filed suit against Blackwater, which is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince.

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

After filing its suit against the dead men's estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families' existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

Over 300 contractors have been killed in Iraq with very little inquiry into their deaths. The families claim that Blackwater is attempting to cover up its incompetence, its cutting of corners in favor of higher profits, and its over billing to the government. Due to lack of accountability and oversight, Blackwater's private army has been able to obtain huge profits from the government, utilizing contacts established through Erik Prince's relationships with high-ranking government officials such as Cofer Black and Joseph Schmitz.

In addition to assembling its litigation troops, Blackwater also stonewalled the families concerning any information about how the men were killed. Over the past two and a half years, Blackwater has not responded to a single question or produced a single document. When the families' attorneys, Callahan & Blaine, obtained a Court Order to take the deposition of a former Blackwater employee with critical information about the incident, Blackwater quickly re-hired him and sent him out of the country. When the witness returned to the United States more than a year later, the families obtained another Court Order for his deposition. Blackwater again prevented them from taking his deposition by seeking the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office to block the deposition under the guise that he possibly possessed national secrets. Following an investigation, the U.S. Army reported that the witness had no secret information and that it had no objection to the deposition.

Blackwater has now lifted this atrocity to a whole new level by going on the offensive and suing the families for $10 million. The families now find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun as Blackwater, armed with a war chest and politically-connected attorneys, is aggressively litigating against them. Blackwater has also threatened to hold the administrator of the estates personally liable to scare him into abandoning his position, and has threatened the families' attorneys as well.

The families are simply without the financial wherewithal to defend against Blackwater. By filing suit, Blackwater is trying to wipe out the families' ability to discover the truth about Blackwater's involvement in the deaths of these four Americans and to silence them from any public comment. In February, the families testified before Congress.

However, Blackwater's lawsuit now seeks to gag the family members from even speaking about the incident or about Blackwater's involvement in the deaths. This is a direct attack to their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

"I initially took this case because it was the right thing to do in helping the families find closure by discovering the events surrounding their loved ones deaths, " said Daniel J. Callahan, attorney for the families. "I have found the evidence concerning Blackwater's involvement in the deaths to be overwhelming and appalling. Even more disturbing though is the callous nature in which Blackwater has not only concealed the truth, but also outright sued to force the families to stop pursuing the case and to silence them." Blackwater has spent millions of dollars and hired at least five different law firms to fight the families, rather than meeting and addressing what should be Blackwater's top priority -- the safety and well being of the mothers, wives, and children left behind. Blackwater has said that it will not pay one red cent to assist or console the surviving families, but instead has counter sued for $10 million.

Without help, Blackwater will succeed in avoiding scrutiny for its conduct, escaping accountability for its actions, and silencing the families of the four Americans killed in Fallujah. A defense fund has been established by which the public is able to donate money to assist the families with litigation costs and expenses.

Donations can be sent to the estates' trust account, payable to "C&B ITF Blackwater Victims Defense Fund," c/o Callahan & Blaine, 3 Hutton Centre Drive, Ninth Floor, Santa Ana, California 92707. Donations may also be made securely online through PayPal by going to blackwatervictims.com. All donations will be kept confidential and anonymous.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http: //www.alternet.org/story/53460 ^^^

Saundra Hummer

June 8th, 2007, 04:40 PM

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Amazing, free speech is threatened, but lobbiests are allowed to co-opt our elected officials, and that's just fine?, but this is having laws passed against it? Is it really being done to protect families? I somehow doubt it got this far because of our dead and the emotions of their loved ones; it is more likely that it is to keep the populace from thinking more about our fallen than we already are. What a bunch of hooey. Really! SRH
About this product Below is extensive information about the three T-Shirts on this page. The links below will take you to the sections further down the page.
What is the history of these shirts?
What are the shirts made of?
Have you made a lot of money on the shirts?
Does any money go to the families?
What do you mean, Bush Lied?
Comments about the families and the fallen.
An open letter to the friends and families of the fallen.
Press release about pending federal legislation.
Free speech should allow using soldiers' names in protests (essay by Dan R. Frazier.)

Jan. 1, 2007 Press Release about proposed Texas law outlawing the unauthorized use of names. What is the history of these shirts? The "Bush Lied They Died" T-shirt was the first T-shirt ever produced by CarryaBigSticker. It evolved from a bumper sticker that included the names of 500 fallen troops and the words "Bush Lied." In June of 2005, we printed about 100 shirts similar to the Bush Lied They Died shirt shown above (but with only 1,693 names). Over the course of about a year, we sold them all.

We were not planning to print more shirts because the first batch sold slowly. We also knew it would be difficult to fit more names on a shirt. In early 2006, at the urging of certain family members who lost loved ones in Iraq, legislators in Oklahoma and Louisiana introduced legislation intended to stop the sale of the shirts. Federal legislation was introduced during the summer of 2006 to outlaw such products nationwide.

Thanks to the legislation, stories about the shirts appeared on CNN, Fox-News, NPR, and in the pages of USA Today and many other newspapers. In August of 2006 we decided to print 300 updated shirts partly because of all the media attention that was being paid to the shirts. In less than three months, we sold all of the new shirts we had printed. We have been printing updated shirts every few months since then.

Louisiana and Oklahoma eventually both passed laws targeting the shirts. Nonetheless, we continue to sell shirts in both states. In January of 2007 similar legislation was introduced in Texas, Arizona and Florida. The Florida legislation SB116 appears to be headed for passage, and will likely take effect July 1, 2007. The The Texas legislation, SB 277 passed in May 2007 and takes effect in September, 2007.

The Arizona legislation may be the most significant because CarryaBigSticker is based in Arizona, and is subject to Arizona legislation. Like other state legislation, Arizona's legislation SB 1014 aims to prohibit the use of the names of fallen troops in advertising unless permission is first obtained from their families. The bill was signed into law on May 24, 2007 by Governor Janet Napolitano. The bill was an emergency measure and thus took effect immediately. We continue to sell shirts in Arizona despite the new law.

The proposed federal legislation would go even further. The bill introduced in the House, HR 269 says, "no person may knowingly use the name or image of a protected individual in connection with any merchandise, retail product, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner reasonably calculated to connect the protected individual with that individual's service in the armed forces."

In May of 2007, the sponsors of HR 269, Congressmen Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Charles W. Boustany Jr. (R-La) announced in a press release that the House of Representatives had approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment is similar in its effect to HR 269. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Despite the new laws and pending legislation, we continue to sell the shirts because we believe the message is important. Our customers seem to agree. In January 2007, the "Bush Lied They Died" shirt became our fastest-selling product. The most recent version of the shirts features the names of more than 3,000 troops who have died in Iraq (see product description above for current figure).

In March of 2007, we introduced two new shirt designs featuring the names of the fallen. One of the new designs says, "Support our Remaining Troops - Bring the Rest Home Alive." The other design says, "If any Question Why we Died, tell Them Because Our Father's Lied." The latter design is a quotation taken from the writings of Rudyard Kipling. The words were penned in response to World War l, during which Kipling lost a son. Kipling is best known as a writer of children's stories, including a collection called "The Jungle Book," and another called "Just So Stories."

With the Bush presidency entering its final phase, we wanted to offer our customers new products that did not focus so much on Bush. We hope to continue selling these new shirts, and other products like them, until all U.S. troops have returned from Iraq.
What are the shirts made of?The shirts are printed on 100% cotton fabric that is pre-shrunk. These shirts are made and printed in the U.S. The names are in alphabetical order, with half the names on the front, and the other half on the back. The names are very small, but easily read.

Have you made a lot of money on the shirts?
No. Much of the first batch of shirts was sold at a deep discount. The shirts were complex to design and expensive to produce. The cost of the shirts has been kept low to encourage sales and spread the important message. Keep in mind that the price includes shipping and a donation to charity. Also, due to the legislation targeting this product, there will likely be legal expenses associated with selling this product. Nobody is getting rich here. I am more deeply in debt now than when I started my business in 2002.
Does any money go to the families?
Yes, one dollar from the sale of each shirt is being donated to charitable organizations that assist families of fallen U.S. troops. As of early June 2007, we had donated $2,120 to such charities.
What do you mean, Bush Lied? I think of this product as both a scathing indictment of George W. Bush and a memorial to the brave young soldiers who gave their lives in Iraq on behalf of their country. Perhaps someday they will get the memorial they deserve in Washington. Until then, this will have to suffice.

Bush is most famous for lying about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was this lie that arguably was most responsible for the deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, not to mention tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.

But Bush has lied in many other ways as well, from denying global warming to boasting about a "mission accomplished" in Iraq. His lies are legion, and have spawned a cottage industry of books including The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn and Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them by Al Franken.
Comments about the families and the fallen
I want to acknowledge that a number of relatives of fallen soldiers have contacted me to express their displeasure (or disgust) with the products I sell that bear the names of their loved ones. I also have heard from some family members of fallen troops who have expressed support for these products.

I admit that I did not contact the families of soldiers to get their permission. This would have been a monumental exercise, and would no doubt have proved impractical given the differing opinions among various family members.

Of course, this product is not meant to be a statement on behalf of the families or the fallen soldiers. It is a statement on behalf of those who believe that this war was a tragic and terrible mistake -- and not an innocent mistake.

I should also like to point out that many of the soldiers who died in Iraq believed that they were fighting for democracy. Democracy is built in large part on freedom of speech. The First Amendment to the Constitution protects these products, and all such similar examples of free speech.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere condolences to all of those who have lost loved ones in this war. No matter what they believed, or which side they were on, those who died will be missed.
An open letter to the friends &
families of the fallen
(revised April 16, 2007)
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts about the Bush Lied They Died products my company is selling. I am sorry that I am not able to respond individually to the messages that I am receiving from the friends and families of those troops who have died in Iraq. However, I am reviewing every message and I would like to respond to some of the most common concerns expressed in these e-mails.

I am surprised at the outpouring of emotion that has been aroused by these products. For nearly a year and a half, my company sold a large bumper sticker that said "Bush Lied" and included the names of more than 500 fallen U.S. troops. I do not recall receiving a single complaint about that product, which sold-out after I sold a few hundred stickers.

I am sorry that some family members and friends of the fallen have been so offended by these products. It was not my intention to offend these family members. Nor did I expect this kind of reaction. Despite all the criticism I have received, I still fail to see how my products change the indisputable fact that these men and women exhibited great bravery on behalf of their country. The statement on the shirt is much more about the president than about the troops. The names of the troops are used to underscore the scale of the human tragedy caused by the president's lies.

As it clearly says on my Web site, these products were never intended to be a statement endorsed by the fallen or their families. But I also know that at least some family members would endorse such a statement. And if we could somehow poll the fallen themselves, we might be surprised at how many of them would agree with the statement that these products make.

These products are not meant to imply that the cause for which these men and women died was not worthwhile. History may show that these troops did in fact die for a worthy cause. Peace and stability may yet come to Iraq. Only time will tell. These products do not in any way imply that these men and women died for a cause they did not believe in.

Much has been made of my failure to get permission from the families before using the names of the fallen. Not only would this have been a monumental endeavor for a small company like mine, but it would be impractical. There would certainly be many cases where the wife said no, but the mother said yes, or vice-versa. All kinds of disagreements would arise between family members. Who would have the final say?

A number of people have accused me of trying to "make a buck" off the fallen troops. But it is not clear that I have made much money on these shirts. These shirts were expensive to design and difficult to produce because of the many names involved. I had to substantially discount the first batch of shirts in order to sell them.

It is true that I am a business man. I do try to make money so that I can continue my business and feed my family. Usually, that is not a crime. But I am also an anti-war activist. I have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other concerned citizens holding candles in remembrance of the fallen. I organized educational peace-themed events in my community. I have marched in parades carrying the U.N. flag.

Several wives and others have asked me to remove various names from the products. Others have asked me to discontinue selling these products. Despite these requests, I have no plans to remove any names or discontinue any of these products, no matter how many requests I receive. Every name matters, and will be retained to help underscore the horrific loss of life that has been caused by President Bush's rush to war under false pretenses. The more plentiful and impassioned the pleas that I take names off these products, or stop selling them, the more aware I become of the depth of the pain and suffering that has been caused by the lies of President George W. Bush, and the more convinced I am that products like these should be part of the national debate over the merits of this war.

Some have said that I should not be degrading the sacrifices of the troops because it is sacrifices like these that enable me to enjoy the freedoms I enjoy, including freedom of speech. First of all, I do not believe that I am degrading anyone's sacrifice. Moreover, if I agree with the idea that throughout history my fellow Americans have fought and died for my freedoms (true enough), why would I be so cowardly as to give up these freedoms? Surely I should be exercising these freedoms, especially when the end result of doing so might be to prevent the deaths of more brave soldiers who may believe that they are fighting for democracy and all that it entails, including free speech.

To lose a loved one in any war is a terrible thing. To lose a loved one in a controversial war is even worse. But to take your anger out on people like me who opposed this war from the beginning, and who continue to work to bring our remaining troops home in one piece, would seem to be a case of misplaced anger. We are all American brothers and sisters. My grandfather fought in World War II and was wounded. My father was also in the military. We may not always agree with one another, but I think we can agree that the names of the fallen should be remembered, that telling the truth is important, and that every American has a right to speak their opinion.

Dan R. Frazier
*
For Immediate Release:
July 17, 2007
Federal Legislation to Ban Certain Anti-War Merchandise Targets Flagstaff Entrepreneur
Just months after legislators in Louisiana and Oklahoma voted to outlaw the unauthorized use of the names and images of U.S. soldiers on anti-war merchandise, representatives of those two states have separately introduced new legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would outlaw such use on merchandise across the nation. *Dan Frazier, the owner of CarryaBigSticker, says the legislation directly targets some of his merchandise. His Flagstaff, Ariz. company mostly sells anti-war and anti-Bush bumper stickers via the Internet. In June of 2005, his company introduced a T-shirt listing the names of about 1,700 U.S. troops who had died in Iraq. The list of names covers the front and the back of the shirt. Overlaid on the names of the fallen troops are the words "Bush Lied," and on the back, "They Died." The company also sells a similar magnetic vehicle sign (discontinued).
*On July 12 U.S. Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, a Democrat known for his conservative leanings, announced in a press release that he was introducing H.R. 5755, prohibiting the unauthorized use of the names or images of American service men and women. The U.S. Attorney General is granted the authority to seek an injunction in federal court against violators.
*On July 13 U.S. Rep. Charles W. Boustany, Jr. of Louisiana and U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis of Kentucky, both Republicans, jointly announced in a press release that they were introducing H.R. 5772 that would ban the unauthorized use of a deceased soldier's name or image for a commercial or political purpose.

The proposed federal legislation comes in the wake of new laws recently passed in Oklahoma and Louisiana.
*On April 20 Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry, a Democrat, signed into law HB2643, creating penalties for the commercial use of a soldier's name or likeness without consent from the soldier or the soldier's family. Violation of the law is punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in prison. The law was the result of lobbying efforts by the mother of the late Cpl. Scott Michael Vincent, whose name appears on Frazier's merchandise. Vincent’s family also contacted Rep. Boren requesting federal legislation. The Oklahoma law is set to take effect Nov. 1, 2006.*On June 2 Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco signed into law HB1304 making it a crime to use the name or likeness of a deceased soldier in advertising without the permission of the closest living relative. Violation of the law is punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to a year in prison. Meanwhile, in the Louisiana Senate a SB281 is awaiting a vote that would make unauthorized use of a soldier’s name on goods or clothing grounds for a lawsuit. Violators could be subject to the award of damages similar to those awarded in cases of the wrongful death of an injured person. *Sharon McLeese and Yvette Burridge, two mothers whose sons died in Iraq, pushed for the new Louisiana legislation. Lance Cpl. Justin D. McLeese, and Pfc. David Paul Burridge, appear on the “Bush Lied They Died” merchandise sold by Frazier’s company. In testimony before a committee of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Burridge specifically mentioned this merchandise.

Despite the new laws and the pending federal legislation, Frazier plans to continue selling his controversial anti-war merchandise. He said he believed it was a free speech issue and that his merchandise deserved a place in the national dialogue on the merits of the war.

“I believe I have a moral obligation to do the right thing here,” said Frazier in a prepared statement. “To me, the right thing is to continue drawing attention to the horrific toll this war is taking in terms of the lives lost. If these legislators really cared about the families of the troops, they would stop their political posturing and pass legislation to bring the troops home.”

He says he will fight any new legislation in court if necessary. But with his supply of merchandise running low, he may run out of merchandise before the new legislation takes effect. He says his “Bush Lied-They Died” merchandise has sold poorly. He says he is unlikely to produce any more.
RELATED LINKS: March 6, 2006 news story from Louisiana.
Oklahoma Senator Jim Wilson’s April 12 press release about the then-pending Oklahoma bill.*Free Speech Should Allow Using Soldiers’ Names in Protests By
Dan R. Frazier
Roughly 800 Words, Revised July, 2006
Imagine a black T-shirt with the names of 1,700 fallen U.S. troops on it. Even in tiny white letters, the partial list of soldiers killed in Iraq fills most of the front and back of the shirt. Now imagine, the words “Bush Lied” in giant red letters superimposed over the list on the front of the shirt. And on the back, the words, “They Died” in equally large red letters.

My small Flagstaff, Ariz. company, CarryaBigSticker, has been selling just such a shirt for about a year now. We also sell a similar magnetic vehicle sign. Unfortunately, these products have not sold as well as some of my other anti-Bush and anti-war merchandise. Nonetheless, these two products have helped to spark a controversy about whether or not such products should be legal. In fact, Oklahoma and Louisiana recently passed laws intended to outlaw such products. A third bill is pending in the Louisiana legislature. Meanwhile, two bills have been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would effectively ban such products in all 50 states.

These bills have emerged at the behest of a small group of mothers of fallen soldiers. These mothers argue that their consent should be required before their sons’ or daughters’ names are used on products like mine. Most of thes bills focus on businesses that use the names or images of fallen soldiers for profit. But two of the pending bills appear to go further, prohibiting use on any goods or clothing, even if the item is not being sold for profit. If these bills become law, they could be used to stop war protesters like Cindy Sheehan from writing the names of fallen soldiers on wooden crosses set up to protest the war.

While I am deeply sympathetic to these mothers and their loss, I do not intend to stop selling the merchandise in question. In fact, it is such grief as theirs that motivated me to produce these products. I do not want to see any more mothers or fathers lose their children to war – especially to a war that was launched on falsehoods.

I have been surprised by the outrage expressed by some family members who have written to me about these products. Many have said that the fallen soldiers they knew and loved would never have supported the message of my shirts. But my shirts do not say that the soldiers listed believed Bush lied about the war. My shirts merely say that Bush lied -- and these people died.

Some people have told me that they support free speech, but they think consent should be required before the names or likenesses of fallen soldiers are used on items like those I sell. But this is much easier said than done, especially when we are talking about thousands of names. Furthermore, “getting consent” and “free speech” are mutually exclusive concepts. You can’t have it both ways.

I have a background as a writer and editor. I know that libel laws could catch up with me if I made demonstrably false statements about living people, especially if such statements hurt their reputations. But I also know that in most states you can’t be held accountable for libeling a dead person, no matter who it is. I could write a newspaper story stating that President John F. Kennedy was a Nazi, and I would not have to get anybody’s consent. Nobody could haul me into court even though the statement is patently false. Why should it be possible to haul me into court for printing my “Bush Lied-They Died” shirts? The soldiers are dead. Legally, I could write a letter to the editor calling them a bunch of communists if I wanted to (I don’t). Furthermore, I have not made any false statements about the soldiers.

How is what I am doing any different from what Atlanta Journal Constitution cartoonist Mike Luckovich did? He created the word “WHY?” out of the names of 2,000 fallen soldiers who died in Iraq. He won a Pulitzer Prize for doing so. The Constitution sells reprints of the cartoon for up to $290.

We really can’t know what our fallen soldiers would say about anti-war products and protests if they could speak from beyond the grave. We may know what they said before they died, but can we really know what they were thinking at the moment they breathed their last breaths? What we do know for sure is that every soldier who has voluntarily served this country has been brave, especially in a time of war. We also know that many soldiers who have served have believed they were protecting the rights and liberties their country stands for, including freedom of speech. We do them a terrible disservice when we take away these liberties, particularly when we say we are doing it for their sake.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
January 1, 2007
Texas Could Become Third State to Outlaw Anti-War T-Shirt -- Flagstaff, Ariz. Shirt Vendor Vows to Keep SellingTexas could become the third state to pass legislation aimed at banning the sale of an anti-war T-shirt that lists the names of fallen soldiers. On Nov. 29, 2006, Texas State Representative Linda Harper-Brown filed House Bill 331. The bill would make it a misdemeanor to use the name or image of a fallen soldier in advertising without permission from the soldier’s family. In a press release, Harper-Brown said, "The families of fallen soldiers have gone through enough, and House Bill 331 will help protect them from additional grief.”

If Texas passes HB 331, it would follow the lead of Oklahoma and Louisiana, which both passed similar legislation in 2006. The proposed Texas law would take effect Sept. 1, 2007. Violation of the law could be punishable by a fine of up to $4,000 and/or a year in prison. The Texas legislature re-convenes on Jan. 9, 2007.

The new legislation of the various states could be upstaged by proposed federal legislation. In July, two bills, HR 5755 and HR 5772 were introduced in Congress that would outlaw the unauthorized use of soldiers’ names. The federal legislation was introduced by legislators from Oklahoma and Louisiana. As of Jan. 1, 2007, HR 5755 had 106 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, HR 5772 had 42 co-sponsors.

All of the new legislation targets a T-shirt sold by CarryaBigSticker.com. The latest version of the shirt includes the names of 2,803 fallen soldiers printed in tiny letters on the front and back of a black T-shirt. Overlaid on the list of names in large red letters are the words “Bush Lied,” and on the back, “They Died.”

Dan R. Frazier, the owner of CarryaBigSticker.com, noted that the new legislation in Oklahoma and Louisiana has only helped to boost sales of his shirts. “It took me more than a year to sell the first batch of 100 shirts,” said Frazier. “Then the new laws started getting media attention and my sales took off. I have probably sold close to 500 shirts in the last six months.”

Frazier has no plans to discontinue sales of the shirts. “When they bring the last soldier home from Iraq, we’ll stop selling the shirts,” said Frazier in a prepared statement. The statement was released Jan. 1, the day after the death toll for soldiers killed in Iraq reached 3,000. “If legislators really cared about grieving families, they would stop their posturing and start working to bring the troops home,” added Frazier.

Despite his vow to continue selling, Frazier has temporarily suspended sales to Oklahoma and Louisiana. He says he is not worried about being prosecuted by the new laws in those states because he lives in Arizona. Nonetheless, he wants to challenge the new laws. To challenge the new laws, Frazier needs to find individuals in Oklahoma and Louisiana who are interested in purchasing the shirts and who would be willing to participate in a legal challenge. Frazier said he has not yet decided whether or not he would continue selling his shirts in Texas if the law proposed by Representative Harper-Brown passes.

On his Web site, where he has written extensively about the controversy surrounding his shirts, Frazier explains that he thinks that the new laws are unconstitutional. “If I agree with the idea that throughout history my fellow Americans have fought and died for my freedoms,” writes Frazier, “why would I be so cowardly as to give up these freedoms? Surely I should be exercising these freedoms, especially when the end result of doing so might be to prevent the deaths of more brave soldiers who may believe that they are fighting for democracy and all that it entails, including free speech.”

Though Frazier now lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, he grew up in San Antonio, graduating from Churchill High School. He still has family in Texas, including a sister who lives in Dallas. Representative Harper-Brown’s district encompasses a different area of Dallas.
For more information, contact:
Dan Frazier
dan (at) CarryaBigSticker (dot) com
For an updated list of U.S. troops killed in Iraq, as well as other coalition casualty data, visit: http://icasualties.org/oif/

For statistics and information about Iraqis killed in the wake of the U.S. invasion, visit:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

*

Saundra Hummer

June 10th, 2007, 04:35 PM

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"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
~~~
"Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. "To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may".

Mark Twain
~~~
"A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle".

George William Curtis
~~~
It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars".

Arthur C. Clarke

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem."

Howard Zinn
From
'Failure to Quit'
~~~
"For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling instruments."

Noam Chomsky
~~~
"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority"

Stanley Milgram
1965

Stanley Milgram was a psychologist who performed a series of experiments that proved conclusively that obedience to authority was so ingrained in the average US citizen they were prepared to cause lethal harm to others when instructed by authority figures to do so. All those who took part were first asked if they would be capable of killing or inflicting severe pain on their fellow human beings. 100% replied categorically 'no'.

http://tinyurl.com/cm6xq
~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

June 10th, 2007, 04:49 PM

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:: :: :: :: ::
Don't Trust GovernmentBy Charley Reese
06/08/07 "Lew Rockwell" -- -- In reading an excellent book, Satanic Purses: Money, Myth and Misinformation, by R.T. Naylor (publisher is McGill-Queen's University Press), I suddenly realized why Adolf Hitler was so popular during the first years of his administration.

The funny thing is that the book is not about Hitler or Germany, but about the U.S. and the bogus war on terror. It is an outstanding book, carefully researched and footnoted, and written in a reasonable manner, though with delicious dollops of sarcasm.

It's the carefully detailed accounts of injustices committed by the U.S. government against American Muslims that gave me the insight about Hitler. In the early days of the Third Reich, if you weren't a criminal, a communist or a Jew, you never saw the dark side of the Nazi government. You saw an economy being revitalized, superhighways being built, Germans being put back to work, the disgraceful Versailles Treaty being scrapped. It must have looked a lot like morning in Germany to the people who had suffered through runaway inflation, economic depression and street riots.

Similarly, if you are not a Muslim or an Arab-American who has been a victim of the Patriot Act and other laws carelessly passed in the hysteria following the attacks in 2001, then the Bush administration probably looks perfectly normal. You probably even believe that it is really protecting you from terrorists, just as many Germans believed Hitler was protecting them from the "bad guys."

What Taylor's book demonstrates is how often this is pure nonsense, and at the same time what terrible damage is being done to the rule of law and America's traditional respect for human rights.

Typically, the government will swoop down and seize an organization's records and computers, while making public accusations of the people being "involved" with terrorists. The important point is that this is done before any determination of guilt or innocence has even begun. By the time a defendant gets to court, if he ever does, he's ruined. Quite often then, the fearless feds will say, "Well, never mind about this terrorist business, just plead guilty to a minor immigration violation." Often defendants are bullied into admitting guilt they don't deserve by threats of being declared an enemy combatant, which means indefinite imprisonment, probably for life.

You can see the process going on with the four men charged with planning to blow up the fuel lines to JFK International Airport in New York. In the first place, it is common knowledge that if you blow up a fuel line, you will get an explosion and fire at one point. The claim that the whole pipeline would blow up for miles is nonsense, and the government knows that, but it threw that out to claim the plot endangered "thousands" of lives.

The real question is, Did these guys actually plan it, or were they set up by the government's federal informant? The federal government has a terrible record of using informants to entrap people. The whole tragedy of Ruby Ridge, which cost the lives of Randy Weaver's wife and son, resulted from a federal informant who nagged Weaver into sawing off the barrels of a shotgun, something any kid can do with a vice and a hacksaw. The feds then arrested Weaver with the intention of forcing him to become an informant, and the tragic farce ensued.

So even though you haven't felt the arbitrary and unjust power of the government, you should read this book and find out just how much deception is involved in this war on terror. You'll discover how often oil, diamonds and big business play behind-the-scenes roles in this current so-called war.

As the German people discovered, once a government has unlimited power, it will eventually use that power against everyone.

Charley Rees has been a journalist for 49 years.
Go on-site to gain access to this article and several others concerning the topics of the day and what has led us to this place, by clicking on the home page, once on line with ICH, or just click on the first link. Just click on the following URLs:

http://www.informationhouse.info

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17854.htm :: :: :: .

Saundra Hummer

June 10th, 2007, 05:07 PM

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l l l l l l l l Putin’s Censored Press Conference:

The transcript you weren’t supposed to see
By
Mike Whitney

06/10/07 "ICH" --- - On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an hour and a half-long press conference which was attended by many members of the world media. The contents of that meeting---in which Putin answered all questions concerning nuclear proliferation, human rights, Kosovo, democracy and the present confrontation with the United States over missile defense in Europe---have been completely censored by the press. Apart from one brief excerpt which appeared in a Washington Post editorial, (and which was used to criticize Putin) the press conference has been scrubbed from the public record. It never happened.
(Read the entire press conference archived here )

Putin’s performance was a tour de force. He fielded all of the questions however misleading or insulting. He was candid and statesmanlike and demonstrated a good understanding of all the main issues.

The meeting gave Putin a chance to give his side of the story in the growing debate over missile defense in Eastern Europe. He offered a brief account of the deteriorating state of US-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War, and particularly from 9-11 to present. Since September 11, the Bush administration has carried out an aggressive strategy to surround Russia with military bases, install missiles on its borders, topple allied regimes in Central Asia, and incite political upheaval in Moscow through US-backed “pro-democracy” groups. These openly hostile actions have convinced many Russian hard-liners that the administration is going forward with the neocon plan for “regime change” in Moscow and fragmentation of the Russian Federation. Putin’s testimony suggests that the hardliners are probably right.

The Bush administration’s belligerent foreign policy has backed the Kremlin into a corner and forced Putin to take retaliatory measures. He has no other choice.

If we want to understand why relations between Russia are quickly reaching the boiling-point; we only need to review the main developments since the end of the Cold War. Political analyst Pat Buchanan gives a good rundown of these in his article “Doesn’t Putin Have a Point?”

Buchanan says:

“Though the Red Army had picked up and gone home from Eastern Europe voluntarily, and Moscow felt it had an understanding we would not move NATO eastward, we exploited our moment. Not only did we bring Poland into NATO, we brought in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and virtually the whole Warsaw Pact, planting NATO right on Mother Russia's front porch. Now, there is a scheme afoot to bring in Ukraine and Georgia in the Caucasus, the birthplace of Stalin.

Second, America backed a pipeline to deliver Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, to bypass Russia.

Third, though Putin gave us a green light to use bases in the old Soviet republics for the liberation of Afghanistan, we now seem hell-bent on making those bases in Central Asia permanent.

Fourth, though Bush sold missile defense as directed at rogue states like North Korea, we now learn we are going to put anti-missile systems into Eastern Europe. And against whom are they directed?

Fifth, through the National Endowment for Democracy, its GOP and Democratic auxiliaries, and tax-exempt think tanks, foundations, and "human rights" institutes such as Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA director James Woolsey, we have been fomenting regime change in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, and Russia herself.

U.S.-backed revolutions have succeeded in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, but failed in Belarus. Moscow has now legislated restrictions on the foreign agencies that it sees, not without justification, as subversive of pro-Moscow regimes.

Sixth, America conducted 78 days of bombing of Serbia for the crime of fighting to hold on to her rebellious province, Kosovo, and for refusing to grant NATO marching rights through her territory to take over that province. Mother Russia has always had a maternal interest in the Orthodox states of the Balkans.

These are Putin's grievances. Does he not have a small point?”

Yes--as Buchanan opines---Putin does have a point, which is why his press conference was suppressed. The media would rather demonize Putin, than allow him to make his case to the public. (The same is true of other world leaders who choose to use their vast resources to improve the lives of their own citizens rather that hand them over to the transnational oil giants; such as, Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez) Even so, NATO has not yet endorsed the neocon missile defense plan and, according to recent surveys, public opinion in Poland and the Czech Republic is overwhelmingly against it.

Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration is going ahead regardless of the controversy.

Putin cannot allow the United States to deploy its missile defense system to Eastern Europe. The system poses a direct threat to Russia’s national security. If Putin planned to deploy a similar system in Cuba or Mexico, the Bush administration would immediately invoke the Monroe Doctrine and threaten to remove it by force. No one doubts this. And no one should doubt that Putin is equally determined to protect his own country’s interests in the same way. We can expect that Russia will now aim its missiles at European targets and rework its foreign policy in a way that compels the US to abandon its current plans.

The media has tried to minimize the dangers of the proposed system. The Washington Post even characterized it as “a small missile defense system” which has set off “waves of paranoia about domestic and foreign opponents”.

Nonsense. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As Putin said at the press conference, “Once the missile defense system is put in place IT WILL WORK AUTOMATICALLY WITH THE ENTIRE NUCLEAR CAPABILITY OF THE UNITED STATES. It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability.

“For the first time in history---and I want to emphasize this---there are elements of the US nuclear capability on the European continent. It simply changes the whole configuration of international security…..Of course, we have to respond to that.”

Putin is right. The “so-called” defense system is actually an expansion (and integration) of America’s existing nuclear weapons system which will now function as one unit. The dangers of this should be obvious.

The Bush administration is maneuvering in a way that will allow it to achieve what Nuclear weapons specialist, Francis A. Boyle, calls the “longstanding US policy of nuclear first-strike against Russia”.

In Boyle’s article “US Missiles in Europe: Beyond Deterrence to First Strike Threat” he states:

“By means of a US first strike about 99%+ of Russian nuclear forces would be taken out. Namely, the United States Government believes that with the deployment of a facially successful first strike capability, they can move beyond deterrence and into "compellence."… This has been analyzed ad nauseam in the professional literature. But especially by one of Harvard's premier warmongers in chief, Thomas Schelling --winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics granted by the Bank of Sweden-- who developed the term "compellence" and distinguished it from "deterrence." …The USG is breaking out of a "deterrence" posture and moving into a "compellence" posture. (Global Research 6-6-07)

That’s right. The real goal is to force Moscow to conform to Washington’s “diktats” or face the prospect of “first-strike” annihilation. That’s why Putin has expressed growing concern over the administration’s dropping out of the ABM Treaty and the development of a new regime of low yield, bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The “hawks” who surround Bush have abandoned the “deterrence” policy of the past, and now believe that a nuclear war can be “won” by the United States. This is madness and it needs to be taken seriously.

The Bush administration sees itself as a main player in Central Asia and the Middle East---controlling vital resources and pipeline corridors throughout the region. That means Russia’s influence will have to be diminished. Boris Yeltsin was the perfect leader for the neoconservative master-plan (which is why the right-wingers Praised him when he died) Russia disintegrated under Yeltsin. He oversaw the dismantling of the state, the plundering of its resources and state-owned assets, and the restructuring of its economy according to the tenets of neoliberalism.

No wonder the neocons loved him.

Under Putin, Russia has regained its economic footing, its regional influence and its international prestige. The economy is booming, the ruble has stabilized, the standard of living has risen, and Moscow has strengthened alliances with its neighbors. This new-found Russian prosperity poses a real challenge to Bush’s plans.

Two actions in particular have changed the Russian-US relationship from tepid to openly hostile. The first was when Putin announced that Russia’s four largest oil fields would not be open to foreign development. (Russia has been consolidating its oil wealth under state-run Gazprom) And, second, when the Russian Treasury began to convert Russia’s dollar reserves into gold and rubles. Both of these are regarded as high-crimes by US corporate chieftains and western elites. Their response was swift.

John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) task force which concocted the basic pretext for an all-out assault on the Putin. This is where the idea that Putin is “rolling back democracy” began; it’s a feeble excuse for political antagonism. In their article “Russia’s Wrong Direction”, Edwards and Kemp state that a “strategic partnership” with Russia is no longer possible. They note that the government has become increasingly “authoritarian” and that the society is growing less “open and pluralistic”. Blah, blah, blah. No one in the Washington really cares about democracy. (Just look at our “good friends” in Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan) What they’re afraid of is Putin ditching the dollar and controlling his own oil. That’s what counts. Bush also wants Putin to support sanctions against Iran and rubber stamp a Security Council resolution to separate Kosovo form Serbia. (Since when does the UN have the right to redraw national borders? Was the creation of Israel such a stunning success that the Security Council wants to try its luck again?)

Putin does not accept the “unipolar” world model. As he said in Munich, the unipolar world refers to “a world in which there is one master, one sovereign---- one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.… What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization.”

He added:

“Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves---wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. More are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate. And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasise this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.”

How can anyone dispute Putin’s analysis?

“Unilateral and illegitimate military actions”, the “uncontained hyper-use of force”, the “disdain for the basic principles of international law”, and most importantly; “No one feels safe!”

These are the irrefutable facts. Putin has simply summarized the Bush Doctrine better than anyone else.

The Bush administration has increased its frontline American bases to five thousand men on Russia’s perimeter. Is this conduct of a “trustworthy ally”?

Also, NATO has deployed forces on Russia’s borders even while Putin has continued to fulfill his treaty obligations and move troops and military equipment hundreds of miles away.

As Putin said on Tuesday: “We have removed all of our heavy weapons from the European part of Russia and put them behind the Urals” and “reduced our Armed Forces by 300,000. We have taken several other steps required by the Adapted Conventional Armed Forces Treaty in Europe (ACAF). But what have we seen in response? Eastern Europe is receiving new weapons, two new military bases are being set up in Romania and in Bulgaria, and there are two new missile launch areas -- a radar in Czech republic and missile systems in Poland. And we are asking ourselves the question: what is going on? Russia is disarming unilaterally. But if we disarm unilaterally then we would like to see our partners be willing to do the same thing in Europe. On the contrary, Europe is being pumped full of new weapons systems. And of course we cannot help but be concerned.”

(This is why Putin’s comments did not appear in the western media! They would have been too damaging to the Bush administration and their expansionist plans)

Who Destroyed the ABM?

Putin said:

“We did not initiate the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But what response did we give when we discussed this issue with our American partners? We said that we do not have the resources and desire to establish such a system. But as professionals we both understand that a missile defense system for one side and no such a system for the other creates an illusion of security and increases the possibility of a nuclear conflict. The defense system WILL DESTROY THE STRATEGIC EQUILIBRIUM IN THE WORLD. In order to restore that balance without setting up a missile defense system we will have to create a system to overcome missile defense, which is what we are doing now.”

Putin: “AN ARMS RACE IS UNFOLDING. Was it we who withdrew from the ABM Treaty? We must react to what our partners do. We already told them two years ago, “don’t do this, you don’t need to do this. What are you doing? YOU ARE DESTROYING THE SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY. You must understand that you are forcing us to take retaliatory steps.” …we warned them. No, they did not listen to us. Then we heard about them developing low-yield nuclear weapons and they are continuing to develop these weapons.” We told them that “it would be better to look for other ways to fight terrorism than create low-yield nuclear weapons and lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons, and thereby put humankind on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. But they don’t listen to us. They are not looking for compromise. Their entire point of view can be summed-up in one sentence: ‘Whoever is not with us is against us.’”

Putin asks, “So what should we do?” The present predicament has brought us “the brink of disaster”.

Putin: “Some people have the illusion that you can do everything just as you want, regardless of the interests of other people. Of course it is for precisely this reason that the international situation gets worse and eventually results in an arms race as you pointed out. But we are not the instigators. We do not want it. Why would we want to divert resources to this? And we are not jeopardizing our relations with anyone. But we must respond.

Name even one step that we have taken or one action of ours designed to worsen the situation. There are none. We are not interested in that. We are interested in having a good atmosphere, environment and energy dialogue around Russia”.

So, what should Putin do? And how else can he meet his responsibilities to the Russian people without taking defensive “retaliatory” action to Bush’s act of war. By expanding its nuclear capability to Europe, all of Russia is in imminent danger, and so, Putin must decide “precisely which means will be used to destroy the installations that our experts believe represent a potential threat for the Russian Federation”. (Note that Putin NEVER THREATENS TO AIM HIS MISSILES AT EUROPEAN CITIES AS WAS REPORTED IN THE WESTERN MEDIA)
Putin has made great strides in improving life for the Russian people. That is why his public approval rating is soaring at 75%. The Russian economy has been growing by 7% a year. He’s lowered the number of people living beneath the poverty-line by more than half and will bring it down to European levels by 2010. Real incomes are growing by an astonishing 12% per year. As Putin says, “Combating poverty is one of our top priorities and we still have to do a lot to improve our pension system too because the correlation between pensions and the average wage is still lower here than in Europe.”

If only that was true in America!

Russia now has the ninth largest economy in the world and has amassed enormous gold and currency reserves--the third largest in the world. It is also one of the leading players in international energy policy with a daily-oil output which now exceeds Saudi Arabia. It is also the largest producer of natural gas in the world. Russia will only get stronger as we get deeper into the century and energy resources become scarcer.

Putin strongly objects to the idea that he is not committed to human rights or is “rolling back democracy”. He points out how truncheon-wielding police in Europe routinely use tear gas, electric-shock devices and water cannons to disperse demonstrators. Is that how the West honors human rights and civil liberties?

As for the Bush administration---Putin produced a copy of Amnesty International’s yearly report condemning the United States conduct in the war on terror. “I have a copy of Amnesty International’s report here, which includes a section on the United States,” he said. “The organization has concluded that the United States IS NOW THE PRINCIPLE VIOLATOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS WORLDWIDE.”

He added, “We have a proverb in Russian, ‘Don’t blame the mirror if your face is crooked.’”

Putin is fiercely nationalistic. He has helped to restore Russia’s self-confidence and rebuild the economy. He’s demonstrated a willingness to compromise with the Bush administration on every substantive issue, but he has been repeatedly rebuffed. The last thing he wants is a nuclear standoff with the United States. But he will do what he must to defend his people from the threat of foreign attack. The deployment of the missile defense system will require that Russia develop its own new weapons systems and change its thinking about trusting the United States. Friendship is not possible in the present climate.

As for “democracy”; Putin said it best himself:
“Am I a ‘pure democrat’? (laughs) Of course I am, absolutely. The problem is that I’m all alone---the only one of my kind in the whole wide world. Just look at what’s happening in North America, it’s simply awful---torture, homeless people, Guantanamo, people detained without trial and investigation. Just look at what’s happening in Europe---harsh treatment of demonstrators, rubber bullets and tear gas used first in one capital then in another, demonstrators killed on the streets….. I have no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.”

Well said, Vladimir.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17856.htm l l l .

Saundra Hummer

June 10th, 2007, 06:09 PM

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. . . . . . .
U.S. senator says military action in Iran possible
By
Reuters

06/10/07 " -- -- WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) -Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a long-time supporter of the Iraq war, said on Sunday military force might be necessary to stop Iran from training and equipping extremists who are killing U.S. troops.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," the Connecticut independent said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"And to me, that would include a strike into -- over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers," he said.

Lieberman lost the Democratic primary for re-election last year because of his support for the war but came back in the general election as an independent to be returned to the Senate.

While leaving the exact nature of a military response to the generals, Lieberman said he was not talking about a massive ground invasion but more likely a strategic use of air power.

Lieberman said he did not oppose talking to the Iranians, as the administration did recently in Baghdad.

"If we're going to sit and talk with the Iranians, tell them what we want them to do -- which is to stop doing that (arming and training Iraqis) because it's killing Americans," he said.

"They can't believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans," Lieberman said. "We cannot let them get away with it."

In the past, Lieberman has said the United States should keep a military response as a last resort in reaction to Iran's nuclear program.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
. . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

June 11th, 2007, 04:19 PM

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^^^^^^^^^ MORE WORDS OF WISDOM
FROM
KING GEORGE
SRH
Bush lashes out at foes in Congress as he heads home from European trip
By
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Monday, June 11, 2007
SOFIA, Bulgaria: As he prepared to head home from an eight-day European swing to face a hostile Congress, President Bush lashed out on Monday at Democrats for scheduling a vote of no confidence on his attorney general, and vowed to get his stalled immigration legislation passed, saying, "I'll see you at the bill signing."

Addressing reporters at a news conference, Bush said the vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - which he called "a political statement on a meaningless resolution" - would have no bearing on Gonzales's future, no matter how it turns out.

"They can try to have their votes of no confidence, but it's not going to determine - make the determination who serves in my government," Bush said, adding, "This process has been drug out a long time, which says to me it's political."

Bush's plane took off bound for Washington late in the afternoon. His eight-day, six-country tour through Europe has been a welcome escape from his political woes at home. The president was mobbed with well-wishers on Sunday in Albania, and received a warm welcome on Monday in Bulgaria, where President George Purvanov hailed Bush's arrival as "very cogent proof of the fact that our two countries' relations are in their best state now in more than a hundred years of their establishment."

But while the president has been gone from Washington, his already diminished clout on Capitol hill has seemed to deteriorate further. The immigration bill was put on hold when Republicans revolted. Then he was forced to withdraw his nomination of General Peter Pace to be chairman of the military's joint chiefs of staff to avoid a bruising nomination fight.

And now Democrats, seeking to revive the controversy over Gonzales's role in the dismissal of federal prosecutors, have scheduled the no-confidence vote.

"It's an interesting comment about Congress, isn't it, that, on the one hand, they say that a good general shouldn't be reconfirmed, and on the other hand, they say that my Attorney General shouldn't stay," Bush said Monday. "And I find it interesting. I guess it reflects the political atmosphere of Washington."

On immigration, Bush is facing a backlash in his party's conservative wing, whose members decry the bill as amnesty. On Tuesday, he plans to attend the Senate Republican policy luncheon on Capitol Hill - a rare step for a president who typically has lawmakers come to him at the White House - in an effort to revive the measure.

"I'm under no illusions about how hard this is," he said, adding that he was disappointed that the measure had been "temporarily derailed." Bush did not do much lobbying from afar. While on Air Force One Friday evening, on the way to Rome from Poland, he telephoned three top Republican Senators: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader; Trent Lott of Mississippi, the whip, and Jon Kyl of Arizona, an architect of the bill.

"The political process sometimes isn't pretty to look at," Bush said. "There's two steps forward and one step back. We made two steps forward on immigration, we took a step back, and now I'm going to work with those who are focused on getting an immigration bill done and start taking some steps forward again. I believe we can get it done. I'll see you at the bill signing."http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/america/11prexy.php ^ ^ ^ .

Saundra Hummer

June 11th, 2007, 04:28 PM

. V_ V_V_V_VThousands in U.S. claiming vaccine-autism link get their day in court
The Associated PressPublished: June 11, 2007

WASHINGTON: The parents of 12-year-old Michelle Cedillo asked a federal court Monday to find that their child's autism was caused by common childhood vaccines, a precedent-setting case that could pave the way for thousands of autistic children to receive compensation from a special U.S. government fund set up to help people injured by the shots.

Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction. Those affected often have trouble communicating, and they exhibit unusual or severely limited activities and interests. Classic symptoms of mercury poisoning include anxiety, fatigue and abnormal irritation, as well as cognitive and motor dysfunction.

Wearing noise-canceling headphones, Michelle was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair at the start of the proceedings before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. She stayed only a short time.

Her parents, Theresa and Michael Cedillo, allege a preservative called thimerosal that had been used in vaccines weakened their daughter's immune system and prevented her body from clearing the measles virus after she was immunized for the disease at age 15 months.

Today, Michelle suffers from a litany of health problems, including severe autism, inflammatory bowel disease, glaucoma and epilepsy.

"We hope to find out what happened and hopefully get the help she needs," said Theresa Cedillo, who takes care of her daughter full time at home.

Special Master George Hastings Jr. thanked the family for allowing theirs to be the first of nine test cases that will help guide the resolution of some of the nearly 5,000 similar claims lodged with the government.

"Clearly the story of Michelle's life is a tragic one," Hastings said in pledging to listen carefully to the evidence presented during the three-week hearing.

The burden of proof is easier than in a traditional court. Plaintiffs only have to prove that a link between autism and the shots is more likely than not, based on a preponderance of evidence.

Large scientific studies have found no association between autism and vaccines containing thimerosal.

But many parents say their children's symptoms did not show up until after their children received the vaccines, required by many states for admission to school.

"These are families who followed the rules. These are families who brought children in for vaccines. These are families who immunized their children," said the Cedillos' attorney, Thomas Powers.

Powers said that the science regarding a possible vaccine-autism link is in dispute.

Government attorney Vincent Matanoski dismissed much of what the plaintiffs are expected to present as conjecture or speculation.

"You'll find their hypotheses untested or, when tested, have been found false," Matanoski said.

Since 1999, more than 4,800 families have filed claims with the government alleging their children developed autism as a result of routine vaccinations. Most contend that a preservative called thimerosal is to blame for the impaired social interaction typical of the disorder.

The court is being asked to decide whether there is a link between autism and childhood vaccines. If it finds one exists, the families could be eligible for compensation under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund, a program established by Congress to ensure an adequate supply of vaccines by safeguarding manufacturers from lawsuits. Under the program, people injured by vaccines receive compensation through a special trust fund.

Monday's case addresses the theory that the cause of autism is the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in combination with other vaccines containing thimerosal. The preservative, about 50 percent mercury by weight, is no longer found in routine childhood vaccines but is used in some flu shots.

In July 1999, the U.S. government asked vaccine manufacturers to eliminate or reduce, as expeditiously as possible, the mercury content of their vaccines to avoid any possibility of infants who receive vaccines being exposed to more mercury than is recommended by federal guidelines.

On the Net:

U.S. Court of Federal Claims: http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/11/america/NA-GEN-US-Autism-Vaccines.php .

Saundra Hummer

June 11th, 2007, 04:46 PM

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~~~~~~~
"Half a truth is often a great lie".

Benjamin Franklin
~~~
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

Joseph Goebbels
Nazi Propaganda Minister
~~~"The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary."

George Orwell in the book 1984
~~~
"Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter".

Erich Fromm
sychoanalyst and social philosopher
1900-1980

~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

June 11th, 2007, 04:57 PM

<<<<<0>>>>>
Some Americans are not waiting for a weight-loss pill
By Angela Cullen
Bloomberg NewsPublished: June 11, 2007
FRANKFURT: Acomplia, the new weight-loss pill from Sanofi-Aventis, has not yet been approved in the United States because of questions about its safety. But some Americans have decided not to wait.
Many are traveling to Europe, where the drug has been approved, or buying the medicine through foreign Web sites, while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues its evaluations of the treatment. On Monday, a panel of advisers to the agency said that the pill might raise the risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts.

"I don't have very many years to go, and I don't want to spend that time over 200 pounds," said Yvette Cardozo, a 62-year-old American photographer who bought six months' worth of Acomplia during a trip to London. "This is the only thing that's ever worked for me."

Twenty milligrams of Acomplia, the highest dose, resulted in statistically and clinically significant weight loss, the Food and Drug Administration's staff said in documents posted Monday on the agency's Web site. The agency advisory panel will meet Wednesday to discuss whether the medicine's benefits of reducing weight, cholesterol and blood sugar outweigh its risks.

Since clinical tests have shown that the drug can cause anxiety and depression, analysts said the panel might be cautious about approving it without seeing more studies.

Once approved, Acomplia might be used by millions who just want to shed a few pounds, says Nick Turner, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities in London. As a result, side effects not revealed in patient trials could arise, he said.

"The major issue with Acomplia appears to be the neurological or mood disorders," said Turner, who has a neutral rating on Sanofi stock. "People won't take this drug because it helps their diabetes, they'll take it because somebody promises them that they'll become slim."

Sanofi has predicted at least $3 billion in annual revenue from the drug. Shares of Sanofi fell 5 cents Monday to close at €67.52 in Paris.

Sanofi officials have repeatedly said that the drug was not for those trying to fit into a party dress.

"Acomplia is not a cosmetic product," Gerard Le Fur, the chief executive of the company, said at the company's annual meeting in May.

The French drugmaker needs the medicine to shore up its activities in the United States, where a third of the population is considered obese, as its older best-sellers, like the sleeping pill Ambien, lose patent protection.

Sanofi had expected Acomplia to be approved last year, but the Food and Drug Administration demanded more information in February 2006. This year, Sanofi said the FDA would need until July to complete its review.

Patients given the highest dose of the drug lost an average 5.3 kilograms, or 11.7 pounds, over a one-year period compared with a weight loss of 1.4 kilograms among patients given a placebo.

Cardozo, the photographer, said that she had lost 20 pounds since restarting treatment after participating in Sanofi clinical trials five years ago. She lost 30 pounds during those tests, and said Acomplia was the only drug that had helped her shake excess weight that had plagued her since her teens.

"If I have a drug that's gone through clinical trials and is not poison, and it works for me, then I'm happy to take it," said Cardozo, who is 5 feet 7 inches, or 1.7 meters, tall and weighs 190 pounds.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/business/fat.php .

Saundra Hummer

June 11th, 2007, 05:14 PM

.:: :: ::
Iran discusses storing oil reserves in China
ReutersPublished: June 11, 2007
KUALA LUMPUR: Iran is in discussions to store strategic oil reserves in China and to build refineries around Asia, Iran's oil minister, Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh, said Monday, as the country seeks secure outlets for its crude in the face of Western economic sanctions.

He said there was no shortage of crude in the market and that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had no plans to increase supplies. It was the latest producers' rebuff to calls by consumer nations for more oil.

Vaziri-Hamaneh said Iran was in discussions to store crude in China, which has been building up reserves in the past year.

"We have some plans," he said at the Asia Oil and Gas Conference in the Malaysian capital. Discussions have revolved around China having a role in storing the strategic reserves, he said.

China has completed filling its Zhenhai reserve facility, which has a capacity of 33 million million barrels, and had been scheduled to make the first crude deposit into its second strategic storage facility at Aoshan by the end of May.

China's goal is a reserve of 100 million barrels by the end of 2008.

The crude being stored comes from countries like Angola, Iran and Sudan, shipping sources said.

China's crude imports from Iran are up 11 percent in the first four months of the year, compared with the same period in 2006.

A shift in Iranian sales to China could serve many interests.

China's state-owned refiners would avoid raiding edgy spot markets by instead securing more long-term contracts, and Iran would tighten economic ties with a key UN Security Council member.

Worries over Iran's nuclear dispute with the West have been a driving factor for rising oil prices this year.

But Vaziri-Hamaneh said Iran was not concerned over the financing of mega oil projects in the country, despite economic sanctions over Tehran's nuclear plan.

He said the country's crude output was expected to rise to 5.3 million barrels per day by 2014, up from 4.3 million currently.

Iran has sweetened the terms of oil and gas contracts as it seeks to lure international companies to invest in the country despite political risks, but energy executives say they want more incentives.

The United States has frowned on deals that international companies have signed with Iran as they look to tap the second-largest oil and gas reserves in the world.

The Iranian minister said the reason for current high oil prices was not because of crude supply problems.

"Now there is no shortage of crude oil in the market," he said when asked if OPEC should release more supplies to temper high oil prices, adding that commercial oil stocks in the United States were at a high level.

London Brent crude prices held above $68 a barrel on Monday, after a slide Friday as fears over slower economic growth halted a rally to near nine-month highs over $71 last week.

Asked if oil prices would hit $80 a barrel, Vaziri-Hamaneh said, "We cannot predict what will happen to prices now."

Vaziri-Hamaneh also vowed closer cooperation with Asia, announcing that Iran was in talks to partner with China, Indonesia, Singapore, Syria and Malaysia to build refineries with a combined production capacity of 1.1 million barrels per day.

"We are supposed to be the partner in those refineries, and also try and provide the crude oil to those refineries," he said.

He did not provide further details on these projects, although an official at National Iranian Oil said earlier Monday that Iran aimed to supply crude to a new refinery planned in northern Malaysia.

Vaziri-Hamaneh said Iran had also completed a deal with Essar Group of India to build a new refinery in Iran,.

National Iranian Oil has been in talks with Essar to build an estimated $2 billion refinery with a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day.

Malaysia is considering a new project to expand the capacity of its joint-venture refinery in Malacca, the head of the state oil company said Monday, Reuters reported from Kuala Lumpur.

"We are looking at the possibility of expanding the present capacity but it is still under study between ourselves and ConocoPhillips," the chairman of the Malaysian state energy firm Petronas, Hassan Marican, said at the Asia Oil and Gas Conference.

"We have not confirmed the expansion capacity yet but we are looking at several options," he said.

The chairman of ConocoPhillips, Jim Mulva, said the company did not yet have plans to divest its stake in the refinery after selling its Malaysian retail outlets to Royal Dutch Shell earlier this year.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/business/oil.php .

Saundra Hummer

June 11th, 2007, 05:50 PM

.. . . . . . . Supply-side Spin
June 11, 2007
Sen. John McCain has said President Bush's tax cuts have increased federal revenues. But revenues would have been even higher without them.
Summary
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has said that the major tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 have "increased revenues." He also said that tax cuts in general increase revenues. That’s highly misleading.

In fact, the last half-dozen years have shown us that we can't have both lower taxes and fatter government coffers. The Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and a former Bush administration economist all say that tax cuts lead to revenues that are lower than they otherwise would have been – even if they spur some economic growth. And federal revenues actually declined at the beginning of this decade before rebounding. The growth in the past three years that McCain refers to brings revenues back in line with the 40-year historical average as a percentage of gross domestic product.

It’s unclear how much of the growth can be attributed to the tax cuts. Capital gains tax receipts did increase greatly from 2003 to 2006, but the CBO estimates that they will level off and decrease in the next few years. The growth overwhelmingly resulted from a sharp rise in corporate tax receipts, the cause of which is a topic of debate.

Analysis
At the May 15 Republican presidential debate, Arizona Sen. John McCain was asked about his opposition to President’s Bush 2001 tax cuts. (Also, the senator voted against the 2003 tax cuts.)

Fox News Channel's Wendell Goler: Sen. McCain, you opposed President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. Now you say you were wrong. How can you convince Republican voters you will push a Democratic Congress hard enough to make those tax cuts permanent, sir?

Sen. McCain: Well, first of all, I didn't say that I was wrong. I said that the reason why I opposed those tax cuts was because we didn't rein in spending.
And the fact is the tax cuts have dramatically increased revenues.

Earlier this year in a National Review interview published March 6, McCain said tax cuts in general created revenue gains:

National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru: If you could get the Democrats to agree, or at least to come to the table on entitlements or on tax simplification, are those circumstances under which you'd be willing to accept a tax increase?

Sen. McCain: No; no.

Ponnuru: No circumstances?

Sen. McCain: No. None. None. Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues. So what's the argument for increasing taxes? If you get the opposite effect out of tax cuts?

Other Republicans and administration officials, including the president, have made similar statements about the power of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. But McCain and his colleagues are not accounting for the decrease in revenue that accompanied the cuts.

“Federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts,” Alan D. Viard of the conservative American Enterprise Institute told the Washington Post last October. Viard, who worked in the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis and the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers under President Bush, told FactCheck.org that “nobody can absolutely prove that.” Proof would require time travel and a reversal of tax policy. “But among economists, there’s no dispute.”

Tax cuts can be a sound economic move that spurs growth, says Viard. “But it doesn’t mean that [the cuts] gained revenue."

If the government had reined in spending – as McCain wanted – the senator might have more to brag about. Viard says economists would expect a boost to the economy if tax relief had been matched by spending cuts. When the cuts are deficit-financed (as these are), it’s still possible to have positive growth, he continues, but that’s a different matter from saying there’s a net increase.

“I found Sen. McCain’s statement rather disappointing on this matter,” he says, referring to the GOP debate.

Federal agencies have published similar statements regarding the effect of tax cuts on federal receipts. From the Congressional Budget Office’s 2007 Budget Outlook: “The expiration of tax provisions as scheduled has a substantial impact on CBO’s projections, especially beyond 2010 when a number of revenue-reducing tax provisions enacted in the past several years are slated to expire,” the report says. “Almost all of the expiring provisions reduce revenues.”

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the 2001 tax legislation (the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act) would cause government revenues to be 107.7 billion less than they would have been in the absence of the legislation in 2004, 107.4 billion less in 2005 and 135.2 billion less in 2006. The committee's estimates for the effect of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 were that it would reduce otherwise projected revenues by 148.7 billion in 2004, 82.2 billion in 2005 and 20.7 billion in 2006. The JCT makes its comparisons against the Congressional Budget Office's receipts baselines.

The projections were not off the mark. A look at the committee's estimates of total federal revenue including the effects of the 2003 tax legislation versus the actual federal receipts shows that the JCT's projections were higher than actual revenues in 2003 and 2004 and slightly lower than actual receipts in 2005.

Also, Rob Portman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Ed Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, told journalists at the Washington Times last October that the tax cuts prompted economic and stock market growth. But, the paper reported, “they conceded that the tax cuts…cut deeply into government revenue.”

Revenue Ups and Downs
When we contacted the McCain campaign, aide Matt David responded in an e-mail that Sen. McCain was referring to the increase in federal revenues between 2001 and 2006. Government receipts rose 20.9 percent between 2001 and 2006, and they were up 35 percent between 2003 and 2006.

When we asked for McCain’s explanation of how the tax cuts have increased revenue, his campaign replied:

McCain aide: "The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts contributed to the economic growth, rise in profitability, and shifts in the form of compensation that have produced strong receipts growth over the past several years. Good tax policy contributes to more rapid growth in receipts."

We’re not quibbling with most of that. A Treasury Department analysis found that the tax cuts prompted the creation of jobs and increased the gross domestic product. If McCain had said the tax cuts contributed to economic growth, he would have been correct. McCain's last sentence may be true, too, but not if the phrase "good tax policy" is equated with the '01 and '03 tax cuts.

Federal revenue normally increases every year. In fact, revenues have declined in only five years since 1962. The 35 percent growth between 2003 and 2006 is significant – the last major growth in revenue was between 1997 and 2000, when the economy was booming and federal receipts rose 28.2 percent. But the recent three-year period also comes after three years of decreases, a drop Viard attributes to the 2001 tax cuts and the start of a recession that same year.

CHART: GO ON-LINE TO GAIN ACCESS:
Source: Congressional Budget Office, “Historical Budget Data” The Office of Management and Budget describes the rebound in the past few years as a return to the historical average. As a percentage of GDP, federal receipts are now 18.4 percent of GDP (in line with the 40-year historical average of 18.3 percent).

McCain also told the Economic Club of Memphis on April 16: "If the federal government can't be funded with current revenues, which are growing at historic rates, then the government is too big and is growing too fast."

The percentage growth since 2003 may be historic, but the government’s coffers are no more flush with funds as a percentage of the economy than they have been on average for 40 years. In our judgment, McCain’s statements give a false impression about the impact of the tax cuts.

The Source of the Growth
But can the increase in receipts over the last three years — though not a net increase — be attributed to the tax cuts? Where has the growth in revenue come from? That is a tough question for economists to answer definitively, but the bulk of the growth in federal receipts has been in corporate tax revenue.

In 2006, according to the CBO, individual income tax revenue was 1,043.9 billion, an increase of 5 percent since 2001. Corporate tax revenue was 353.9 billion in 2006, a 134 percent rise from 2001. That’s a dramatic increase.

“It really is astonishing,” Viard says of those numbers. But he can’t point to major corporate tax cuts that would have spurred the growth. Corporate profits are doing very well and the economy is growing, but “I don’t know that there’s a single, clear cut reason for that.”

A May 2006 report by the Federal Reserve Board did not find that the 2003 dividend tax cut had a major impact on stock prices.

Federal Reserve Board authors: “We do not find any imprint of the dividend tax cut news on the value of the aggregate stock market. On the other hand, high-dividend stocks outperformed low-dividend stocks by a few percentage points over the event windows, suggesting that the tax cut did induce asset reallocation within equity portfolios.”

That contradicts President Bush’s pronouncements. In May 2006, when the president signed an extension of tax relief legislation, he said: "The cuts on dividends and capital gains are reaching families and businesses alike.... By cutting the taxes on dividends and capital gains, we helped add about $4 trillion in new wealth to the stock market."

The CBO analyzed data to uncover the causes of revenue growth since 2003 in response to a request from Sen. Kent Conrad, chair of the Senate budget committee. In a letter to Conrad, CBO Director Peter R. Orszag says that overall receipts increased by 1.9 percentage points as a share of GDP and that the increase “disproportionately” comes from a rise in corporate income tax revenues.

Orszag attributes two-thirds of the bump in corporate taxes to an increase in corporate profits. The rest he pins to tax policy. For instance, when provisions allowing partial expensing of investment in equipment expired, tax revenue increased. In other words, revenue declined when the provisions were enacted and bumped up again when they expired.

Orszag says there was growth in capital gains realizations in individual tax receipts, but measures such as lower rates on dividends and an increase in the child tax credit, as well as a drop in job wages, caused a reduction in revenues. A CBO chart in Orszag's letter shows that legislation (not counting an impact on capital gains) had a total negative effect on revenue growth.

The impact of the tax cuts on economic growth is a matter of debate among economists. We're not voicing a view on whether the tax cuts should have been enacted; that, too, is a separate discussion. But it is clear they did not "increase revenues."
– by Lori Robertson
Sources
United States Congressional Budget Office. “The Budget and Economic Outlook:[/B][/COLOR]Fiscal years 2008 to 2017” Jan. 2007.

Council of Economic Advisers. “Economic Report of the President.” Government Printing Office. Feb. 2003.

Ponnuru, Ramesh. “The Full McCain.” National Review Online. 5 March 2007.
Montgomery, Lori. “Lower Deficit Sparks Debate Over Tax Cuts’ Role.” Washington Post. 17 Oct. 2006, D01.

Joint Committee on Taxation. “Estimated Budget Effects of the Conference Agreement for H.R. 1836” JCX-51-01. 26 May 2001.

Joint Committee on Taxation. “Estimated Budget Effects of the Conference Agreement for H.R. 2 The ‘Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003’ ” JCX-55-03. 22 May 2003.

Joint Committee on Taxation. “Exploring Issues in the Development of Macroeconomic Models for Use in Tax Policy Analysis” JCX-19-06. 16 June 2006.

Hill, Patrice. “House or Senate shake-up likely to end tax cuts.” Washington Times 5 Oct. 2006.
United States Congressional Research Service. “The Budget for Fiscal Year 2008.” 12 March 2007.

United States Congressional Budget Office. “Historical Budget Data” 2007.

United States Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis. “A Dynamic Analysis of Permanent Extension of the President’s Tax Relief.” 25 July 2006.

Office of Management and Budget. “Budget of the Government Fiscal Year 2008.” Presentation 5 Feb. 2007.

Amromini, Gene; Harrison, Paul; and Sharpe, Steven. “How Did the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut Affect Stock Prices?” Federal Reserve Board, Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs. 29 May 2006.

United States Congressional Budget Office. Letter from Director Peter R. Orszag to Sen. Kent Conrad. 18 May 2007.
Copyright © 2003 - 2007, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
FactCheck.org's staff, not the Annenberg Center, is responsible for this material.
This message was sent from: http://www.FactCheck.org.http://factcheck.org .

Saundra Hummer

June 11th, 2007, 06:34 PM

.X X X X X X X
The Neoconservative Threat to American Freedom
By
Paul Craig Roberts
06/11/07 "ICH " -- - The Bush/Cheney White House, which told the American people in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion would be a three to six week affair, now tells us that the US occupation is permanent. Forever.
Attentive Americans of which, alas, there are so few, had already concluded that the occupation was permanent. Permanence is the obvious message from the massive and fortified US embassy under construction in Iraq and from the large permanent military bases that the Bush regime is building in Iraq.

Bush regime propagandists have created a false analogy with “the Korean model” in their effort to sell the permanent occupation of Iraq as necessary for Iraq’s security. More than one half century after the close of the Korean war, US troops continue to be based in Korea, as they are in Germany more than six decades after the end of World War II.

The rationale for the US troops in S. Korea is to remind N. Korea that an attack on S. Korea is an attack on the US itself. The rationale for US troops in Germany disappeared when Reagan and Gorbachev brought the cold war to an end.

There is, of course, no similarity between Iraq and Korea. There was no insurgency in Korea and no attacks on US troops based in S. Korea once the fighting stopped. The presence of US troops in S. Korea has produced many protest demonstrations by South Koreans, but the US troops in S. Korea have had no exposure to combat since the war ended in 1953.

In contrast, the insurgency in Iraq continues to rage and could expand dramatically if Shi’ites were to join the Sunnis in attacks on US forces. Most American military leaders no longer believe the insurgency can be defeated. Permanent occupation means permanent insurgency. Indeed, an attempt at permanent occupation could possibly unify the Arabs in a joint effort to expel the Americans.

The absurd analogy with Korea is so far-fetched that it raises the question whether the Bush/Cheney regime has entered a new, higher level of delusion. Bush cannot keep troops in Iraq permanently unless he intends to remain permanently in the White House. Even some Republicans in Congress are talking about beginning withdrawals of US troops in September. Republicans believe that if withdrawals do not begin, their party will be wiped out in the 2008 election.

The wild card is the neoconservatives and their long-standing alliance with Israeli Zionists. The neoconservatives still have a death grip on the discredited Bush regime. Jim Lobe (http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/) describes the extensive international organization that the neoconservatives have put into place for the purpose of orchestrating an attack on Iran.

A sane reader might wonder why neoconservatives would want to expand a conflict in which the US has failed. Surely, even delusional “cakewalk” neoconservatives must realize that attacking Iran would greatly increase the threat to US troops in Iraq and perhaps bring missile attacks on oil facilities and US bases throughout the Middle East. An attack on Iran would further radicalize Muslims and further undermine US puppets in the Middle East. It could bring war to the entire region.

The point is that the neoconservatives do realize this. Their defeat in Iraq and Israel’s defeat in Lebanon has taught the neoconservatives that the US cannot prevail in the Middle East by conventional military means. As I have previously explained, the neoconservatives’ plan is to escape the failure of their Iraq plan by orchestrating a war with Iran in which the US can prevail only by using nuclear weapons. As previously reported, the neoconservatives believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran will convince Muslims that they must accept US hegemony.

The neoconservatives have put the elements of their plan in place. They have powerful naval forces on station off Iran’s coast. They have convinced President Bush that only by attacking Iran can he prevail in Iraq.

The neoconservatives have rewritten US war doctrine to permit preemptive US nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries (http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8263). They have demonized Iran as the greatest threat since Hitler. Neoconservatives have invented “Islamofascism,” something that exists only in the neoconservative propaganda used to instill in Americans hatred of Muslims. The neoconservatives have dehumanized Muslims as monsters who must be destroyed at all costs. Recent statements by neoconservative leaders such as Norman Podhoretz read like the ravings of ignorant lunatics. Podhoretz has written Muslims out of the human race. He demands that their culture be deracinated.

Neoconservatives, convinced that a nuclear attack will bring Muslims to heel, are ignoring the likely blowback and unintended consequences of an attack on Iran, just as they ignored the likely consequences of their attack on Iraq. If the neoconservatives are mistaken in their assumption that nuclear weapons will cause Muslims to submit to the US, the consequences will be unmanageable.

The neoconservative Bush regime has got away with more than I thought possible, perhaps because most of Congress and the American public cannot imagine the degree of insanity that lies behind the Bush administration. Most Americans who have turned against the regime think that the administration is incompetent, that it jumped to wrong conclusions about Iraq, and that it mismanaged the war and will not admit its mistakes. As every reason Bush gave for the war has proven to be false, people see no point in continuing the struggle.

If Americans understood the enormity of the deception behind the invasion of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the pending attack on Iran, Bush and Cheney would be impeached and turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague, and AIPAC would be forced to register as a foreign agent.

Just as Goebbels said, some lies are too big to be disbelieved. It is this disbelief that is so dangerous. The inability of Americans to see through the Big Lie to the secret agenda allows the neoconservatives to escape accountability and to continue with their plot.

The neoconservatives also believe that nuclear attack on Iran will isolate America in the world and, thereby, give the government control over the American people. The denunciations that will be hurled at Americans from every quarter will force the country to wrap itself in the flag and to treat domestic critics as foreign enemies. Not only free speech but also truth itself will disappear along with every civil liberty.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. He is author or co-author of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon chair in political economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and senior research fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17863.htm WAKE UP AMERICA!
SRH
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Saundra Hummer

June 12th, 2007, 07:24 PM

.
. . . . . . .
The War on Consciousness
By Paul Levy06/12/07 "ICH" --- -- We are truly in a war. It is not the war we imagine we are in, which is the way our true adversaries want it. It is not a foreign war against a foreign enemy. It is a war on consciousness, a war on our own minds. The global war on terror that is being fought around the world is an embodied reflection in the material world of a deeper, more fundamental war that is going on in the realm of consciousness itself.

We have the most criminal regime in all of our history wreaking unspeakable horror on the entire planet, while simultaneously waging war on the consciousness of its own citizens - US. If we aren’t aware of this, we are unwittingly playing into, supporting and complicit in the evil that is being perpetrated in our name.

A government’s war on the consciousness of its own citizens is by no means unique to the Bush administration. Abusing power over others so as to limit their freedom is an archetypal process that has been endlessly re-enacted by governments throughout history in various forms. With the Bush administration, however, the pathological aspect of this process has become so exaggerated and amped up to such a degree that it is just about impossible not to notice its staggering malignancy. With the Bush administration, the underlying evil that has played out in our government over many years is becoming overwhelmingly obvious for all to see. With the Bush administration, the underlying evil that informs systems of government that are based on “power over” instead of “liberty for” is coming out from hiding in the shadows. Instead of being acted out underground, our government is acting out this evil above ground, in plain sight for all who are courageous enough to look.

Impeaching Bush and Co. ultimately won’t change anything unless we deal with the corrupt powers which control and direct them. George Bush is just a finger-puppet of the hidden hand which animates him. Bush only has apparent power, as he himself is a minion of far more powerful predator-like forces whose nefarious interests he serves. Whether we call it the illuminati, the global elite, a shadow government, or a secret cabal, there is no doubt that there are darker, self-serving forces that have insinuated themselves into and taken over our government. The terrorists that we should be worried about are domestic terrorists who are actually implementing their agendas from deep within our very system of government itself.

The United States Government itself has become a “front” for the underlying military-industrial-financial crime syndicate that animates it. This is not to say that there aren’t many good, well-meaning people in our government – they are simply prohibited by the very nature of the corrupt system they are in from reforming it. Our system of government is rigged in such a way so that there is no way to transform the system within the system itself.

The underlying core of our government has become rotten such that the entire operation simply feeds into and is an expression of the same underlying corruption. All of the scandals continually coming out are like the superficial skin rash of a much deeper systemic disease, like a cancer that is infecting the greater body politic. Citizens who are not aware of our government’s insidious intrusions into our lives are unwittingly feeding the corruption they are looking away from in their very act of looking away.

The “powers” that have taken over our government have become concentrated and centralized in just a few elite hands, proving how easy it is for the few to control the many. They almost control all the levers of power: financial, political and judicial. In this war on consciousness, these powers-that-be are using the most advanced mind-control technology that our world has ever known to make its takeover complete. The essence of mind-control is information control, which is one thing our overly secretive current administration is very good at.

Mind-Control
The private interests that control our government have an incredible mind-control/propaganda machine at their disposal in the form of the mainstream media, which if not quite fully owned and controlled, is certainly under their “influence” enough to serve their underlying self-serving agenda. George Orwell once said that omission is the greatest form of lie – this perfectly describes the corporate owned media of today which is nothing other than the propaganda organ of the state. The corporate world and our government are becoming indistinguishable, which is one of the hallmarks of fascism, or more accurately – corporatism.

In addition to information, our government is adept at putting out dis-information, whose intention is to create distractions and confusion so as to cover its tracks and hide its true intentions. It will purposely leak stories that are not true simply to cover-up what it is really doing. By putting out misleading information, the government hides behind its self-generated smokescreen like an octopus squirting ink.

Quite often, right at the moment when people’s focus is moving towards some area of criminality in the White House, the administration will even create a diversionary event for the public to put their attention on. Memories of those color-coded terror alerts that always seemed to happen right when something bad was starting to happen for the Bush administration come to mind. In creating distractions, our government is able to steer our collective attention in directions that allow it to successfully accomplish its malevolent goal of grabbing all the power it can get.

In a diabolical ploy, the administration will even feed stories to a compliant press, and then reference these stories as justification for enacting its pre-planned agenda. One glaring example is when the administration fed Judith Miller of the New York Times stories about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Once this propaganda appeared on the front page of the Times, the administration was only too happy to use it as evidence for why we should go to war.

WMD could easily stand for “Weapons of Mind Deception”, as our own government is continually trying to “Deceive” our “Minds”, which is the battlefield in which the war on consciousness is being fought. We are all on the front lines in the war on consciousness, whether we know it or not. Instead of shooting us, our government is using cutting-edge mind-control technology to psychically emasculate us. In order to be able to deal with the evil that the Bush regime is perpetrating, we first have to become acquainted with that very same potential evil in ourselves so as to be able to recognize it in the outside world. The way to vanquish our adversary is to be found hidden within the very nature of our own awareness, which contains the key to its own freedom.

The corporate-mainstream media “captivates” our attention, capturing a part of our self-reflective, discriminative awareness, thereby restricting the range of our conscious awareness, which is what hypnotism is all about. Once the attention of the masses becomes entranced, the corporate/government media can then “play with” our mind. This unholy trinity of corporate/government/media can create an obsessive fixation on certain superficial events that “seize” the collective psyche. For example, it feeds the masses sensationalized stories such as Anna Nicole Smith ad nauseam so as to divert our attention from the evil that is being done behind the scenes in our name.

Ex-CIA director Allen Dulles used to say that the most effective way to disguise a secret is to pretend to openly share information. The Bush administration isn’t interested in solving problems as much as creating good PR (Public Relations) for itself. With one hand the Bush administration will try to appear like it is openly sharing information and being transparent, while with its other hand it will be actively obstructing the very process it is seemingly supporting. A vivid example is the government’s 9/11 commission, whose aim was allegedly to shed light on what happened on 9/11, while covertly – behind the scenes – the Bush administration was doing everything it could to hinder the commission’s inquiries (see, for example, 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, by David Ray Griffin). All one has to do is investigate the numerous ties to the core cabal of the neocon Bush administration that the members of the 9/11 commission have and the degree to which it was a deliberate operation to obscure the truth becomes apparent. It was as if the White House was investigating itself; the foxes truly guarding the henhouse. The 9/11 commission and its report, just like the Warren Commission and its report on the Kennedy assassination, was a façade, a show, a display in which it appeared like our government was giving us what we wanted, while actually being part of a deceptive game of smoke-and-mirrors. It is like a magician has hypnotized us, and is stealing what’s in our pockets while they have us under their trance in which we believe they are serving us.

As if by a perverse Jedi mind-trick, the Bush administration has bewitched us into believing that it controls the national dialogue, when in a democracy the opposite is actually true. One of many examples – when confronted with overwhelming evidence that we have been torturing our adversaries, Bush responds by saying he “rejects” that claim, and the conversation stops right there and moves on to other, more superficial topics. Our government is supposed to represent us, which is to say that they are our employees. Bush has turned this around and put himself in the role of the dictator with us as his subjects. And somehow we have allowed him to get away with this. There is no escaping our individual and collective complicity in this sad state of affairs.

One difference between what is happening in our country and the state-controlled media of the old Soviet Union, is that in the Soviet Union, most people were quite aware that what was being presented to them by their corrupt government as news was nothing but mind-warping propaganda. Many Americans have fallen so under the spell of the Bush regime’s criminal lies that they don’t even know they are being lied to. It is like we are living in a land of state-controlled zombies who think they are free citizens of a free country.

It is as if millions of our fellow citizens have fallen asleep, as if they have become hypnotized and brainwashed by the powers-that-be‘s incessant “managing” and “massaging” of reality. These powers simply manipulate an already gullible and highly suggestible public into a game of “divide and conquer.” They get rich off of other’s blood - they incite conflict, and covertly support both sides, as they themselves reap the benefit of the conflict.

The corporate war machine, which is co-dependently entangled with our government, profits wildly from our invading other sovereign countries. The government-military-industrial complex’s solution to the very problem that they created by instigating wars – more war! It’s completely sick and totally insane. And we, in our dulled denial – like hypnotized sheep - simply go along and allow the whole parasitic enterprise to be fed by offering our sons and daughters as fodder. To the extent that we are not shedding light on the utter criminality and insanity of what the Bush administration is doing and saying “No,” we are all complicit in feeding our own genocide.

Bush and our Congressional leaders are mouthpieces for the advertising campaign of distortion and falsehood that is being “bomb-arded” into our psyches on a daily basis. Our “leaders” repetitive slogans and incantations brand and imprint themselves deep into our unconscious, where many who do not have enough psychic resistance fall under the spell. (please see Chapter 8 – “Breaking Bush’s Spell”, in my book The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). People’s ability to discern truth from fiction has been rendered inoperative by our own government’s pattern of routinely taking liberty with the truth. Government propaganda has inverted the perception of what is actually happening, as lies are presented as truths, and up is portrayed as down in a truly Orwellian universe of confounding doublespeak. Through the “Big Lie” – which is based on that the bigger the lie, the harder it is for people to see the truth - the government has transformed myth into seeming fact, and has achieved its goal of muddling our minds so as to dis-empower us.

Many of us haven’t developed the psychic immunity to be able to fully ward off the toxic effects of our government’s covert, fear-based psychological warfare. An expression of the success of our government’s psy-ops against US is the fact that there’s so little awareness about the government’s assault on our minds that it’s hardly even a part of our national dialogue. The insidiousness of the government’s covert manipulation of our minds is even found in the very term “Global War on Terror”. “The Global War on Terror” is a crazy-making, self-contradictory statement, as we can never stop terror with a war – on the contrary, wars induce terror! This term carries with it a false and self-negating premise that if we accept we’ve already given away our power. If we leave this underlying assumption unquestioned, we unwittingly allow them to frame the agenda on their terms. We have then already fallen under their spell without knowing it, as our capacity to think and respond creatively is undermined. Our inability to creatively respond to the war on our consciousness is an expression of being immobilized in fear as if frozen in trauma. The war on terror is really a war on our psyche. The war on terror is ultimately about control – control of our minds.

What Bush and our Congressional leaders are doing is so morally outrageous that it is literally off the charts of accepted, “normal”, ethical, sane human behavior. In the words of French poet Andre Chenier, Bush and Co. are committing “crimes that make the laws tremble,” as they are covertly undermining our very legal and political system itself. The corruption that has infected our body politic is like a virus that is exploiting weaknesses in our political immune system so as to feed and spread its pathology.

Those of us who are somewhat sane can easily lack the imagination for the depth of depravity that the Bush administration regularly acts out in the world. Our lack of imagination works to the government’s advantage, as it allows them to continue to act out the darkness in a manner which is incomprehensible to us. This is why the great doctor of the soul C. G. Jung counseled us to develop an “imagination for evil,” as being able to imagine the scope of evil that human beings can fall prey to and act out empowers us to see it clearly and thereby deal with it more effectively.

Our government’s lying and criminality is so pervasive that we have become desensitized to their corruption. Their evil has become so “normalized,” that just like someone watching TV becomes numb and anesthetized to the violence, we have become desensitized to the horror of what Bush and his cronies are doing right in front of our very eyes day after day. We’ve learned – or, shall I say, become programmed - to accept the fact that the Bush administration is almost always lying, for, as we are told “All governments lie”.

CONTINUED: GO ON-SITE TO SEE.... Much more is following in this article. Go on-site to see it's continuation by clicking on the following link. While there check out ICH's Home Page. There's much more to read, such as war stats, cartoons, etc. Just click on the following URLs:
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Saundra Hummer

June 12th, 2007, 11:59 PM

.~~~~~~~
Bush Passes The Buck On War
Country Should Be Looking For Way Out Of Iraq
Helen Thomas
Hearst White House columnist
TheBostonChannel.com
POSTED: 1:01 pm EDT May 10, 2007
President George W. Bush still has to learn to say "the buck stops here" when it comes to presidential decisions.

The "decider" and commander-in-chief seems to be trying to pass the buck, particularly if the war in Iraq implodes and he has to bring troops home from his disastrous invasion of Iraq.

The president is counting on Gen. David Petraeus -- the top military commander in Iraq -- and Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki to take the fall if his troop "surge" fails.

Bush is a long way from that mirage, even with an expected Pentagon buildup of U.S. troops to 160,000 by midsummer.

Bush's war of choice -- now in its fifth year -- has taken 3,368 American lives and wounded thousands more Americans.

The death toll for the Iraqi people is reportedly in the hundreds of thousands, although the Iraqi Health Ministry says it will no longer disclose the casualty figures.

Bush had a 25-minute telephone call with al-Maliki earlier this week after feeling the domestic political pressure following his veto of war funding legislation that called for U.S. troops to withdraw, starting Oct. 1.

Vice President Dick Cheney followed up with a personal visit with al-Maliki in Baghdad, where he told the Iraqi that the U.S. has a dim view of the Iraqi parliament's plan to take a two-month vacation this summer.

Both Bush and Congress have laid down the law to the beleaguered al-Maliki with this message: If his government doesn't pass a law divvying up Iraq's vast oil reserves among the three ethnic-religious groups and if he fails to reconcile the various Iraqi factions, the U.S. just might just pack up and leave.

This is the same Bush administration trying to throw its weight around after destroying Iraq and destabilizing the entire Middle East. But al-Maliki will be there to catch the blame.

Last week, in a speech to the Associated General Contractors of America, Bush put the burden on Petraeus and quoted the commander as saying that "it's going to be at least until the end of this summer that he will know whether or not the new strategy (of escalating the troops by thousands) has achieved successes."

But White House spokesman Tony Snow rejected any suggestion that Petraeus' comments pointed to September as a deadline. The president was not accepting any troop withdrawal date, Snow insisted.

More ominous is a report Wednesday by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that an unnamed Saudi source said Bush told the Saudis that he will not withdraw from Iraq during his presidency.

If true, that's more in line with speculation that Bush wants to run out the clock and pass the war on to his successor.

However, it's not far-fetched to believe that Republicans will wake up and see their re-election chances flame out if Bush continues the war until 2008.

The latest CBS-New York Times poll said the president has dropped to 24 percent in his approval ratings on his handling of the war. President Richard M. Nixon's Watergate scandal-plagued polls fell to 23 percent when he was forced to resign from office.

But the same CBS-TV poll said 56 percent of those sampled believe that congressional Democrats should fund the war -- despite a presidential veto of a bill that included a withdrawal timetable.

The White House has translated any effort to withhold war funding as a signal that Congress is failing to support the troops, tying the hands of the generals and acquiescing to "surrender."

In his remarks to the contractors, the president blamed al-Qaida -- the terrorist network -- for ratcheting up the sectarian violence in Baghdad between the Shiites and the Sunnis and the high-profile suicide bombings.

"The most visible and violent front of this global war is Iraq," Bush said. "It's a tough fight. ... Illegal armed groups continue their attacks, insurgents remain deadly" and have to be dealt with.

"Al-Qaida is public enemy No. 1 in Iraq," Bush declared. "It's in our interest to stay in the fight."

Soon after the war started and all the false rationales justifying the invasion were falling like 10 pins, Ari Fleischer -- Bush's first press secretary -- stepped up to the podium in the White House pressroom and picked the battleground, declaring: "Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism." And al-Qaida took him at his word.

The mantra for Bush's new strategy in the war is called "the way forward." But if Americans have any say, it should be "the way out."

Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address [email]hthomas@hearstdc.com

Discuss Helen Thomas' Opinion (Go on-site to gain access to this link).

Copyright 2007 by Hearst Newspapers. All rights reserved.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/13294684/detail.html?taf=bos

http://www.democracyinaction.org
~ ~ ~
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Saundra Hummer

June 13th, 2007, 07:16 PM

. . .
Cheney’s Iran-Arms-To-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed
By
IPS News.

A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials.

The allegation that Iran has reversed a decade-long policy and is now supporting the Taliban, conveyed in a series of press articles quoting “senior officials” in recent weeks, is related to a broader effort by officials aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney to portray Iran as supporting Sunni insurgents, including al Qaeda, to defeat the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

An article in the Guardian published May 22 quoted an anonymous U.S. official as predicting an “Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive in Iraq, linking al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran’s Shia militia allies” and as referring to the alleged “Iran-al Qaeda linkup” as “very sinister”.

That article and subsequent reports on CNN May 30, in the Washington Post Jun. 3 and on ABC news Jun. 6 all included an assertion by an unnamed U.S. official or a “senior coalition official” that Iran is following a deliberate policy of supplying the Taliban’s campaign against U.S., British and other NATO forces.

In the most dramatic version of the story, ABC reported “NATO officials” as saying they had “caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces.”

Far from showing that Iran had been “caught red-handed”, however, the report quoted from an analysis which cited only the interception in Afghanistan of a total of four vehicles coming from Iran with arms and munitions of Iranian origin. The report failed to refer to any evidence of Iranian government involvement.

Both Gates and McNeill denied flatly last week that there is any evidence linking Iranian authorities to those arms. Gates told a press conference on Jun. 4, “We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it’s smuggling, or exactly what is behind it.” Gates said that “some” of the arms in question might be going to Afghan drug smugglers.

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. McNeill, implied that the arms trafficking from Iran is being carried out by private interests. “[W]hen you say weapons being provided by Iran, that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting these weapons here,” he told Jim Loney of Reuters June 5. “That’s not my view at all.”

Gates and McNeill are obviously aware of the link between arms entering Afghanistan from Iran and the flow of heroin from Afghanistan into Iran. It is well known that Afghan drug lords who command huge amounts of money have been able to penetrate the long and porous border with ease. They have undoubtedly been involved in buying arms in Iran with their drug proceeds for both themselves and the Taliban, which protects their drug routes. Smuggling is relatively easy because of the money available for bribery of border guards.

Another factor helping to explain the influx of arms from Iran, as noted by former Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Momand in an interview on Pakistan’s GEO television Apr. 19, is that the Taliban now controls areas on the Iranian border for the first time. Momand said the Taliban, which is awash in money from the heroin exports to Iran, buys small quantities of weapons in Iran and smuggles them back into Afghanistan.

But the Iranian government itself is not involved in the trade in arms, Momand insisted.

The combination of anonymous statements by administration officials and the dismissal of the charge by the commander in the field contrasts sharply with the Bush administration’s claims that Iran was sending armour-piercing IEDs to Shiite militias in Iraq last January and February. Those accusations, which were never backed up with specific evidence, were made publicly by Bush himself, the State Department and the U.S. military command in Baghdad.

The fact that the officials making the accusation about Iran and Afghanistan are unwilling to go on the record and the refusal of Gates and McNeill to go along with it suggests an effort by Cheney and his allies in the administration to do an “end run” around the official policy by conjuring up a region-wide Iranian offensive against U.S. forces.

Steve Clemons reported on his blog The Washington Note May 24 that an aide to Cheney has told gatherings at right-wing think tanks that Cheney is afraid Bush will not make the “right decision” on Iran and believes he must constrain the president’s choices.

Iran has long regarded the Taliban regime as its primary enemy and was the first external power to support Afghan forces in an effort to overthrow it. It is not merely a sectarian Sunni-Shiite divide but the Pakistani government patronage of the Taliban that has made it an irreconcilable enemy of Iran.

The line being pushed by the Cheney group in the administration that Iran is supplying the Taliban with arms appears to be based on a highly imaginative reading of some recent intelligence reporting on Iranian contacts with the Taliban. A source with access to that reporting, who insists on anonymity because he is not authorised to comment on the matter, told IPS that it indicates Iranian intelligence has had contacts with the top commanders of the Taliban’s inner Shura — the leadership council located in Kandahar.

However, the source also says these intelligence reports do not provide any specific evidence of an Iranian intention to give weapons to the Taliban.

The Cheney group is evidently arguing within the administration that the mere existence of contacts between Iranian intelligence and Taliban commanders, combined with the presence of arms or Iranian origin, is sufficient reason to conclude that Iran has changed its policy toward the Taliban.

That argument parallels a key assertion made by Cheney and other neoconservative officials in constructing the case for war against Iraq in 2002. They insisted that any contact between an official of the Iraqi government at any level and anyone in al Qaeda was sufficient proof of its support for al Qaeda terrorism.

Afghanistan specialist Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation, who visited Afghanistan most recently in early 2007, says some elements of the Iranian government may be involved in arms trafficking but that it is “very small-scale support” and that Iran does not want to strengthen the Taliban.

NATO commanders in Pakistan have long been aware that the Taliban has been dependent on Pakistan for its arms and ammunition. The Telegraph reported Sunday that a NATO report on a recent battle shows the Taliban fired an estimated 400,000 rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shells and had stocked over one million rounds of ammunition, all of which came from Quetta, Pakistan during the spring months.

– By Gareth Porter

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in June 2005.

Go on-site to gain access to this article and others on topical issues of the day . http://www.mediachannel.org/

http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpres...mbit-rebuffed/
. .

Saundra Hummer

June 13th, 2007, 07:41 PM

.
~~~~~~~In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments."

Napoleon Bonaparte
(1769-1821)
~~~
"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Russian author
1828-1910
~~~
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

Thomas Jefferson
3rd US president.
Principal author of the Declaration of Independence
1743-1826.
~~~
"Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens."

Plato
Ancient Greek philosopher
(428/427-348/347 B.C.)
~~~
As long as we hate, there will be people to hate."

George Harrison
Musician, producer and composer.
Member of The Beatles, 1943-2001
~~~
"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

Adolf Hitler
~~~
"To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business."

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Russian author
1828-1910
~~~
Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere."

Martin Luther King Jr.
1929-1968
~~~
"that until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; that until there is no longer any first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; that until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; that until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, without regard to race -- until that day, the dreams of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained."

Speech by
H.I.M. HAILE SELASSIE I
-
California 28th February 1968
~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

June 13th, 2007, 08:02 PM

.
:: :: :: :: ::
Clark slams Lieberman on Iran
Published: June 13, 2007 at 12:05
LITTLE ROCK, Ark., June 13 (UPI) -- Retired Gen. Wesley Clark has slammed Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., for threatening military force against Iran.
Clark, the former Supreme Allied NATO Commander and chair of the Board of Advisers of VoteVets.org, Monday said in a statement that Lieberman, the former Democratic candidate for vice president in the 2000 presidential election, had been irresponsible in saying Sunday that such action against Iran might be necessary.

"Sen. Lieberman's saber rattling does nothing to help dissuade Iran from aiding Shiite militias in Iraq, or trying to obtain nuclear capabilities. In fact, it's highly irresponsible and counter-productive, and I would urge him to stop," Clark said.

"This kind of rhetoric is irresponsible and only plays into the hands of (Iranian) President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad and those who seek an excuse for military action," the retired four-star general said.

"What we need now is full-fledged engagement with Iran," he said. "All options are on the table, but we should be striving to bridge the gulf of almost 30 years of hostility before, and only when all else fails should there be any consideration of other options."

"Only someone who never wore the uniform or thought seriously about national security would make threats at this point," Clark said. "What our soldiers need is responsible strategy, not a further escalation of tensions in the region. Sen. Lieberman has to act much more responsibly and tone down his threat machine."

In his comments, Lieberman said, "If (the Iranians) don't play by the rules, we've got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they're doing."

© Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
United Press International, UPI, the UPI logo, and other trademarks and service marks, are registered or unregistered trademarks of United Press International, Inc. in the United States and in other countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
Which rules are we playing by?

Like a little spoiled child, rules are ignored by this administration, or, they're changed and/or made up as they and all of their lap dogs go along. This total disregard for what this country was founded on is unbelievable.

Where is Joe Lieberman on this issue alone? Hey, it's affecting us, not Israel, so he ignores our own governments lawbreaking here, and abroad; he ignores the Cheney - Bush administrations own not playing by the rules? I think so. Geneva Conventions be damned. The truth be damned. It is so convoluted as to be ludicrous.

Get real Joe, we are all in danger here from this administrations and your total disregard of our laws. We can understand you're wanting to protect Israel, we just think you are, once again, misguided in your approach. SRH :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

June 13th, 2007, 08:10 PM

.
$$$$$$$$$
A true land of opportunity
Where there's death and destruction, there's profit - as security companies in Iraq know only too well
By
Terry Jones

06/12/07 "The Guardian" -- -- -- Gordon Brown was in Iraq yesterday on a "fact-finding mission". It needn't all have looked gloomy for the next prime minister, however - not if he did some fact-finding about Blackwater, a North Carolina company that is now one of the most profitable military contractors operating in Iraq, and proves just what a land of opportunity Iraq really is. Blackwater's president, Gary Jackson, acclaimed a "staggering" 600% growth in 2004: "This is a billion-dollar industry," he said, "and Blackwater has only scratched the surface of it." So if Gordon, or any of us, wants to get on this Iraqi gravy train, we could do worse than see how Blackwater goes about it.

First you need your father to leave you a billion dollars or so, as happened to Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder. Then use the money to set up a company that specialises in shooting people. Of course, you say the company's vision is "to support security, peace, freedom and democracy everywhere". But your brochure is full of photos of men bursting into rooms with machine guns and shooting from helicopters - and it offers five sniping courses: basic military, advanced military, situation sniper, high angle (shooting people from rooftops) and, of course, helicopter.

Making money out of this sort of violence, no matter how you dress it up in idealistic language, can look a little morally dodgy, so it would be best if - like Erik - you were a born-again Christian and you donate pots of money to the Republicans. Since 1989, the Nation reports, Erik and his wife have given $275,550 to Republican campaigns, and $0 to the Democrats. A White House internship - something Erik did in the early 90s - could also provide enough friends in the right places. The odd no-bid contract, such as the one Blackwater got to guard Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority, wouldn't go astray.

You should be comfortable with your friends making money. For example, you pay your security guards $600 a day, but bill the Kuwaiti Regency Hotel company for $815. Regency, according to the Raleigh News & Observer, bills defence services company ESS for another chunk of money. ESS sends the bill to Kellogg, Brown & Root, who add a percentage for their services and present the inflated bill to the Pentagon. Senator Henry Waxman says he's been trying in vain to find out what that bill is for two years.

We can again learn from Blackwater in how to keep expenses down. On March 12 2004, Blackwater signed a contract with Regency and ESS specifying that each security mission should have a minimum of "two armoured vehicles to support ESS movements". Blackwater had the word "armoured" deleted from the contract and saved $1.5m.

This had was an unforeseen payoff when four Blackwater operatives were sent into Falluja and both vehicles were overwhelmed by a mob. The men were killed and their mutilated bodies hung on a bridge. Now rather than damage Blackwater's reputation, this incident was to prove the company's making as the US military got behind it. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt vowed: "We will be back ... We will hunt down the criminals ... It will be precise, and it will be overwhelming." The result was that the US more or less destroyed the town.

The families of the four men decided to sue Blackwater to find out why they died - but the company can seek profit even in this situation: last Friday it was announced that Blackwater is suing the dead men's estates for $10m, according to the families' lawyers, "to silence the families and keep them out of court".

So there it is - more ways to make money out of Iraq than you or I would have dreamt of. And companies like Blackwater are showing us the way.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python - www.terry-jones.net
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17867.htm $$$ $$$
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Saundra Hummer

June 13th, 2007, 08:23 PM

.
. <<<<<0>>>>>
High on Hate?
By
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich & Nader Bagherzadeh
06/13/07 "ICH" -- --- - While the poppy fields in Afghanistan are thriving in supplying the demands of millions, this White House and their neo-cons accomplices are cultivating their own fix - hate. But in order for them to get their high, their hate must be transferred into people's fear – A fear they plan to turn into another bloodbath. Pushing forward with their latest warmongering idea that Iran is planning to extend the reach of its Shahab 3 missiles from 1200 to more than 2500 kilometers in order to reach Rome, the media beats the war drums, hoping the fearful sound will drown out reason and logic.

This White House and its foreign policy architects, Dick Cheney and National Security Council (NSC) boss Stephen Hadley accuse Iran of planning to extend its strike ability to one of the major countries that has billions of dollars of commerce with it, Italy. Not only are the Italians involved in oil exploration in defiance of US sanctions, but they also sell Iran high tech equipment and technology[i]. What makes these groundless accusations even more preposterous is that the head of the Roman Catholic Church seated in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI supports Iran's right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.[ii]

Lies and deception come easily to an administration which 'cooked up' intelligence in order to invade a sovereign country and cause the death of more than 655,000 people in order to further its agenda. The US, finding itself unable to pressure Iran into abandoning its enrichment program, which is nothing short of a pretext for a regime change, has opted for military strike as sanctions are not delivering the desired outcome, and Iran is making progress towards a full enrichment capability.

Had John Bolton been successful in his quest to push Iran out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), perhaps the American people would hear less lies. John Bolton had purposefully attempted to have Iran leave NPT by making unreasonable demands. In an address to AIPAC, he was dismayed at not having succeeded in compelling Iran to leave the international treaty thus 'justifying' a reaction from the United States, presumably, militarily.[iii]

Left without a pretext for a military assault on Iran, the Bush administration finds itself in a position where it needs to prepare the world opinion for mass genocide with a compelling reason. With its control over the media, it is accomplishing this by denouncing Iran as the killer of American troops while causing civil unrest in Iraq. Tragically, the majority of the public has been paralyzed by fear and believes that the letting of blood is the only cure that will rid them of their unfounded panic. Iran's woes are not limited to the ambitions of the neo-cons.

Reza Pahlavi who thinks that he can in turn dupe Iranians, and peoples of other nations, has sent out a statement to the world from a conference in Prague asking for "solidarity for the people of Iran,". At this conference he was in good company where he conferred with U.S. hawks, including an all-star contingent from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) consisting of Richard Perle, Michael Rubin, Michael Novak, Joshua Muravchik, and Reuel Marc Gerecht; Herb London, John O'Sullivan, and Bruce Jackson a former director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Names of the Iraq war planners must be noted among the aforementioned.[iv] No doubt Reza Pahlavi's friends had innovative ideas for giving him the ruins of Iran, but none were as original as Senator Lieberman who 4 days after the Prague conference announced that the U.S. should use military force against Iran based on false allegations. The presence of the group in the conference is a telling sign, for many were the same disingenuous politicians that were accusing Iran of the Khobar Tower bombing in 1993; an accusation rejected last week by William Perry, Clinton's Defense Secretary at the time, with the assertion that the bombings had been the work of al-Qaeda all along.

It seems that the tragedy of Iran goes beyond the treason of the MEK, all the 'chelabis', and the dangerous ambitions of Reza Pahlavi; she is equally abandoned by Iranian-Americans. While the Iranians take pride in their history, they shun away from defending her from the imminent danger she is in, or contributing to the future in a meaningful way. The movie '300' caused an uproar among the Iranians – rightly so. The affront caused by this movie, a movie that insulted the history of Iran of 2000 years ago, united Iranian-Americans and caused them to take action. Yet they are insensitive to the threat of war, death of millions of fellow Iranians, and destruction of their country.

If Iran is attacked under false pretense, all those who defend her history have no reason to celebrate their heritage. Making a movie is easy, maintaining a legacy - that takes character, national character.

Notes[i] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05722579.htm

[ii] http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=246637
http://content.msn.co.in/News/International/InternationalIANS_050507_507.htm

[iii] http://www.stopaipac.org/bolton_aipactranscript.pdf
http://www.stopaipac.org:80/boltontape.htm

[iv] http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=27
Just click on the following link to gain access to ICH:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17877.htm
<<<0>>> .

Saundra Hummer

June 13th, 2007, 08:41 PM

June 12, 2007
Breaking: Maxine Waters
(D-CA)
8th to cosign Cheney impeachment bill
Filed under: Impeachment Progress News, California — Mikael @ 9:42 pm
opednews

Eight Congress Members for Impeachment
by David Swanson

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Chair of the Out of Iraq Caucus, has joined Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey, the two Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Chief Deputy Whip and a member of the Steering and Policy Committee, and Congress Members Yvette Clarke, William Lacy Clay, Albert Wynn, and Dennis Kucinich in cosponsoring Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney (H. Res. 333).

For details, see: http://impeachcheney.org
The list of state Democratic Parties that have passed resolutions urging the impeachment of Bush and Cheney has recently grown to 15. Meanwhile, 11 state legislatures have introduced such resolutions, which have now been passed by at least 77 cities and towns and a growing list of labor unions and other organizations. These resolutions are all listed at http://impeachpac.org/resolutions-list

(Original Article)

From the
DAILY IMPEACHMENT NEWS
Impeach for Peace.org
http://impeachforpeace.org/impeach_bush_blog/?p=2135
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Saundra Hummer

June 14th, 2007, 04:40 PM

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Official: Cheney Urged Wiretaps
Stand-In for Ashcroft Alleges Interference
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 7, 2007; A03

Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.
The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey.

Comey's disclosures, made in response to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicate that Cheney and his aides were more closely involved than previously known in a fierce internal battle over the legality of the warrantless surveillance program. The program allowed the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas.

Comey said that Cheney's office later blocked the promotion of a senior Justice Department lawyer, Patrick Philbin, because of his role in raising concerns about the surveillance.

The disclosures also provide further details about the role played by then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. He visited Ashcroft in his hospital room and wrote an internal memorandum on the surveillance program shortly afterward, according to Comey's responses. Gonzales is now the attorney general. He faces possible congressional votes of no-confidence because of his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

"How are you, General?" Gonzales asked Ashcroft at the hospital, according to Comey.

"Not well," replied Ashcroft, who had just undergone gallbladder surgery and was battling pancreatitis.

The new details follow Comey's gripping testimony last month about the visit by Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then President Bush's chief of staff, to Ashcroft's hospital bed on the night of March 10, 2004. The two Bush aides tried to persuade Ashcroft to renew the authorization of the NSA surveillance program, after Comey and other Justice Department officials had said they would not certify the legality of the effort, according to the testimony and other officials.

Ashcroft refused, noting that Comey had been designated as acting attorney general during his illness.

The episode prompted sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, who questioned whether Gonzales and Card were attempting to take advantage of a sick man to get around legal objections from government lawyers. It is unclear who directed the two Bush aides to make the visit.

Democrats said yesterday that the new details from Comey raise further questions about the role of Cheney and other White House officials in the episode.

"Mr. Comey has confirmed what we suspected for a while -- that White House hands guided Justice Department business," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). "The vice president's fingerprints are all over the effort to strong-arm Justice on the NSA program, and the obvious next question is: Exactly what role did the president play?"

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the surveillance program "was always subject to rigorous oversight and review. . . . We have acknowledged that there have been disagreements about other intelligence activities, as one would expect."

Democrats have criticized Gonzales for testifying last year that there were no "serious disagreements" about the program.

According to Comey, the hospital visit was preceded by a March 9, 2004, meeting at the White House on the Justice Department objections. It was attended by Cheney; Gonzales; Card; Cheney's counsel then, David S. Addington; and others, Comey said.

Comey also named eight Justice Department officials who were prepared to quit if the White House had not backed down, including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, current U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg of Alexandria and Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel and led an internal legal review of the surveillance program.

Comey said that the review "focused on current operations during late 2003 and early 2004, and the legal basis for the program." He declined to answer detailed questions about the program or the review, citing restrictions on classified information.

Bush confirmed the existence of the surveillance effort after news reports in December 2005, saying it was authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and was vital to protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. The program has since been put under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine eavesdropping in the United States.

Staff writer Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.
There are NUMEROUS links within this article. Go on-site to gain access to them and to read related articles.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/06/AR2007060602297.html
^^^ .
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Saundra Hummer

June 14th, 2007, 06:33 PM

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Judge won't delay Libby prison term
By
MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writer
Thu Jun 14, 4:22 PM ET
A federal judge said Thursday he will not delay a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the CIA leak case, a ruling that could send the former White House aide to prison within weeks.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton's decision will send Libby's attorneys rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force President Bush to consider calls from Libby's supporters to pardon the former aide.

No date was set for Libby to report to prison but it's expected to be within six to eight weeks. That will be left up to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which will also select a facility.

"Unless the Court of Appeals overturns my ruling, he will have to report," Walton said.

Libby's wife, Harriet Grant, wiped tears away from her eyes but Libby was stoic as Walton ruled.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted in March of lying to investigators and obstructing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's inquiry into the 2003 leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby's supporters have called for President Bush to wipe away Libby's convictions. Bush publicly has sidestepped pardon questions, saying he wants to let the legal case play out. A delay would give Bush more time to consider the requests.

"Scooter Libby still has the right to appeal, and therefore the president will continue not to intervene in the judicial process," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "The president feels terribly for Scooter, his wife and their young children, and all that they're going through."

Libby thanked federal marshals but did not take questions from reporters as he left the courthouse with his wife and lawyers. Fitzgerald also left without commenting.

Walton never appeared to waver from his opinion that a delay was unwarranted. After 12 prominent law professors filed documents supporting Libby's request, the judge waved it off as "not something I would expect from a first-year in law school."

He also said he received several "angry, harassing, mean-spirited" letters and phone calls following his sentencing but said they wouldn't factor into his decision.

Libby is the highest ranking government official ordered to prison since the Iran Contra affair. His monthlong trial offered a rare glimpse into the White House in the early days of the Iraq war.

Trial testimony showed that Cheney was eager to beat back criticism of prewar intelligence. One of the administration's most outspoken critics in mid-2003 was former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Amid a flury of news coverage of that criticism, Bush administration officials leaked to reporters that fact that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked as an undercover analyst for CIA. That disclosure in a syndicated newspaper column touched off a leak investigation that brought senior White House officials, including Bush and Cheney, in for questioning.

Libby argued he had a good chance of persuading an appeals court that, when Attorney General John Ashcroft and other senior Justice Department officials recused themselves from the leak investigation, they gave Fitzgerald unconstitutional and unchecked authority.

Walton was skeptical, saying the alternative was to put someone with White House ties in charge of an investigation into the highest levels of the Bush administration.

"If that's going to be how we have to operate, our system is going to be in serious trouble with the average Joe on the street who thinks the system is unfair already," Walton said.

Libby's newly formed appellate team — Lawrence S. Robbins and Mark Stancil — will seek an emergency order delaying the sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is not sitting right now, however, and attorneys worried about how fast the request would be heard.

The appeals court has several conservative jurists, but that doesn't necessarily mean Libby will get a pass. Walton is a Republican judge whom Bush put on the bench in his first term.

Associated Press Writer Jennifer Kerr contributed to this story. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070614/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_trial;_ylt=Ak5UoqrgliGGOlTvNLXPCgus0NUE
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Saundra Hummer

June 15th, 2007, 11:58 AM

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$::$::$::$::$
'Brilliant' Identity Theft Scheme Targets Child Porn BuyersJune 15, 2007 10:48 AM

Joseph Rhee Reports:

A ring of European cyber criminals have devised an ingenious scheme that steals the credit card information of internet buyers of child pornography, law enforcement sources say. Officials call it a "brilliant" system because victims rarely complain for fear of being identified as a child porn purchaser.

Authorities say an on-going investigation centers around an East European crime ring that operates numerous child pornography websites. When a person attempts to purchase access to the sites, they are directed to a bogus payment processor page and instructed to enter their credit card information, including CVC code and expiration date. Investigators say the criminal ring uses the credit card information to purchase new child pornography domain names and ISP hosting space. When victims discover the fraud, instead of reporting it to law enforcement, they typically just pay the charge and report the card lost or stolen, officials say.

Targeting international child pornography and cyber crime rings has become a growing priority for U.S. law enforcement. "Part of our work is to secure our nation's boundaries and we see making the internet safe as an important component of that," said Pat Reilly, spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a recent high-profile case, the leaders of a Belarus-based child pornography and money-laundering enterprise were brought to justice after being lured by undercover law enforcement agents to western European countries with extradition treaties with the U.S. The ICE-led investigation resulted in the arrest of more than 1,200 individuals worldwide.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/brilliant_ident.html
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Saundra Hummer

June 15th, 2007, 12:26 PM

.X X X X X

Media is a Plural --
June 15, 2007
By
Rory O'Connor
Mirror, Mirror
In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the beautiful but wicked Queen would ask her mirror each day, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?" And the talking mirror would respond, "Oh My Queen, it seems to me, there is none fairer in the land than thee!"

The fairy tale sprang to mind recently at the first annual Mirror Awards for "the best in media industry reporting," sponsored by Syracuse University's S.I Newhouse School of Public Communications. It's no secret (at least in media circles) that the media loves nothing as much as awards ceremonies. This is especially true when the awards are being presented to the media? And given this century's explosion of new forms of media content and technology, with its concomitant boom in reporting about that media, it's not surprising that awards ceremonies for media about the media would soon follow. The Mirror Awards, which honor reporters, editors and teams of writers "who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public's benefit," are but the latest entrant in the media awards sweepstakes.

As someone who regularly reports, comments on and criticizes "the media industry" (this meta-media post - a media commentary about media about media ? was inevitable) I welcomed news of the competition, which drew 140 entries in seven categories. (Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award.) The winners were feted at a Manhattan luncheon attended by "the media's top writers, readers and leaders" and hosted by Meredith Vieira who, having worked variously for ABC, NBC and CBS, is kinda meta-media herself! Vieira began by citing "the vital journalistic activity of reporting on the media," which she opined was "something completely new," and noted "journalists covering the media are watching the watchdogs and holding a mirror up to the media."

So who's the fairest of them all? To my mind, not the Big Media boys like David Carr of The New York Times, whose his weekly column won for 'Best Commentary,' or Philip Weiss and Clive Thompson of New York magazine, who won for 'Best Profile' and 'Best Single Article,' respectively ? as worthy as their entries may have been.

Instead, my favorite was culled from Nieman Reports, the small (and, to some of "the media's top writers, readers and leaders" in attendance, obscure) publication of The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. The category was 'Best Coverage of Breaking Industry News,' and the author is Dean Miller, executive editor of the definitely small and obscure Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Miller's article in the Summer 2006 Issue of Nieman Reports, entitled "A Local Newspaper Endures a Stormy Backlash," tells an amazing story of how his paper exposed Boy Scout pedophiles and those who failed to kick them out of the scouting program," and how "three of our community's big forces?the community's majority religion, the richest guys in town, and the conservative machine that controls Idaho," tried to punish the paper for doing so. Why? Because Miller and his team chose "to tell the story of powerless people who'd been hurt by powerful people who counted on the public never learning what they'd done."

Here's what happened: after receiving a tip that a pedophile caught at a local scout camp in 1997 had not two victims (as the paper reported at the time) but actually dozens, Post Register reporters went to the courthouse to look for a civil suit filed by victims, only to be told that there was no such case. They later learned that the national Boy Scouts of America and its local Council had hired two of Idaho's best-connected law firms to seal the files -thus covering up the entire affair.

Or so they thought? But the Post Register went to court and "dragged the case file into the light of day." What reporters found astonished them; scout leaders had been warned about the pedophile years earlier, but hired him (again!) anyway. Lawyers for the Boy Scouts knew about more victims, but never told those boys' parents. Top local and national leaders of the Mormon Church, which sponsors almost all area scout troops, had also been warned.

The Post Register ran a six-day series about the affair. The first story featured a 14-year-old camper - "the son of a Mormon seminary teacher and a cinch to become an Eagle Scout" ? who forced adult leaders to call the police about the pedophile.

Then the backlash began. Mormon church members were among the first to complain, characterizing the paper's coverage as an attack on their faith. "The drums banged, and we were flooded with calls and e-mails and letters to the editor from readers who told us that holding the Grand Teton Council accountable was Mormon-bashing," Miller recounted.

The backlash came as well from advertisers, and the economic pressure built everyday the paper ran the series. "It's one thing to lose an account when you're an employee," Miller wrote. "It's quite another when you're also a stockholder; 140 employees hold close to 49 percent of the company's stock. For many families, this is their retirement." Nevertheless, he recalled, "Most of what I heard inside our building were words of support." Publisher Roger Plothow was also staunchly unapologetic throughout, "standing up with a stoic and clear-eyed defense? for the values of journalism."

The attacks weren't just financial, but personal as well ? including the outing of a gay staff reporter, Peter Zuckerman, by a local multimillionaire who bought full-page ads devoting several paragraphs to establishing that Zuckerman is gay. "Strangers started ringing Peter's doorbell at midnight," Miller wrote. "His partner of five years was fired from his job. Despite the harassment, Peter kept coming to work and chasing down leads on other pedophiles? I spoke at his church one Sunday and meant it when I said that I hope my son grows into as much of a man as Peter had."

By then the paper had secured evidence of four other pedophiles in the local scout council, "about as many documented cases as the 500,000-member Catholic diocese of Boston when that scandal erupted in The Boston Globe," as Miller noted.

Laboring in obscurity, and without Big Media resources, community journalists "often end up dreaming small," Miller wrote. "But my 34 colleagues at the Post Register ? in particular the cadre of editors who have worked together for a decade and lead a largely entry-level staff ? refused to pull back in the face of much opposition."

In his Nieman report, Miller asks, "Was what any of us did courageous?" I'll say it was! Moreover, the story has a happy ending - one all too uncommon in these days of massive layoffs, dwindling circulation, disruptive technologies and fears that the entire newspaper industry might be rapidly crumbling. I'll let Miller tell the tale: "One of the sweeter moments of our year occurred when we received figures from our circulation audit. While the sales numbers of other U.S. newspapers were in free fall, we were among the nation's faster growing daily papers."

So what's the moral of this fairy tale? To Dean Miller and the other ordinary heroes at the Post Register, it's clear: "For us, these numbers testified to the value of fortitude. Publishing uncomfortable truths needn't be an act of hot-blooded courage; it should be a cool-headed exercise in focus: Find the civic heart of a story, steer a steady course to it, and serve the public's legitimate interests in openness and justice. Do that and, even when the story rocks your boat, trust that the waves won't capsize it."

(For his work on this series, Peter Zuckerman also won the Livingston Award in the category of local reporting, a prize recognizing the nation's best journalists under the age of 35- Editor)

Comment on this post... (Go on-site to gain access to this article, it's photo, and it's links. There is much more on topical issues and activism, just click on the following URL:
http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/06/15/mirror-mirror/#comments
© 2007 MediaChannel.org X X X .
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the magnificent goldberg

June 15th, 2007, 12:42 PM

Saundra Hummer

June 15th, 2007, 01:08 PM

Glad you enjoyed it MG.

Saundra Hummer

June 15th, 2007, 01:19 PM

.lllllllllllll

Giuliani Contradicts Himself in Rush to Blame Dems for Terrorism
Rudy Giuliani's efforts to fit in with the Republican mainstream by, in part, Democrat-bashing is resulting in some ugly contortions. Speaking recently on FOX News, Giuliani slammed Bill Clinton's presidency for making America less safe, saying the administration's attitude towards terrorism was "don't react, let things go."

Not only is that wrong (see Richard Clarke's work) and misdirected, it directly contradicts what Giuliani said just nine months ago, when commenting on ABC's 9/11 docudrama:

"The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it."
One can only hope that if Rudy wins the Republican nomination, the mainstream media will focus on contradictions such as this and what even conservatives say is Rudy's facile understanding of foreign affairs.

Posted by Jonathan Stein on 06/14/07 at 6:05 AM

Go on-site to gain access to the links within this article. Just click on the following URL:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/06/4647_giuliani_contra.html?src=email&link=hed_20070615_bl2_giulianicontradicshimself
lll .

Saundra Hummer

June 15th, 2007, 04:44 PM

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$ $ $ $ $ $ $
New Orleans turns to international aid
By
BECKY BOHRER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted on Fri, Jun. 15, 2007
NEW ORLEANS -- The cash-strapped city of New Orleans is turning to foreign countries for help to rebuild as federal hurricane-recovery dollars remain slow to flow.

Kenya Smith, director of intergovernmental relations for Mayor Ray Nagin, said city leaders are talking with more than five countries. He wouldn't identify the countries, saying discussions were in the early stages. But he said the city is "very serious" about pursuing foreign help.

"Of course, we would love to have all the resources we need from federal and state partners, but we're comfortable now in having to be creative," Smith said. He did not know if the city would have to overcome any obstacles if it got firm pledges for aid, but "we want to make sure we're leaving no options unexplored."

For months Nagin has complained bureaucracy is choking the flow of much-needed federal aid dollars to New Orleans - slowing the city's recovery. As of June 8, the city said it had received just over half of the $320 million FEMA has obligated for rebuilding city infrastructure and emergency response-related costs. The city has estimated its damage at far more than that - at least $1 billion. And that doesn't include other improvements - such as raised neighborhoods - meant to help build the stronger city promoted by Nagin and his recovery director.

Discussions with foreign representatives have been occurring off and on since the storm, but Smith said the city became re-engaged after a news report in April that millions of dollars in aid offered by foreign countries after Hurricane Katrina went unaccepted.

It wasn't clear how much of the $854 million in aid originally offered remained on the table. In Katrina's wake, Cuban President Fidel Castro's proposal to send more than 1,000 medical personnel to New Orleans was among the offers of aid.

The federal government accepted about $126 million from foreign sources and encouraged some countries to give instead to private groups such as the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice told a congressional committee last month.

Nagin said city officials are now trying to skirt the Bush administration and contact foreign governments directly "to see if we can get some of those dollars coming here."

Separately, Adam Sharp, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said Landrieu is working with the government of Saudi Arabi on ways it can help restore New Orleans' City Park.

In addition, Landrieu joined Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in asking Rice to respond to whether the United States is better positioned now to accept foreign aid should the need arise again.

© 2007 Sun Herald. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.sunherald.com
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Saundra Hummer

June 15th, 2007, 05:18 PM

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^^^^^^^^^
On the escalator to war with Iran
By Patrick J. Buchanan
06/15/07 "WND" -- -- - These are the "birth pangs" of a "new Middle East," said Condi Rice last summer, as Israel pounded Lebanon. Unfortunately, the new Middle East may make us all pray for the return of the old.

Hamas is today engaged in savage street fighting with Fatah for control of Gaza. If Hamas prevails, it could convert this Palestinian enclave into a terrorist base camp between Israel and Egypt.

In northern Lebanon, Islamic jihadists are battling the army for control of a Palestinian refugee camp. Scores are dead.

On Wednesday, a seventh parliamentarian was assassinated with his son in a Beirut car bomb attack.

In Samarra, the Golden Mosque was attacked again on Wednesday, collapsing the two minarets that survived last year's bombing. Gen. David Petraeus is grim about the consequences of what he says was an al-Qaida attack to escalate the Sunni-Shia war

With Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan convulsed by ever-widening civil wars, a new danger is that the United States, tied down in two of those wars, may be about to lash out and launch a third – on Iran.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Joe Lieberman blurted on "Face the Nation," adding, "To me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training those people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

"If there's any hope of ... stopping their nuclear weapons development," Lieberman said, "we can't just talk to them."

Joe's call for air strikes follows the GOP debate where several presidential hopefuls did not even rule out the use of tactical atomic weapons to deal with Iran's uranium enrichment program.

These are politicians, however, and bashing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran has no political downside. More ominous are the grim words of serious U.S. diplomats and soldiers not usually given to bellicose rhetoric.

On Wednesday, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN that Iran is not only arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, but Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and insurgents in Iraq.

"There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it's a pattern of activity," said Burns. He added there was no chance the shipments were coming from rebel groups in Iran.

"It's certainly coming from the government of Iran. It's coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government," said Burns.

NATO officials in Afghanistan say Iranian-made AK-47s, plastic explosives, mortars and one "explosively formed penetrator" bomb that can pierce coalition armor have been intercepted.

On Wednesday, Gen. Petraeus told USA Today's Cesar Soriano Iran is "funding, arming, training and, even in some cases, directing the activities of extremists and militia elements in Iraq."

The flow of arms from Iran into Iraq, said Petraeus, has not diminished since the May 28 meeting between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart.

"The people they (the Iranians) are arming are very, very serious thugs," said Petraeus. The general claims militants armed by Iran kidnapped the British contractors on May 29 and were behind the recent mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone.

What Iran is being publicly charged with here, by responsible U.S. officials, are acts of war – arming insurgents and terrorists to kill U.S. soldiers and civilians.

"As many as 200 American soldiers" may have been killed by Iranians or Iranian-trained insurgents, Lieberman claimed. Petraeus and Nick Burns would not be making these charges publicly if the White House did not want them made publicly.

What is going on? The most logical explanation is that the White House is providing advance justification for air strikes on camps of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that are allegedly providing training for and transferring weapons to Afghan and Iraqi insurgents. And if the United States conducts those strikes, Iranians will unite around Ahmadinejad, and Tehran will order retaliatory strikes against U.S. targets in Iraq and perhaps across the Middle East.

President Bush will then have his casus belli to take out Natanz and all the other Iranian nuclear facilities, as the Israelis and the neocons have been demanding that he do. This would mean a third Middle Eastern war for America, with a nation three times as large and populous as Iraq. Perhaps it is time to begin constructing a new wing on Walter Reed.

Which raises the question: Where is the Congress? Why is it not holding public hearings and sifting the evidence to determine if Tehran is behind these attacks on Americans and if the United States has not itself been aiding insurgents inside Iran?

Or is it all up to George W. as to whether we launch a third and wider war in the Middle East, which could result in an economic and strategic disaster for the United States?

All Rights Reserved. WorldNetDaily.com Inc.

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papsrus

June 15th, 2007, 08:03 PM

Man there's a lot to read here Saundra! ... Can't keep up with you :eek:

Agree with both you and MG on the "Media is a Plural" article. Hats off to those journalists. As I'm sure we're all aware, reporters working at smaller newspapers get paid hardly anything at all. They're usually young, aggressive and looking to move up the food chain. They, along with the publisher, should have been recognized for their courage and tenacity in the face of what surely was intense pressure.

This is what journalism should be, as opposed to the Beltway BS regurgitated by the national press.

I read somewhere else tonight that it is standard practice for Washington journalists to take the press releases of political campaigns -- press releases that are clearly no more than glorified attack ads -- and use them as anonymously sourced material for "stories." ... This is not journalism in the slightest. (To it's credit, the New York Times did not in this case accept the press release as an anonymous source. I think that's a standard guideline over there.)

Saundra Hummer

June 16th, 2007, 01:13 PM

.*Party head lambastes Lieberman on Iran
PETER URBAN purban@ctpost.com
Connecticut Post Online
Article Last Updated:
WASHINGTON — Connecticut for Lieberman Party Chairman John Orman called Tuesday for Sen. Joe Lieberman to resign, saying his advocacy of a military strike against Iran could explode into a global conflict.
"He has crossed the line," said Orman, a professor of politics at Fairfield University. "His unilateral warmongering could lead to a new World War III."
During an appearance on "Face the Nation" on CBS Sunday, Lieberman said the United States should consider a military strike against Iran because of Tehran's involvement in Iraq.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman said. "And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

Lieberman reiterated his call for a military strike on Monday during an appearance on Fox News in which he claimed that Tehran is training and arming Iraqi insurgents to kill American and Iraqi soldiers. He also suggested that failing to launch a military strike now would embolden Tehran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

"If we let them get away with this they will continue to move throughout the region and if we think we are going to have a prayer of a chance to stop them from developing nuclear weapons, it's not going to happen unless they take us seriously," Lieberman said.

Orman, a former Democrat, switched party affiliation and took over the Connecticut for Lieberman Party earlier this year. Lieberman created the party last August to run for re-election as an independent after losing the state's Democratic primary to Ned Lamont of Greenwich. However, Lieberman never joined the new party and remains a registered Democrat.

Orman issued a news release Tuesday asking Lieberman to immediately resign and urging Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell to appoint Susan Henshaw, secretary of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, as his replacement.

Lieberman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The senator's saber rattling has also drawn sharp criticism from other Democrats who oppose the Iraq war.

Lamont said Monday on Air America Radio that Lieberman was "to the right of the mainstream of the Republican Party" when it comes to Iran.

"If anything has come out that's slightly positive of this Bush administration in the last few months it's that they have now had some beginnings of conversations with the Iranians. And this is just what Joe Lieberman is trying to squash. It's really unfortunate," Lamont said.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark urged Lieberman Monday to stop advocating a military strike against Iran, saying it is "highly irresponsible and counterproductive."

"Sen. Lieberman's saber rattling does nothing to help dissuade Iran from aiding Shia militias in Iraq, or trying to obtain nuclear capabilities," said Clark, who in 2004 was one of Lieberman's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. "This kind of rhetoric is irresponsible and only plays into the hands of President Ahmadinejad, and those who seek an excuse for military action."

During an appearance Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition," Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson said tough negotiations are needed to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"Sanctions would work on Iran," he said. "They are susceptible to disinvestment policy. They are susceptible to cuts, economic sanctions in commodities."

Lieberman responded Monday on Fox News to Richardson and Clark. "I believe in talk too, but the Europeans talked to the Iranians for more than two years to stop [their] nuclear weapons development program and it had zero effect," Lieberman said.

Lieberman said Clark's view "doesn't relate to the realities on the ground in the Middle East" where Arab leaders worry "about the belligerence of Iran."

"They sent me a very clear message that unless the Iranians know that America means business, they are just going to keep moving," Lieberman said.
Go on-site to access this article and others related to it by clicking on the following URLs:
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http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_6126214 I won't be holding my breath. SRH * * * .

Saundra Hummer

June 17th, 2007, 07:12 AM

. . . . . . . .
F.D.A. Tracked Tainted Drugs,
but Trail Went Cold in China
By
WALT BOGDANICH
After a drug ingredient from China killed dozens of Haitian children a decade ago, a senior American health official sent a cable to her investigators: find out who made the poisonous ingredient and why a state-owned company in China exported it as safe, pharmaceutical-grade glycerin.

The Chinese were of little help. Requests to find the manufacturer were ignored. Business records were withheld or destroyed.

The Americans had reason for alarm. “The U.S. imports a lot of Chinese glycerin and it is used in ingested products such as toothpaste,” Mary K. Pendergast, then deputy commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, wrote on Oct. 27, 1997. Learning how diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison used in some antifreeze, ended up in Haitian fever medicine might “prevent this tragedy from happening again,” she wrote.

The F.D.A.’s mission ultimately failed. By the time an F.D.A. agent visited the suspected manufacturer, the plant was shut down and Chinese companies said they bore no responsibility for the mass poisoning.

Ten years later it happened again, this time in Panama. Chinese-made diethylene glycol, masquerading as its more expensive chemical cousin glycerin, was mixed into medicine, killing at least 100 people there last year. And recently, Chinese toothpaste containing diethylene glycol was found in the United States and seven other countries, prompting tens of thousands of tubes to be recalled.

The F.D.A.’s efforts to investigate the Haiti poisonings, documented in internal F.D.A. memorandums obtained by The New York Times, demonstrate not only the intransigence of Chinese officials, but also the same regulatory failings that allowed a virtually identical poisoning to occur 10 years later. The cases further illustrate what happens when nations fail to police the global pipeline of pharmaceutical ingredients.

In Haiti and Panama, the poison was traced to Chinese chemical companies not certified to make pharmaceutical ingredients. State-owned exporters then shipped the toxic syrup to European traders, who resold it without identifying the previous owner — an attempt to keep buyers from bypassing them on future orders.

As a result, most of the buyers did not know that the ingredient came from China, known for producing counterfeit products, nor did they show much interest in finding out.

China itself was a victim of diethylene glycol poisoning last year when at least 18 people died after ingesting poisonous medicine made there. In the wake of the deaths, and reports of pet food and other products contaminated with dangerous ingredients from China, officials there announced that they would overhaul the regulation of food, drugs and chemicals.

Beyond the three incidents linked to Chinese diethylene glycol, there have been at least five other mass poisonings involving the mislabeled chemical in the past two decades — in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Argentina and twice in India.

“This problem keeps coming back,” said Dr. Joshua G. Schier, a toxicologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And no wonder: the counterfeiters are rarely identified, much less prosecuted.

Finding a way to keep diethylene glycol out of medicine, particularly in developing countries, has confounded health officials for decades. “It is preventable and we have to figure out some way of stopping this from happening again,” said Carol Rubin, a senior C.D.C. official.

In a global economy, ingredients for drugs are often bought and sold many times in different countries, sometimes without proper paperwork, all of which increases the risk of fraud, the authorities say.

The Panama poison passed through five hands, the Haitian poison six. In both cases, the factory’s original certificate of analysis, attesting to the contents of the shipment and its provenance, did not accompany the product as it moved around the world.

“Where there is a loophole in the system, a frailty in the system, it’s the ability of an unscrupulous distributor to take industrial or technical material and pass it off as pharmaceutical grade,” said Kevin J. McGlue, a board member of the International Pharmaceutical Excipients Council.

Uncovering that deception can be difficult. “It’s impossible to get anyone to do the trace-backs,” said Dr. Michael L. Bennish, co-author of a 1995 medical journal article on a poisoning epidemic in Bangladesh.

One reason, Dr. Bennish said, is the clout of local manufacturers. “We tried to follow up as amateur Sherlocks, investigators, but you don’t go down to the wholesale market and ask questions,” he said. “You are going to get your fingers burnt.”

A Crisis in Haiti
By the end of June 1996, the F.D.A. knew it might have an international crisis on its hands. A poison had found its way into fever syrup in Haiti, and the F.D.A. wanted to know if more of the same might be heading to the United States or, for that matter, to any other country. But to learn that, the agency needed to find the manufacturer.

This was not just any poison. Virtually every young poisoning victim who showed up at the main hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, died.

Labeled pharmaceutical-grade glycerin, the toxic syrup was mixed into thousands of bottles of fever medicine. For months, parents gave it to children, then watched them die, in agony, from kidney failure. No one suspected the medicine until much later.

Officially, at least 88 children died, nearly half under the age of 2. But those 88 were only the ones doctors remembered or for whom hospital records could be found.

The F.D.A. traced the poison to a German broker, Chemical Trading and Consulting, but the company’s records were not much help. “They cannot trace glycerine lots to their manufacturer,” David Pulham, an F.D.A. investigator, wrote on June 30, 1996.

Chemical Trading had arranged for a Dutch company, Vos B.V., to sell 72 barrels of the suspect syrup to Haiti, records show. The agency dispatched an investigator, Ann deMarco, who made an unsettling discovery: sitting in Vos’s warehouse near Rotterdam were 66 more barrels labeled glycerin, all containing lethal concentrations of diethylene glycol.

“Some of this second shipment has been sold,” Ms. deMarco wrote in a memorandum on July 4, 1996. Although the missing barrels had gone to an industrial user, not a drug maker, the F.D.A.’s worries grew.

Ms. deMarco learned that another broker, Metall-Chemie, a German trader, had arranged for Vos to buy the barrels from Sinochem International Chemicals Company, a giant exporter in Beijing owned by the Chinese government.

But Metall-Chemie also did not know the manufacturer, and one of its officials predicted that the F.D.A. would have trouble finding that out. “It is difficult to get any information from Chinese traders,” Ms. deMarco wrote.

More complete shipping records would have identified who made the poison. But in this case, records provided few clues.

“The original source of the material had been obliterated on documents and product containers,” Ms. deMarco wrote to senior F.D.A. officials. “One trader referred to this practice as ‘neutralization.’ I was advised that neutralization is a common practice among traders in order to protect their business interests.”

With no paper trail, American officials turned to Sinochem for help.

Initially, they took an indirect approach. In July 1996, the American Embassy in China contacted the company and asked for a list of Chinese glycerin makers, without saying that it was investigating the Haiti poisonings. Sinochem, however, “would not reveal the names of actual manufacturers in order to prevent the prospective foreign customer from bypassing Sinochem,” an embassy official reported to Washington.

In early August, American officials asked Sinochem representatives specifically about the origin of the Haiti poison. “They want to investigate further and were unable (or unwilling) to give the name of the manufacturer at this time,” the officials reported.

Federal investigators sought help from senior Chinese drug regulators, who promised to help find the manufacturer, but said it “will take time,” records show.

When another month passed without any word from either regulators or Sinochem, the embassy tried again. Chinese regulators said they had done nothing to find the factory, according to a confidential State Department telegram from September 1996.

Sinochem did finally offer the manufacturer’s name: the Tianhong Fine Chemicals Factory in the city of Dalian in northeastern China. But Sinochem “refused” to provide an address, saying it was illegible. A telephone number would have to suffice, it said.

That, too, was unproductive. When American investigators called the plant manager, Zhang Gang, they were told he was not available. Send a fax, they were told. That did not work either. “The phone was always busy,” investigators reported.

Finally, they got Mr. Zhang on the phone, but he, too, refused to give out his factory’s address. He said that tests had found no signs of diethylene glycol, adding that “there had been no cases in China of poisoning resulting from the ingestion” of glycerin contaminated by diethylene glycol, investigators wrote.

After months of trying to trace the poison to its source, United States investigators were at a dead end.

“The Chinese officials we contacted on this matter were all reluctant to become involved,” a State Department official wrote in late September 1996, saying that drug regulators and the plant manager had insisted on communicating only on the telephone “to avoid leaving a paper trail.”

He added, “We cannot be optimistic about our chances for success in tracking down the other possible glycerine shipments.”

The following May, Mr. Pulham, who was part of the original F.D.A. investigative team in Haiti, tried to revive the investigation. “Is it possible to block-list all Chinese pharmaceutical products until we gain cooperation?” he asked.

The suggestion went nowhere. Five months later, Ms. Pendergast of the F.D.A. wrote her memorandum, imploring investigators to keep digging.

“China is turning into one of the major bulk pharmaceutical producers in the world,” she wrote. “Unless they have an open, transparent and predictable system for dealing with problems and other countries, it is going to be rough sledding in the years ahead.”

On Nov. 17, 1997, federal investigators once again questioned Sinochem officials. They denied any wrongdoing, saying that two certificates of analysis showed that the suspect shipment was safe, pharmaceutical-grade syrup. But when the F.D.A. asked to see them, Sinochem refused.

“The officials were not willing to explain why they could not provide the copies,” an American official reported at the time.

Chen Liusuo, who handled the glycerin sales, strongly disputed the F.D.A.’s account. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Chen said Sinochem cooperated. “We gave them everything they wanted,” Mr. Chen said, adding that the agency was satisfied.

“The product we sold was glycerin,” he said. “It passed through three or four companies after us. To find the problem you need to look at every link in the supply chain.”

A Chinese government official familiar with the F.D.A.’s inquiries said the Americans’ frustration might have stemmed from their misunderstanding about who regulated chemical companies, which led them to seek help from the wrong officials. “This was a truly tragic event, and we expressed our sadness and sympathy,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.

At the end of 1997, a year and a half after the F.D.A. began tracing the poisonous shipments, one of its investigators, Ted Sze, finally got inside the Tianhong chemical plant in Dalian. But glycerin was no longer made there, and Mr. Sze had no records to inspect. The plant manager, Mr. Zhang, told investigators that he had received no complaints about his products and that his company had not produced the poison.

Mr. Sze, now retired from the F.D.A., said in an interview that he had no choice but to accept the manager’s word and clear the company of wrongdoing. “By the time I went there, the plant was already shut down,” he said. “The agency can only do so much.”

The Experts’ Recommendations
The United States may not have gotten what it wanted from China, but the Haiti crisis did bring together health groups to search for ways to stop diethylene glycol poisonings. At a workshop in Washington in February 1997, health experts recommended that certificates of analysis be improved to allow users to “trace the product back through every intermediary, broker and repackager to the original manufacturer.”

The workshop participants also called for better testing of drug ingredients and asked governments to tighten oversight of drug manufacturing.

The next year, the World Health Organization offered many of the same recommendations. And a 1998 article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, warned that failure to strictly follow the guidelines could cause poisonings “even in countries where quality control procedures are usually strictly applied.”

Much of this had been said before, yet the poisonings have continued.

Just as the JAMA article was being published, three dozen children began dying of acute renal failure at two hospitals in Delhi, India. A local drug maker had unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into acetaminophen syrup, much as the Haitian pharmacist had.

The drug maker was prosecuted, but according to interviews and government records no progress had been made in identifying the supplier of the poison.

“My experience as an investigator tells me that many of these things will not be proven,” said Dr. M. Venkateswarlu, the drug controller general of India.

Finding counterfeiters often means pursuing leads across foreign borders, and no international authority has the power to do that. Dr. Howard Zucker, who helps to oversee drug issues for the W.H.O., said individual countries must conduct their own trace-back investigations.

But if the United States could not do that on behalf of Haiti, poorer, less influential nations would have little chance of tracking down counterfeiters.

After the Haiti poisoning, a more accurate, less expensive test for diethylene glycol was developed, but last year’s case in Panama shows that suppliers and governments do not always use it.

And as long as counterfeiters do not fear prosecution, the poisonings are likely to continue, experts say.

Dr. Mohammed Hanif, a prominent physician in Dhaka, Bangladesh, said the foreign suppliers of diethylene glycol were never prosecuted for the deaths of thousands of children from 1982 to 1992. “The traumatizing memories of those days still torment me,” said Dr. Hanif, who wrote a paper about the deaths from toxic medicine.

In Argentina, a court official said no one had been prosecuted for supplying the diethylene glycol that ended up in a health supplement, killing 29 people in 1992.

David Mishael, a Miami lawyer, knows the difficulty of assigning blame in these deaths. For 10 years, Mr. Mishael has unsuccessfully pursued legal claims in the United States and Europe against European traders that helped to arrange the shipment of toxic syrup to Haiti. “You can imagine the cost,” said Mr. Mishael, who is representing Haitian parents whose children died from the fever medicine.

He said Dutch authorities assessed a $250,000 fine against Vos, which tested the counterfeit syrup, found it impure and did not alert anyone in Haiti. But given how many died, he called the size of the fine “a joke.” A lawyer who represents Vos, Jeffrey B. Shapiro, declined to comment.

A few children survived after being flown to the United States by humanitarian groups. One of them, Faika Jean, was 2 months old at the time and nearly died en route. Now 11, she has learning disabilities as a result of the poisoning, said her father, Wislin Jean.

Ms. Pendergast, now a private lawyer and consultant, said China had the most to answer for. “Everybody else is just reacting to initial failures,” she said. “It needs to take steps to protect not just its own consumers but also consumers all around the world.”

After The Times reported in May that the Panama poison had been made and exported by Chinese companies as 99.5 percent pure glycerin, Chinese regulators said they would reopen their investigation of the incident. Three weeks later, the officials acknowledged some “misconduct” in how Chinese companies labeled the toxic syrup.

But most of the blame, they said, rested with a Panamanian importer who changed the paperwork to make the syrup look safer than it actually was.

The F.D.A. disagrees, saying the deception began with Chinese companies falsely labeling a poisonous product glycerin. “If the drums had been 99.5 percent glycerin, the deaths in Panama would never have occurred,” the F.D.A. said in a statement.

A Dissatisfied Customer
The F.D.A.’s Haiti investigation never did find more counterfeit glycerin from China, despite a global hunt. But its concerns, it turns out, were not unfounded.

In 1995, the same year babies began to die in Haiti, 284 barrels of a chemical labeled glycerin arrived in New York on container ships. Although the chemical was not intended for use in drugs, it was labeled 98 percent pure. An official with the company that bought the barrels, Dastech International, of Great Neck, N.Y., would later say, “It smelled like glycerin, it looked like glycerin.” But after one of its customers complained, Dastech took a closer look.

Although the chemical was labeled 98 percent pure glycerin, Dastech said in court records that the syrup actually contained sugar compounds — as well as diethylene glycol.

The exporter was Sinochem. Claiming that it was fleeced, Dastech tried to get its money back from the broker who arranged the sale, court records show.

It never did.

Reporting was contributed by Jake Hooker from Beijing, Hari Kumar from New Delhi, Anand Giridharadas from Mumbai, and Julfikar Ali Manik from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/health/17poison.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=0&emc=th&adxnnlx=1182084924-c5ie34qH8HejViweX/4EJg&pagewanted=print
. . . .

Saundra Hummer

June 18th, 2007, 12:26 AM

.:: :: :: :: :: Eric Boehlert's blog
The media's assault on reason
by
Eric Boehlert
How hard is it to figure out if a book has footnotes? When it comes to Al Gore's new, national bestseller, The Assault on Reason (Penguin Press, May 2007), it's trickier than you think for some disdainful members of the Beltway press corps.

On June 10, The Washington Post published an opinion column by Andrew Ferguson about Gore's new book. Personally, I give The Assault on Reason high marks as a spot-on, truth-telling critique of the Bush administration, as well as for the insightful concern Gore expresses about the fragile state of American democracy. Or, "what passes for a national conversation," as Gore puts it.

Not surprisingly though, Ferguson, an editor at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard, disliked the book, waving it off as "a sprawling, untidy blast of indignation."

What was embarrassing for both Ferguson and the Post was that in the very first sentence of his column, Ferguson made a whopping error when he condescendingly observed that The Assault on Reason had no footnotes. (The book is such a mess, footnotes would have been of no use, he suggested.) The problem, according to Ferguson, is that without footnotes readers have no way of checking the sources for the many historical quotes Gore uses in the book, including one on Page 88 from Abraham Lincoln that Ferguson would "love to know where [Gore] found."

In fact, if Ferguson had simply bothered to look, every one of the nearly 300 quotes found in The Assault on Reason is accompanied by an endnote with complete sourcing information, including the quote on Page 88 that Ferguson focuses on. The endnotes consume 20 pages of the book.

But such is life for Al Gore when dealing with the Beltway press, where his vociferous critics cannot be bothered with the simplest fact-checking task, while oblivious media outlets such as the Post print up the errors.

Of course the thick irony here is that Gore's book laments the state of our crumbling national dialogue, yet it's the press that often deliberately dumbs down and interrupts our "conversation of democracy." Gore doesn't often explicitly connect the dots in his book, but the press remains a culprit throughout.

For instance, Gore writes extensively about the culture of fear that developed following the terrorist attacks on 9-11:

The single most surprising new element in America's national conversation is the prominence and intensity of constant fear. Moreover, there is an uncharacteristic and persistent confusion about the sources of that fear; we seem to be having unusual difficulty in distinguishing between illusory threats and legitimate ones.

The sad fact is that the media have played a central role. Everyone remember the Great Duct Tape Scare of 2003?

Gore also decries the fact that the Bush administration misled Americans about Saddam Hussein's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. But the White House had lots of help in spreading that phony prewar tale, including The New York Times' Judith Miller to the whole Fox News team, to name just a few.

Gore does offer a specific critique of television and blames it for polluting the national conversation. Too much Anna Nicole Smith and Britney, says Gore. And of course he's right. The cable news nervous breakdown that was broadcast last Friday afternoon when Paris Hilton was taken back to jail simply proved Gore's point, and specifically that it's

journalists who are driving the celebrity-as-news obsession, not news consumers. (MSNBC producers were heard screaming when Hilton first emerged from her home in handcuffs on Friday.) In the 24 hours after Friday's news broke, "Paris" was mentioned nearly 800 times on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, combined. That same day, Gen. Peter Pace, who oversees the war in Iraq, resigned as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His name was mentioned fewer than 100 times by the three cable news channels, according to TVEyes.com.

But the problems extend far beyond celebrity-obsessed cable news channels. Proof of the broken system? Just look at the Beltway media's reaction to Gore's book release. Thanks to the likes of ABC News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, the coverage has, at times, been comically shallow, small, and dishonest. That's what's wrong with our "national conversation."

And Gore has the 2000 campaign scars to prove it, having suffered some of the most egregious media cheap shots in modern political history. (Inventing the internet, anybody?) Indeed, it's no exaggeration to say Gore is out on book tours today instead of sitting in the Oval Office because of the wildly dishonest press coverage he received during that presidential campaign, in which he was depicted as a stiff, phony bore who lied.

That lazy narrative still sticks to this day. Time magazine, in an otherwise flattering profile, recently wrote of Gore, "He was never quite the wooden Indian his detractors made him out to be in 2000 (nor did he claim to have invented the Internet), but he did carry himself with a slightly anachronistic Southern formality that was magnified beneath the klieg lights of the campaign."

See, it was the klieg lights that doomed Gore in 2000, not the dishonest journalists, who actually doubled as the unnamed "detractors" referenced by Time.

And in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, James Traub wrote that in 2000 Gore "was, to all appearances, an unhappy guy running against a happy guy; and Americans like their presidential candidates to be happy." Unhappy? Of course, when Gore lip-locked his wife on national television at the Democratic convention in an unexpected display of unbridled joy, the pundits descended to probe and dissect the smooch, before dismissing it as a likely calculated ruse.

It seems Gore has been cursed with the life sentence of suffering newsroom fools gladly. Indeed, much of the Beltway media's response to The Assault on Reason was depressingly predictable and dim-witted. As Bob Somerby noted at his weblog, The Daily Howler, "It's obvious how it's going to go as the press corps pretends to discuss Al Gore's book. Gore has said our discourse is broken -- and our pundits are going to rush out to prove it."

Appearing on ABC's Good Morning America, Gore was forced to suffer through an extended sit-down with host Diane Sawyer, who, like so many of Gore's recent interviewers, appeared only interested in talking about whatever presidential aspiration he may or may not have. First question: "OK. You're not gonna tell me again that you have no plans to run, are you? Tell me this morning." (FYI, it's telling that during an hour-long conference call with prominent liberal bloggers during his book tour, not once was Gore asked about his White House hopes. Instead, the bloggers actually engaged Gore on the substance of his book, as well as the day's current events. How quaint.)

Later, Sawyer, reciting GOP talking points regarding anyone who questions the failed war in Iraq, tried to set a word-game trap for Gore:

SAWYER: And another point you say, "If Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, the president took us into a war he didn't have to. Three thousand Americans and countless Iraqis died unnecessarily." Are you saying, in this book and this morning, that Americans -- 3,000 of them -- died unnecessarily?

GORE: See, that's the kind of buzzword approach: "Is it an unnecessary death?" No. Those who serve our country are honored in memory and those who are still serving are always honored. That's not the question. There is hardly anybody in America left, Diane, who doesn't believe that it was a terrible mistake to invade a country that didn't attack us.

And then there was this dopey back-and-forth between Gore and Nightline's Terry Moran, who really has no idea how modern politics works in America; an awkward fact Gore was forced to (politely) highlight:

MORAN: So, if this fall, a sufficient number of Democrats came to you and said, "This is your moment. We needyou. The country needs you."

GORE: Well, I'm not -- I -- it doesn't happen that way anymore.

MORAN: It has.

GORE: You know, 100 years ago, there were times when something like that happened. It hasn't happened in, in the last century or so, and that's just not the way our political system works now.

At another point, Moran, who like so many journalists was determined to portray The Assault on Reason as a bitter, anti-Bush screed, asked Gore if it was "the book you wanted to write after the 2000 election?" (i.e. payback). But how on Earth could Gore have wanted to write this book right after 2000 if most of the events discussed in the book (the war with Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, corporate tax cuts, etc.) hadn't even occurred yet?

Meanwhile, over at ABC.com, Jake Tapper analyzed The Assault on Reason. Busy portraying Gore as a Michael Moore-type radical (as if Moore's ideas are radical), Tapper theorized that, although there is no mention of it in the book, Gore would probably support impeaching Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Gore, in fact, does not support impeachment, which, of course, is why Gore did not write about impeaching Bush or Cheney in his book.

Bottom line: Gore was trying to have a debate about democracy while Sawyer, Moran, and Tapper were inserting words into his mouth, asking silly questions, and analyzing what he did not write in his book. And that was just ABC News.

At The New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks ridiculed Gore for writing a book that Gore did not actually write. Brooks described Gore's utopia as a machine-driven world that is without emotion, family or friends: "He envisions a sort of Vulcan Utopia, in which dispassionate individuals exchange facts and arrive at logical conclusions." Suffice it to say that Brook's mocking description bears no resemblance to The Assault on Reason. Then again, Brooks has been making stuff up about Gore for years, so why stop now?

The same goes for his colleague Maureen Dowd. Like clockwork, she typed up a derisive, trivia-based column to greet Gore's new book. Believe it or not, she thought the most telling facts about The Assault on Reason were that A) Gore's image does not appear on the cover; and B) Gore's author photo on the jacket dates from the 1990s. And neither reflected well on Gore. According to Dowd, the lack of photo on the cover revealed Gore's pretensions about the book, while his dated author photo revealed his vanity. (Ridiculing The Assault on Reason in the Sunday Times of London, Andrew Sullivan also stressed very high up in his review that Gore's face does not appear on the book cover. Sullivan and Dowd literally critiqued packaging.)

Meanwhile, The Washington Post, embracing rampant anti-intellectualism, fretted that Gore was too smart. (Or he was acting too smart.) And the paper despised him for it. Reviewing The Assault on Reason for the Post on May 30, Alan Ehrenhalt, whom the Post described as an "intellectual," leveled a personal attack on Gore in the review's second sentence, complaining that he "annoy[s] the maximum possible number of people." (Ehrenhalt offered no proof for that attack.)

He belittled Gore for including too many quotes from the likes of Louis Brandeis, Edmund Burke, Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, John Donne, and the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. (All the quotes showed that Gore was "desperate to display his erudition.") Ehrenhalt then concluded by noting, "The Assault on Reason is a serious work by an intelligent man with an incurable habit of calling more attention to himself than to the ideas he wishes to communicate."

So Gore was guilty of "calling attention to himself" by not putting his image on the cover of the book and by filling The Assault on Reason with quotes from other people? You figure it out, because it makes no sense to me.

Three days later, while covering a local speech and book signing, the Post's Dana Milbank literally made fun of Gore for even discussing topics of historical importance, such as the Enlightenment and the Information Age. Milbank wrote that "Professor Gore" kept pompously reminding attendees that he was "the smartest guy in the room." Yet Milbank's mocking article provided no proof to back up that assertion. Instead, the article included quotes from people in the audience who said Gore was the smartest person in the room.

In The Assault on Reason, Gore correctly laments that we cannot have intelligent, informed national debates. Yet the sad fact remains there are Beltway press players who devote much of their time and energy to ensuring that those debates cannot take place. Hopefully Gore will write a book about them some day.
_______
About author A senior fellow at Media Matters for America, and a former senior writer for Salon, Boehlert's first book, "Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush," was published in May. He can be reached at eboehlert@aol.com :: :: :: .

Saundra Hummer

June 18th, 2007, 01:00 AM

.
. . . . . . Robert Parry's blog
A Special Report: U.S. News Media's 'War on Gore' by
Robert Parry

When historians sort out what happened to the United States at the start of the 21st Century, one of the mysteries may be why the national press corps ganged up like school-yard bullies against a well-qualified Democratic presidential candidate while giving his dimwitted Republican opponent virtually a free pass.

How could major news organizations, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have behaved so irresponsibly as to spread falsehoods and exaggerations to tear down then-Vice President Al Gore – ironically while the newspapers were berating him for supposedly lying and exaggerating?

In a modern information age, these historians might ask, how could an apocryphal quote like Gore claiming to have “invented the Internet” been allowed to define a leading political figure much as the made-up quote “let them eat cake” was exploited by French propagandists to undermine Marie Antoinette two centuries earlier?

Why did the U.S. news media continue ridiculing Gore in 2002 when he was one of the most prominent Americans to warn that George W. Bush’s radical policy of preemptive war was leading the nation into a disaster in Iraq?

Arguably, those violations of journalistic principles at leading U.S. news organizations, in applying double standards to Gore and Bush, altered the course of American history and set the nation on a very dangerous course.

Now, Gore has reemerged in Washington appealing to his former colleagues in the House and Senate to act urgently on the threat from global warming.

In the initial press coverage of Gore’s return to Capitol Hill, there remains a touch of the old mocking tone, such as The New York Times’ front-page article describing Gore as “a heartbreak loser turned Oscar boasting Nobel hopeful globe-trotting multimillionaire pop culture eminence,” but not nearly the level of open disdain shown in Campaign 2000.

In early 2000, we published a story about that hostility and how it changed the dynamic of that crucial presidential race. We noted that “to read the major newspapers and to watch the TV pundit shows, one can’t avoid the impression that many in the national press have decided that Vice President Al Gore is unfit to be elected the next President of the United States.”

The article, entitled “Al Gore v. the Media,” went on to say:
Across the board – from The Washington Post to The Washington Times, from The New York Times to the New York Post, from NBC's cable networks to the traveling campaign press corps – journalists don't even bother to disguise their contempt for Gore anymore.

At one early Democratic debate, a gathering of about 300 reporters in a nearby press room hissed and hooted at Gore's answers. Meanwhile, every perceived Gore misstep, including his choice of clothing, is treated as a new excuse to put him on a psychiatrist's couch and find him wanting.

‘Delusional’
Journalists freely call him "delusional," "a liar" and "Zelig." Yet, to back up these sweeping denunciations, the media has relied on a series of distorted quotes and tendentious interpretations of his words, at times following scripts written by the national Republican leadership.

In December 1999, for instance, the news media generated dozens of stories about Gore's supposed claim that he discovered the Love Canal toxic waste dump. "I was the one that started it all," he was quoted as saying. This "gaffe" then was used to recycle other situations in which Gore allegedly exaggerated his role or, as some writers put it, told "bold-faced lies."

But behind these examples of Gore's "lies" was some very sloppy journalism. The Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post and The New York Times misquoted Gore on a key point and cropped out the context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what he meant.

The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times grudgingly filed corrections.

Almost as remarkable, though, is how the two newspapers finally agreed to run corrections. They were effectively shamed into doing so by high school students in New Hampshire and by an Internet site called The Daily Howler, edited by a stand-up comic named Bob Somerby.

The Love Canal quote controversy began on Nov. 30, 1999, when Gore was speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. He was exhorting the students to reject cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens can effect important changes.

As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tenn., a town that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue to the attention of Gore's congressional office in the late 1970s.

"I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told the students. "I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee – that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

After the hearings, Gore said, "we passed a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got involved."

Clear Context
The context of Gore's comment was clear. What sparked his interest in the toxic-waste issue was the situation in Toone – "that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

After learning about the Toone situation, Gore looked for other examples and "found" a similar case at Love Canal. He was not claiming to have been the first one to discover Love Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies for the hearings.

The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore's comments of their context and gave them a negative twist.

"Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of toxic waste," the Post reported. "'I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal,' he said, referring to the Niagara homes evacuated in August 1978 because of chemical contamination. 'I had the first hearing on this issue.' … Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. 'I was the one that started it all,' he said." [Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1999]

The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious story with the same false quote: "I was the one that started it all."

The Republican National Committee spotted Gore's alleged boast and was quick to fax around its own take. "Al Gore is simply unbelievable – in the most literal sense of that term," declared Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson. "It's a pattern of phoniness – and it would be funny if it weren't also a little scary."

The GOP release then doctored Gore's quote a bit more. After all, it would be grammatically incorrect to have said, "I was the one that started it all." So, the Republican handout fixed Gore's grammar to say, "I was the one who started it all."

In just one day, the key quote had transformed from "that was the one that started it all" to "I was the one that started it all" to "I was the one who started it all."

Instead of taking the offensive against these misquotes, Gore tried to head off the controversy by clarifying his meaning and apologizing if anyone got the wrong impression. But the fun was just beginning.

‘Love Factor’
The national pundit shows quickly picked up the story of Gore's new “exaggeration.”

"Let's talk about the 'love' factor here," chortled Chris Matthews of CNBC's Hardball. "Here's the guy who said he was the character Ryan O'Neal was based on in ‘Love Story.’ … It seems to me … he's now the guy who created the Love Canal [case]. I mean, isn't this getting ridiculous? … Isn't it getting to be delusionary?"

Matthews turned to his baffled guest, Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal resident who is widely credited with bringing the issue to public attention. She sounded confused about why Gore would claim credit for discovering Love Canal, but defended Gore's hard work on the issue.

"I actually think he's done a great job," Gibbs said. "I mean, he really did work, when nobody else was working, on trying to define what the hazards were in this country and how to clean it up and helping with the Superfund and other legislation." [CNBC's Hardball, Dec. 1, 1999]

The next morning, Post political writer Ceci Connolly highlighted Gore's boast and placed it in his alleged pattern of falsehoods. "Add Love Canal to the list of verbal missteps by Vice President Gore," she wrote. "The man who mistakenly claimed to have inspired the movie 'Love Story' and to have invented the Internet says he didn't quite mean to say he discovered a toxic waste site." [Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1999]

That night, CNBC's Hardball returned to Gore's Love Canal quote by playing the actual clip but altering the context by starting Gore's comments with the words, "I found a little town…"

"It reminds me of Snoopy thinking he's the Red Baron," laughed Chris Matthews. "I mean how did he get this idea? Now you've seen Al Gore in action. I know you didn't know that he was the prototype for Ryan O'Neal's character in ‘Love Story’ or that he invented the Internet. He now is the guy who discovered Love Canal."

Matthews compared the Vice President to "Zelig," the Woody Allen character whose face appeared at an unlikely procession of historic events. "What is it, the Zelig guy who keeps saying, 'I was the main character in ‘Love Story.’ I invented the Internet. I invented Love Canal."

The following day, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post elaborated on Gore's pathology of deception. "Again, Al Gore has told a whopper," the Post wrote. "Again, he's been caught red-handed and again, he has been left sputtering and apologizing. This time, he falsely took credit for breaking the Love Canal story. … Yep, another Al Gore bold-faced lie."

The editorial continued: "Al Gore appears to have as much difficulty telling the truth as his boss, Bill Clinton. But Gore's lies are not just false, they're outrageously, stupidly false. It's so easy to determine that he's lying, you have to wonder if he wants to be found out.

"Does he enjoy the embarrassment? Is he hell-bent on destroying his own campaign? … Of course, if Al Gore is determined to turn himself into a national laughingstock, who are we to stand in his way?"

Fantasyland
The Love Canal controversy soon moved beyond the Washington-New York power axis.

On Dec. 6, The Buffalo News ran an editorial entitled, "Al Gore in Fantasyland," that echoed the words of RNC chief Nicholson. It stated, "Never mind that he didn't invent the Internet, serve as the model for 'Love Story' or blow the whistle on Love Canal. All of this would be funny if it weren't so disturbing."

The next day, the right-wing Washington Times judged Gore crazy. "The real question is how to react to Mr. Gore's increasingly bizarre utterings," the Times wrote. "Webster's New World Dictionary defines 'delusional' thusly: 'The apparent perception, in a nervous or mental disorder, of some thing external that is actually not present … a belief in something that is contrary to fact or reality, resulting from deception, misconception, or a mental disorder.'"

The editorial denounced Gore as "a politician who not only manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself and his achievements but appears to actually believe these confabulations."

Yet, while the national media was excoriating Gore, the Concord students were learning more than they had expected about how media and politics work in modern America.

For days, the students pressed for a correction from The Washington Post and The New York Times. But the prestige papers balked, insisting that the error was insignificant.

"The part that bugs me is the way they nit pick," said Tara Baker, a Concord High junior. " they should at least get it right." [AP, Dec. 14, 1999]

When the David Letterman show made Love Canal the jumping off point for a joke list: "Top 10 Achievements Claimed by Al Gore," the students responded with a press release entitled "Top 10 Reasons Why Many Concord High Students Feel Betrayed by Some of the Media Coverage of Al Gore's Visit to Their School."

he Web site, The Daily Howler, also was hectoring what it termed a "grumbling editor" at the Post to correct the error.

[B]Incorrect Correction
Finally, on Dec. 7, a week after Gore's comment, the Post published a partial correction, tucked away as the last item in a corrections box. But the Post still misled readers about what Gore actually said.

The Post correction read: "In fact, Gore said, 'That was the one that started it all,' referring to the congressional hearings on the subject that he called."

The revision fit with the Post's insistence that the two quotes meant pretty much the same thing, but again, the newspaper was distorting Gore's clear intent by attaching "that" to the wrong antecedent. From the full quote, it's obvious the "that" refers to the Toone toxic waste case, not to Gore's hearings.

Three days later, The New York Times followed suit with a correction of its own, but again without fully explaining Gore's position. "They fixed how they misquoted him, but they didn't tell the whole story," commented Lindsey Roy, another Concord High junior.

While the students voiced disillusionment, the two reporters involved showed no remorse for their mistake. "I really do think that the whole thing has been blown out of proportion," said Katharine Seelye of the Times. "It was one word."

The Post's Ceci Connolly even defended her inaccurate rendition of Gore's quote as something of a journalistic duty. "We have an obligation to our readers to alert them [that] this [Gore's false boasting] continues to be something of a habit," she said. [AP, Dec. 14, 1999]

The half-hearted corrections also did not stop newspapers around the country from continuing to use the bogus quote.

A Dec. 9 editorial in the Lancaster [Pa.] New Era even published the polished misquote that the Republican National Committee had stuck in a press release: "I was the one who started it all."

The New Era then went on to psychoanalyze Gore. "Maybe the lying is a symptom of a more deeply-rooted problem: Al Gore doesn't know who he is," the editorial stated. "The Vice President is a serial prevaricator."

In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writer Michael Ruby concluded that "the Gore of '99" was full of lies. He "suddenly discovers elastic properties in the truth," Ruby declared. "He invents the Internet, inspires the fictional hero of 'Love Story,' blows the whistle on Love Canal. Except he didn't really do any of those things." [Dec. 12, 1999]

On Dec. 19, GOP chairman Nicholson was back on the offensive. Far from apologizing for the RNC's misquotes, Nicholson was reprising the allegations of Gore's falsehoods that had been repeated so often that they had taken on the color of truth: "Remember, too, that this is the same guy who says he invented the Internet, inspired Love Story and discovered Love Canal."

Ripple Effect
More than two weeks after the Post correction, the bogus quote was still spreading. The Providence Journal lashed out at Gore in an editorial that reminded readers that Gore had said about Love Canal, "I was the one that started it all." The editorial then turned to the bigger picture:

"This is the third time in the last few months that Mr. Gore has made a categorical assertion that is – well, untrue. … There is an audacity about Mr. Gore's howlers that is stunning. … Perhaps it is time to wonder what it is that impels Vice President Gore to make such preposterous claims, time and again." [Providence Journal, Dec. 23, 1999]

On New Year's Eve, a column in The Washington Times returned again to the theme of Gore's pathological lies.

Entitled "Liar, Liar; Gore's Pants on Fire," the column by Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder concluded that "when Al Gore lies, it's without any apparent reason. Mr. Gore had already established his credits on environmental issues, for better or worse, and had even been anointed 'Mr. Ozone.' So why did he have to tell students in Concord, New Hampshire, ‘I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I had the first hearing on the issue. I was the one that started it all.'" [Washington Times, Dec. 31, 1999]

The characterization of Gore as a clumsy liar continued into the New Year. Again in The Washington Times, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. put Gore's falsehoods in the context of a sinister strategy:

"Deposit so many deceits and falsehoods on the public record that the public and the press simply lose interest in the truth. This, the Democrats thought, was the method behind Mr. Gore's many brilliantly conceived little lies. Except that Mr. Gore's lies are not brilliantly conceived. In fact, they are stupid. He gets caught every time … Just last month, Mr. Gore got caught claiming … to have been the whistle-blower for 'discovering Love Canal.'" [Washington Times, Jan. 7, 2000]

It was unclear where Tyrrell got the quote, "discovering Love Canal," since not even the false quotes had put those words in Gore's mouth. But Tyrrell's description of what he perceived as Gore's strategy of flooding the public debate with "deceits and falsehoods" might fit better with what the news media and the Republicans had been doing to Gore.

Beyond Love Canal, the other prime examples of Gore's "lies" – inspiring the male lead in Love Story and working to create the Internet – also stemmed from a quarrelsome reading of his words, followed by exaggeration and ridicule rather than a fair assessment of how his comments and the truth matched up. The earliest of these Gore "lies," dating back to 1997, was Gore mentioning a press report that indicated that he and his wife Tipper had served as models for the lead characters in the sentimental bestseller and movie, Love Story.

When the author, Erich Segal, was asked about this, he stated that the preppy hockey-playing male lead, Oliver Barrett IV, indeed was modeled after Gore as well as after Gore's Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones. But Segal said the female lead, Jenny, was not modeled after Tipper Gore. [NYT, Dec. 14, 1997]

Indictment
Rather than treating this distinction as a minor point of legitimate confusion, the news media concluded that Gore had willfully lied. The media made the case an indictment against Gore’s honesty.

In doing so, however, the media repeatedly misstated the facts, insisting that Segal had denied that Gore was the model for the lead male character. In reality, Segal had c