Pentagon Whistle-Blower On The Coming War With Iraq

   I could not resist this telephone interview by James Harris over at TruthDig with Karen Kwaitowski. Who is she you might ask? Read the following transcript, which is lengthy.

                                                                            

 

Crossposted from TruthOut

Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran
    TruthDig.com

    Tuesday 27 February 2007

Transcript:

James Harris: This is TruthDig. James Harris sitting down with Josh Scheer, and on the phone we have a special guest. She is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, formerly working for the Pentagon, The National Security Agency. Needless to say, she knows a lot about intel and a lot about what took place and what went on before we went into Iraq and what went on with that intel. Many questions have been asked in recent weeks, obviously in recent years about what we knew, what was fabricated, what was made up. On the phone we have somebody who has been vociferous in her effort to out the wrongdoings of people like Douglas Feith and people like Donald Rumsfeld. So, Karen Kwiatkowski, welcome to TruthDig.

Karen Kwiatkowski: Thanks for having me.

James Harris: It's our pleasure. I want to start, not talking about Douglas Feith, but I want to get your opinion about Iraq. We know that British troops and Tony Blair have decided that they're out. We've seen the commitment of other nations drop by 17 countries and our biggest partner, England, is now out. Why do you think they're out and Bush is still in? Well we know why Bush is still in. Why now?

Karen Kwiatkowski: It is towards the end of Tony Blair's long, long term of duty there as the Prime Minister. And the other thing is, the British very much oppose, in spite of the fact that there are some Murdoch newspapers in Great Britain, some conservative papers, pseudo conservative I should say, not truly conservative. Truly conservatives, true conservatives have opposed this venture form the beginning. But in spite of the small, loud pro-war faction in London, most people in Britain recognize this for what it is. They have some experience in this kind of thing with, both in Middle East, particularly in Iraq years ago when they left in dishonor. LAUGHS Another time when they tried to occupy Baghdad, years and years ago, and also their experience with terrorism and movements of independents or what have you with Ireland, much more recent memory for many of the people in Great Britain. I don't think Britain's economy can afford it. Certainly they see the writing on the all, why get, why not get out now while George Bush is still there than be stuck with, stuck holding the bag when a Democratic president takes over and pulls the troops out abruptly in 2008, 2009. So I think there's many reasons why they're doing it. Some people say it is, it is because of Tony Blair's concern over his legacy. If he doesn't bring the troops home, his legacy will be that he left Britain in a quagmire. They are in a quagmire now and maybe he doesn't want to leave office with that being on his record. Mainly it's the right thing to do, the people of Britain want those troops home. And I guess their government is listening. Unlike ours.

James Harris: The highly speculative people have said they're out because we're going into Iran. You might've read the news…

Karen Kwiatkowski: Well yeah, I don't… I had not seen that connection made, but I certainly am alarmed at the daily signs that indeed this country is getting ready to instigate an attack on Iran. All the signs are there, the suggestions that Iranian bombs are killing American soldiers, that's not true, but it's certainly been made in, I think every American newspaper, the suggestion that Iran is somehow killing Americans. The suggestion that Iran has nuclear weapons, is imminently close to nuclear weapons. That is not true but that's been, those claims are made, even by this Administration. The idea that we have two carrier battle groups currently in the region and in fact I just saw today, Admiral Walsh, one of the big guys in the Navy said that we're very concerned about what Iran is doing even more so than Al Qaeda. So there, all the signs are there that we are being, we're going to wake up one morning soon, very soon, and we will be at war with Iran. We will have bombed them in some sort of shock and awe campaign destroying many lives and setting back US relations even further than we've already done it with Iraq.

Josh I want to continue on Iran. You spent obviously many years in the military and you talk in those kind of terms that many people maybe not know about. Can we not just politically, and not just in the region, but can we support another war in another country? Right now we're in Afghanistan, we're in Iraq. Can we feasibly actually go into Iran, or is this going to be a shock and awe campaign?

Karen Kwiatkowski: You know, I think the, one of the big reasons that Bush and Cheney think they can do Iran is that they believe, what they're hearing from the Air Force and the Navy, two of the three main branches of our military, the two that have been left out of the glory of Iraq, you see. And those guys want a piece of the action, and so they're advertising to the Administration and publicly, I mean you can read it for yourself, the Air Force and the Navy have targets they believe they can overwhelmingly hit their targets, deep penetration, weapons, possibly nuclear weapons, I mean, nothing is off the table as Dick Cheney is off the table, Dick Cheney says “nothing is off the table.” And the delivery of these weapons, whether they're conventional or nuclear will be naval and Air Force. They'll be Navy from the sea and Air Force form long range bombers and some of the bases that we have around the… so I don't think, certainly, I don't know, I'm not in the Army, wasn't in the Army, I was in the Air Force, I don't think the Army could support any type of invasion of Iran and they wouldn't' want to. I'm sure that they've, they've had enough with Iraq and our reserves are in terrible condition. We've got huge problems in the Army and in the Reserve system. So I don't think there's any intention to go into Iran, but simply to destroy it and to create havoc and disruption and humanitarian crisis and topple perhaps the government of [Ahmadinejad]. We want to topple that government. Yeah, we'll do it with bombs from a distance. I don't know if you call that shock and awe, we've been advertising it for a long, long time. It will not be a surprise to the Iranians if we do it.

James Harris: That was your former boss, the shock and awe campaign. I'm still shocked and I'm awed.

Karen Kwiatkowski: [laughs] He shocked and awed all of us.

James Harris: As a means of understanding the level of deceit that you claim took place and I agree took place before the war. Because it, the things that are going on in and around Iran sound a lot like the things that went on in 2002…

Karen Kwiatkowski: Sure do.

James Harris: And I always note Scott Ritter, because I spoke to him, and I couldn't believe that we didn't take the advice of people like him that were saying that there's nothing there, there's nothing. Can you describe for us a typical day, if we went in around March, we're approaching that anniversary, we went in around March of ‘03. What was it like in The Pentagon?

Karen Kwiatkowski: Well, I worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and up until mid February I was in Near East South Asia, which is the office that owns the Office of Special Plans, they were our sister office. And so Iraq is one of the areas. And there's a great degree of excitement, there's a, we didn't know when we would invade Iraq, and many people thought it would be in February, late February, early March and it actually was like I think march 23 is when we actually conducted that attack on Baghdad and that kind of thing. Most people in the Pentagon, there's 23,000 people worked in the Pentagon. Most of those people were as in the dark as any of the Americans. They believed what they read in the papers, and what they read in the papers, particularly The New York Times and The Washington Post had been, for the most part, planted by The Administration. We know this now, the whole Congress knows this now, they've had a number of hearings publicly faltered, I think even the DODIG just recently faltered, Doug Feith and his whole organization for planting and mis-, providing misleading stories, many of which were later leaked on purpose to the press. A friendly press, of course, Judith Miller was not, was not hostile to the intentions of this administration. They wanted to go into Iraq, and they intended to go into Iraq. We did go into Iraq, and all that was really needed was to bring onboard the American people, and to bring onboard the Congress. But not necessarily to declare war. Congress has never been asked to declare war on Iraq. And they won't be asked to declare war on Iran even though we will conduct that war. These guys had an agenda. In fact, one of the things that I did learn as a result of having my eyes opened in that final tour in the Pentagon is that neo-conservatives, their foreign policy is very activist, you could say that's a nice way to say it, very activist, it's very oriented towards the Untied States as a benevolent dictator, a benevolent guiding hand for the world, particularly the Middle East. And it's very much a pro-Israel policy, and it's a policy that says, we should be able to do whatever we want to do, if we see it in our interest. Now, Americans don't see any value, most Americans, 75 percent of Americans want the troops home now. They don't see any value to having our troops in Iraq. They didn't see any value in that in 2002. But, they had a story sold to them, which was of course that Saddam Hussein somehow was involved with 9/11, had WMDs, and was a serious threat, an imminent threat, a grave threat to the United States.

James Harris: For those people that think somehow that government officials, even though you work for the government, were complicit in this effort to move into Iraq. I want you to be clear, as a worker there, you were doing what you thought was right at the time. Is that a safe thing to say?

Karen Kwiatkowski: We were doing, I'll tell ya, there's two parts of how the story is sold, how the propaganda was put forth on the American people, and how it's been put forth on them today in terms of Iran. You have political appointees in every government agency, and they switch out every time you get a new president, and that's totally normal. Usually those, the numbers increase after every president, they always get a few more. So Bush was no different. He brought in a number of political appointees: Doug Feith, certainly Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. But also a number of political appointees at what you would call a lower level, like my level - Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel level. And they're not military officers, they're civilians. And they're brought in, and this is where the propaganda was kind of put together, this is where the so-called alternative intelligence assessments were put together by the civilian appointees of the Bush Administration. Most of which, in fact, probably all of the Pentagon shared a neo-conservative world vision, which has a particular role for us, and that included the topping of Saddam Hussein, and it includes the toppling of the leadership in Tehran. These guys are the ones doing it, they're doing it. They're putting all the propaganda, they're spreading stories, planting stuff in the media. They're doing that to people in The Pentagon, the civil, the Civil Service core in The Pentagon, which is about half of them, and the other half which are uniformed military officers serving anywhere from three to four, five years, sometimes tours in The Pentagon. We're looking at regular intel, we're looking at the stuff the CIA and the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency produces. And that stuff never said, that stuff never said Saddam Hussein had WMDs, had a delivery system, was a threat to the United States. It never said that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 or that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda. That intelligence never said that.

James Harris: Did they tell you to shut up?

Karen Kwiatkowski: Absolutely! [Laughs] That's a funny thing, and of course, here's how it worked. Once the Office of Special Plans was set u formally, now they were informally set up prior to the fall of 2002, but formally they became an office with office space and that whole bit. And the first act to follow that setup of the Office of Special Plans, we had a staff meeting, and our boss, Bill Ludy, who was the boss of Special Plans technically, not in reality but on paper. And he announced to us that from now on, action officers, staff officers such as myself and all my peers, at least in that office, and I presume this went all the way through the rest of policy, but we were told that when we needed to fill in data, putting it in papers that we would send up, doing our job, as we did our daily job, we were no longer to look at CIA and DIA intelligence, we were simply to call the Office of Special Plans and they would send down to us talking points, which we would incorporate verbatim no deletions, no additions, no modifications into every paper that we did. And of course, that was very unusual and all the action officers are looking at each other like, well that's interesting. We're not to look at the intelligence any more, we're simply to go to this group of political appointees and they will provide to us word for word what we should say about Iraq, about WMD and about terrorism. And this is exactly what our orders were. And there were people [Laughs] a couple of people, and I have to say, I was not one of these people who said, “you know, I'm not gonna do that, I'm not gonna do that because there's something I don't like about it, it's incorrect in some way.” And they experimented with sending up papers that did not follow those instructions, and those papers were 100 percent of the time returned back for correction. So we weren't allowed to put out anything except what Office of Special Plans was producing for us. And that was only partially based on intelligence, and partially based on a political agenda. So this is how they did it. And I'll tell you what, civil servants and military people, we follow orders, okay. And we buy into it. And we don't suspect that our leaders are nefarious, we don't suspect that. They, they quite frankly have to go a long way to prove to us that they are nefarious. That's how it worked, and I imagine it's working much the same way there in terms of Iran.

James Harris: Obviously you've been in the military for quite a while. Has this every happened to your knowledge in any other Pentagon, where a political appointees have the power to just control the…

Karen Kwiatkowski: Sure, well sure, Vietnam is filled with examples. And Daniel Ellsberg's information and his Pentagon paper that he released factual information that contradicted what political appointees at the top of the Pentagon were saying to Congress and saying to the American people. Yeah, this is typical of how it works. Now, having said that, most people who serve and wear the uniform or give a career of service to the military, whether civilian, civil service or military, we don't think that our bosses will do that. We don't think that our military will do that. But in fact history is full of examples of bald-faced lies being told to sell particular agendas. Often times those agendas include war making, certainly in Vietnam they did, under LBJ and a few other presidents. Look at the thing that Reagan did. I mean, I actually don't dislike Reagan, he deployed very few troops overseas, but when he went in to that little island down there… what is the name of that island that he invaded, Grenada. [Laughs] Remember that? Remember the Invasion of Grenada.

    JOSHUA SCHEER:Joshua Scheer: All eight hours?

James Harris: It was a short one.

Karen Kwiatkowski: I mean, God, shortly thereafter, come to find out, well actually, some of the stuff they said about the threat and the Cubans and all that wasn't really true. So politicians and their politically appointed military leaders will lie, historically do lie when it has to do with making war, particularly making a war that they want. And what has happened in the Bush Administration is the war that they want was Iraq. And the war that they want is Iran, and the war that they want is Syria, okay? That's the war they want. They don't want Vietnam. I don't know why, they don't want Vietnam, they want these places, this is what the neo-conservatives are particularly interested in. So we have war. And they make up stories and we're seeing the exact same thing in terms of Iran, which is quite alarming because it seems as if we can't stop this, we can't prevent this.

Josh: You were talking about these political appointees and pushing us into war. Why haven't people like Paul Wolfowitz, I mean these guys seem to feather their own nests.

Karen Kwiatkowski: [Laughs] That's an understatement.

Josh: They lead us into war, Mark Zell, Doug Feith's partner was in bed with Chalabi. It falls apart and then it seems that these guys disappear into the woodwork. What happens?

Karen Kwiatkowski: Well, a big part of what happens is these guys have top cover, the names of the top cover are Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. These guys like what Wolfowitz has done. And here's the other thing. While we as American citizens do not like being lied to, particularly being lied to into a stupid quagmire that makes no sense. We don't' like being lied to. Congress doesn't like being lied to. However, many in Congress, and certainly in this administration agree, and this is Democrats and Republicans, like the idea that we have gone into Iraq, we have built four mega bases, they are complete. Most of the money we gave to Halliburton was for construction and completion of these bases. We have probably, of the 150,000, 160,000 troops we have in Iraq probably 110,000 of those folks are associated with one of those four mega bases. Safely ensconced behind acres and acres of concrete. To operate there indefinitely, no matter what happens in Baghdad, no matter who takes over, no matter if the country splits into three pieces or it stays one. No matter what happens, we have those mega bases, and there's many in Congress and certainly in this administration, Republican and Democrat alike that really like that. Part of the reason I think that we went into Iraq was to reestablish a stronger foothold than we had in Saudi Arabia, but also a more economical, a more flexible, in terms of who we want to hit. If you want to hit Syria, can you do it from Iraq? Of course you can. And now you can do it from bases that will support any type of airplane you want, any number of troops in barracks. I mean we can do things from Iraq. And this is what they wanted. So, yeah, we don't like being lied to. But quite frankly, many people in the Congress, and certainly this administration, when they call Iraq a success, they mean it, and this is why.

    We're in Iraq to stay. And can we strike Iran from Iraq? Well, I don't know if we'll do that next week, but we can.

James Harris: We're there to stay in the sense that even, let's say somebody takes office in await, do you think that we're gonna be occupying those bases still?

Karen Kwiatkowski: Absolutely! And we don't even have status of forcive agreements with any legitimate government in Iraq to support those bases. They are illegal bases, okay. But yes, they're gonna stay, absolutely, they're gonna stay. And I'll tell you, there are guys that have been with this administration for awhile, people, in fact one of the guys was an Air Force General that was involved with the Kurds ten years ago, he's retired now, but he was actually the guy, his name escapes me for the moment, but he was Jerry Bremer's predecessor (Jay Garner?) for a short period of time. And he was fired, and Bremer came in and took over in Baghdad as part of the reconstruction phase. This is in the Spring of 2003. And this guy gave an interview in Government Exec Magazine, February 2004, he said “we will be in Iraq, and the American people need to get with this program, we will be in Iraq like we were in the Philippines for anywhere from 20 to 30 more years. That's the time frame that we're looking at. And that is the life span of the bases that we've constructed there. Yeah, we are not leaving these bases, and a Democratic president, I don't care who they are, will keep those basses there. They will justify them and they will use them and we love that. We love it. So it's not about what the American people think is right or wrong, it's not about if we got lied to, what matters is, they did what they wanted to do, and as bush says, and as Cheney says, “it's quite the success.” And this is very frightening. Because none of this has ever been admitted to the American people, it's only been hinted at by people that know. And of course the facts speak for themself. The facts are, we are in Iraq, we have the finest military installations in the world, the newest military installations in the world, and we're not leaving them. We're not turning them over to a Shiite government, we're not turning them over to a Sunni government, we're not turning them over to a Kurdish government. We're not doing that. They are American bases. We've got our flag there. And this is kind of the way they used to do things, I guess back in the Middle Ages. Maybe the Dark Ages. A king decided he wanted to go do something, he went and did it. And this is George Bush. We call him an elected president. I mean, he's operating much as kings have operated in the past.

James Harris: You called him “the war pimp” in your essay. “He's behaving,” as you put it, “a lot like a pimp would treat a prostitute, ‘you do like I tell you to do.'”

Karen Kwiatkowski: that's right, and over the money. “Get back to work.” We're using these, we use these bases, we use these people, the country, it matters not one whit to us.

James Harris: With all we see in the news on a daily basis, is there any reason to hope? Every day I lose more and more sleep, about soldiers who are dying. You're talking about being there another 30 years. How many more soldiers are going to be injured and killed? How much more money is this war going to cost?

Karen Kwiatkowski: Well the money, yeah, sure, the money's a problem. The number of soldiers being killed will probably actually reduce in many ways because we will withdraw to our bases and we will not interface with Iraqis who hate us. This idea of what they're doing right now, this so called three-block program, let's meet more Iraqis so they'll like us, that's totally for show. The more Iraqis meet us, the more they hate us. So I actually do think though, over time, fewer Americans will die, and look how easily, look how easily this country has accepted the loss of those 3,200 soldiers that have died. I think something like 90 women, maybe more have died, mothers [Laughs] mothers of children. They've died, and America has eaten it up, we have not complained one bit. They're spread out over 50 states, hey, it's no big deal. So I think we can certainly, as a country, accommodate future deaths and I think the death rate will drop. The problem is, it's immoral, it's illegal, it engenders hatred for Americans, contempt for Americans. It makes every American in the world a target for terrorism. It's just plain wrong, it's unconstitutional. I mean, there's a lot of problems with it. Dead Americans, unfortunately doesn't seem to be the problem for most of us, which is a shame. We don't like looking at ugly people, I will say that. And we're seeing a lot of folks come back pretty deformed, mentally and even more obviously physically, deformed from their experiences in Iraq. And I think that could, that might give, I hate to say give hope, but realize the real moral price that we're paying for this, that that can help. But quite frankly, I have no hope of us leaving Iraq. I think the intention was for us to put bases there, to stay there, operate militarily from there. And I think that's what we're going to do, Democrat, Republican, Independent, I can't imagine anybody but Ron Paul, if you elect Ron Paul as president, those bases will be closed down. Otherwise…

James Harris: Or Dennis Kucinich.

Karen Kwiatkowski: Or Kucinich, there you go, Kucinich would do it too. So these are the guys we are able to elect, but chances are, I hate to say, the machine is not behind these men. So yeah, we got a problem. Now is there anything optimistic? Yeah. I'm a God fearing Christian. God has the power. How He might express that, I don't know. But yeah, can the average American do anything about it? I'm just not, I'm pretty not very, I'm not optimistic, I'm pessimistic that any single American can do much to prevent what seems to be going to happen here, attacking Iran and also this terrible thing we've done to Iraq which I think will continue to go on for many years. It will fester, fester for many years.

James Harris: I'm one that believes the price of terrorism, I'm interested to get your perspective on this as one who watched us engage on this terrorist enemy, an enemy like we'd never seen before, at least from a military standpoint. I look at terrorism, and I see it tearing us apart. And in a lot of ways I look at it and say, we've already lost this war because we now have a president who's bending the Constitution. We're looking over our shoulders. We question our whereabouts. This whole thing that went on in Boston with the advertisement, “is it a bomb?” There's always that question. Perhaps the goal of Osama, perhaps the goal of these people was to make us afraid, and they've succeeded at that. My question to you is, in your mind, what is the true price of terrorism been for you?

Karen Kwiatkowski: The military has been broken in most respects into the extent that it worked, it worked because it's a mercenary force. We were so contracted out, we hired people that are beyond the law, that are not accountable to rules of war. And that's how we function. So the whole military system, the idea of a defensive force, forget it, that's done with. Constitution has been hurt by many presidents, but this president has done huge damage to understanding of the Constitution, its idea that it should restrain presidential power, that we should be conservative, small “c” conservative when we go out and engage in these adventures, the Congress has the right to declare war, we've ignored that for many decades. Just continued down that path. Te idea that the Bill of Rights is an option, the Bill of Rights is a set of suggestions has become almost mainstream belief. And this is terrible, this is a terrible thing. But I don't think Osama Bin Laden did that. Terrorism is, obviously it has a political intent, but terrorism almost always, in fact I think in every case, when the political solutions are offered, when the politics change, when the people themselves change, terrorism stops. Terrorism to the extent that it is a crime, should've been treated like a crime, but instead we made it a war. Well there is no war with terror, terrorism is a tactic, you don't make war against a tactic. So yeah, a lot of things have happened, I don't think Osama had much to do with it, quite frankly, I think this administration, many of the people in Washington are quite comfortable with reduced freedoms for America and this is a good way to get those reduced freedoms, to basically break down and deconstruct the Bill of Rights and say, “well we didn't mean that, we didn't mean this.” It's a problem. Our country has changed, and I think what people have to do now is kind of stand up and separate themselves from a government to the extent that they don't agree with it and prepare themselves for real battle. Because we are gonna need to stand up very, I can use the word “vociferously,” I think that's what we have to do, cause our own country is at risk, but not from terror, not from buildings being knocked down, that's not what our country is at risk from, it's at risk from our politics, from our abandonment of the Constitution, our devaluing of the Bill of Rights. We've lost our freedom. Osama probably couldn't have dreamed that George Bush would help him out so much. I don't think even that was his intention, I don't think Osama could care less about our freedom, Osama's issues have to do with Islam and the Holy land, Saudi Arabia, his issues are much more narrow than anything that he's so called achieved. And I think George Bush has achieved this in a very weak and LAUGHS debased Congress has achieved this for this country. And so, it's a big problem. I'm quite depressed about it. I don't really have a solution or a remedy. I think we just need to wake up and see what's being done, and then we need to decide if we want to be a part of it. It's like that old thing, I'm not a child of the 60s, but you're either working to fix the problem or you are the problem.

James Harris: Why have the neo-cons been allowed, they're not, to me, they don't seem like the Republicans that I grew up with.

Karen Kwiatkowski: No, no, they're not. And if you look at the history of neo-conservatism, it really traces its roots, well back to Trotsky, but if you go more recent, back to who was the guy, Senator from Boeing (Henry Jackson) they used to call him… big Democratic, 30 year Senator out of Washington State. And Richard Perle was on his staff, Wolfowitz I think was inspired by him. And he was a Democrat during the Cold War. And he was a pro, or I should say strongly anti-Communist democrat, kind of a strong defense democrat. And these guys migrated, particularly after Jimmy Carter, because Jimmy Carter, remember, what was he doing, he was trying to make peace. Remember that, somebody got a Peace Prize out of it, I don't know what it was, some kind of approach between Arabs and Israelis, and Carter was part of that. And that alienated a great many of these folks who now we know as neo-conservatives because they have two things that they care about, one is strong defense, for whatever reason they like that, an activist foreign policy, and pro-Israel, no questions asked policy. So many of these conservative, pro-defense democrats, anti-Communist democrats abandoned the democratic party at the time of Jimmy Carter, particularly after the time of Jimmy Carter and his summit working on Middle East peace. And they came over to eth Republican party, and of course they came over with a great deal of money and a great deal of political influence and a great deal of voters. So now they're in the Republican party, and absolutely, this happened, late 1970s. so it is not, these are not the Republicans that we grew up thinking about, but they are in the Republican party now. Of course the Republican party now isn't anything like what I thought it was, it's certainly no Goldwater party, it's a party of big spending, it's a party of corruption. What do you want me to say? They love big government, they haven't seen a big government plan they didn't write.

James Harris: Henry “Scoop” Jackson was the guy you were looking for. As we continue to search for the truth, and that's pretty much the motto of TruthDig, we don't believe we have the answer, but we believe that we should at least be looking for the answers. So as we approach that truth around the issues that take place in Iraq and perhaps Iran, we think you might be a good friend to have close to the TruthDig family so we'd like to check in from time to time.

Karen Kwiatkowski: Sure, I'd be delighted, it's great fun talking. And hopefully maybe in a couple of months some of these negative things I think are going to happen, maybe they won't happen.

James Harris: Maybe we'll all be proven wrong… whatever the case…

Josh: I'm praying for it.

James Harris: We're both praying, even though Josh is not a religious man.

Josh: Excuse me, I am a religious man.

Karen Kwiatkowski: Maybe we're in a foxhole together. You know what they say, there are no atheists in a foxhole, and I think in political sense, many true conservatives and classical liberals, people that love freedom, unlike George Bush, people that really love freedom, we are in a foxhole. We are threatened. And so we gotta call on every possible help we can get.

Josh: I believe in God, I don't believe in big religion, just like I don't believe in big government.

James Harris: There you go, we're in a foxhole, so we're on the same team.

 

Technorati tags: Karen Kwaitowski, Pentagon, Iran, NSA, Air Force, Navy

White House Threatens 9/11 Bill Because Of Union clause

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate began debating legislation to bolster America's security on Wednesday with the White House threatening a veto because one part would extend union protection to 45,000 airport workers [...]

The overall bill would implement many of the stalled recommendations of the bipartisan commission created after the September 11 attacks.

The measure refines other recommendations and imposes new ones, such as the labor provision, and would let state and local governments share information with federal authorities, build better communication systems and provide grants to help high-risk areas prepare for disasters.

But White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said if the labor provision remains in the legislation, "the president's senior advisers would recommend he veto the bill."

Thirty-six Republican senators sent a letter to Bush on Tuesday saying they would provide the needed votes to sustain a veto in the 100-member Senate.

   The other day I posted some of this and stated that the Democrats should just drop that union part of the bill and get the remainder passed.

There is time afterwards to worry about the airport workers getting unionization. The 36 Republicans who say that they will support a veto makes it impossible for the Democrats to get this passed before it even leaves for the Presidents desk, so drop it now and make another version of a union bill. Make it a bill which will put those 36 Republicans and the White House in a very bad spot if the bill is not passed.

   As it is at this point in time, the Democrats will just be beating their heads into a brick wall as they did with the non-binding resolution's for Iraq and our troops.

    Come on Democrats. Don't be so stupid!

 

Technorati tags: U.S. Senate.Republican Senators, Airport Workers, 9/11 Bill, Union

 

McCain Not Speaking At CPAC

     Senator McCain is trying to be a slick little fellow as of late.

 Sponsors of the Conservative Political Action Conference invited McCain to speak at their gathering, which starts today, and McCain said no thanks. They call this event the premier gather of the countries conservatives but I guess that  " McPain " has gotten to big for them, but not to big to go and try to invite some of the attendees to a reception in private. Needless to say, the organizers are a little hostile towards  " McPain " at this point. Source

   If Senator McCain keeps things such as this up, the Democrats will have only themselves to blame if they do not capture the White House as McCain is simply splitting the Republicans into groups. Who is going to back who on the GOP side will become an interesting topic later on in the year.

Washington Times

  "It was a classical McCain move, dissing us by going behind our backs," said William J. Lauderback, executive vice president of the American Conservative Union.
    Convening through Saturday at a sold-out Omni Shoreham Hotel, the 34th annual CPAC will feature personal appearances and nationally televised speeches by every Republican presidential hopeful except Mr. McCain, said David A. Keene, chairman of the ACU, which, along with Young America's Foundation and Human Events, is a principal sponsor of CPAC.
    Conservative activists have speculated that Mr. McCain did not want to be seen on television "pandering" to Republican "right-wingers" but wanted to court those same activists at a reception in the same hotel.
    "He turned down repeated CPAC offers to speak but then tried to get around us by having his office call the hotel to rent a room for a reception for CPAC attendees -- without first seeking approval of CPAC organizers," said Mr. Lauderback.

 

Technorati tags: CPAC, John McCain, Conservatives

 

Walter Reed Problems/Complaints Ignored For Several Years

  In the ongoing saga of Walter Reed hospital, we now know that the  Army's surgeon general and higher up officials at the hospital had been hearing complaints from some of the members of Congress and veterans groups for at least the last three years.

    WaPo

A procession of Pentagon and Walter Reed officials expressed surprise last week about the living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares faced by wounded soldiers staying at the D.C. medical facility. But as far back as 2003, the commander of Walter Reed, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, who is now the Army's top medical officer, was told that soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were languishing and lost on the grounds, according to interviews.

                                  

   I'm just going to sit back and wait to see who the Bush administration is going to terminate over this. There are many in the chain who should be dismissed, beginning with Lt. Gen. Kiley.

 

In 2004, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and his wife stopped visiting the wounded at Walter Reed out of frustration. Young said he voiced concerns to commanders over troubling incidents he witnessed but was rebuffed or ignored. "When Bev or I would bring problems to the attention of authorities of Walter Reed, we were made to feel very uncomfortable," said Young, who began visiting the wounded recuperating at other facilities.

Beverly Young said she complained to Kiley several times. She once visited a soldier who was lying in urine on his mattress pad in the hospital. When a nurse ignored her, Young said, "I went flying down to Kevin Kiley's office again, and got nowhere. He has skirted this stuff for five years and blamed everyone else."

Young said that even after Kiley left Walter Reed to become the Army's surgeon general, "if anything could have been done to correct problems, he could have done it."

Soldiers and family members say their complaints have been ignored by commanders at many levels.

 

Technorati tags: Walter Reed, Congress, Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, Veterans Groups

Night-time News WrapUp

   Like wet sand through the hourglass, these are the wars in our lives. Just cannot seem to get past these things with an idiot in the White house.

AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb ripped through a bustling shopping district in a religiously mixed neighborhood of western Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding about 20 as the U.S.-Iraqi security operation entered its third week.

          * * * *

   The US is finally beginning to catch some flack about the treatment of detainees, from the UN no less.

AP

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. human rights chief expressed concern Wednesday at recent U.S. legislative and judicial actions that she said leave hundreds of detainees without any way to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.

Louise Arbour referred to the Military Commissions Act approved by Congress last year and last month's federal appeals court ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot use the U.S. court system to challenge their detention. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court.

          * * * *

   The Chinese stock market played kamikazi again on Thursday and dropped a bit more.

Al Jazeera

China's main stock index fell more than 3 per cent in early trade on Thursday, hit by renewed selling in blue chips, after it had rallied slightly in the previous session.

   I'm off to the races everyone! I've got computers to fix, taxes to do, and.....?   Good Day and Good Night!

 

Technorati tags: Baghdad, U.N. U.S., Military Commissions Acts, Detainees Iraq war, Gitmo, US Supreme Court, China, Stock Index

 

13 Year Old Dies From Drinking While 4 Others Watched

   There are some stupid people in this world not to mention ignorant!

Tucson Citizen

The Associated Press   02.28.2007

PHOENIX - Police arrested four people late Tuesday in connection with the death of a 13-year-old runaway whose body was found dumped in a Phoenix alley on Feb. 19.

Brenda Nguyen died after drinking a fifth of vodka in the course of about 30 minutes at a west Phoenix apartment complex, police said Wednesday. She died about four hours after the drinking binge, apparently of alcohol poisoning, and two men in the apartment then decided to get rid of her body.

Nguyen was last seen by her family on Feb. 11. It took five days for police to identify her body.

According to a police probable cause statement filed in court, Clayton Koepke, 18, wanted Nguyen to drink heavily so he could have sex with her. He and Armando Hernandez Jr., 18, watched as she drank 5 full glasses of vodka, fell unconscious and began having seizures and trouble breathing during the evening on Feb. 18.

Koepke and Hernandez, along with Hernandez' mother, Ana Laura Hernandez, 44, and her boyfriend, Scott Andrew Franze, 38, watched the unconscious girl for three hours, sometimes performing CPR to get her to keep breathing, court documents allege. None called police or the fire department because they were afraid.

   I'm wondering how much vodka Clayton Koepke figured she needed before she would give it up, although not willingly. At thirteen years of age, one glass would have been more than enough. Either way, his sorry ass and his friends are on their way to the slammer.

    I wrote the other day on a man getting 200 years for having child porn on his computer so these assholes should get at least that much time and then some!

brenda nguyen, phoenix, 4 adults

 

 

 

22 GOP'ers Have Taken Cash Which NRCC Received From Alleged Terror Financier

   We all know about the National Republican Campaign Committee ( NRCC ) taking money from an accused terrorist financier ( Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari ).

   The NRCC said that they would donate the money to charity if their dirtbag is found guilty of the crimes that he was arrested for last week.

National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is already working on donating their contributions to charity and the NRCC should follow the same path, but they can't do that because some of the cash has been handed out to others already.  Source   MORE BELOW

                                                                        

   The following is a listing of those who have accepted the money. It remains to be seen if they will give it up, which I seriously doubt.

DCCC

22 Republican representatives have taken money from the NRCC since the accused terrorist began contributing to the Republicans:
Rick Renzi (AZ-01)
Marilyn Musgrave (CO-04)
Tom Latham (IA-04)
Bill Sali (ID-01)
Peter Roskam (IL-06)
Charles Boustany (LA-07)
Mike Rogers (MI-08)
Joe Knollenberg (MI-09)
Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11)
Michele Bachmann (MN-06)
Sam Graves (MO-06)
Robin Hayes (NC-08)
Heather Wilson (NM-01)
Jon Porter (NV-03)
Steve Chabot (OH-01)
Jim Gerlach (PA-06)
Charlie Dent (PA-15)
Tim Murphy (PA-18)
Thelma Drake (VA-02)
Cathy McMorris-Rogers (WA-05)
Dave Reichert (WA-08)
Barbara Cubin (WY-AL)

nrcc, abdul tawala ibn ali alishtari, nrsc, republican, terror financier

Olbermann Jumps On Condi Rice

   Having a few other jobs to do now and then, I sometimes miss things such as the episode on February 26 when Keith Olbermann tore into Condi Rice for not getting her facts straight while trying to compare Hussein to Hitler, White House point of view.

   Well I just watched that "Countdown" episode and Olbermann was ...Olbermann. what can you say?

   Here is the script and the video. you just have to watch it!!

   A sample:

TruthOut

 But, Secretary Rice, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was akin to overthrowing Adolf Hitler? Are you kidding? Did you want to provoke the world's laughter?

    And, please, Madame Secretary, if you are going to make that most implausible, subjective, dubious, ridiculous comparison; if you want to be as far off the mark about the Second World War as, say, the pathetic Holocaust-denier from Iran, Ahmadinejad - at least get the easily verifiable facts right: the facts whose home through history lies in your own department.                                                                 Your predecessors, Dr. Rice, didn't spend a year making up phony evidence and mistaking German balloon-inflating trucks for mobile germ warfare labs. They didn't pretend the world was ending because a tin-pot tyrant couldn't hand over the chemical weapons it turned out he'd destroyed a decade earlier. The Germans walked up to the front door of our State Department and said, "We're at war." It was in all the papers. And when that war ended, more than three horrible years later, our troops and the Russians were in Berlin. And we stayed, as an occupying force, well into the 1950s. As an occupying force, Madam Secretary!

  If you want to compare what we did to Hitler and in Germany to what we did to Saddam and in Iraq, I'm afraid you're going to have to buy the whole analogy. We were an occupying force in Germany, Dr. Rice, and by your logic, we're now an occupying force in Iraq. And if that's the way you see it, you damn well better come out and tell the American people so. Save your breath telling it to the Iraqis - most of them already buy that part of the comparison.

keith olbermann, condi rice, hussein, hitler, state department, iran

 

 

1st Lt. Ehren Watada 2nd Court-Martial Set For July

Yahoo News

February 28,2007

SEATTLE - The Army has set a second court-martial for July 16 for an officer who refused to deploy to Iraq and spoke out against the war and the Bush administration.

The first military trial for 1st Lt. Ehren Watada ended in a mistrial Feb. 7, when the judge said he didn't believe Watada, 28, fully understood a pretrial agreement he'd signed.

On Friday, the Army refiled charges of missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer. If convicted, Watada could be sentenced to six years in prison and be dishonorably discharged.

Eric Seitz, Watada's attorney, has said he will seek to have the charges dismissed on the grounds they violate the Constitution's protection against being tried twice for the same crime.

   The Bush Klingon Empire never gives up. Just like the Energizer bunny, they keep going and going.

   It is up to all of us to raise alot of hell with our elected officials and to make some noise everywhere so that we can to get this man out of this shit that the military is throwing at him. So, get to work!

1st lt. ehren watada, us army, military trial

The Evening News Bits and Pieces

   A middle school principal was busted for using and selling crystal meth after he was snitched on. CNN for more.

                    * * * *

   In the story that won't go away news, we have this from CNN

A Florida appeals court cleared the way Wednesday for Anna Nicole Smith to be buried next to her son, Daniel, in the Bahamas.

                  * * * *

   From BBC we hear that Airbus will kill off 10,000 jobs in Europe over the next four years. I'll bet that Boeing just loved that news!

                   * * * *

Al Jazeera

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

US stocks have risen after steep falls on Tuesday, as the head of the Federal Reserve said that no single trigger was responsible for the sell-off.

Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, said on Wednesday that he still expects "moderate growth" in the US economy, giving investors confidence to buy stocks one day after the Dow fell 416 points.

Chinese stocks also recovered by about four per cent, a day after the Shanghai Composite index fell nearly nine per cent – the biggest decline for a decade.

However, markets in Europe and Asia fell for a second day amid concerns about possible slowdowns in the US and Chinese economies.

 

middle school principal, crystal meth, anna nicole smith, airbus, us stock market, federal reserve

HRW Says CIA Detainee's Missing

   Here is an interesting report from the Human Rights Watch group which is reporting that 14 detainees held in the CIA's secret prison system are missing. That would be another shocker now wouldn't it?

HRW

February 2007

Estimates of the number of detainees held by the CIA over the course of the program vary.  The Washington Post described a two-tier system of detention, with some 30 “major terrorism suspects” being held at high-security prisons operated exclusively by CIA personnel, and an additional 70 less important suspects being transferred to prisons run by other countries’ intelligence services. The major suspects, also known as “High Value Targets,” were alleged top al-Qaeda leaders, not “foot soldiers.”

The picture emerging from detainee accounts, however, suggests that these numbers are understated, and that the true picture is more complex. For example, at the prison in Afghanistan where Khaled el-Masri was held, the guards were Afghan, but the interrogators, the main director, and the people in charge of prisoner transport appeared to be CIA. So while the prisoners had daily contact with Afghan personnel, all of the important decisions regarding detention, treatment, and release were made by Americans.

And at the so-called Dark Prison in Afghanistan, which appears to have been operated solely by CIA personnel, there were a substantial number of detainees who were not top terrorism suspects.  Human Rights Watch knows of some 20 prisoners previously held at that facility who are currently held at Guantanamo, as well as a former detainee who was released from Guantanamo in 2004. The majority of these prisoners (and obviously the one who was released) would not be considered major suspects.

Similarly, prisoners such as Marwan Jabour and the three Yemeni former detainees interviewed in 2005 by Amnesty International were far from top suspects—they were eventually released without charge.  Yet they too were held in prisons that seemed to have only American staff, as well as the extreme high-security arrangements characteristic of the CIA.

human rights watch, cia, guantanamo, dark prison, detainees

 

Olbermann Killing Democracy? That's What CNN's Glenn Beck Says

From American Progress Action Fund

"This material [article] was created by the Center for American Progress Action Fund"

Glenn Beck Claims Olbermann Is ‘Killing…The World’s Democracy,’ ‘Smacks Of…McCarthyism’

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann is profiled in this month’s issue of Rolling Stone. In the piece, Olbermann shares his thoughts on right-wing CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck:

A wolf in sheep’s clothing. The very dangerously bigoted guy who is selling himself as a pragmatic philosopher. I don’t think he sees his own bigotry. There’s something about him that suggests that, one night, he’ll say something that will cost him his career in television.

Glenn Beck responded tonight, calling Olbermann an “intolerant ideologue” whose ideas “smack of the same McCarthyism [Edward R.] Murrow fought so valiantly against.” Beck added, “Hey, Keith, you’re not saving the world’s democracy; you’re killing it, my friend, by trying to limit the marketplace of ideas to only those that reflect your own.”

Beck said tonight that his numerous inflammatory comments aren’t due to his right-wing point of view, but are merely a sign that he is “not perfect” and “struggl[ing] to find the answers to the issues that we face — on my own.” Some lowlights from Beck’s “struggle”:

The anti-gay slur “faggot” is nothing more than “a naughty name.” [1/23/07]

“What happened to the Duke lacrosse team was practically a lynching without the rope. And for the first time in my life, Mr. Oreo Cookie without the chocolate on the outside can understand why people celebrated when O.J. Simpson was acquitted.” [1/15/07, using a racial slur for African-Americans that refers to “being black on the outside and white on the inside”]

“[W]hat I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’” [11/14/06, on what he would like to say to Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first elected Muslim member of Congress]

“I wonder if I’m alone in this — you know it took me about a year to start hating the 9-11 victims’ families? Took me about a year.” [9/9/05]

“And that’s all we’re hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones we’re seeing on television are the scumbags.” [9/9/05]       ENTIRE ARTICLE

Posted by Nico February 27, 2007

keith olbermann, glenn beck, cnn, msnbc, democracy

Catholic Church Still Ripping Off Victims

Yahoo News

By ALLISON HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 28,2007

SAN DIEGO - The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few hours before it was to go to trial Wednesday in the first of more than 140 lawsuits accusing priests of sexual abuse.

The bankruptcy filing, put in at five minutes to midnight, automatically halted the court proceedings.

In a letter posted on the diocese's Web site, Bishop Robert H. Brom said the diocese made its decision because any damage awards in the earlier trials could deplete "diocesan and insurance resources" and leave nothing for other victims.

The diocese claimed in the filing late Tuesday $95.7 million in property holdings and another $60.4 million in liquid assets, including stocks, bonds and operating accounts.

                                                          

      This is one of the reason that I have a problem with the Catholic church. The church has spent numerous years hiding and moving these priests around from one place to another to avoid having to deal with the priests sexual abuse problems and now that the church has been found out and sued for their misdeeds, they want to claim bankruptcy to avoid paying these people that they have let be abused while the church leaders looked the other way! What a crock.

roman catholic diocese of san diego, chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, bishop robert h. brom

Pentagon Solves Walter Reed Problems The Bush Crime Family Way

     Here is an interesting note for you.

     After all of the flack that the government and the military caught after the Washington Post articles on the bad conditions in certain buildings at Walter Reed, the boys at the Pentagon have found a way to solve the problem. This would be typical Bush Crime Family method of operation.

 The Air Force Times says that the soldiers at Walter Reed were told that from now on they will have to wake up at 6 a.m. each morning to ready their rooms for a 7 a.m. inspection and that they are prohibited from speaking to the media.

      Bush Crime Family censorship in action because the public was made aware of the conditions that our troops have to put up with from our president who claims to care about our fighting men and women.

      IMPEACH! INDICT! IMPRISON!

walter reed, pentagon, bush crime family, military censorship

National Security Experts Grim On Terror War

   Crossposted from Common Dreams

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 by the Inter Press Service

by Jim Lobe

A new survey of more than 100 U.S. foreign policy experts -- both Republicans and Democrats, as well as retired military and intelligence professionals -- has found deep pessimism over the "global war on terror" and even deeper pessimism over the war in Iraq.
According to the survey, the second in the last six months carried out by Foreign Policy magazine and the Centre for American Progress, two out of three foreign policy experts oppose President George W. Bush's plans to increase troop levels in Iraq, while nearly nine out of 10 say the war there is undermining U.S. national security.
Overall, three out of four respondents disagreed with assertion that Washington "is winning the war on terror", while 81 percent said the world is becoming "more dangerous" to the United States and its people.
The survey also found wide, although narrowing differences compared to six months ago, between expert opinion and the views of the general public on a range of issues related to Iraq and the war on terrorism. Experts were significantly more pessimistic that the public at large and voiced considerably less confidence in the Bush administration's performance.
The survey, called "The Terrorism Index" and published in the upcoming issue of Foreign Policy, is based on interviews with former senior government officials who have served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, as well as independent analysts, experts and journalists who have covered national security issues.
Eighty percent of respondents have served in the U.S. government, and more than half in the executive branch, including in the White House or in top cabinet posts. Twenty-six percent served in the military and 18 percent in the intelligence community.
As to their political leanings, 30 percent of respondents identified themselves as "conservative"; 42 percent said they were "moderate"; and 44 percent "liberal". But the survey organisers weighted the results so that the views of self-described "conservatives" were given equal representation with those of the "liberals".
When broken down ideologically, 43 percent of the conservatives polled said they believed the U.S. is winning the war on terror, compared to 50 percent of conservatives who disagreed. Only five percent of both moderates and liberals said they thought Washington was winning.
By contrast, 46 percent of the general public told interviewers in a Pew Center for the People & the Press survey conducted last November that Washington is winning the war on terrorism, although that number has shrunk to around 33 percent in the most recent polling.
Asked whether they believed Bush had a plan to protect the country from terrorism, seven out of 10 of the expert respondents -- including nearly 40 percent of the self-described conservatives -- said no. By contrast, 51 percent of the public said last November that Bush does indeed have a plan.
Experts were particularly pessimistic on Iraq and U.S. policy there. Eighty-eight percent of the experts said the war is having a negative impact on U.S. national security.
Asked to rate the administration's job in Iraq on a 10-point scale, 92 percent of respondents -- including 82 percent of conservatives -- described it as below five. Fifty-nine percent of the entire group gave the administration the lowest possible rating (1-2), including a plurality of 48 percent of conservatives.
Significantly, among 81 percent of experts who said the world is becoming "more dangerous" to the U.S., a large plurality identified the Iraq war as "one principal reason" why. Only six months ago, the reason most cited by the experts who believed the world was becoming more dangerous was anger and hostility among Muslims.
Only one-third of the expert pool agreed with the administration's notion that Iraq has become the "central front on the war on terrorism," while two-thirds said they disagreed.
That may help explain why two-thirds of the experts said they disagreed with Bush's plan to increase troop levels in Iraq, but 69 percent said they favoured adding troops in Afghanistan. In the last six months, according to the survey, expert confidence about the situation in Afghanistan has fallen sharply, according to the survey.
Indeed, asked to rate the relative strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan today compared to one year ago, a total of 83 percent of experts rated it either "somewhat" (57 percent) or "much stronger" (26 percent).
The experts also rated Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestine's Hamas as "much" and "somewhat" stronger, respectively, than a year ago. A large majority (72) percent said they believed that Islamist extremism was also growing in Western Europe.
The experts also voiced strong concern about Pakistan. Asked to choose the country most likely to become the next stronghold of al Qaeda, Pakistan (30 percent) was rated second, just behind Somalia (34 percent, but that was before Ethiopia's recent military campaign there), and 91 percent of the experts said the U.S. must increase pressure on Pakistan to crackdown against Taliban and al Qaeda militants in tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
Asked to identify the world's most dangerous government, 40 percent of the experts named Iran, while 35 percent cited North Korea, and nine percent -- including 14 percent of self-described conservatives -- identified the United States itself.
At the same time, a plurality of 26 percent rated "a denuclearised Korean Peninsula" as the "most important policy objective" for Washington to achieve in the next five years. Seventeen percent identified a stable Iraq as the most important objective, and 12 percent named stopping Iran's nuclear programme.
North Korea's status at the top of the list may be explained by the experts' assessment that Pyongyang was significantly more likely to transfer nuclear technology to terrorists than any other country, including the two most-often-cited countries, Pakistan and Iran.
The experts voiced little confidence in Bush's ability to address the challenge posed by Tehran, with 73 percent voiding disapproval of his performance to date. That, too, was a significantly higher percentage than the general public's view. Last November, a plurality of 40 percent of respondents told Pew they approved of Bush's handling of Iran.
Asked to rate the impact of 14 specific policies or actions by the administration, the experts cited the war in Iraq as the most negative by far, followed by the detention and treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo and elsewhere, and U.S. positions during the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
On the more positive side, experts said the administration had made real progress in stanching the flow of money to terrorist organisations around the world and the least progress in public diplomacy.

 

foreign policy magazine, the centre for american progress, war on terror, george w. bush, iraq, al qaeda

Democrats Chasing Another Anti-War Proposal

AP   

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders are developing an anti-war proposal that wouldn't cut off money for U.S. troops in Iraq while requiring President Bush to acknowledge problems with an overburdened military.

The plan could draw broad bipartisan support but was expected to be a tough sell to members who said they don't think it goes far enough to assuage voters angered by the four-year war.

Bush "hasn't to date done anything we've asked him to do, so why we would think he would do anything in the future is beyond me," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey ( voting record), D-Calif., one of a group of liberal Democrats pushing for an immediate end to the war.

   Someone needs to just flat out slap a few of these Democrats in the Congress and the Senate upside their heads! In duty to my country, I volunteer to do it.

    Thus far we have had those worthless non-binding resolutions that went no where. Come to think of it, that is all that we have had. Those Democrats just keep insisting on doing things the hard way, it would seem instead of just going for the jugular and cutting off the war funding which is the only way that Bush is going to be stopped.

    It is pretty sad that even those that we elected in November are buying into the cutting funding will not show support for our US troops, which is the biggest lie and one of the best that the Bush spin machine has come up with to date.

    I think that the Dems have forgotten that the American citizens want his war over and next next year either. These politicians do not give the American people enough credit as we generally know that cutting the funds off is not going to hurt the troops in any way, shape or form.

    Come on ladies and gentleman! Quit screwing around and do what we put you into office to do. Quit worrying about politics for once and worry about our people over in Iraq.

 

house democratic leaders, bush, rep. lynn woolsey, liberal democrats

Wednesday Morning News

    Canadian parliament shows some common sense and decides against renewing two anti-terror measures that were put into place after the 9/11 attacks says the BBC. Canadian PM Harper used the US White House line by saying that opposition Liberals' were soft on terror.

The measures allowed suspects to be detained without charge for three days and could compel witnesses to testify.

The minority Conservative government accused the opposition Liberals of being soft on terror.

The vote comes days after the Supreme Court revoked a law allowing foreign suspects to be detained indefinitely.

                                                         

    The UPI reports that the Philippine military is claiming that it has killed  one of the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf Group which has been linked to al-Qaida.

Lt. Gen. Eugenio Cedo, head of the Armed Forces Western Minanao Command, said Albader Parad was killed in fighting earlier this week between terrorists and army rangers in an area of Sulu known as Indanan.

Abu Sayyaf chief Khadaffy Janjalani and Jainal Antel Sali Jr., an ASG commander, had been killed earlier, according to the report in Wednesday's edition of The Philippine Star.

          * * * *

    Federal and state agents raided two pharmacies in Orlando Florida at two Signature Pharmacy stores and arrested four company employees including two pharmacist and charging them with with criminal diversion of prescription medications and prescriptions, criminal sale of a controlled substance and insurance fraud.

   It is reported that athletes and celebrities were some of the customers and were maybe into buying steriods.


news, canadian parliament, abu sayyaf group, philippine military, signature pharmacy stores

Asian Markets Open Lower Amid US Recession Fears

From BBC

Steep dip as Asian markets open

Asian stock markets have opened sharply lower after the biggest drop in Chinese stocks in a decade triggered a steep slide in global markets.

Japan's TOPIX index dipped 5.04% while the country's Nikkei 225 stock index fell 693.50 points, or 3.83%.

The slips were echoed in the South Korean capital, Seoul, where the country's benchmark index fell 3.9%.

Tuesday's falls were sparked by a near-9% slide in Shanghai and comments fuelling fears of a US recession.

   It's sort of funny the way many people have been acting since the Dow Jones dropped some 416 points on Tuesday. I suspect that we will see more of the same on Wednesday while the other world markets worry about a U.S. recession being on the horizon.

   I own stocks of various companies so I have been asked quite a bit today if I was concerned with the drop. My answer? No, I'm not. I don't even think about it. What's to worry about? We have to have a correcting once in awhile and this is all that I see this as, with a few minor irritations thrown in.

   I look at this as a great buying opportunity because that's all it is,for now.
asian markets, global markets, dow jones industrials, us recession, stock market

 

 

Democrats going Nowhere Fast

Yahoo News

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders are backing away from a plan to scale back U.S. involvement in the Iraq war by using Congress' most powerful tool — withholding money in the budget.

Instead, party officials said Tuesday, leaders are weighing a proposal that would attempt to embarrass Bush into abandoning his war strategy. Under a plan discussed behind closed doors, Democrats probably would fund President Bush's entire $93.4 billion request for war spending this year but require that any troops sent into battle that don't meet certain standards receive a presidential waiver and that Congress be notified of the shortcoming.

The compromise is an attempt to please members who want to end the war immediately by cutting funding and others who do not want to appear as though Democrats are turning their back on troops.

"I think it's a responsible approach," said Rep. Chet Edwards (voting record), D-Texas.

   So now we have our elected ' stop the war ' Democrats thinking of funding Bush's entire $93 billion war spending for this year. What next, let him keep the White House forever.

    Embarrass Bush? What planet have you idiots been on for the last six years? You can't embarrass someone with an I.Q. of nothing, he doesn't understand that sort of thing. Wake the hell up you guys and get with the program!

 

house democrat leaders, iraq war, congress, president bush, us troops

Secretary Gates Says Military Needs Supplemental Funds By April, U.S.-Led Forces Nab Shiite Death Squad Bosses, and The Democrats Are Getting Incompetent

  AP 

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S.-led strike forces seized suspected Shiite death squad bosses Tuesday in raids that tested the fragile bonds between the government and a powerful militia faction allowing the Baghdad security crackdown to move ahead.

    The sweeps through the Sadr City slum were part of highly sensitive forays into areas loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has ridiculed the 2-week-old campaign for failing to halt bombings by suspected Sunni insurgents against Shiite civilians.

          * * * *

                                     

McClatchy 

By Margaret Talev

WASHINGTON - Back from a weeklong recess, top Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate acknowledged Tuesday that they still don't have a game plan for how to force President Bush to change policy in Iraq.

"There has not yet been a determination made by the Democratic caucus as to how we will finalize our legislative approach to this," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. He said it would be another week or two before Senate debate on Iraq resumed.

House Democrats are no closer to decisive action, though they did pass a nonbinding resolution earlier this month opposing Bush's troop buildup in Iraq.

"We are in the process of choosing the least dangerous, the least negative alternative," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "We're not there; there's not a consensus."

    Me thinks that the Democrats that we elected to put an end to this war have gotten spineless and stupid, I'm sad to say. Cut off the damned funding!!

                    * * * *

    The UPI reports that Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday has testified that the military needs those supplemental funds by April to pay for the war in Iraq.

   Gates also said that the military has already begun spending the money.

    Our military is sounding like the Bush White House more and more each day, spending money that they do not even have yet.  This is but another ploy by the Bush Crime Family to make the Democrats look bad if the cash isn't allocated by April.

   I would look at this in a positive note. The U.S. troops would be coming home if they can't be supported for their stay in Iraq.

    I cannot wait to hear the Republican spin on this one! It should be good.

 

Technorati tags: Secretary Gates, Shiite, Sadr City, Sunni insurgents, Democrats, Harry Reid, US military, Funding

The Three Amigo's ( U.S.,Iran, Syria ) To Have A Sitdown About Iraq

CNN says that the United States, Iran, and Syria may have a face to face conference next month to chat about the mess in Iraq. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at that get together!

   Little Miss Condi told reporters that the United States supports the get together which is supposed to take place during the first part of March.

   Is that before the Bush Crime Family bombs Iran or afterwards? This will be an interesting meeting with the reps. from the U.S. talking all kinds of trash and Iran and Syria telling the U.S. what it can do with itself.

CNN  

It could set the stage for a ministerial-level meeting in April that will include the Group of Eight -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia -- and Iraq's neighbors -- Syria, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey.

Multilateral organizations and China -- the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council which is not in the G-8 -- will also be invited, Rice said.

 

Technorati tags: U.S., Iran, Syria, Iraq, Condi Rice

 

White Will Veto Anti-Terror Bill From Congress

   The White House has said  that it would veto a September 11th  anti-terror bill from Congress if it contains a clause that would let airport screeners unionize. That statement was backed by some 36 Republicans also.

   I may need to seek medical attention because this is one of the very rare times that I agree with the Bush Crime Family. The Congress needs to worry about the anti- terrorist funding being spent in the manner that it is supposed to be and not whether or not the screeners can join a union. There's plenty of time for that crap later on. This Congress has more important issues to deal with so let's deal with them!

AP

"As the legislation currently stands, the president's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

Senate Republicans swiftly backed up the threat with a pledge by more than enough senators to block any veto override attempt.

"If the final bill contains such a provision, forcing you to veto it, we pledge to sustain your veto," they wrote to the president. Sen. Jim DeMint ( voting record), R-S.C., planned to offer an amendment to strip the provision from the bill.

      The bill also includes an amendment that would let the states delay the issuing of standardized driver licenses, which Bush opposes.

   On that subject, I say good deal. I don't care how much Bush or anyone else say's that a national driver license will cut down on terror problems or fake I.D.'s, that is not going to happen. We do not need big brother, especially this one, keeping their every eye on us.

Other measures in the bill would improve rail and aviation security, provide funds for state and local emergency communications systems, improve intelligence sharing between federal, state and local officials, and expand a visa waiver benefit for favored countries.

 

Technorati tags: White House, anti terror bill, National Driver License

 

COMMITMENTS

  Previous things to do will keep me away from here until 5: 30 P.M. (EST)

  Have a good afternoon!