So if jobs are scarce and wages are flat, who's benefiting from the economy's expansion? The direct gains are going largely to corporate profits, which rose at an annual rate of more than 40 percent in the third quarter. Indirectly, that means that gains are going to stockholders, who are the ultimate owners of corporate profits.
According to the most recent estimate, only 8 percent of corporate taxes were paid by the poorest 60 percent of families, while 67 percent were paid by the richest 5 percent, and 49 percent by the richest 1 percent. ("Class warfare!" the right shouts.)
But how Bush can do this much damage and still expect to get re-elected? That is the true genius of his plan. He sweetened the plan with some little tax breaks, like increased child care credit, easing the marriage penalty, and expanded the lower tax brackets to include more low-income people. The only problem—those things are all due to expire in 2005, after he is re-elected. On the other hand, his tax breaks for the rich (i.e. rate reductions and capital gains and dividend tax breaks) don’t expire. The final touch is the incentives for businesses to invest in equipment also expire at the end of 2004, so they have to use it or lose it, thus making the economy appear to surge.
The Bush Administration is, has, and will use every trick in the book to keep this house of cards standing long enough to get George W. Bush re-elected. I do not even want to imagine what they have planned for their second term.
•“Having been here and seeing the care that these troops get is comforting for me and Laura. We are -- should and must provide the best care for anybody who is willing to put their life in harm's way.”-- Walter Reed Army Hospital, 1/17/03 (That same day the Bush Administration cut off access to its health care system from approximately 164,000 veterans.)
• “We're working hard to make sure your job is easier, that the port is safer. The Customs Service is working with overseas ports and shippers to improve its knowledge of container shipments, assessing risk so that we have a better feel of who we ought to look at, what we ought to worry about.”-- 6/24/02 (Bush’s 2003 and 2004 budgets provide nothing for port security grants. In August, he vetoed all $39 million for the Container Security Initiative that he specifically touted.)
And as an example of giving people what they want, the night Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was captured was the biggest tip night for pizza deliverers of the year. No. 2 was the night Madonna (news - web sites) and Britney Spears kissed on the MTV Music Video awards.
"Excuse me, a chemical weapon was found in the home state of George Bush," says Levitas. "I'm not saying the Justice Department deliberately decided to downplay the story because they thought it might be embarrassing to the US government if weapons of mass destruction were found in America before they were found in Iraq. But I am saying it was a mistake not to give this higher profile."
• “Liberty and order will never be completely safe until a trespass on the Constitutional provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents and invasion of the dearest rights.”-- James Madison, 4th U.S. President and “Father of the Constitution”, 1792
• "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."-- Patrick Henry (1736-1799) American Revolutionary
• "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821
• "The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."-- Thomas Jefferson, 1825
• “It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), American Revolutionary and Author
• "We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts--not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution”-- Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President
Moreover, the Federal Aviation Administration had published a warning on its website months earlier that “Bin Laden’s anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation.” Please note that last phrase—“particularly to U.S. civil aviation.”
Actually, Bush first received warning of an impending Al Qaeda operation the previous July. According to the Washington Post, Richard Clarke, the government’s top counter terrorism official, told officials of a dozen federal agencies at a White House meeting July 5, ”Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon.” C.I.A. Director Tenet “had been ‘nearly frantic’ with concern since June 22,” the Post said. And Ms. Rice, herself, no less, warned on June 28, “It is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks.”
Didn’t the date September 11 ring a bell with anyone in the administration? To Islamic guerilla organizations, September 11 is what December 7 is to Americans. It commemorates the date the Jordanian army expelled the PLO from Jordan. The terrorists who attacked the Israeli village at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich were known as the September 11 Movement. In other words, September 11 was not some mere random date chosen by bin Laden’s gang to carry out their attacks. It had symbolic meaning.
FBI Intelligence Bulletin no. 89 also alerts local police that "activists often communicate with one another using cell phones or radios to coordinate activities or to update colleagues about ongoing events. Other types of media equipment (video cameras, photogenic equipment, audiotape recorders, microphones, and computer and radio equipment) may be used for documenting potential cases of police brutality and for distribution of information over the Internet."
But why does this brooding FBI bulletin contain so many references to entirely legal protest activities? Like this one: "Activists may use intimidation techniques such as videotaping" during demonstrations. Who is intimidating whom?
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers.
A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday.
A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday.
between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.)
Where is this taking us? Thomas Piketty, whose work with Saez has transformed our understanding of income distribution, warns that current policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." If he's right – and I fear that he is – we will end up suffering not only from injustice, but from a vast waste of human potential.
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
mred-good grief - thou shall not annotate suspiciously
A new U.S. intelligence report obtained by WorldNetDaily describes a plot by "Pakistani Islamic extremists" to pose as aides to disabled travelers to obtain U.S. visas and carry out terrorist attacks once inside the U.S.
Al-Qaida is still active in Pakistan, routinely described by the administration as a "key ally" in the war on terror. U.S. intelligence believes the terror network's top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, have taken refuge in the Islamic state's northern tribal belt
" This is not the first time that "CrankNetDaily" has appeared to be an organ of the Ministry of Propaganda. Why else would the "Homeland Security" Department feed classified intelligence to them, and them alone?
Strip searches and cavity searches for every disabled person in America!"
But Ashcroft terrorist list obtained by The Times also includes two New Jersey men, operators of small grocery stores, who were convicted of accepting hundreds of boxes of stolen breakfast cereal, in a crime that occurred 16 months before the terrorist hijackings.
Their suspicions were further fueled by a Syracuse University study this month showing that the median sentence for defendants in international terrorism cases won by the department is two weeks.
Twice as many US soldiers have been killed or wounded in action in the past four months as in the previous four, despite their commanders' claim to have made significant gains against the resistance.
Where is this taking us? Thomas Piketty, whose work with Saez has transformed our understanding of income distribution, warns that current policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." If he's right – and I fear that he is – we will end up suffering not only from injustice, but from a vast waste of human potential.
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
mred-good grief - thou shall not annotate suspiciously
A new U.S. intelligence report obtained by WorldNetDaily describes a plot by "Pakistani Islamic extremists" to pose as aides to disabled travelers to obtain U.S. visas and carry out terrorist attacks once inside the U.S.
Al-Qaida is still active in Pakistan, routinely described by the administration as a "key ally" in the war on terror. U.S. intelligence believes the terror network's top leaders, including Osama bin Laden, have taken refuge in the Islamic state's northern tribal belt
" This is not the first time that "CrankNetDaily" has appeared to be an organ of the Ministry of Propaganda. Why else would the "Homeland Security" Department feed classified intelligence to them, and them alone?
Strip searches and cavity searches for every disabled person in America!"
But Ashcroft terrorist list obtained by The Times also includes two New Jersey men, operators of small grocery stores, who were convicted of accepting hundreds of boxes of stolen breakfast cereal, in a crime that occurred 16 months before the terrorist hijackings.
Their suspicions were further fueled by a Syracuse University study this month showing that the median sentence for defendants in international terrorism cases won by the department is two weeks.
Twice as many US soldiers have been killed or wounded in action in the past four months as in the previous four, despite their commanders' claim to have made significant gains against the resistance.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
mr ed - ok - so heres where my thinking is heading wrt the geo-political future of the planet. im just gonna ramble....
praps my overall sense is that rove and the neocons and murdoch et al are really good at what they do. the world seems to make a lot more sense under that prima facie assumption. im nearly sure that 911 was an inside job. im nearly sure that any lawyer could prove on balance of evidence, that the inside job story is more likely than the osama story. that means that things are about 1000 times worse than we originally thought on that horrible day. 1000 times. if we thought the osama thing was simply incomprehensable, then the idea that the president et al were complicit is orders of magnitude more fucked up. but the evidence seems to point more in that direction than the osama direction (at least not without inside support). so the stage is set.
then we get the iraq debacle - with military personel totally stretched, and the apparently inevitable imminent-ish invasions of syria and iran. there are only 2 ways that u can solve that problem. implement the draft (which at least probably adds many months to the time frame) or secondly, u nuke 'em. praps theres a third way - sars or some other disease. these people arent idiots - i reckon they *must* have a plan - newt is wrong - they arent 'going off a cliff' - at least, not without a stunt double.
and then we have the odd industry battles going on - first steel, and gm food, then textiles, now beef, and tourism (all details of passengers, and now marshalls - 'sovereign air space'). assuming they have a plan, then there must a purpose behind all this - its almost like they are intentionally isolating themselves, and destroying the usd in the process. praps the isolationism is purely to create other monsters. 'the japs wont buy our beef, cos canada is mad'. enemies enemies everywhere. or perhaps they did some analysis and decided that say a 90% fall in the usd would hurt russia and china more than the US. it looks intentional to me if im feeling skeptical - but i cant work out why they would do that. thank godness i knew i was crazy before bush was selected.
praps my overall sense is that rove and the neocons and murdoch et al are really good at what they do. the world seems to make a lot more sense under that prima facie assumption. im nearly sure that 911 was an inside job. im nearly sure that any lawyer could prove on balance of evidence, that the inside job story is more likely than the osama story. that means that things are about 1000 times worse than we originally thought on that horrible day. 1000 times. if we thought the osama thing was simply incomprehensable, then the idea that the president et al were complicit is orders of magnitude more fucked up. but the evidence seems to point more in that direction than the osama direction (at least not without inside support). so the stage is set.
then we get the iraq debacle - with military personel totally stretched, and the apparently inevitable imminent-ish invasions of syria and iran. there are only 2 ways that u can solve that problem. implement the draft (which at least probably adds many months to the time frame) or secondly, u nuke 'em. praps theres a third way - sars or some other disease. these people arent idiots - i reckon they *must* have a plan - newt is wrong - they arent 'going off a cliff' - at least, not without a stunt double.
and then we have the odd industry battles going on - first steel, and gm food, then textiles, now beef, and tourism (all details of passengers, and now marshalls - 'sovereign air space'). assuming they have a plan, then there must a purpose behind all this - its almost like they are intentionally isolating themselves, and destroying the usd in the process. praps the isolationism is purely to create other monsters. 'the japs wont buy our beef, cos canada is mad'. enemies enemies everywhere. or perhaps they did some analysis and decided that say a 90% fall in the usd would hurt russia and china more than the US. it looks intentional to me if im feeling skeptical - but i cant work out why they would do that. thank godness i knew i was crazy before bush was selected.
safire: I've known Cheney since our Nixon days. He's thoughtful, calmly conservative, nonpompous, decisive and was accessible to me over the phone on the hectic morning after 9/11.
In Washington, the US Homeland Security Department said today non-US airlines will be told "on a flight by flight basis" whether to put sky marshals on board, as a precondition for entering US airspace.
Yesterday's announcement by the British government followed a British press report -- denied by Saudi authorities -- that Islamic extremists were planning to attack a British airliner in Riyadh by crashing small planes into it.
Do you think GlobalNet (which until December 22 was called iDial Networks, and is a trendy VoIP company based in Woodlands, Texas) negotiated this contract in a week? With Libya completely isolated by American sanctions? Or did GlobalNet have a tip off that Libya was going to be opened to American investment, and started the negotiations months before? If there was a tip off, Gaddafi could not have been acting on the basis of Saddam's capture, and somebody in the American government must have known about Gaddafi's 'surprise' announcement in advance.
Butler who resolutely said that any unilateral war engaged by the US against Iraq would be wrong, illegal and unjustifiable, and that the only way military action should occur, if it does and if its absolutely necessary, is through UN Security Council approval.
fisk: Far from being another despotic little killer, Gadhafi is now, according to Jack Straw, "statesmanlike and courageous."
For Rove, gay marriage is the new Willie Horton, a wedge issue perfectly suited to fire up the corporate-funded right-wing church network while diverting public attention from an ailing economy and a failing war effort.
As governor of Vermont, Howard Dean approved gay civil unions, somewhat different from gay marriage. But the Bush/Rove GOP is unlikely to make such fine distinctions, any more than Bush One belabored the legal intricacies of the Willie Horton parole.
Just after Japan's surrender, the secretary of war sent a team of analysts called the United States Strategic Bombing Survey to Japan to evaluate the effects of America's bombing campaign. Among other things, the group was charged with ascertaining how the aerial assault (both conventional and nuclear) affected the morale of Japanese citizens and the decision-making of Japan's wartime leaders.
The team's conclusions fly in the face of what we now consider the conventional wisdom. "It cannot be said that the atomic bomb convinced the leaders who effected the peace of the necessity of surrender," the Survey says.
The 2003 award is shared by adventurer Steve Irwin and columnist Michael Duffy. The crocodile hunter declared, in the presence of John Howard, that the Prime Minister is the greatest leader in the entire world. Soon after, Irwin scored an invitation to lunch with George Bush at the Lodge - demonstrating that flattery works.
In awarding the logistics contract, the Army acknowledged last year, it failed to consider that haliburton was under criminal investigation for a previous Pentagon contract, even though that inquiry was disclosed in Halliburton's annual report.
Ms. Hall, the Halliburton spokeswoman, said subcontractors were kept confidential "in order to ensure subcontractor safety" in Iraq. By contrast, Bechtel, the other large government contractor involved in the reconstruction effort, lists its subcontractors on its Web site.
The three-day conference included officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the corps and other government agencies as well as executives from KBR. The companies that attended, according to David C. Farlow, a spokesman for the United States Central Command, included only "commercial contractors currently working in Iraq."
For Australia, the obvious example of such a threat that comes to mind is North Korea, an impoverished Orwellian society where paranoia, poverty and nuclear potency intersect, financed by drug smuggling and missile sales.
Back in Moscow, most commentators were sure of the motive: Chelsea was, like Chukotka before it, a safety net. Should the Kremlin ever demand Abramovich's extradition, Britain would think twice with thousands of Chelsea fans picketing the high court. (A day after the Chelsea deal, Khodorkovsky's right-hand man Platon Lebedev was arrested in Moscow; two weeks later, Yukos's Moscow offices were raided by armed police.)
Writing in The Independent, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, said: "It is undignified for the Prime Minister, and worrying for his nation, to go on believing in a threat which everyone else can see was a fantasy. Nor will Tony Blair ever recover his credibility until he stops insisting he is right when the public can see he was wrong."
Libya was not close to building a nuclear weapon, said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday. The deal was brokered by Britain and America in secret talks that sidelined the IAEA, the United Nations' atomic energy agency.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.
The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial institution," which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
U.S. President George W. Bush called Putin twice this month to raise concerns about where Russia is headed, according to a senior State Department official. On Dec. 1, Bush called to express concerns about whether the rule of law was being used selectively.
And, in what appears to be an attempt to push Khodorkovsky into making a deal, Tax Ministry reports have been leaked claiming the company owes $5 billion in back taxes.
On Tuesday, the same day as a Moscow court extended Khodorkovsky's stay in jail another three months, a visibly tense Putin indicated for the first time that the Yukos affair might not be an isolated case and threatened action against other oligarchs that gained their wealth in fraudulent privatizations if they did not toe the line.
Bush's next declared mission, that of toppling Yasser Arafat, only reinforces the image of the president as a king who knows not the boundaries of his kingdom, nor the limits of his power. Or, as a captive of pro-Israeli hawks hell-bent on remaking the Middle East to Likud designs.
He invoked democracy but ignored its expression abroad and suspended its principles at home.
To many of the soldiers whose retirements and departures are on ice, however, stop-loss is an inconvenience, a hardship and, in some cases, a personal disaster. Some are resigned to fulfilling what they consider their patriotic duty. Others are livid, insisting they have fallen victim to a policy that amounts to an unannounced, unheralded draft.
"The West should be very afraid of what is going on in Russia now," said Boris Berezovsky, the former owner of Sibneft and Putin antagonist exiled in London. "What's happening now could lead to a new military build-up. And a nationalist Russia armed with nuclear weapons is far more dangerous for the West than Hitler's Third Reich ever was."
Putin has also seemed anxious to talk up Russia's military capabilities. On the eve of the EU-Russia summit in Italy shortly after Khodorkovsky was arrested, he made clear in an interview with Italian journalists that he considered Russia a force to be reckoned with. He stressed again that Russia retains the right to launch preemptive strikes and pointed out that Russia has weapons that "can penetrate any missile defense system."
While tacitly acknowledging that the alert was a fake, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge decided to maintain the ‘Orange Code’ alert: "Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted."
What is disturbing in the December 21 statement is the fact that an "actual" or "attempted" Al Qaeda terrorist attack seems already to be in the official pipeline.
In the words of David Rockefeller: "We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."
According to the official statement, which must be taken seriously, an "actual terrorist attack" in the near future on American soil would lead to a Red Code Alert. The latter in turn, would create conditions for the (temporary) suspension of the normal functions of civilian government, as foreseen by General Tommy Franks. This scenario was envisaged by Secretary Tom Ridge in a CBS News Interview on December 22, 2003: "If we simply go to red ... it basically shuts down the country," meaning that civilian government bodies would be closed down and taken over by and Emergency Administration. The scenario is presented in detail at the Homeland department's Ready.Gov
Whenever any of the administration’s "misspeaks" were exposed, Fatherland Security czar Tom Rigid would take to the air and publicly change the Colorform on the Alibi for Authoritarianism Rainbow to a bolder shade.
Rumsfeld deepened the pit by summarizing the anarchy thusly, "It’s untidy. And freedom’s untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." With this remark he unintentionally disclosed that some of the freest people in the world are now occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
In an April 2003 interview with the New York Times, Garner said, "If President Bush had been president [during Vietnam], we would have won." Why Garner thought a drunken, drug-abusing, MOOA (Missing Out of Action) National Guardsman would have made a good president back then remains unclear.
Garner did next to nothing to stabilize the country during his brief rule. Seeing an opportunity, Henry Kissinger managed to place one of his lackeys, L. Paul Bremer III, the former managing director of Kissinger & Associates (and the man in charge of counterterrorism in the Reagan White House), in the void widened by Garner.
would it be asking too much to do the same for the American people through the adoption of the following two amendments to the U.S. Constitution:
"The Congress shall have the power to declare war, and this time we
really do mean it." "No person shall be denied life, liberty, or
property without due process of law, and this time we really do mean it."
By all world standards, America's trade deficits are
stunningly unsustainable. We have to go back to Italy
in 1924 to find a major nation that, in percentage
terms, has run a larger peacetime trade deficit.
The full significance of this is that Italy in 1924
was a true economic basket case -- so much so that in
January 1925, Mussolini seized dictatorial powers
In Washington, the US Homeland Security Department said today non-US airlines will be told "on a flight by flight basis" whether to put sky marshals on board, as a precondition for entering US airspace.
Yesterday's announcement by the British government followed a British press report -- denied by Saudi authorities -- that Islamic extremists were planning to attack a British airliner in Riyadh by crashing small planes into it.
Do you think GlobalNet (which until December 22 was called iDial Networks, and is a trendy VoIP company based in Woodlands, Texas) negotiated this contract in a week? With Libya completely isolated by American sanctions? Or did GlobalNet have a tip off that Libya was going to be opened to American investment, and started the negotiations months before? If there was a tip off, Gaddafi could not have been acting on the basis of Saddam's capture, and somebody in the American government must have known about Gaddafi's 'surprise' announcement in advance.
Butler who resolutely said that any unilateral war engaged by the US against Iraq would be wrong, illegal and unjustifiable, and that the only way military action should occur, if it does and if its absolutely necessary, is through UN Security Council approval.
fisk: Far from being another despotic little killer, Gadhafi is now, according to Jack Straw, "statesmanlike and courageous."
For Rove, gay marriage is the new Willie Horton, a wedge issue perfectly suited to fire up the corporate-funded right-wing church network while diverting public attention from an ailing economy and a failing war effort.
As governor of Vermont, Howard Dean approved gay civil unions, somewhat different from gay marriage. But the Bush/Rove GOP is unlikely to make such fine distinctions, any more than Bush One belabored the legal intricacies of the Willie Horton parole.
Just after Japan's surrender, the secretary of war sent a team of analysts called the United States Strategic Bombing Survey to Japan to evaluate the effects of America's bombing campaign. Among other things, the group was charged with ascertaining how the aerial assault (both conventional and nuclear) affected the morale of Japanese citizens and the decision-making of Japan's wartime leaders.
The team's conclusions fly in the face of what we now consider the conventional wisdom. "It cannot be said that the atomic bomb convinced the leaders who effected the peace of the necessity of surrender," the Survey says.
The 2003 award is shared by adventurer Steve Irwin and columnist Michael Duffy. The crocodile hunter declared, in the presence of John Howard, that the Prime Minister is the greatest leader in the entire world. Soon after, Irwin scored an invitation to lunch with George Bush at the Lodge - demonstrating that flattery works.
In awarding the logistics contract, the Army acknowledged last year, it failed to consider that haliburton was under criminal investigation for a previous Pentagon contract, even though that inquiry was disclosed in Halliburton's annual report.
Ms. Hall, the Halliburton spokeswoman, said subcontractors were kept confidential "in order to ensure subcontractor safety" in Iraq. By contrast, Bechtel, the other large government contractor involved in the reconstruction effort, lists its subcontractors on its Web site.
The three-day conference included officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the corps and other government agencies as well as executives from KBR. The companies that attended, according to David C. Farlow, a spokesman for the United States Central Command, included only "commercial contractors currently working in Iraq."
For Australia, the obvious example of such a threat that comes to mind is North Korea, an impoverished Orwellian society where paranoia, poverty and nuclear potency intersect, financed by drug smuggling and missile sales.
Back in Moscow, most commentators were sure of the motive: Chelsea was, like Chukotka before it, a safety net. Should the Kremlin ever demand Abramovich's extradition, Britain would think twice with thousands of Chelsea fans picketing the high court. (A day after the Chelsea deal, Khodorkovsky's right-hand man Platon Lebedev was arrested in Moscow; two weeks later, Yukos's Moscow offices were raided by armed police.)
Writing in The Independent, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, said: "It is undignified for the Prime Minister, and worrying for his nation, to go on believing in a threat which everyone else can see was a fantasy. Nor will Tony Blair ever recover his credibility until he stops insisting he is right when the public can see he was wrong."
Libya was not close to building a nuclear weapon, said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday. The deal was brokered by Britain and America in secret talks that sidelined the IAEA, the United Nations' atomic energy agency.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.
The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial institution," which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
U.S. President George W. Bush called Putin twice this month to raise concerns about where Russia is headed, according to a senior State Department official. On Dec. 1, Bush called to express concerns about whether the rule of law was being used selectively.
And, in what appears to be an attempt to push Khodorkovsky into making a deal, Tax Ministry reports have been leaked claiming the company owes $5 billion in back taxes.
On Tuesday, the same day as a Moscow court extended Khodorkovsky's stay in jail another three months, a visibly tense Putin indicated for the first time that the Yukos affair might not be an isolated case and threatened action against other oligarchs that gained their wealth in fraudulent privatizations if they did not toe the line.
Bush's next declared mission, that of toppling Yasser Arafat, only reinforces the image of the president as a king who knows not the boundaries of his kingdom, nor the limits of his power. Or, as a captive of pro-Israeli hawks hell-bent on remaking the Middle East to Likud designs.
He invoked democracy but ignored its expression abroad and suspended its principles at home.
To many of the soldiers whose retirements and departures are on ice, however, stop-loss is an inconvenience, a hardship and, in some cases, a personal disaster. Some are resigned to fulfilling what they consider their patriotic duty. Others are livid, insisting they have fallen victim to a policy that amounts to an unannounced, unheralded draft.
"The West should be very afraid of what is going on in Russia now," said Boris Berezovsky, the former owner of Sibneft and Putin antagonist exiled in London. "What's happening now could lead to a new military build-up. And a nationalist Russia armed with nuclear weapons is far more dangerous for the West than Hitler's Third Reich ever was."
Putin has also seemed anxious to talk up Russia's military capabilities. On the eve of the EU-Russia summit in Italy shortly after Khodorkovsky was arrested, he made clear in an interview with Italian journalists that he considered Russia a force to be reckoned with. He stressed again that Russia retains the right to launch preemptive strikes and pointed out that Russia has weapons that "can penetrate any missile defense system."
While tacitly acknowledging that the alert was a fake, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge decided to maintain the ‘Orange Code’ alert: "Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted."
What is disturbing in the December 21 statement is the fact that an "actual" or "attempted" Al Qaeda terrorist attack seems already to be in the official pipeline.
In the words of David Rockefeller: "We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."
According to the official statement, which must be taken seriously, an "actual terrorist attack" in the near future on American soil would lead to a Red Code Alert. The latter in turn, would create conditions for the (temporary) suspension of the normal functions of civilian government, as foreseen by General Tommy Franks. This scenario was envisaged by Secretary Tom Ridge in a CBS News Interview on December 22, 2003: "If we simply go to red ... it basically shuts down the country," meaning that civilian government bodies would be closed down and taken over by and Emergency Administration. The scenario is presented in detail at the Homeland department's Ready.Gov
Whenever any of the administration’s "misspeaks" were exposed, Fatherland Security czar Tom Rigid would take to the air and publicly change the Colorform on the Alibi for Authoritarianism Rainbow to a bolder shade.
Rumsfeld deepened the pit by summarizing the anarchy thusly, "It’s untidy. And freedom’s untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." With this remark he unintentionally disclosed that some of the freest people in the world are now occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
In an April 2003 interview with the New York Times, Garner said, "If President Bush had been president [during Vietnam], we would have won." Why Garner thought a drunken, drug-abusing, MOOA (Missing Out of Action) National Guardsman would have made a good president back then remains unclear.
Garner did next to nothing to stabilize the country during his brief rule. Seeing an opportunity, Henry Kissinger managed to place one of his lackeys, L. Paul Bremer III, the former managing director of Kissinger & Associates (and the man in charge of counterterrorism in the Reagan White House), in the void widened by Garner.
would it be asking too much to do the same for the American people through the adoption of the following two amendments to the U.S. Constitution:
"The Congress shall have the power to declare war, and this time we
really do mean it." "No person shall be denied life, liberty, or
property without due process of law, and this time we really do mean it."
By all world standards, America's trade deficits are
stunningly unsustainable. We have to go back to Italy
in 1924 to find a major nation that, in percentage
terms, has run a larger peacetime trade deficit.
The full significance of this is that Italy in 1924
was a true economic basket case -- so much so that in
January 1925, Mussolini seized dictatorial powers
Monday, December 29, 2003
Neil Bush is the latest manifestation of a long tradition in American life -- the president's embarrassing relative
But Neil Bush has surpassed them all. Bush has done something that no other American has ever accomplished: He has become the embarrassing relative of not one but two presidents.
And Bush's career as an embarrassment may not be over. At 48, he is still relatively young and, judging from his deposition, still virile and vigorous. If his brother Jeb, governor of Florida, is ever elected president, Neil could conceivably embarrass him, too, pulling off an unprecedented hat trick of presidential embarrassment.
Neil Mallon Bush was born in 1955 and named after his grandfather's Yale buddy Neil Mallon, the corporate CEO who gave George H.W. Bush his first job in the Texas oil business.
It all began in 2002, when Bush informed his wife -- via e-mail -- that he no longer loved her and wanted a divorce.
"She told me he's only offering $1,000 a month in support -- take it or leave it. . . . She said that when she told Neil she needs more to live on, Neil Bush said, 'Just get remarried.' Sharon was sobbing as she told me, 'Kitty, I just won't sell my body!' "
"Eighteen of the 20 largest hotels in the U.S. are right on a 2-mile stretch of the vegas Strip, literally right next to McCarran (International Airport)," Bussell said. "If we had something that was credible and actionable, you would know."
But Neil Bush has surpassed them all. Bush has done something that no other American has ever accomplished: He has become the embarrassing relative of not one but two presidents.
And Bush's career as an embarrassment may not be over. At 48, he is still relatively young and, judging from his deposition, still virile and vigorous. If his brother Jeb, governor of Florida, is ever elected president, Neil could conceivably embarrass him, too, pulling off an unprecedented hat trick of presidential embarrassment.
Neil Mallon Bush was born in 1955 and named after his grandfather's Yale buddy Neil Mallon, the corporate CEO who gave George H.W. Bush his first job in the Texas oil business.
It all began in 2002, when Bush informed his wife -- via e-mail -- that he no longer loved her and wanted a divorce.
"She told me he's only offering $1,000 a month in support -- take it or leave it. . . . She said that when she told Neil she needs more to live on, Neil Bush said, 'Just get remarried.' Sharon was sobbing as she told me, 'Kitty, I just won't sell my body!' "
"Eighteen of the 20 largest hotels in the U.S. are right on a 2-mile stretch of the vegas Strip, literally right next to McCarran (International Airport)," Bussell said. "If we had something that was credible and actionable, you would know."
ALMOST 80 per cent of Victorians believe the Bracks government has not done enough for them in the past 12 months, a survey published in today's Herald Sun newspaper has revealed.
Nine in 10 Victorians said they did not trust the accuracy of speed cameras and more than eight in 10 believed speed cameras were being used to raise revenue.
The survey also found 80 per cent of respondents said public transport across Melbourne was not up to scratch.
A SPECIAL Morgan poll has found only 6 per cent of Australians and New Zealanders expect the new year to be more peaceful than this year.
But this year, with a Dec. 30 deadline looming and 55,000 green cards at stake, the lottery has attracted fewer than half the usual number of applications, falling to 5 million from as many as 13 million.
'What a terrible day this has been,' he is quoted as telling Libero in the Christmas Eve interview. 'The papers don't come out tomorrow, right? Then I can tell you that the real question is not the television decree [which preserved the right of one of Berlusconi's channels to continue terrestrial broadcasting]... but precise and verified information about an attack on Rome on Christmas Day. A hijacked plane on the Vatican - an attack from the sky, you understand?
'The threat of terrorism is very high at the moment. I spent Christmas Eve in Rome dealing with the situation. Now I feel more tranquil.'
An overwhelming majority of Americans consider themselves to be religious. Yet according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, people who attend church more than once a week vote Republican by 63 percent to 37 percent; people who seldom or never attend vote Democratic by 62 percent to 38 percent.
Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world — including the United States."
Nine in 10 Victorians said they did not trust the accuracy of speed cameras and more than eight in 10 believed speed cameras were being used to raise revenue.
The survey also found 80 per cent of respondents said public transport across Melbourne was not up to scratch.
A SPECIAL Morgan poll has found only 6 per cent of Australians and New Zealanders expect the new year to be more peaceful than this year.
But this year, with a Dec. 30 deadline looming and 55,000 green cards at stake, the lottery has attracted fewer than half the usual number of applications, falling to 5 million from as many as 13 million.
'What a terrible day this has been,' he is quoted as telling Libero in the Christmas Eve interview. 'The papers don't come out tomorrow, right? Then I can tell you that the real question is not the television decree [which preserved the right of one of Berlusconi's channels to continue terrestrial broadcasting]... but precise and verified information about an attack on Rome on Christmas Day. A hijacked plane on the Vatican - an attack from the sky, you understand?
'The threat of terrorism is very high at the moment. I spent Christmas Eve in Rome dealing with the situation. Now I feel more tranquil.'
An overwhelming majority of Americans consider themselves to be religious. Yet according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, people who attend church more than once a week vote Republican by 63 percent to 37 percent; people who seldom or never attend vote Democratic by 62 percent to 38 percent.
Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world — including the United States."
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Without admitting any error, the department has rapidly increased the number of cattle it tests annually. It went from testing 219 in 1997 (the year it banned the feeding of ruminants to other ruminants) to 20,526 last year. By contrast, European countries tested 10 million animals last year.
Now, in the wake of its first case, the department has made some surprising admissions. Its testing was never meant to stop a diseased cow from reaching the public, Dr. Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian, said. It was meant to reach a statistical level of probability that it could spot one case in a million.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday denied quotes attributed to him in a newspaper report that said he had received information about a plan to attack the Vatican on Christmas Day.
Now, in the wake of its first case, the department has made some surprising admissions. Its testing was never meant to stop a diseased cow from reaching the public, Dr. Ron DeHaven, the department's chief veterinarian, said. It was meant to reach a statistical level of probability that it could spot one case in a million.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday denied quotes attributed to him in a newspaper report that said he had received information about a plan to attack the Vatican on Christmas Day.
U.S. investigators want to speak with a small number of people in Paris who failed to show up for boarding flights to Los Angeles that fell under close scrutiny in a possible terrorist plot, including one pilot-trainee, a U.S. official said Friday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators hope to resolve concerns that some passengers aboard those flights might have intended to use them to launch terror attacks against the United States.
The filing of nine felony counts against Jackson was orchestrated by a Hollywood public relations company, Tellem Worldwide, that is providing pro bono services to the Santa Barbara prosecutors. the company's other clients include the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.
The Schwarzenegger team, reeling from sexual harassment allegations by a parade of women, went after Miller with a vengeance.
I am sure they are desperately trying to place the origin of the infected cow as OUTSIDE the US.
Well, if that is true and the cow originated outside the US in BSE endemic country, then laws were violated regarding the importation of beef from BSE infected country. More then likely, they seek to blame Canada. The cow was born before Canada had discovered infected BSE cattle
The government is trying to find the herd the cow was raised with, since the cow likely was sickened several years ago from eating feed made partly from an infected cow. The incubation period in cattle is four to five years, said Dr. Stephen Sundlof of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The USDA insisted the case is probably isolated and the US beef supply is safe. "I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner," Veneman said, "and we remain confident in the safety of our food supply."
Two government sources tell TIME that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is arguing over ground rules for her appearance in part because she does not want to testify under oath or, according to one source, in public
For us, the key change was this: Media went from being a casual complaint to becoming a serious issue around which people began mobilizing.
In approving the merger, the FCC required that "its Fox subsidiary offer its programming to other cable and satellite operators on the same terms as it does to DirecTV." The FCC also required that News Corp. accept "arbitration of any disputes" and must continue to provide programming while the dispute is being resolved. One problem: "the benefits of these conditions disappear without a trace after six years."
The kosher food market in the US totals some $165 billion and is growing at a rate of 15 percent annually according to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), a New York-based consulting firm for the kosher industry.
The most bizarre threat was of smallpox. There was not a shred of intelligence that any enemy had quantities of smallpox, let alone in weapon form. Yet ministers in their Cobra bunker went berserk. They ordered 12 regional smallpox response groups across the nation. Seventy key workers were told to receive instant vaccination to be able to cope with millions of victims. An astonishing £100 million was found overnight to buy 50 million doses of vaccine. The ability of ministers to find huge amounts of money from nowhere under political duress never fails to impress me.
Everyone knows who John Hinckley, Jr. is. This youngest Hinckley son is now being permitted unsupervised visits within the Washington, DC metropolitan area--away from his mental facility, after nearly killing President Reagan in 1981. But a much more interesting subject is, who is John Hinckley, Sr.? In 1980, Hinckley Sr. was a Texas oilman who, the records show, strove mightily to get fellow Texas oilman George H.W. Bush the Republican nomination for president. The Bushes and the Hinckleys were frequent dinner companions.
On the morning of March 30 [the day of the Reagan assassination attempt by John Hinckley, Jr.], three representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy told Scott Hinckley, John Hinckley Jr.'s older brother and Vanderbilt's vice president of operations, that auditors had uncovered evidence of pricing violations on crude oil sold by the company from 1977 through 1980. The auditors announced that the federal government was considering a penalty of two million dollars. [This, on the same day that his brother John--the youngest son of Vice President Bush's close friend--attempted the assassination!] Scott Hinckley reportedly requested "several hours to come up with an explanation" of the serious overcharges. The meeting ended a little more than an hour before John Hinckly, Jr. shot President Reagan.
"Then why does the package insert say under 'Precautions' that 'FluMist recipients should avoid close contact with immuno-compromised individuals for at least 21 days'?"
If weapons of mass destruction are a menace in unstable regions such as the Middle East, if their availability must be reduced, then logic begins to move us closer to the confrontation we never seek with the nuclear power we - let alone Messrs Bush and Blair - seldom mention: Israel.
President Bush was incensed that Mr Blair stole Washington's thunder by being the first Western leader to confirm that the former dictator had been arrested by US troops.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators hope to resolve concerns that some passengers aboard those flights might have intended to use them to launch terror attacks against the United States.
The filing of nine felony counts against Jackson was orchestrated by a Hollywood public relations company, Tellem Worldwide, that is providing pro bono services to the Santa Barbara prosecutors. the company's other clients include the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.
The Schwarzenegger team, reeling from sexual harassment allegations by a parade of women, went after Miller with a vengeance.
I am sure they are desperately trying to place the origin of the infected cow as OUTSIDE the US.
Well, if that is true and the cow originated outside the US in BSE endemic country, then laws were violated regarding the importation of beef from BSE infected country. More then likely, they seek to blame Canada. The cow was born before Canada had discovered infected BSE cattle
The government is trying to find the herd the cow was raised with, since the cow likely was sickened several years ago from eating feed made partly from an infected cow. The incubation period in cattle is four to five years, said Dr. Stephen Sundlof of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The USDA insisted the case is probably isolated and the US beef supply is safe. "I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner," Veneman said, "and we remain confident in the safety of our food supply."
Two government sources tell TIME that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is arguing over ground rules for her appearance in part because she does not want to testify under oath or, according to one source, in public
For us, the key change was this: Media went from being a casual complaint to becoming a serious issue around which people began mobilizing.
In approving the merger, the FCC required that "its Fox subsidiary offer its programming to other cable and satellite operators on the same terms as it does to DirecTV." The FCC also required that News Corp. accept "arbitration of any disputes" and must continue to provide programming while the dispute is being resolved. One problem: "the benefits of these conditions disappear without a trace after six years."
The kosher food market in the US totals some $165 billion and is growing at a rate of 15 percent annually according to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), a New York-based consulting firm for the kosher industry.
The most bizarre threat was of smallpox. There was not a shred of intelligence that any enemy had quantities of smallpox, let alone in weapon form. Yet ministers in their Cobra bunker went berserk. They ordered 12 regional smallpox response groups across the nation. Seventy key workers were told to receive instant vaccination to be able to cope with millions of victims. An astonishing £100 million was found overnight to buy 50 million doses of vaccine. The ability of ministers to find huge amounts of money from nowhere under political duress never fails to impress me.
Everyone knows who John Hinckley, Jr. is. This youngest Hinckley son is now being permitted unsupervised visits within the Washington, DC metropolitan area--away from his mental facility, after nearly killing President Reagan in 1981. But a much more interesting subject is, who is John Hinckley, Sr.? In 1980, Hinckley Sr. was a Texas oilman who, the records show, strove mightily to get fellow Texas oilman George H.W. Bush the Republican nomination for president. The Bushes and the Hinckleys were frequent dinner companions.
On the morning of March 30 [the day of the Reagan assassination attempt by John Hinckley, Jr.], three representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy told Scott Hinckley, John Hinckley Jr.'s older brother and Vanderbilt's vice president of operations, that auditors had uncovered evidence of pricing violations on crude oil sold by the company from 1977 through 1980. The auditors announced that the federal government was considering a penalty of two million dollars. [This, on the same day that his brother John--the youngest son of Vice President Bush's close friend--attempted the assassination!] Scott Hinckley reportedly requested "several hours to come up with an explanation" of the serious overcharges. The meeting ended a little more than an hour before John Hinckly, Jr. shot President Reagan.
"Then why does the package insert say under 'Precautions' that 'FluMist recipients should avoid close contact with immuno-compromised individuals for at least 21 days'?"
If weapons of mass destruction are a menace in unstable regions such as the Middle East, if their availability must be reduced, then logic begins to move us closer to the confrontation we never seek with the nuclear power we - let alone Messrs Bush and Blair - seldom mention: Israel.
President Bush was incensed that Mr Blair stole Washington's thunder by being the first Western leader to confirm that the former dictator had been arrested by US troops.
Saturday, December 27, 2003
In its earliest incarnations, hollingers advisory board included Mr. Kissinger, Mr. Perle and Mr. Brzezinski, as well as Paul A. Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve; Chaim Herzog, the former president of Israel, who died in 1997; and Lady Thatcher, Mr. Siklos wrote.
safire: "The Republican Party, in control of all three branches of government and most of the statehouses, fat and sassy because the economy is rising and the war is being won. "
Then in May, a case of mad cow disease appeared in Canada, and he quickly sought a meeting with Ann M. Veneman, the secretary of agriculture. He was rebuffed, he said in an interview yesterday, until he ran into Karl Rove, senior adviser to President Bush.mred - ah ha - k.roves fingerprints! the artricle doesnt elaborate at all about his role.
I tell you what. Let President Bush declare we will absolutely never ever use WMDs against anyone who invades Iraq or attacks American troops there, even if they use WMDs to start things.
Sound ludicrous? Well, that is what we were demanding Saddam do, somehow survive living wedged between Iran and Syria without having any WMDs as a possible deterrent.
"I think a weakened, fragmented, chaotic Iraq, which could happen if this isn't done carefully, is more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam is now," zinni told reporters in 1998. "I don't think these questions have been thought through or answered."
Cheney's certitude bewildered Zinni. As chief of the Central Command, Zinni had been immersed in U.S. intelligence about Iraq. He was all too familiar with the intelligence analysts' doubts about Iraq's programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. "In my time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never — not once — did it say, 'He has WMD.' "
In 1999, 1,350 wiretaps were authorized by state and Federal courts. Of these, 978 (72.4%) were for drug-related investigations, 139 (10.3%) were for racketeering, 60 (4.4%) were for gambling, 62 (4.6%) were for homicide or assault, and only 7 (approximately 0.5%) were for kidnapping.
Lee was held in solitary confinement for nine months before the government's case collapsed and 58 of the 59 charges against him were dropped. The conservative Reagan-appointed judge in the case said in freeing Lee, "I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch."
In the end, in a plea bargain forced by prosecutors threatening Lee with life in prison, the scientist admitted to one count of mishandling government data. The data had not even been classified as secret when Lee mishandled it. But no matter, his reputation and career had been destroyed, leaving U.S. District Judge James Parker to conclude that the government's treatment of Lee "embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."
When Robert Dreyfuss of the American Prospect asked an unspecified Bush neocon "strategist" how best to deal with the resistance in Iraq, the response he received was chilling, "It's time for 'no more Mr. Nice Guy.' All those people shouting, 'Down with America!' and dancing in the street when Americans are attacked? We have to kill them."
Dramatic videotape from the city of Ramadi 75 miles west of Baghdad showed unarmed supporters of Saddam Hussein being gunned down in semi-darkness as they fled from Americans troops. Eleven of the 18 dead were killed by the Americans in Samarra to the north of Baghdad.
Thus, the Bush men have raised everyone’s expectations, but are prepared to satisfy none of them. It is as if, as thousands of troops scoured the countryside all these months searching for Saddam, there was no plan for what to do when they caught him. Karl Rove’s domestic policy brain may not know it, but his colleagues have stumbled into another crisis in the making.
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) star Don Marie signs an autograph for an unidentified U.S. soldier after a wrestling performance by wrestlers who flew to Iraq
"The only big city near this route is Las Vegas, which they would consider a nice, attractive target," the Post quoted an unidentified government official as saying.
safire: "The Republican Party, in control of all three branches of government and most of the statehouses, fat and sassy because the economy is rising and the war is being won. "
Then in May, a case of mad cow disease appeared in Canada, and he quickly sought a meeting with Ann M. Veneman, the secretary of agriculture. He was rebuffed, he said in an interview yesterday, until he ran into Karl Rove, senior adviser to President Bush.mred - ah ha - k.roves fingerprints! the artricle doesnt elaborate at all about his role.
I tell you what. Let President Bush declare we will absolutely never ever use WMDs against anyone who invades Iraq or attacks American troops there, even if they use WMDs to start things.
Sound ludicrous? Well, that is what we were demanding Saddam do, somehow survive living wedged between Iran and Syria without having any WMDs as a possible deterrent.
"I think a weakened, fragmented, chaotic Iraq, which could happen if this isn't done carefully, is more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam is now," zinni told reporters in 1998. "I don't think these questions have been thought through or answered."
Cheney's certitude bewildered Zinni. As chief of the Central Command, Zinni had been immersed in U.S. intelligence about Iraq. He was all too familiar with the intelligence analysts' doubts about Iraq's programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. "In my time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never — not once — did it say, 'He has WMD.' "
In 1999, 1,350 wiretaps were authorized by state and Federal courts. Of these, 978 (72.4%) were for drug-related investigations, 139 (10.3%) were for racketeering, 60 (4.4%) were for gambling, 62 (4.6%) were for homicide or assault, and only 7 (approximately 0.5%) were for kidnapping.
Lee was held in solitary confinement for nine months before the government's case collapsed and 58 of the 59 charges against him were dropped. The conservative Reagan-appointed judge in the case said in freeing Lee, "I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch."
In the end, in a plea bargain forced by prosecutors threatening Lee with life in prison, the scientist admitted to one count of mishandling government data. The data had not even been classified as secret when Lee mishandled it. But no matter, his reputation and career had been destroyed, leaving U.S. District Judge James Parker to conclude that the government's treatment of Lee "embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."
When Robert Dreyfuss of the American Prospect asked an unspecified Bush neocon "strategist" how best to deal with the resistance in Iraq, the response he received was chilling, "It's time for 'no more Mr. Nice Guy.' All those people shouting, 'Down with America!' and dancing in the street when Americans are attacked? We have to kill them."
Dramatic videotape from the city of Ramadi 75 miles west of Baghdad showed unarmed supporters of Saddam Hussein being gunned down in semi-darkness as they fled from Americans troops. Eleven of the 18 dead were killed by the Americans in Samarra to the north of Baghdad.
Thus, the Bush men have raised everyone’s expectations, but are prepared to satisfy none of them. It is as if, as thousands of troops scoured the countryside all these months searching for Saddam, there was no plan for what to do when they caught him. Karl Rove’s domestic policy brain may not know it, but his colleagues have stumbled into another crisis in the making.
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) star Don Marie signs an autograph for an unidentified U.S. soldier after a wrestling performance by wrestlers who flew to Iraq
"The only big city near this route is Las Vegas, which they would consider a nice, attractive target," the Post quoted an unidentified government official as saying.
Friday, December 26, 2003
mr ed:
here is an entry i made at wotisitgood4.blogspot.com on Mon Nov 10:
"i turned to fox to get their spin on the latest riyadh bombings - and there was nothing on... instead they showed a story about a hepA outbreak at some chain called Cheechies or some such - but all the footage was of mcdonalds... which wasnt even mentioned in the story. perhaps theres a stock-trading strategy based on who is being pilloried on FauxNews"
this observation perhaps takes on heavier significance given the madcowscare. i dont know what it means. there has only been one cow found so far. if this happens to be a part of another falsified story, then it seems directed at something larger than mcd's - 12 countries immediately banned beef imports. the only possible reasons i can think for this is either trying to extend the isolationism ('unilateral'), or an attempt to rush in some GM 'solution'. one mite also posit that there is also a link to the major human diseases de jour - flu & sars - i hope we dont see the media merging the stories... ive previously suggested that we should get scared when we hear the term 'forced quarantine' - but i meant that in a human sense...
i dont know what trading strategy might work. the original mcd story seemed to be a direct attack on them, which presumably would have helped their competitors - but if my hypothesis is accurate, then they have decimated not only mcd's but also the entire fastfood industry, and im tempted to think that all meat industries will get hurt - at least in the short term. some people will switch to lamb/pig/chicken instead of beef, but u run the risk that lamb/pig/chicken gets tarred with the bse brush - and there'll be substitution into more vegetables. praps the attack wasnt directed at mcd's, or at the food industry, but the entire economy. weve already seen attacks on other industries, and mite see some more... or praps the attack is just on the usd. it'd be interesting to check the relative wealth impact across countries (incl the US) of say another 80%fall in the $ - i wonder how much chinese and russian wealth is tied up. perhaps the neocons are trying to send other countries broke by colllapsing the value of their holdings. or by shattering their global competitive positions and trying to instigate peasant riots - like in venezuela, and georgia. if any of that hypothesis is valid, then the best trading strategy would be to continue to short the dollar. or maybe go long usd bonds. or praps us residential real estate - altho thats starting to get too many degrees away from the core issue - at least u dont have to worry about other market forces in currency & bonds - its purely political - independent of unemployment or mkt crashes or product-substitution questions et al. going long beef seems a bit risky.
another marginally/possibly curious item about the bse story is that 'the samples went to britain for verification.' i dont know anything about microbiology - but id have to reckon that the CDC has doctors who can identify bse. sure, it kinda sounds like the britain thing makes sense - cos britain had madcowdisease. but it rings tiny alarm bells 4 me - its the sort of detail you would make up if u were trying to make up a convincing story. like that stupid pilot that they made up at thanksgiving in baghdad. if the CDC doesnt have a strain of bse for early identification, and a bunch of doctors who can recognise it, then they really arent doing their job.
apparently the rumour about the bse was out b4 the public story broke. this either confirms that the case is legitimate, or that the propaganda machine has learnt that its more convincing to leak stuff through experts in advance.
drawing an even longer bow - all this talk about bse inevitably brings up in ones mind the uk, and microbiology, and the mind is tempted to wander toward all the microbiologists who got murdered this year - and our emiinent friend dr kelly who apparently thought that cutting furiously across his wrists in an open field was his best option for a successful suicide. thank goodness he wasnt under surveillance.
time mite tell if its madcow or madfox disease.
here is an entry i made at wotisitgood4.blogspot.com on Mon Nov 10:
"i turned to fox to get their spin on the latest riyadh bombings - and there was nothing on... instead they showed a story about a hepA outbreak at some chain called Cheechies or some such - but all the footage was of mcdonalds... which wasnt even mentioned in the story. perhaps theres a stock-trading strategy based on who is being pilloried on FauxNews"
this observation perhaps takes on heavier significance given the madcowscare. i dont know what it means. there has only been one cow found so far. if this happens to be a part of another falsified story, then it seems directed at something larger than mcd's - 12 countries immediately banned beef imports. the only possible reasons i can think for this is either trying to extend the isolationism ('unilateral'), or an attempt to rush in some GM 'solution'. one mite also posit that there is also a link to the major human diseases de jour - flu & sars - i hope we dont see the media merging the stories... ive previously suggested that we should get scared when we hear the term 'forced quarantine' - but i meant that in a human sense...
i dont know what trading strategy might work. the original mcd story seemed to be a direct attack on them, which presumably would have helped their competitors - but if my hypothesis is accurate, then they have decimated not only mcd's but also the entire fastfood industry, and im tempted to think that all meat industries will get hurt - at least in the short term. some people will switch to lamb/pig/chicken instead of beef, but u run the risk that lamb/pig/chicken gets tarred with the bse brush - and there'll be substitution into more vegetables. praps the attack wasnt directed at mcd's, or at the food industry, but the entire economy. weve already seen attacks on other industries, and mite see some more... or praps the attack is just on the usd. it'd be interesting to check the relative wealth impact across countries (incl the US) of say another 80%fall in the $ - i wonder how much chinese and russian wealth is tied up. perhaps the neocons are trying to send other countries broke by colllapsing the value of their holdings. or by shattering their global competitive positions and trying to instigate peasant riots - like in venezuela, and georgia. if any of that hypothesis is valid, then the best trading strategy would be to continue to short the dollar. or maybe go long usd bonds. or praps us residential real estate - altho thats starting to get too many degrees away from the core issue - at least u dont have to worry about other market forces in currency & bonds - its purely political - independent of unemployment or mkt crashes or product-substitution questions et al. going long beef seems a bit risky.
another marginally/possibly curious item about the bse story is that 'the samples went to britain for verification.' i dont know anything about microbiology - but id have to reckon that the CDC has doctors who can identify bse. sure, it kinda sounds like the britain thing makes sense - cos britain had madcowdisease. but it rings tiny alarm bells 4 me - its the sort of detail you would make up if u were trying to make up a convincing story. like that stupid pilot that they made up at thanksgiving in baghdad. if the CDC doesnt have a strain of bse for early identification, and a bunch of doctors who can recognise it, then they really arent doing their job.
apparently the rumour about the bse was out b4 the public story broke. this either confirms that the case is legitimate, or that the propaganda machine has learnt that its more convincing to leak stuff through experts in advance.
drawing an even longer bow - all this talk about bse inevitably brings up in ones mind the uk, and microbiology, and the mind is tempted to wander toward all the microbiologists who got murdered this year - and our emiinent friend dr kelly who apparently thought that cutting furiously across his wrists in an open field was his best option for a successful suicide. thank goodness he wasnt under surveillance.
time mite tell if its madcow or madfox disease.
(as the David Letterman joke goes, referring to the $87 billion Bush got out of Congress, when making out the check, remember there are two l's in Halliburton; Americans may be that stupid, but the Europeans certainly aren't)
But the Black affair isn't just about bad corporate governance. It goes without saying that Lord Black, like Rupert Murdoch, has used his media empire to promote a conservative political agenda. The Telegraph, in particular, has a habit of "finding" documents of unproven authenticity that just happen to support neoconservative rationales for war. We're now learning that Lord Black also used his control of Hollinger to reward friends, including journalists, who share his political views.
Last August, in a moment of supreme synergy, Mr. Perle, wearing his defense-insider hat, co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising the Pentagon's controversial Boeing tanker deal. He didn't disclose Boeing's $2.5 million investment in Trireme.
The real surprise, though, is that two prominent journalists, William Buckley and George Will, were also regular paid advisors to Hollinger.
Limbaugh and his attorney must feel that Limbaugh's real exposure is to the money laundering charge, for admitting to the massive drug purchasing is a big risk to take unless the alternatives are worse. Why are they so terrified of the money laundering charge that they would admit to the fact that Limbaugh had a weakness for which he could be blackmailed?
If the Europeans decide to trade debt relief for access to Iraqi reconstruction, that would presumably spell the end of international agreements on fairness in government procurement contracts, agreements which have benefited American corporations more than the corporations of any other country. If they decide not to make that trade-off, American taxpayers get to pay the whole bill at grossly inflated Halliburton-Bechtel prices
But the Black affair isn't just about bad corporate governance. It goes without saying that Lord Black, like Rupert Murdoch, has used his media empire to promote a conservative political agenda. The Telegraph, in particular, has a habit of "finding" documents of unproven authenticity that just happen to support neoconservative rationales for war. We're now learning that Lord Black also used his control of Hollinger to reward friends, including journalists, who share his political views.
Last August, in a moment of supreme synergy, Mr. Perle, wearing his defense-insider hat, co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising the Pentagon's controversial Boeing tanker deal. He didn't disclose Boeing's $2.5 million investment in Trireme.
The real surprise, though, is that two prominent journalists, William Buckley and George Will, were also regular paid advisors to Hollinger.
Limbaugh and his attorney must feel that Limbaugh's real exposure is to the money laundering charge, for admitting to the massive drug purchasing is a big risk to take unless the alternatives are worse. Why are they so terrified of the money laundering charge that they would admit to the fact that Limbaugh had a weakness for which he could be blackmailed?
If the Europeans decide to trade debt relief for access to Iraqi reconstruction, that would presumably spell the end of international agreements on fairness in government procurement contracts, agreements which have benefited American corporations more than the corporations of any other country. If they decide not to make that trade-off, American taxpayers get to pay the whole bill at grossly inflated Halliburton-Bechtel prices
Sunday, December 21, 2003
"In 1991 Carlyle did only one deal: It advised Prince Alwaleed bin Talal on his $590-million investment in Citibank preferred stock for a 9.9 percent stake."
Can a system where less than one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. population gives 83 percent of all campaign contributions of $200 or more – as data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows – truly represent the will of all the people?
mred - Freedom Tower? good grief.
We refer, of course, to the $40 million contract awarded by occupation authorities to a private security company called Erinys Iraq. This plucky start-up is one of the great success stories of the occupation, having already bagged big money to ride shotgun for Halliburton and Bechtel as they spread their beneficent tentacles throughout the conquered land. Now little Erinys will guard the Holy Grail of the entire invasion project: Iraq's oil industry.
And Chalabi was always their main man, the horse they were going to ride in on. Despite his conviction in Jordan for massive bank fraud, despite his dubious husbandry of the millions in covert aid thrown at him by U.S. officials, despite the fact that even the CIA finally washed its hands of him, dismissing him as an ineffectual poseur peddling false intelligence to inflate his importance and attract more funding, the PNAC boys kept faith with Chalabi, as American Prospect reports.
Now, Chalabi's cronies at Erinys are hiring Chalabi's militiamen for the new "security" contract. In other words, Bush has given Chalabi armed control over Iraq's oil industry.
A British man is facing charges of plotting to supply a terrifying crude nuclear device to al Qaeda terrorists in America. London-based arms dealer Hemant Lakhani allegedly offered to provide a socalled "dirty bomb" capable of spreading radioactive contamination over a major city. He will appear in court within days, American government lawyer Christopher Christie said. The charges would be a coup for the US war against terrorism following a series of setbacks.
mr ed - welcome back hemant - we've missed u since u last scared us all. curious the ashcroft isnt trumpeting.
Well, gwb is getting so bold in his hubris that he is now issuing edicts - in writing - commanding that the press only, "Write positive stories," covering his visit yesterday to Ft. Carson in Colorado. In fact, he handed out a 10 commandments to all members of the press, which he labeled "10 ground rules" for covering his visit to the base, as reported by Jim Spencer of the Denver Post
Among the "10 ground rules" handed out to all members of the press, according to Spencer, were:
Rule 9: "Write positive stories about Ft. Carson and the U.S. Army."
Rule 3: No talking to soldiers or their families before, during, or after the event.
Talk about un-American - the soldiers must serve their commander but not even their families can be talked to to get their opinions about how the war is going so people can do what people do in democracies, namely decide if they want to keep their leader or not.
Rule 6: "No roaming."
In other words, we want to be able to keep an eye on all of you - we are watching you - and so will not allow the free reporters of the free press in free America to so much as move out of our sight. Wow.
Rule 2: "Remain in press riser at all times; you will be escorted to the bathroom."
They wouldn't even let them go on their own to the bathroom, because they didn't want to lose sight - or control - of them for a single second.
Rule 1: "No video at Butts (the base) until the President arrives."
And then, in true dictator style, they add a sarcastic rule number 10:
Rule 10: "Have fun."
Now, he is putting his unspoken code in writing, having no qualms about distributing on paper his anti-freedom, dictator-like edicts. The only step left to make his complete conversion to dictator is to issue directly a list of consequences should the rules not be followed.
Putin has steadily been consolidating power, rolling back freedoms and rights, and openly calling for creating a majority for his party that will rule a generation. Yes, no protests from President Bush anywhere along the way - he can hardly afford a tiff with Russia while we are so thinly spread.
Putin, unlike Bush, has been a master diplomat and politician. He has gained the support and trust of much of the world while President Bush has lost it for America. By siding with Germany and France during the lead up to the Iraq War, Russia more than made a whole host of new friends - which it took directly from the U.S. When President Bush singled out Iran as part of his Axis of Evil, Putin took yet another opportunity to make a friend and gain power in the world by stepping in and renewing Russia's alliance with Iran. We make a move, he makes beautiful and subtle countermoves that go unnoticed by our PNAC-bullied, unthougthtful, incurious President.
In the meantime, Bush's borrow and spend policies have America's economy in a huge financial ditch. Again, does anyone remember what led to Russia's collapse? Yes, bad fiscal policy and overextended military campaigns - including a disastrous decade-long one in Afghanistan - that bankrupted it.
United Russia's candidates also avoid participating in debates. As the Post reports, "Refusing to participate in nationally televised debates, (head of United Russia Borris) Gryzlov recently said publicly that his party would not let itself be placed at the same level as the others... They also don't routinely talk to independent Russian media."
As his second act as Governor, Arnold immediately, “suspended all regulations.” as reported by KPCC radio in Los Angeles.
All regulations – more specifically, all regulations, “passed during the last five years.” In other words, he undid every regulation passed under Governor Davis – who was re-elected after passing most of them. The immediate effect: pollution controls, regulations protecting workers, healthcare, every protective regulation suddenly vanished. All the work of the legislature and Governor over the last five years done in protection of the people wiped out in a single stroke. Businesses need no longer worry about having to operate in ways that protect employees, the environment, prevent corporate fraud.
Can a system where less than one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. population gives 83 percent of all campaign contributions of $200 or more – as data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows – truly represent the will of all the people?
mred - Freedom Tower? good grief.
We refer, of course, to the $40 million contract awarded by occupation authorities to a private security company called Erinys Iraq. This plucky start-up is one of the great success stories of the occupation, having already bagged big money to ride shotgun for Halliburton and Bechtel as they spread their beneficent tentacles throughout the conquered land. Now little Erinys will guard the Holy Grail of the entire invasion project: Iraq's oil industry.
And Chalabi was always their main man, the horse they were going to ride in on. Despite his conviction in Jordan for massive bank fraud, despite his dubious husbandry of the millions in covert aid thrown at him by U.S. officials, despite the fact that even the CIA finally washed its hands of him, dismissing him as an ineffectual poseur peddling false intelligence to inflate his importance and attract more funding, the PNAC boys kept faith with Chalabi, as American Prospect reports.
Now, Chalabi's cronies at Erinys are hiring Chalabi's militiamen for the new "security" contract. In other words, Bush has given Chalabi armed control over Iraq's oil industry.
A British man is facing charges of plotting to supply a terrifying crude nuclear device to al Qaeda terrorists in America. London-based arms dealer Hemant Lakhani allegedly offered to provide a socalled "dirty bomb" capable of spreading radioactive contamination over a major city. He will appear in court within days, American government lawyer Christopher Christie said. The charges would be a coup for the US war against terrorism following a series of setbacks.
mr ed - welcome back hemant - we've missed u since u last scared us all. curious the ashcroft isnt trumpeting.
Well, gwb is getting so bold in his hubris that he is now issuing edicts - in writing - commanding that the press only, "Write positive stories," covering his visit yesterday to Ft. Carson in Colorado. In fact, he handed out a 10 commandments to all members of the press, which he labeled "10 ground rules" for covering his visit to the base, as reported by Jim Spencer of the Denver Post
Among the "10 ground rules" handed out to all members of the press, according to Spencer, were:
Rule 9: "Write positive stories about Ft. Carson and the U.S. Army."
Rule 3: No talking to soldiers or their families before, during, or after the event.
Talk about un-American - the soldiers must serve their commander but not even their families can be talked to to get their opinions about how the war is going so people can do what people do in democracies, namely decide if they want to keep their leader or not.
Rule 6: "No roaming."
In other words, we want to be able to keep an eye on all of you - we are watching you - and so will not allow the free reporters of the free press in free America to so much as move out of our sight. Wow.
Rule 2: "Remain in press riser at all times; you will be escorted to the bathroom."
They wouldn't even let them go on their own to the bathroom, because they didn't want to lose sight - or control - of them for a single second.
Rule 1: "No video at Butts (the base) until the President arrives."
And then, in true dictator style, they add a sarcastic rule number 10:
Rule 10: "Have fun."
Now, he is putting his unspoken code in writing, having no qualms about distributing on paper his anti-freedom, dictator-like edicts. The only step left to make his complete conversion to dictator is to issue directly a list of consequences should the rules not be followed.
Putin has steadily been consolidating power, rolling back freedoms and rights, and openly calling for creating a majority for his party that will rule a generation. Yes, no protests from President Bush anywhere along the way - he can hardly afford a tiff with Russia while we are so thinly spread.
Putin, unlike Bush, has been a master diplomat and politician. He has gained the support and trust of much of the world while President Bush has lost it for America. By siding with Germany and France during the lead up to the Iraq War, Russia more than made a whole host of new friends - which it took directly from the U.S. When President Bush singled out Iran as part of his Axis of Evil, Putin took yet another opportunity to make a friend and gain power in the world by stepping in and renewing Russia's alliance with Iran. We make a move, he makes beautiful and subtle countermoves that go unnoticed by our PNAC-bullied, unthougthtful, incurious President.
In the meantime, Bush's borrow and spend policies have America's economy in a huge financial ditch. Again, does anyone remember what led to Russia's collapse? Yes, bad fiscal policy and overextended military campaigns - including a disastrous decade-long one in Afghanistan - that bankrupted it.
United Russia's candidates also avoid participating in debates. As the Post reports, "Refusing to participate in nationally televised debates, (head of United Russia Borris) Gryzlov recently said publicly that his party would not let itself be placed at the same level as the others... They also don't routinely talk to independent Russian media."
As his second act as Governor, Arnold immediately, “suspended all regulations.” as reported by KPCC radio in Los Angeles.
All regulations – more specifically, all regulations, “passed during the last five years.” In other words, he undid every regulation passed under Governor Davis – who was re-elected after passing most of them. The immediate effect: pollution controls, regulations protecting workers, healthcare, every protective regulation suddenly vanished. All the work of the legislature and Governor over the last five years done in protection of the people wiped out in a single stroke. Businesses need no longer worry about having to operate in ways that protect employees, the environment, prevent corporate fraud.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
"This is the first empirical evidence I've seen that conclusively links al-Qaida with the drug trade," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at RAND, a think tank that often does work for the Pentagon.
Military officials would not say Friday why they believed the boat, its cargo and some of its crew were linked to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
About 60 percent of the village's thousand or so men were arrested and questioned. "We had number 6's father, Saddam's first cousin, quite a cast of characters that are town elders," Lt. Col. Steve Russell of the Fourth I.D. told NEWSWEEK.
Adnan Pachachi, a leading member of the Governing Council, was engaged in a shouting match with Saddam when Pachachi was interrupted for a congratulatory phone call from President Bush on Sunday morning in Iraq.
mred - oh yeah.
The military must still capture Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Saddam's redheaded No. 2 (he is said to resemble Krusty the Clown)
In the aftermath of Saddam's arrest and the media-hype which followed, many in the Arab world believe that Saddam was not in fact arrested on Saturday, December 13, but at least ten days beforehand, and arguments raised in defense of this notion are surely worth mentioning.
dec*93*
As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, "Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
Safire had been on the case since 1989, turning out slashing op-ed pieces. But readers of the Times's news pages must have wondered where Safire's body-blows were coming from, since the news columns contained almost nothing about Iraqgate for the longest time.And it emphasized the striking fact -- buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece -- that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loan guarantees to Iraq.
"At worst, that support was a frightening exercise in capitalistic opportunism (we made money both supporting and attacking Hussein). . . ."
Without notification to foreign media outlets, the immigration and customs people are arresting, detaining, and deporting journalists arriving here without special visas. This is so even when they come from nations whose citizens can stay for up to 90 days without a visa if they are arriving as tourists or on business.
Your drunk Uncle George just delivered to the citizens of the United States a lovely, but very expensive and unnecessary gift. And the bill is just beginning to arrive.
Everyone knows that when police officers pick up a suspect, the last thing on their minds is running a complex two-day DNA test to check his ancestry, or to see whether suspect whatshisname might allegedly be predisposed to Alzheimer’s or some other quasi-medical horror. Of course not! If there is the slightest doubt about identity, police officers fingerprint whatshisname, and then compare those prints with incriminating prints from various different crime scenes. Get sufficient identical characteristics or “points” with fingerprinting, and you have the perfect match.
The bottom line is that Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld have taken the brakes off a giant million-man Shi’ite war machine called the Mehdi Army, and all Moqtada al-Sadr has to do now to start it rolling, is turn the ignition key. Remember, the Shi’ite Mehdi Army brackets all American exfiltration routes south towards Kuwait, which is the only way out for 110,000+ American servicemen.
The first White House claim of a “Saddam Hussein DNA match” was made less than twelve hours after whatshisname was taken into custody, which is absolutely impossible, but that no longer matters one way or the other. .
It is therefore impossible to believe that these three conspirators could have been unaware of the deadly danger posed by Moqtada al-Sadr’s vengeful million-man Shi’ite Mehdi Army, which has the easy ability to cut large chunks of the American military in Iraq to bloody ribbons, thereby severely “undermining U.S. military resistance” to the Zionist conquest of the Americas.
Put simply, the U.S. political leadership is deliberately undermining the U.S. military, in order to assist in the subordination and partial destruction of the American people.
(apart from baker) Other EDS board members include former congressman William Gray,
also on the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Board, and Ray L. Hunt of
Hunt Oil who also sits on the Halliburton Board. Still sitting
on the Halliburton Board after Dick Cheney left to become
Vice-President
is Lawrence Eagleburger former Secretary of State under Bush.
He also sits on the board of Phillips Petroleum along with former
Senator David Boren and Norman R. Augustine who also sits on
the Board of Lockheed Martin. Sitting on of Lockheed Martin is
Frank Savage a board of director on the CFR. The largest number
of members of the CFR from an Oil company come from Chevron.
Chevron has Board Members and CFR members in former Senator J.
Bennet Johnson who also heads the U.S. Pacific Economic Cooperation
Council. Carl Ware is also a member of both Chevron and the CFR,
along with Samuel L. Ginn and Carla Anderson Hills who is also
a CFR director, which brings us to also Richard Matzke who is
also involved in the U.S.-Kazakhstan Business Association. Let
us not forget until recently Condaleeza Rice, the National Security
Advisor, sat on the board of Chevron. It is also of interest
to note that Reagan Secretary of State, George Schultz, now is
in charge of J.P. Morgan's International Council, which is comprised
of international CEO's and makes recommendations on international
policy, George Schultz was also Condaleeza Rice's mentor. Another
among the Oil company former statesmen is Kenneth Duberstein
he was White House Chief of Staff under Reagan and now sits on
the board of Conoco and is a director at the CFR. Another Oil
company with several members in the CFR is Exxon-Mobil. Among
the Exxon and CFR members is Lee Raymond who also is a director
of the National Petroleum Concil. Additionally, we have Helene
Kaplan, James Houghton and Charles Heimbold. Some other interesting
corporate board members is former Sen. Sam Nunn who has a school
of international affairs named after him at Georgia Tech, he
also serves on the board of the Center for Strategic and
International
Studies but importantly serves on the Board of Directors of Texaco,
Coca-Cola and General Electric. And on the defense front we have
former Democratic congressman Vic Fazio who now sits on the board
of directors of Northrop Grumman Corporation, a leading defense
contractor, Vic was a member of the Armed Services Committee.
But even the CIA and Generals can get in on the action as John
Deutch former Director of the CIA now heads up Citigroup, CMS
Energy and Raytheon. And former Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff
General Shalikashvili is a director at George Bush and James
Baker's Carlyle Group owns United Defense Industries.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.
After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.
For a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the Google "cached" copies of the original page.
Military officials would not say Friday why they believed the boat, its cargo and some of its crew were linked to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
About 60 percent of the village's thousand or so men were arrested and questioned. "We had number 6's father, Saddam's first cousin, quite a cast of characters that are town elders," Lt. Col. Steve Russell of the Fourth I.D. told NEWSWEEK.
Adnan Pachachi, a leading member of the Governing Council, was engaged in a shouting match with Saddam when Pachachi was interrupted for a congratulatory phone call from President Bush on Sunday morning in Iraq.
mred - oh yeah.
The military must still capture Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Saddam's redheaded No. 2 (he is said to resemble Krusty the Clown)
In the aftermath of Saddam's arrest and the media-hype which followed, many in the Arab world believe that Saddam was not in fact arrested on Saturday, December 13, but at least ten days beforehand, and arguments raised in defense of this notion are surely worth mentioning.
dec*93*
As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, "Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
Safire had been on the case since 1989, turning out slashing op-ed pieces. But readers of the Times's news pages must have wondered where Safire's body-blows were coming from, since the news columns contained almost nothing about Iraqgate for the longest time.And it emphasized the striking fact -- buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece -- that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loan guarantees to Iraq.
"At worst, that support was a frightening exercise in capitalistic opportunism (we made money both supporting and attacking Hussein). . . ."
Without notification to foreign media outlets, the immigration and customs people are arresting, detaining, and deporting journalists arriving here without special visas. This is so even when they come from nations whose citizens can stay for up to 90 days without a visa if they are arriving as tourists or on business.
Your drunk Uncle George just delivered to the citizens of the United States a lovely, but very expensive and unnecessary gift. And the bill is just beginning to arrive.
Everyone knows that when police officers pick up a suspect, the last thing on their minds is running a complex two-day DNA test to check his ancestry, or to see whether suspect whatshisname might allegedly be predisposed to Alzheimer’s or some other quasi-medical horror. Of course not! If there is the slightest doubt about identity, police officers fingerprint whatshisname, and then compare those prints with incriminating prints from various different crime scenes. Get sufficient identical characteristics or “points” with fingerprinting, and you have the perfect match.
The bottom line is that Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld have taken the brakes off a giant million-man Shi’ite war machine called the Mehdi Army, and all Moqtada al-Sadr has to do now to start it rolling, is turn the ignition key. Remember, the Shi’ite Mehdi Army brackets all American exfiltration routes south towards Kuwait, which is the only way out for 110,000+ American servicemen.
The first White House claim of a “Saddam Hussein DNA match” was made less than twelve hours after whatshisname was taken into custody, which is absolutely impossible, but that no longer matters one way or the other. .
It is therefore impossible to believe that these three conspirators could have been unaware of the deadly danger posed by Moqtada al-Sadr’s vengeful million-man Shi’ite Mehdi Army, which has the easy ability to cut large chunks of the American military in Iraq to bloody ribbons, thereby severely “undermining U.S. military resistance” to the Zionist conquest of the Americas.
Put simply, the U.S. political leadership is deliberately undermining the U.S. military, in order to assist in the subordination and partial destruction of the American people.
(apart from baker) Other EDS board members include former congressman William Gray,
also on the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Board, and Ray L. Hunt of
Hunt Oil who also sits on the Halliburton Board. Still sitting
on the Halliburton Board after Dick Cheney left to become
Vice-President
is Lawrence Eagleburger former Secretary of State under Bush.
He also sits on the board of Phillips Petroleum along with former
Senator David Boren and Norman R. Augustine who also sits on
the Board of Lockheed Martin. Sitting on of Lockheed Martin is
Frank Savage a board of director on the CFR. The largest number
of members of the CFR from an Oil company come from Chevron.
Chevron has Board Members and CFR members in former Senator J.
Bennet Johnson who also heads the U.S. Pacific Economic Cooperation
Council. Carl Ware is also a member of both Chevron and the CFR,
along with Samuel L. Ginn and Carla Anderson Hills who is also
a CFR director, which brings us to also Richard Matzke who is
also involved in the U.S.-Kazakhstan Business Association. Let
us not forget until recently Condaleeza Rice, the National Security
Advisor, sat on the board of Chevron. It is also of interest
to note that Reagan Secretary of State, George Schultz, now is
in charge of J.P. Morgan's International Council, which is comprised
of international CEO's and makes recommendations on international
policy, George Schultz was also Condaleeza Rice's mentor. Another
among the Oil company former statesmen is Kenneth Duberstein
he was White House Chief of Staff under Reagan and now sits on
the board of Conoco and is a director at the CFR. Another Oil
company with several members in the CFR is Exxon-Mobil. Among
the Exxon and CFR members is Lee Raymond who also is a director
of the National Petroleum Concil. Additionally, we have Helene
Kaplan, James Houghton and Charles Heimbold. Some other interesting
corporate board members is former Sen. Sam Nunn who has a school
of international affairs named after him at Georgia Tech, he
also serves on the board of the Center for Strategic and
International
Studies but importantly serves on the Board of Directors of Texaco,
Coca-Cola and General Electric. And on the defense front we have
former Democratic congressman Vic Fazio who now sits on the board
of directors of Northrop Grumman Corporation, a leading defense
contractor, Vic was a member of the Armed Services Committee.
But even the CIA and Generals can get in on the action as John
Deutch former Director of the CIA now heads up Citigroup, CMS
Energy and Raytheon. And former Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff
General Shalikashvili is a director at George Bush and James
Baker's Carlyle Group owns United Defense Industries.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.
After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.
For a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the Google "cached" copies of the original page.
friedman: " I don't believe Mr. Chirac ever intended to go to war against Saddam, under any circumstances. So history will record that all three of these leaders were probably stretching the truth — but with one big difference: George Bush and Tony Blair were stretching the truth in order to risk their own political careers to get rid of a really terrible dictator. And Jacques Chirac was stretching the truth to advance his own political career by protecting a really terrible dictator."
"By risking their own political careers, George Bush and Tony Blair have, indeed, given Iraqis the gift of freedom. But it is not the freedom to simply shout about what they oppose. That is anarchy. Freedom is about limits, compromise and accepting responsibility. "
"I hope we don't hear any more chants from Iraqis of "Death to Saddam.""
mred - just from americans.
And Paris Hilton outgunned President Bush in a prime-time shootout between Fox and ABC.
Americans are the best-informed people in the history of the world.
By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — the principal public rationale for the war — hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture.
Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison? As recently as 2000 he defended that vote, saying that the African National Congress "was then perceived as a terrorist organization."
CPA officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, think Mr Hussein would not be tried until July at the earliest, setting up the possibility of a televised trial of Saddam Hussein in the final months of the US presidential contest in 2004.
A few hours after the blast I made a second visit to the intersection to check out a claim by US military officials that the explosion had been a tanker accident rather than a bomb - a claim that they yesterday withdrew, conceding that it had been a bomb.
Ousted Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, was betrayed by a relative who served as his personal bodygyard and who led US troops to the former leader's secret hideout after drugging him, a Jordanian newspaper reported Thursday
Pressed to explain why his administration had asserted Saddam possessed weapons, when at best fragmentary evidence of programmes had been found, Mr Bush replied: "So what's the difference?
Sneddon is now asking us to believe that beginning on the day after the special aired, and while the investigation was taking place, Jackson decided to commit seven lewd acts upon the boy. It’s possible, but it seems implausible.
"By risking their own political careers, George Bush and Tony Blair have, indeed, given Iraqis the gift of freedom. But it is not the freedom to simply shout about what they oppose. That is anarchy. Freedom is about limits, compromise and accepting responsibility. "
"I hope we don't hear any more chants from Iraqis of "Death to Saddam.""
mred - just from americans.
And Paris Hilton outgunned President Bush in a prime-time shootout between Fox and ABC.
Americans are the best-informed people in the history of the world.
By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — the principal public rationale for the war — hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture.
Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney voted against a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison? As recently as 2000 he defended that vote, saying that the African National Congress "was then perceived as a terrorist organization."
CPA officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, think Mr Hussein would not be tried until July at the earliest, setting up the possibility of a televised trial of Saddam Hussein in the final months of the US presidential contest in 2004.
A few hours after the blast I made a second visit to the intersection to check out a claim by US military officials that the explosion had been a tanker accident rather than a bomb - a claim that they yesterday withdrew, conceding that it had been a bomb.
Ousted Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, was betrayed by a relative who served as his personal bodygyard and who led US troops to the former leader's secret hideout after drugging him, a Jordanian newspaper reported Thursday
Pressed to explain why his administration had asserted Saddam possessed weapons, when at best fragmentary evidence of programmes had been found, Mr Bush replied: "So what's the difference?
Sneddon is now asking us to believe that beginning on the day after the special aired, and while the investigation was taking place, Jackson decided to commit seven lewd acts upon the boy. It’s possible, but it seems implausible.
Friday, December 19, 2003
Robert Leslie Burghoff, 45, of The Woodlands was killed in the 1600 block of South Braeswood on Nov. 20. He was studying the virus plaguing cruise ships, police said. Police have released a composite drawing of a motorist who sped away after his van jumped the curb and killed a chemist walking on a sidewalk in the Texas Medical Center.
Vice President Dick Cheney's Christmas card arrived in the capital's mailboxes last week with this suddenly apt quotation from Benjamin Franklin: "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?" Mr. Cheney's bird-hunting trip at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania last Monday, when he and nine others in his party shot some 400 out of 500 pen-raised pheasants released for the morning hunt.
White House officials also declined to release photographs they have of the vice president in full hunting mode. But the vice president's spokesman, Kevin Kellems, did say that the pheasants were cleaned, packed and sent to those less fortunate."
mred - god help us
The employees added that they did not know what had become of Scott Wakefield, a dog handler at the club who was quoted by The Post-Gazette as saying that 500 birds had been released from nets for the hunt.
Guantánamo now holds about 660 prisoners, although that number is expected to decline as some of them are turned over to their home countries.
mred - that 660 number has been around for way too long. (and the rest of the article is so spooky that i cant even comment)
Vice President Dick Cheney's Christmas card arrived in the capital's mailboxes last week with this suddenly apt quotation from Benjamin Franklin: "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?" Mr. Cheney's bird-hunting trip at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania last Monday, when he and nine others in his party shot some 400 out of 500 pen-raised pheasants released for the morning hunt.
White House officials also declined to release photographs they have of the vice president in full hunting mode. But the vice president's spokesman, Kevin Kellems, did say that the pheasants were cleaned, packed and sent to those less fortunate."
mred - god help us
The employees added that they did not know what had become of Scott Wakefield, a dog handler at the club who was quoted by The Post-Gazette as saying that 500 birds had been released from nets for the hunt.
Guantánamo now holds about 660 prisoners, although that number is expected to decline as some of them are turned over to their home countries.
mred - that 660 number has been around for way too long. (and the rest of the article is so spooky that i cant even comment)
But the experts said at a Washington meeting organised by the American Enterprise Institute that any trial of Saddam could simply get bogged down over the lack of evidence.
March/April 1993
ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop. "It is becoming increasingly clear," said a grave Ted Koppel, "that George Bush41, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy."
Is this accurate? Just about every reporter following the story thinks so. Most say that the so-called Iraqgate scandal is far more significant then either Watergate or Iran-contra, both in its scope and its consequences. And all believe that, with investigations continuing, it is bound to get bigger.
December 2, 2003. LaHood: Hussein's capture imminent
U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood held his thumb and forefinger slightly apart and said, "We're this close" to catching Saddam Hussein.
A member of The Pantagraph editorial board -- not really expecting an answer -- asked LaHood for more details, saying, "Do you know something we don't?"
"Yes I do," replied LaHood.
Vice-President Dick Cheney, who was then secretary of defence, outlined some of them in a BBC interview in 1992, when he said: "If we'd gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein - assuming we could have found him - we'd have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to ground some place. He would not have been easy to capture.
"Then you've got to put a new government in his place, and then you're faced with the question of what kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shiah government or a Sunni government?"
Cheney continued: "How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it propped up; how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this operation?"
Donald Rumsfeld mused yesterday that fear of dying might prompt Hussein to talk.
BP faces fresh embarrassment over its new Russian merger partner, TNK, following the release of CIA documents alleging bribery by former TNK president Simon Kukes. The disclosure is also a blow for Russia's largest oil company, Yukos, at which Mr Kukes was recently installed as chief executive following the imprisonment of his predecessor, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Police have refused to characterize the shootings as the work of a sniper -- a word that summons chilling comparisons to the string of shootings from a vehicle around Washington last year that took 10 lives.
The ambush-style attacks follow a series of fatal sniper shootings in the Washington area last year that terrorized residents around the U.S. capital.
FNC: 'schools have closed in ohio where *several shootings* have occured recently, killing one woman."
"...Iraq, at the very least, is a nation of a thousand Jack Rubys."
"Will BushFeld let an Iraqi Jack Ruby "slip through" to keep Saddam from exposing Bush's WMD lies?..."
President Bush is already stumbling over his words and showing the signs of advanced aspartame poisoning.
The world is suffering from Aspartame Disease thanks to President Bush's friend, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, who called in his markers to get it approved when the FDA had refused for 16 years to not only allow approval but attempted to have the manufacturer indicted.
Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle when he called in his markers to get it approved. He was on President Reagan's transition team, and Reagan the day after taking office appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner since no Commissioner in 16 years would approve the poison. A board of inquiry of the best scientists the FDA had to offer was set up and it was their decision that the petition for approval of aspartame be revoked. Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes over-ruled that Board of Inquiry and then went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer and has refused to talk to the press ever since.
mred - this from a non-murdoch 'paper' - but tabloid nunthaless
Sep 21 2003
DESPERATE SADDAM OFFERS AMERICANS DEAL
SADDAM Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, we can reveal.
The Iraqi dictator is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In exchange, he has vowed to provide information on weapons of mass destruction and disclose bank accounts where he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in plundered cash.
Saddam's English-speaking representative walked into the US HQ at Tikrit - the dictator's home town - on September 12 and asked to talk to senior officers.
"The discussions are now going on under the direct authority of General Sanchez. Naturally all the major decisions are being made at the level of the National Security Council, under Condoleezza Rice."
"He has apparently run out of black hair-dye and will almost certainly have white hair."
mred - this is all quite curious if true
AN American soldier shot and killed a tiger in Baghdad's zoo after it attacked a colleague who had put his arms through the bars to feed it. "They turned up after the zoo was closed and were both drunk", an Iraqi keeper said.
DEBKAfile speculates on intelligence issues from a pro-Israeli viewpoint. Noting the "incredibly bedraggled, tired and crushed condition of this once savage, dapper and pampered ruler," DEBKAfile concludes: "Saddam Hussein was not in hiding; he was a prisoner.
Seven-hour "conclusive" DNA tests? Dyed hair while living in a hole? War tribunals for Saddam set up 3 days before Saddam's capture? So where are those alleged hoardes of "Saddam loyalists?
When the ‘Saddam Capture’ story broke, a survey of several mainstream news outlets makes it clear: The corporate media in the US and UK, were conveniently supplied with a package similar to a press kit that included video footage, still shots, press releases worded in such a way they could be cut and pasted, ready to go, in the “news sections” or read on air. Statements from selected officials were provided (Jay Bremer, Condi Rice, etc.), along with timelines of Saddam’s rise and fall, maps, etc.
But here are a few questions that I would like to see asked – not just asked but PROBED, the way real journalists are supposed to probe unexplained “mysteries” that have a significant bearing on the credibility of the government.
1. How could confirmed results of a DNA test come back in just 7 hours, or even 24 for that matter, when an accurate test takes 3-5 days?
2. How Can Saddam, at 67, still Have BLACK HAIR, even after hiding out in a hole?
3. Why was a tribunal hastily set up on December 10, without the foreknowledge or consent of the Iraqi people, just in time for Saddam's 'capture on the 13th'?
4. How will We Know What Saddam Actually Says and What the Bush Fairytalers Make Up as they Go Along?
The man is traveling around for several months carring papers and 750k, I have not seen the condition of the papers, but the dollars after going from dirt hole to dirt hole looked like they just came out of the treasury. Had to have opened up the case many times.
mr ed - i actually made a post somewhere!
"nice work cheryl. other curious items include:
1. FauxNews was breathlessly waiting for 'official confirmation' and it became official when Blair 'announced' the capture. it reminded me of the SOTU snafu re niger. and any talk of 'doubles' was quashed.
2. the very curious story about saddams wife in lebanon, pre-dating the capture by a few days, in murdochpress. 'saddam calls frequently, and he writes me if its a secret.' and they "printed photos of her and said it was the first time her face had been published." Why so chatty Mrs Hussein? ive heard that mr hussein wasnt amenable to security risks. and why the effective 'offer' to have her mail intercepted to get those juicy saddam secrets of which he cant speak on the phone? and the lebanon/syria/paris connection is cute. http://asia.news.yahoo.com/031214/afp/031214030249top.html and later we hear that the cafe where the "undated" interview takes place *doesnt exist*. Were they trying to *prove* that he is alive?
3. wheres the parishilton/jessicalynch nitevision video?
4. 'Then one man on the property, apparently realizing the game was up, pointed. "Saddam is in there".' - if i was this guy, and i thought the game was up, id probably start thinking about the $25M and a witness protection program before pointing. my kids would probably thank me.
5. the tip was received at 11am. the troops 'waited till 6pm for darkness.' id have thought that darkness was unfriendly in any mass search with loads of soldiers and bradleys and helicopters. this was no sneak operation.
6. saddam was apparently moving 'every 3 hours' - why wait 7 hours for darkness?
7. we also have this " "The bedroom was cluttered with new clothes, including T-shirts and socks, some still in their wrappers, leading General Odierno to estimate that Mr. Hussein had been at the site perhaps only an hour or so."
2 questions. how does an unopened pair of socks lead a general to assume that the occupant had only been there for an hour??? secondly, the troops had barricaded the site for a few hours by the time of the capture - did saddam sneak in from outside in the last hour?
8.we also have a soldier noticing the "edge of a fabric-backed rubber mat peeking through soil edging the concrete floor". thats presumably difficult to do in the dark. the 'compound' was searched earlier - presumably during the day - and came up empty.
9. and this "soldiers peered down into the shaft with weapons and bright lights, with orders to kill Mr. Hussein if he put up a fight, held back when they saw he carried no body belt bomb or gun and appeared to be pleading for his life." the diagrams (http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/net/20031215/capt.aphideout.jpg) of the spidey-hidey *clearly* show that 'peering with weapons' at nighttime isnt gonna be too reassuring about whether there was a 'body belt bomb' or not. if i was a nervous soldier in the dark who'd just stumbled across a concealed hole when looking for saddam, id have probably called for backup - perhaps taken gwb literally for once and 'smoked him out' - there wouldnt be very much 'peering' i can promise you. i also question his apparent 'pleading for his life' - the 'schematic' shows that the soldiers can only see his toes - and the acoustics must have been terrible. i doubt the soldiers could have determined if anyone was doing any non-specific pleading - next time they should ensure at least kneeling room. it makes pleading much easier. and "ace in the hole" is pure, perfect rove. he is so good. i can only hope that he is also hubristic and smug.
10. and this priceless piece: "Pentagon officials said Mr. Hussein's identity had been confirmed by old bullet wounds and by other Iraqis who saw him." Against what benchmark are the old bullet wounds calibrated? apparently one of his doubles previously defected cos he couldnt stand all the surgery. did this include cosmetic bullet wounds? and in the same vein, im not sure that 'other iraqis who saw him' is a solid line of evidence. can we please put a stop to *everyone* saying 'well, it looks like him' - we dont even know what he looks like. thats exactly the point of having doubles. theres no baseline for comparison - not for pundits here, or for 'other iraqis'. forever we've heard on fauxnews et al that 'we cant be sure if this footage is of the real saddam' and now we get 'it really looks like him' - please stop it everyone!
11. another curious thing is that im not even sure that ive seen that there were any actual dna reports. we saw saddam being dentally examined (btw - a halloween trick if u wanna scare kids at nite is to put a torch in your mouth) - it looked almost as though it was sposed to *imply* that he was being 'swabbed'.
12. "Sources have indicated that Saddam may have instructed his closest bodyguards to rat him out and lead U.S. forces to his hiding place. When U.S. forces dug through the spider hole, they found Saddam face down, a man resigned to his fate, a gun in his lap, but he did not even reach for it. " I cant even bring myself to comment on the first part of the sentence - but the image of any man lying face down with a gun in his lap is really too much.
weaving webs of deceipt - shakespeare or not
references at http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2003_12_14_wotisitgood4_archive.html#107159694475908045"
March/April 1993
ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop. "It is becoming increasingly clear," said a grave Ted Koppel, "that George Bush41, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy."
Is this accurate? Just about every reporter following the story thinks so. Most say that the so-called Iraqgate scandal is far more significant then either Watergate or Iran-contra, both in its scope and its consequences. And all believe that, with investigations continuing, it is bound to get bigger.
December 2, 2003. LaHood: Hussein's capture imminent
U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood held his thumb and forefinger slightly apart and said, "We're this close" to catching Saddam Hussein.
A member of The Pantagraph editorial board -- not really expecting an answer -- asked LaHood for more details, saying, "Do you know something we don't?"
"Yes I do," replied LaHood.
Vice-President Dick Cheney, who was then secretary of defence, outlined some of them in a BBC interview in 1992, when he said: "If we'd gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein - assuming we could have found him - we'd have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to ground some place. He would not have been easy to capture.
"Then you've got to put a new government in his place, and then you're faced with the question of what kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shiah government or a Sunni government?"
Cheney continued: "How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it propped up; how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this operation?"
Donald Rumsfeld mused yesterday that fear of dying might prompt Hussein to talk.
BP faces fresh embarrassment over its new Russian merger partner, TNK, following the release of CIA documents alleging bribery by former TNK president Simon Kukes. The disclosure is also a blow for Russia's largest oil company, Yukos, at which Mr Kukes was recently installed as chief executive following the imprisonment of his predecessor, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Police have refused to characterize the shootings as the work of a sniper -- a word that summons chilling comparisons to the string of shootings from a vehicle around Washington last year that took 10 lives.
The ambush-style attacks follow a series of fatal sniper shootings in the Washington area last year that terrorized residents around the U.S. capital.
FNC: 'schools have closed in ohio where *several shootings* have occured recently, killing one woman."
"...Iraq, at the very least, is a nation of a thousand Jack Rubys."
"Will BushFeld let an Iraqi Jack Ruby "slip through" to keep Saddam from exposing Bush's WMD lies?..."
President Bush is already stumbling over his words and showing the signs of advanced aspartame poisoning.
The world is suffering from Aspartame Disease thanks to President Bush's friend, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, who called in his markers to get it approved when the FDA had refused for 16 years to not only allow approval but attempted to have the manufacturer indicted.
Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle when he called in his markers to get it approved. He was on President Reagan's transition team, and Reagan the day after taking office appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner since no Commissioner in 16 years would approve the poison. A board of inquiry of the best scientists the FDA had to offer was set up and it was their decision that the petition for approval of aspartame be revoked. Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes over-ruled that Board of Inquiry and then went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer and has refused to talk to the press ever since.
mred - this from a non-murdoch 'paper' - but tabloid nunthaless
Sep 21 2003
DESPERATE SADDAM OFFERS AMERICANS DEAL
SADDAM Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, we can reveal.
The Iraqi dictator is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In exchange, he has vowed to provide information on weapons of mass destruction and disclose bank accounts where he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in plundered cash.
Saddam's English-speaking representative walked into the US HQ at Tikrit - the dictator's home town - on September 12 and asked to talk to senior officers.
"The discussions are now going on under the direct authority of General Sanchez. Naturally all the major decisions are being made at the level of the National Security Council, under Condoleezza Rice."
"He has apparently run out of black hair-dye and will almost certainly have white hair."
mred - this is all quite curious if true
AN American soldier shot and killed a tiger in Baghdad's zoo after it attacked a colleague who had put his arms through the bars to feed it. "They turned up after the zoo was closed and were both drunk", an Iraqi keeper said.
DEBKAfile speculates on intelligence issues from a pro-Israeli viewpoint. Noting the "incredibly bedraggled, tired and crushed condition of this once savage, dapper and pampered ruler," DEBKAfile concludes: "Saddam Hussein was not in hiding; he was a prisoner.
Seven-hour "conclusive" DNA tests? Dyed hair while living in a hole? War tribunals for Saddam set up 3 days before Saddam's capture? So where are those alleged hoardes of "Saddam loyalists?
When the ‘Saddam Capture’ story broke, a survey of several mainstream news outlets makes it clear: The corporate media in the US and UK, were conveniently supplied with a package similar to a press kit that included video footage, still shots, press releases worded in such a way they could be cut and pasted, ready to go, in the “news sections” or read on air. Statements from selected officials were provided (Jay Bremer, Condi Rice, etc.), along with timelines of Saddam’s rise and fall, maps, etc.
But here are a few questions that I would like to see asked – not just asked but PROBED, the way real journalists are supposed to probe unexplained “mysteries” that have a significant bearing on the credibility of the government.
1. How could confirmed results of a DNA test come back in just 7 hours, or even 24 for that matter, when an accurate test takes 3-5 days?
2. How Can Saddam, at 67, still Have BLACK HAIR, even after hiding out in a hole?
3. Why was a tribunal hastily set up on December 10, without the foreknowledge or consent of the Iraqi people, just in time for Saddam's 'capture on the 13th'?
4. How will We Know What Saddam Actually Says and What the Bush Fairytalers Make Up as they Go Along?
The man is traveling around for several months carring papers and 750k, I have not seen the condition of the papers, but the dollars after going from dirt hole to dirt hole looked like they just came out of the treasury. Had to have opened up the case many times.
mr ed - i actually made a post somewhere!
"nice work cheryl. other curious items include:
1. FauxNews was breathlessly waiting for 'official confirmation' and it became official when Blair 'announced' the capture. it reminded me of the SOTU snafu re niger. and any talk of 'doubles' was quashed.
2. the very curious story about saddams wife in lebanon, pre-dating the capture by a few days, in murdochpress. 'saddam calls frequently, and he writes me if its a secret.' and they "printed photos of her and said it was the first time her face had been published." Why so chatty Mrs Hussein? ive heard that mr hussein wasnt amenable to security risks. and why the effective 'offer' to have her mail intercepted to get those juicy saddam secrets of which he cant speak on the phone? and the lebanon/syria/paris connection is cute. http://asia.news.yahoo.com/031214/afp/031214030249top.html and later we hear that the cafe where the "undated" interview takes place *doesnt exist*. Were they trying to *prove* that he is alive?
3. wheres the parishilton/jessicalynch nitevision video?
4. 'Then one man on the property, apparently realizing the game was up, pointed. "Saddam is in there".' - if i was this guy, and i thought the game was up, id probably start thinking about the $25M and a witness protection program before pointing. my kids would probably thank me.
5. the tip was received at 11am. the troops 'waited till 6pm for darkness.' id have thought that darkness was unfriendly in any mass search with loads of soldiers and bradleys and helicopters. this was no sneak operation.
6. saddam was apparently moving 'every 3 hours' - why wait 7 hours for darkness?
7. we also have this " "The bedroom was cluttered with new clothes, including T-shirts and socks, some still in their wrappers, leading General Odierno to estimate that Mr. Hussein had been at the site perhaps only an hour or so."
2 questions. how does an unopened pair of socks lead a general to assume that the occupant had only been there for an hour??? secondly, the troops had barricaded the site for a few hours by the time of the capture - did saddam sneak in from outside in the last hour?
8.we also have a soldier noticing the "edge of a fabric-backed rubber mat peeking through soil edging the concrete floor". thats presumably difficult to do in the dark. the 'compound' was searched earlier - presumably during the day - and came up empty.
9. and this "soldiers peered down into the shaft with weapons and bright lights, with orders to kill Mr. Hussein if he put up a fight, held back when they saw he carried no body belt bomb or gun and appeared to be pleading for his life." the diagrams (http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/net/20031215/capt.aphideout.jpg) of the spidey-hidey *clearly* show that 'peering with weapons' at nighttime isnt gonna be too reassuring about whether there was a 'body belt bomb' or not. if i was a nervous soldier in the dark who'd just stumbled across a concealed hole when looking for saddam, id have probably called for backup - perhaps taken gwb literally for once and 'smoked him out' - there wouldnt be very much 'peering' i can promise you. i also question his apparent 'pleading for his life' - the 'schematic' shows that the soldiers can only see his toes - and the acoustics must have been terrible. i doubt the soldiers could have determined if anyone was doing any non-specific pleading - next time they should ensure at least kneeling room. it makes pleading much easier. and "ace in the hole" is pure, perfect rove. he is so good. i can only hope that he is also hubristic and smug.
10. and this priceless piece: "Pentagon officials said Mr. Hussein's identity had been confirmed by old bullet wounds and by other Iraqis who saw him." Against what benchmark are the old bullet wounds calibrated? apparently one of his doubles previously defected cos he couldnt stand all the surgery. did this include cosmetic bullet wounds? and in the same vein, im not sure that 'other iraqis who saw him' is a solid line of evidence. can we please put a stop to *everyone* saying 'well, it looks like him' - we dont even know what he looks like. thats exactly the point of having doubles. theres no baseline for comparison - not for pundits here, or for 'other iraqis'. forever we've heard on fauxnews et al that 'we cant be sure if this footage is of the real saddam' and now we get 'it really looks like him' - please stop it everyone!
11. another curious thing is that im not even sure that ive seen that there were any actual dna reports. we saw saddam being dentally examined (btw - a halloween trick if u wanna scare kids at nite is to put a torch in your mouth) - it looked almost as though it was sposed to *imply* that he was being 'swabbed'.
12. "Sources have indicated that Saddam may have instructed his closest bodyguards to rat him out and lead U.S. forces to his hiding place. When U.S. forces dug through the spider hole, they found Saddam face down, a man resigned to his fate, a gun in his lap, but he did not even reach for it. " I cant even bring myself to comment on the first part of the sentence - but the image of any man lying face down with a gun in his lap is really too much.
weaving webs of deceipt - shakespeare or not
references at http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2003_12_14_wotisitgood4_archive.html#107159694475908045"
Lynn said: "The voluntary aspect is almost of no consequence. It is government-supported religion, and it is just as unconstitutional in a prison as it would be in a public housing project... We are certainly going to be looking at this very carefully and very closely."
Similarly, Howard Simon of the American Civil Liberties Union said: "I think the governor is just creating what will be an inevitable constitutional showdown about whether it is permissible to use state dollars and state facilities to promote religion. They are not appropriate programs to be sponsored by state government."
Similarly, Howard Simon of the American Civil Liberties Union said: "I think the governor is just creating what will be an inevitable constitutional showdown about whether it is permissible to use state dollars and state facilities to promote religion. They are not appropriate programs to be sponsored by state government."
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Unprecedented demand for the flu vaccine has caused its price to skyrocket across the United States, from $40 a vial two months ago to as high as $215 today, leading to charges that companies are price-gouging health agencies amid fears of an unusually harsh flu season. Each vial contains 10 doses.
Meanwhile, private U.S. companies have been offering for sale several hundred thousand vaccine doses at a steep markup to health agencies across the country. The companies say they are doing nothing wrong. It is a simple case of supply and demand, they say.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services paid $74 a vial for the vaccine it bought from England, about twice what it typically pays.
The increased cost of acquiring the vaccine is not expected to be passed along to the public, health officials said. The health agencies will likely absorb the added expense, they said.
FluMist, a nasal spray vaccine, is being offered for the first time this year, with about 4 million doses available.
WashTImes
The capture promises to restore Mr. Rumsfeld's status as the ultimate wartime leader, after months of being pummeled by the Washington press corps.
In addition to eyewitness identification, the piece of evidence that finally convinced Mr. Rumsfeld was the money: Why would a Saddam double be hiding with nearly $1 million in cash?
mred - how bout the dna?
Osama bin Laden proposed attacking a Turkish military base used by the United States, but militants stymied by tight security bombed civilian targets instead, killing Muslims and upsetting al-Qaida leaders, Turkish officials told The Associated Press.
"The government can’t spend taxpayer money promoting one side of the drug policy debate while prohibiting taxpayers from using their own money to promote the other side," said Bill Piper, Associate Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "This is censorship and not the democratic way.
Richard Britt, 51, the executive director of the Amherst Boys and Girls Club, was arrested and arraigned Monday on a charge of possessing child pornography, police said.
Britt revealed that he had sexually explicit materials last week during a meeting with board members in his apartment.
In 1988, the same year the Iran-Iraq war ended, a new U.S. president was elected. George Herbert Walker Bush came into office determined to pursue a policy of engagement with Saddam. In fact, his first year in office, President Bush signed a secret executive order, National Security Directive Number 26. It called for even closer ties between the United States and Iraq.
If U.S. officials insist on retaining control over Hussein’s case, what are they going to charge him with — “misleading President Bush into mistakenly believing that he still possessed the weapons of mass destruction that the president’s father gave him”?
there’s a good possibility that Hussein will be charged with employing chemical weapons both against Iran and his own people. But how do they explain the failure to indict the U.S. officials who furnished him with those weapons in the first place?
Indeed, the real question is: Will President Bush permit Saddam Hussein to be put on trial for anything? As U.S. officials begin to reflect upon the legal quandary that Hussein’s capture has put them in, they will undoubtedly come to rue the day that U.S. soldiers treated his capture differently than the way they treated the capture of his two sons.
The Tavistock Institute did some interesting research after WW2,
showing that conditions of stress were conducive to operations attempting to change belief-structures or world-view of society.
"According to a Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, an estimated 70,000 to 120,000 jihadists passed through those training camps. So even if a few thousand are sent to Iraq, Osama bin Laden will retain a healthy reserve capable of sustaining his global jihad." (Bruce Hoffman is a terrorism expert with the RAND Corporation.)
This is superficially curious. The US did not similarly trust the Serbs to try Slobodan Milosevic, although they had voted him from power themselves, enjoyed a democratic government and already had him under house arrest. Milosevic's crimes were against his own people. Yet his own people were not allowed to try him. Americans kidnapped him and spirited him away to The Hague.
Iraqis may speak of a thirst for justice but they understandably mean revenge. The Governing Council's Mowaffak al-Rubaie said on Monday: "We will get sovereignty on June 30 and I can tell you he could be executed on July 1."
It's just a suggestion but maybe if you're that convinced of Republican stupidity you ought to write about something else between now and, say, the start of Condi Rice's second term in 2013. The fact (if you'll forgive the word) is that things are going pretty well, and there's really no losing scenario in Iraq.
Bush may not succeed in bringing democracy to Mesopotamia, but so what? If he has to settle for a Musharraf and a big American base on the Syrian border, it's no skin off his back. But it's still better to have tried.
mred - the australian has started borrowing a lot of puremurdoch. hard. right.
the photo is from Jeff Rense's site - November 1993 - Hustler Magazine - satire ad.
mred - larry flint also played an odd role in the jessica lynch story. odd.
In NSW, a surveillance law reform proposal is drafted so sweepingly it would declare spectacles and contact lenses as illegal devices intended to enhance surveillance.
In Victoria, there are discussions about privacy laws preventing the use, without their permission, of photographs of people taken in public places.
Just as the U.S. launched its PR blitz on the capture of Saddam, a bomb on a bridge just outside Rawalpindi, Pakistan, came close to killing Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president. Over the preceding few days Musharraf had come down hard on jihadi groups and had made peace overtures to India, which really enrages the jihadists. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda, in a taped message broadcast on Al Jazeera, called for Musharraf's assassination.
But they added that doctors and parents should closely monitor children for signs of restlessness, agitation, recklessness, unusual behavior or thoughts of suicide, especially during the first weeks of drug treatment and after any increase in dosage. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that suicidal or aggressive behavior, if it is tied to the drugs, occurs within the first weeks after the drug treatment is started.
Meanwhile, private U.S. companies have been offering for sale several hundred thousand vaccine doses at a steep markup to health agencies across the country. The companies say they are doing nothing wrong. It is a simple case of supply and demand, they say.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services paid $74 a vial for the vaccine it bought from England, about twice what it typically pays.
The increased cost of acquiring the vaccine is not expected to be passed along to the public, health officials said. The health agencies will likely absorb the added expense, they said.
FluMist, a nasal spray vaccine, is being offered for the first time this year, with about 4 million doses available.
WashTImes
The capture promises to restore Mr. Rumsfeld's status as the ultimate wartime leader, after months of being pummeled by the Washington press corps.
In addition to eyewitness identification, the piece of evidence that finally convinced Mr. Rumsfeld was the money: Why would a Saddam double be hiding with nearly $1 million in cash?
mred - how bout the dna?
Osama bin Laden proposed attacking a Turkish military base used by the United States, but militants stymied by tight security bombed civilian targets instead, killing Muslims and upsetting al-Qaida leaders, Turkish officials told The Associated Press.
"The government can’t spend taxpayer money promoting one side of the drug policy debate while prohibiting taxpayers from using their own money to promote the other side," said Bill Piper, Associate Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. "This is censorship and not the democratic way.
Richard Britt, 51, the executive director of the Amherst Boys and Girls Club, was arrested and arraigned Monday on a charge of possessing child pornography, police said.
Britt revealed that he had sexually explicit materials last week during a meeting with board members in his apartment.
In 1988, the same year the Iran-Iraq war ended, a new U.S. president was elected. George Herbert Walker Bush came into office determined to pursue a policy of engagement with Saddam. In fact, his first year in office, President Bush signed a secret executive order, National Security Directive Number 26. It called for even closer ties between the United States and Iraq.
If U.S. officials insist on retaining control over Hussein’s case, what are they going to charge him with — “misleading President Bush into mistakenly believing that he still possessed the weapons of mass destruction that the president’s father gave him”?
there’s a good possibility that Hussein will be charged with employing chemical weapons both against Iran and his own people. But how do they explain the failure to indict the U.S. officials who furnished him with those weapons in the first place?
Indeed, the real question is: Will President Bush permit Saddam Hussein to be put on trial for anything? As U.S. officials begin to reflect upon the legal quandary that Hussein’s capture has put them in, they will undoubtedly come to rue the day that U.S. soldiers treated his capture differently than the way they treated the capture of his two sons.
The Tavistock Institute did some interesting research after WW2,
showing that conditions of stress were conducive to operations attempting to change belief-structures or world-view of society.
"According to a Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, an estimated 70,000 to 120,000 jihadists passed through those training camps. So even if a few thousand are sent to Iraq, Osama bin Laden will retain a healthy reserve capable of sustaining his global jihad." (Bruce Hoffman is a terrorism expert with the RAND Corporation.)
This is superficially curious. The US did not similarly trust the Serbs to try Slobodan Milosevic, although they had voted him from power themselves, enjoyed a democratic government and already had him under house arrest. Milosevic's crimes were against his own people. Yet his own people were not allowed to try him. Americans kidnapped him and spirited him away to The Hague.
Iraqis may speak of a thirst for justice but they understandably mean revenge. The Governing Council's Mowaffak al-Rubaie said on Monday: "We will get sovereignty on June 30 and I can tell you he could be executed on July 1."
It's just a suggestion but maybe if you're that convinced of Republican stupidity you ought to write about something else between now and, say, the start of Condi Rice's second term in 2013. The fact (if you'll forgive the word) is that things are going pretty well, and there's really no losing scenario in Iraq.
Bush may not succeed in bringing democracy to Mesopotamia, but so what? If he has to settle for a Musharraf and a big American base on the Syrian border, it's no skin off his back. But it's still better to have tried.
mred - the australian has started borrowing a lot of puremurdoch. hard. right.
the photo is from Jeff Rense's site - November 1993 - Hustler Magazine - satire ad.
mred - larry flint also played an odd role in the jessica lynch story. odd.
In NSW, a surveillance law reform proposal is drafted so sweepingly it would declare spectacles and contact lenses as illegal devices intended to enhance surveillance.
In Victoria, there are discussions about privacy laws preventing the use, without their permission, of photographs of people taken in public places.
Just as the U.S. launched its PR blitz on the capture of Saddam, a bomb on a bridge just outside Rawalpindi, Pakistan, came close to killing Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president. Over the preceding few days Musharraf had come down hard on jihadi groups and had made peace overtures to India, which really enrages the jihadists. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda, in a taped message broadcast on Al Jazeera, called for Musharraf's assassination.
But they added that doctors and parents should closely monitor children for signs of restlessness, agitation, recklessness, unusual behavior or thoughts of suicide, especially during the first weeks of drug treatment and after any increase in dosage. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that suicidal or aggressive behavior, if it is tied to the drugs, occurs within the first weeks after the drug treatment is started.
December 11, 2003
MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS
FROM: WILLIAM KRISTOL & ROBERT KAGAN
SUBJECT: Contracts for Iraq: Reverse the Pentagon's Decision
As the former Mossad chieftain Danny Yatom put it:
"I would be very worried if I were (Syrian President) Bashir Assad tonight. President Bush has just signed a law which allows him to take drastic steps against Syria if it refuses to accede to the American request to ... cease its support for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. ... The Americans are showing their determination. Despite more than 400 dead, they are still there and they intend to act. That should worry Bashir Assad."
Implicate Syria, and we'll spare your life. Will Saddam take the deal?
MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS
FROM: WILLIAM KRISTOL & ROBERT KAGAN
SUBJECT: Contracts for Iraq: Reverse the Pentagon's Decision
As the former Mossad chieftain Danny Yatom put it:
"I would be very worried if I were (Syrian President) Bashir Assad tonight. President Bush has just signed a law which allows him to take drastic steps against Syria if it refuses to accede to the American request to ... cease its support for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. ... The Americans are showing their determination. Despite more than 400 dead, they are still there and they intend to act. That should worry Bashir Assad."
Implicate Syria, and we'll spare your life. Will Saddam take the deal?
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Saddam "remnants" or Saddam "loyalists" are far more difficult to sustain as enemies when they can no longer be loyal to Saddam. Their Iraqi identity will become more obvious and the need to blame "foreign" al-Qa'ida members all the greater.
a sergeant in the 1st Armoured Division on checkpoint duty in Baghdad explained the situation to The Independent in remarkably blunt words. "We're not going to go home any sooner because of Saddam's getting caught," he said. "We all came to search for weapons of mass destruction and attention has now been diverted from that. The arrest of Saddam is meaningless. We still don't know why we came here."
Thalia Assuras of CBS, from Baghdad, says the streets are very, very quiet. Where are the shouts of joy?
Law Professor Francis Boyle, who represented Bosnian victims of atrocity in international courts :
The video footage of Saddam, resembling a homeless man, having his mouth swabbed and hair checked for lice, was a violation of Articles 13 and 14 of the Third Geneva Convention, Boyle argued. [s]Article 13 states that prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated, not subjected to insults and public curiosity, and Article 14 says prisoners are entitled to respect.
Orwell was merely premature
William Kristol and Robert Kagan are not pleased with the Pentagon over its “heavy-handed” action in publicly excluding governments that opposed the invasion of Iraq from bidding on reconstruction contracts. Yesterday, they released a memorandum, posted on the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) website, urging the President to reverse that policy.
mer ed: ?
Sending baker to Europe empty-handed to beg for handouts seems, to say the least, unseemly.
After all, unless the Bush administration grasps the diplomacy of looting pretty quickly, they are unlikely to get much support for their next imperial act of aggression.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says Saddam Hussein must know where his country's weapons of mass destruction are hidden. But, Mr. Rumsfeld indicates he expects little cooperation from the captured former Iraqi leader and suggests the search for the missing weapons is likely to go on for some time.
The defense secretary notes U.S. and coalition troops searched for months before getting intelligence information that led them to Saddam's hiding place in a tiny hole in the ground at a remote farmhouse near Tikrit.
"Think of the quantity of biological weapons that could fit in that hole alone could kill tens of thousands of human beings," he said. "So the difficulty of finding him is the same difficulty of finding anyone else or another thing, like weapons."
One day after the United States announced the capture of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the top issue has become what to do with him.
mred - nice planning team.
Sky News has been fined £50,000 by the Independent Television Commission for broadcasting a fake news report during the Iraq war.
James Forlong, 44, had claimed that footage of a Cruise missile being fired at Iraq from the Navy submarine HMS Splendid, broadcast in March, was being shown live. It later emerged the film of the missile being fired was library stock and the crew members were on a practice run.
The Commission also noted that Mr Forlong was an experienced journalist whose reports had never previously proved to be inaccurate. He resigned in July and committed suicide three months later.
New research suggests that the miracles promised by antidepressants may be largely due to the placebo effect. Too bad there's no money to be made in sugar pills.
And by the end of the study, Schonfeld seemed to be yet another person who owed a nearly miraculous recovery to the new generation of antidepressants -- in this case, venlafaxine, better known as Effexor.
Psychiatrists and other mental-health professionals (I am a practicing therapist) know that any given antidepressant has only about a 50 percent chance of working with any given person. But what most people -- patients and clinicians alike -- don't know is that in more than half of the 47 trials used by the Food and Drug Administration to approve the six leading antidepressants on the market, the drugs failed to outperform sugar pills, and in the trials that were successful, the advantage of drugs over placebo was slight.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich insightfully called the Jessica Lynch story an American ink blot test.
Pornographers troll for people like Jessica Lynch: slender, blonde, with an air of pretty next-door innocence the degradation of which titillates the main consumers of pornography: men. Wealthy men are also quick to colonize young women like Jessica Lynch as models, mistresses, and trophy wives.
Jessica Lynch was 19 when she was deployed to Kuwait to support an impending invasion of Iraq. Like so many young people for whom the military is a sectoral economic strategy, she was unschooled in the dynamics of capital accumulation and imperialism.
One Iraqi officer and an ambulance driver named Sabah Khazaal tried to transport Lynch back to the Americans.
The reasoning was that an ambulance is protected under the Geneva Conventions and wouldn't be fired upon. It didn't work. When the ambulance was within 300 meters of the American army checkpoint, U.S. soldiers opened fire on it, nearly killing Lynch after she was well on her way to a successful convalescence and repatriation to the United States.
"Rendon even boasted about it to the National Security Council, saying, "If any of you either participated in the liberation of Kuwait City ... or if you watched it on television, you would have seen hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags. Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American flags? And for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs.""
(Rendon's Chief Financial Officer is Sandy Libby, wife of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.)
mred - i see the same thing on the tv today in iraq. i wonder when the signs were made
This tactic is combined with language/message control--explaining why masculine bluster like "Americans are not the running kind" can show up in two separate speeches in the same day by different members of the administration--redefining all opposition to US actions as terrorists, and building false associations through repetition: "echoing," another industry word. (How many times did we hear "September 11," "terrorists," and "Saddam Hussein" in the same breath.) This is a Psyops technique, a method to "construct memory," and the "target audience" is not the enemy, and not the "indigenous population." It is us.
When they get caught, they reconfigure the story with elliptical, some would say obtuse, language, then let it linger some more. Weapons of mass destruction become a "weapons program," a "seeking" of WMD. George Tenet's CIA "had questions" about the British forgery... er, dossier.
a sergeant in the 1st Armoured Division on checkpoint duty in Baghdad explained the situation to The Independent in remarkably blunt words. "We're not going to go home any sooner because of Saddam's getting caught," he said. "We all came to search for weapons of mass destruction and attention has now been diverted from that. The arrest of Saddam is meaningless. We still don't know why we came here."
Thalia Assuras of CBS, from Baghdad, says the streets are very, very quiet. Where are the shouts of joy?
Law Professor Francis Boyle, who represented Bosnian victims of atrocity in international courts :
The video footage of Saddam, resembling a homeless man, having his mouth swabbed and hair checked for lice, was a violation of Articles 13 and 14 of the Third Geneva Convention, Boyle argued. [s]Article 13 states that prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated, not subjected to insults and public curiosity, and Article 14 says prisoners are entitled to respect.
Orwell was merely premature
William Kristol and Robert Kagan are not pleased with the Pentagon over its “heavy-handed” action in publicly excluding governments that opposed the invasion of Iraq from bidding on reconstruction contracts. Yesterday, they released a memorandum, posted on the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) website, urging the President to reverse that policy.
mer ed: ?
Sending baker to Europe empty-handed to beg for handouts seems, to say the least, unseemly.
After all, unless the Bush administration grasps the diplomacy of looting pretty quickly, they are unlikely to get much support for their next imperial act of aggression.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says Saddam Hussein must know where his country's weapons of mass destruction are hidden. But, Mr. Rumsfeld indicates he expects little cooperation from the captured former Iraqi leader and suggests the search for the missing weapons is likely to go on for some time.
The defense secretary notes U.S. and coalition troops searched for months before getting intelligence information that led them to Saddam's hiding place in a tiny hole in the ground at a remote farmhouse near Tikrit.
"Think of the quantity of biological weapons that could fit in that hole alone could kill tens of thousands of human beings," he said. "So the difficulty of finding him is the same difficulty of finding anyone else or another thing, like weapons."
One day after the United States announced the capture of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the top issue has become what to do with him.
mred - nice planning team.
Sky News has been fined £50,000 by the Independent Television Commission for broadcasting a fake news report during the Iraq war.
James Forlong, 44, had claimed that footage of a Cruise missile being fired at Iraq from the Navy submarine HMS Splendid, broadcast in March, was being shown live. It later emerged the film of the missile being fired was library stock and the crew members were on a practice run.
The Commission also noted that Mr Forlong was an experienced journalist whose reports had never previously proved to be inaccurate. He resigned in July and committed suicide three months later.
New research suggests that the miracles promised by antidepressants may be largely due to the placebo effect. Too bad there's no money to be made in sugar pills.
And by the end of the study, Schonfeld seemed to be yet another person who owed a nearly miraculous recovery to the new generation of antidepressants -- in this case, venlafaxine, better known as Effexor.
Psychiatrists and other mental-health professionals (I am a practicing therapist) know that any given antidepressant has only about a 50 percent chance of working with any given person. But what most people -- patients and clinicians alike -- don't know is that in more than half of the 47 trials used by the Food and Drug Administration to approve the six leading antidepressants on the market, the drugs failed to outperform sugar pills, and in the trials that were successful, the advantage of drugs over placebo was slight.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich insightfully called the Jessica Lynch story an American ink blot test.
Pornographers troll for people like Jessica Lynch: slender, blonde, with an air of pretty next-door innocence the degradation of which titillates the main consumers of pornography: men. Wealthy men are also quick to colonize young women like Jessica Lynch as models, mistresses, and trophy wives.
Jessica Lynch was 19 when she was deployed to Kuwait to support an impending invasion of Iraq. Like so many young people for whom the military is a sectoral economic strategy, she was unschooled in the dynamics of capital accumulation and imperialism.
One Iraqi officer and an ambulance driver named Sabah Khazaal tried to transport Lynch back to the Americans.
The reasoning was that an ambulance is protected under the Geneva Conventions and wouldn't be fired upon. It didn't work. When the ambulance was within 300 meters of the American army checkpoint, U.S. soldiers opened fire on it, nearly killing Lynch after she was well on her way to a successful convalescence and repatriation to the United States.
"Rendon even boasted about it to the National Security Council, saying, "If any of you either participated in the liberation of Kuwait City ... or if you watched it on television, you would have seen hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags. Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American flags? And for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs.""
(Rendon's Chief Financial Officer is Sandy Libby, wife of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.)
mred - i see the same thing on the tv today in iraq. i wonder when the signs were made
This tactic is combined with language/message control--explaining why masculine bluster like "Americans are not the running kind" can show up in two separate speeches in the same day by different members of the administration--redefining all opposition to US actions as terrorists, and building false associations through repetition: "echoing," another industry word. (How many times did we hear "September 11," "terrorists," and "Saddam Hussein" in the same breath.) This is a Psyops technique, a method to "construct memory," and the "target audience" is not the enemy, and not the "indigenous population." It is us.
When they get caught, they reconfigure the story with elliptical, some would say obtuse, language, then let it linger some more. Weapons of mass destruction become a "weapons program," a "seeking" of WMD. George Tenet's CIA "had questions" about the British forgery... er, dossier.
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