Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The Saudis to Baker's Rescue?





As regular readers know, I'm not hot on conspiracy theories--partly because I don't believe government officials are competent enough to pull off overly intricate schemes (though it does happen occasionally). But here's a modest CT for anyone who--like me--was stunned to read the op-ed by Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi adviser, in Wednesday's Washington Post. He says explicitly that if George W. Bush withdraws troops from Iraq, Saudi Arabia will do whatever it must to protect the Sunnis of Iraq. For years, he notes, Saudi King Abdullah has refused calls to send money and weapons to Iraqi Sunnis. Those calls, Obaid writes, will "be heeded if American troops begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq." He acknowledges this could pit Saudi Arabia versus Iran, which is supporting Iraqi Shiites, in a civil war in Iraq. He ends the piece: "To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks--it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse."

It's a chilling piece. It might even be true: a US pullout could lead to a greater civil war that draws in other nations and leads to worse. But I can't help wondering if Obaid's piece is an attempt to provide cover for former Secretary of State James Baker and his Iraq Study Group, which is supposed to be releasing its recommendations within weeks. Baker and his fellow commissioners have a problem: what to say about withdrawing troops. The ten members of the bipartisan panel are likely divided on this critical point. The Democrats on the panel know that their party leaders in Congress have been advocating disengagement. Republicans on the panel know their president has said he will not bring back the troops. How can Baker square this circle?

Are the Saudis coming the rescue? Baker has always been close to the House of Saud. Now a representative of that clan is publicly warning--even if noting his views do not reflect "official Saudi policy"--that withdrawal could lead to all-out war in the region. That certainly raises the cost of proposing a retreat. Anyone considering withdrawing troops ought to be scared by this article. And that could well be the point of it--to help Baker smother any recommendation for withdrawal. But there's something worse: Obaid might indeed be reflecting official Saudi policy and his predictions might be on the mark. Should the prospect of open civil war involving other regional powers trump the argument for withdrawing troops? Not necessarily. (Read Republican Senator Chuck Hagel's argument for withdrawal here.) But withdrawal may substitute one set of grave problems for another. The furies that Bush has unleashed in the Middle East are far from burning out.

Posted by David Corn at November 29, 2006 11:21 AM

19 comments:

kathleen said...

This is the best interview of Carter's book "Palestine Peace, Not Apartheid" that I have heard or read so far! Go Larry King!


Although both Blitzer (at Cnn go listen) and Larry King stated that it was Arafat who blew it during the Clinton negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel! Carter blew that myth away in the interview with Blitzer! Carter said that Barak never agreed to what Clinton proposed!

This is a great interview!CNN: Jimmy Carter Interview on Larry King

Jimmy Carter Interview
CNN Larry King Live

(...)
KING: Now let's move to your book, "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid," published by Simon and Schuster. This must be book number 600.

CARTER: It's book number 21.

KING: Twenty-one. It just seems so frequent.

CARTER: I know.

KING: Anyway, Alan Dershowitz writing about this book Mr. Dershowitz has written strong books defending Israel, blasts this book and he says your use of the loaded word "apartheid" suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa is especially outrageous. What's the analogy? Why use the word apartheid?

CARTER: Well, he has to go to the first word in the title, which is "Palestine," not Israel. He should go to the second word in the title, which is "peace." And then the last two words is "not apartheid." I never have alleged in the book or otherwise that Israel, as a nation, was guilty of apartheid.

But there is a clear distinction between the policies within the nation of Israel and within the occupied territories that Israel controls and the oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli forces in the occupied territories is horrendous. And it's not something that has been acknowledged or even discussed in this country. The basic purpose of... KING: Why not?

CARTER: I don't know why not. You never hear anything about what is happening to the Palestinians by the Israelis. As a matter of fact, it's one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world. The Palestinians' land has been taken away from them. They now have an encapsulating or an imprisonment wall being built around what's left of the little tiny part of the holy land that is in the West Bank.

In the Gaza, from which Israel is now withdrawing, Gaza is surrounded by a high wall. There's only two openings in it, one into Israel which is mostly closed, the other one into Egypt. The people there are encapsulated.

And, the deprivation of basic human rights among the Palestinians is really horrendous and this is a fact that's known throughout the world. It's debated heavily and constantly in Israel. Every time I'm there the debates is going on. It is not debated at all in this country.

And, I believe that the purpose of this book, as I know, is to bring permanent peace to Israel living within its recognized borders, modified with good faith negotiations between the Palestinians for land swaps. That's the only avenue that will bring Israel peace.

KING: But, again, referring to Dershowitz, he says: "Palestinian terrorism is missing from Carter's entire historical account," true?

CARTER: No, it's not. He obviously hasn't read the book. I point out very horrible instances of Palestinian terrorism. But I also point out that in the last -- since August of 2004 that Hamas has not been guilty of an act of terrorism that cost an Israeli life. And, the terrible acts of violence on both sides are a very great concern of mine.

For instance, since the second intifada started, there have been about 4,000 Israelis -- Palestinians killed, about 1,000 Israelis killed. Seven hundred Palestinian children have died. About 120 Israeli children have died. These are all horrible acts and this constant killing of each other needs to be stopped.

Since Israel went into Gaza 400 Palestinians have died, three Israeli soldiers have been killed. Four other Israelis have been killed by rockets. All of those deaths are tragic but there has been violence on both sides.

And what we need now is a recognition that Israel will comply with international law with the resolutions passed by the United Nations, approved by the United States and Israel requiring Israel to withdraw from occupied territories.

To comply with Israel's with me and President Sadat at Camp David when Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel agreed, "We will withdraw our military and political forces from the West Bank. We'll give them full autonomy. We'll comply with U.N. resolution 242," which requires Israel to withdraw from occupied territories. That has now been violated.

KING: Let me hold you right there.

CARTER: Yes.

KING: And we'll pick right up.

CARTER: Fine.

KING: We'll have e-mails and include some phone calls. "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid," Jimmy Carter the author, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Concerning your book, Nancy Pelosi, the incoming speaker of the House said: "It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously."

CARTER: Well, I didn't refer to Israel, to repeat myself, and I made it plain in my book that the apartheid as now being practiced in the West Bank is based not on racism or ethnic divisions. It's based on (INAUDIBLE) for Palestinian land by a minority of Israelis and this has been the problem for a long time.

And, I don't think there's any way that Israel will ever have what all of us want, what I've worked for, for 30 years, and that is peace until Israel is willing to withdraw from the occupied territories and let the Palestinians have their own land side-by-side, as is specified, by the way, in the international quartet's roadmap for peace, which calls for Israel to withdraw from occupied territories.

KING: Mr. President, didn't President Clinton have that all worked out and wasn't it Arafat that backed off?

CARTER: No. As a matter of fact, Clinton -- President Clinton did a great job the last term, the last part of his term in trying to bring peace to Israel. He made some very interesting proposals, none of which were accepted either by the Israelis or the Palestinians.

I describe that in my book and what President Clinton proposed was not acceptable to either Israel of the Palestinians but was the best effort he could make in the time that he had left in his term.

KING: We have an e-mail from Julie in Palo Alto. "The United States and Israel seem to be the ones you love to hate worldwide. Why do you think that is so and why are they always linked together?"

CARTER: Well, I think the United States and Israel have been linked together ever since long before I was president and they were certainly linked together when I was president. I was the one that negotiated a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Egypt had been the attacker of Israel four times in the previous 25 years before I became president and we concluded a peace treaty between Israel and our most formidable opponent in 1979 in April, not a word of which has ever been violated. So, I've devoted a good portion of my adult life trying to bring peace to Israel, which I admire very much.

And I think what's happening in the West Bank and in the occupied territories is completely contrary to the basic principles of the Israeli religion and completely contrary to the basic principles of Israel as a nation when it was founded.

It's a crime what is being done to the Palestinians by the occupying forces and that's what I tried to describe in the book. And everything in the book, I might say, is completely accurate.

KING: Richard Cohen in "The Washington Post" wrote the following. I want your reaction. "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It's an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslim (and Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are now seeing. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself."

CARTER: I don't agree with that, if you're asking me if I do agree.

KING: Yes.

CARTER: I think it was a notable and heroic thing for the international community with practical unanimity, except for the Arab countries, to ordain the right of Israel to be a nation and I think that one of the greatest steps that Harry Truman made was to recognize Israel immediately.

And then when Israel was attacked and went through a series of wars in 1967, the delineation of Israel was established. Seventy- seven percent of the holy land was given to Israel. Only 22 percent went into the West Bank. And the agreement was that Israel would not invade and occupy and colonize the property owned by the Palestinians.

Israel violated that international law and the international quartet's roadmap and other agreements. And, as soon as Israel quits violating that and withdraws to its legal borders, then Israel will have I think a fruitful and peaceful life in harmony with its neighbors.

KING: Are you optimistic about that?

CARTER: It depends. You know in the last six years, contrary to every other thing we've known since Israel was founded, there has not been a single day of good faith negotiation between Israel and her neighbors, despite the fact that the Palestinians have produced with full approval for Israel and the United States the person that they wanted to represent the Palestinians, that is Mahmoud Abbas who is known as Abu Mazen.

When Arafat was still president, Abu Mazen was made the prime minister, at the choice of U.S. and Israel, so he could negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. Later when Arafat died, Abu Mazen became the president of the Palestinians and still he has not been permitted to negotiate a single day in good faith in a substantive way with Israeli leaders.

That's something that's missing is any effort on the part of the international community, particularly the United States, to bring these two sides together for good faith talks, as all previous presidents, including President Clinton, have tried to do.

KING: The book is "Palestine, Peace not Apartheid." Coming up, former President Carter's take on the midterm elections; a little later his predictions for 2008. Your phone calls on the questions of this book as well and some more on the book too. It's just ahead on LARRY KING LIVE.

(...)

KING: Do you think it will continue to be as pro-Israel as this past Congress?

CARTER: I would guess so, Larry. It's almost inconceivable for any members of the House and Senate to take any position that would be critical of Israel.

That's one reason I wrote my book, is just to precipitate some controversy, to use your word, or provocation, that is to provoke debate on the issue and to let the people of America know that there are two sides to many issues in the Middle East, and that in order ever to have peace for Israel, Israel will have to comply with international law. But I don't think it's likely at all that Democrats will be any more critical for the policies of Israel than were the Republicans.

KING: Back to Mr. Dirshowitz (ph) on your book. He deals with the tone of your book. He says "it's obvious that Carter doesn't like Israel or Israelis. He lectured Golda Meir on Israel's secular nature, he admits he didn't like Menachem Begin. He has little good to say about any Israelis except those few who agree with him. He apparently got along swimmingly with secular Syrian mass murderer Hafiz al-Assad. He and his wife Rosalynn had a fine time fine with equally secular Yasser Arafat, a man with the blood of hundreds of Americans and Israelis on his hands."

How would you respond?

CARTER: That's ridiculous. You know, I think it's a waste of my time and yours to quote Professor Dirshowitz. He's so obviously biased, Larry, and it's not worth my time to waste it on commenting on him.

I had very good friends in Israel. I said in the book that my number one friend in Israel was Eva Weissman (ph), who negotiated with me at Camp David. Moshe Dian (ph) was also there with me. I got along well with Prime Minister Begin. In fact, he was the one that made it possible for me to have the greatest success politically of my life, and that is to bring peace between Israel and Egypt. And obviously I was friendly with Sadat, as well. So, I still have great friends in Israel. And for him to say that I hate Israel, I hate Israelis, I hate Jews and so forth is ridiculous.

KING: Since you negotiated one of the most successful peace treaties in history, the treaty between Israel and Egypt, which has never been broken, right?

CARTER: That's correct. Not a single word has ever been violated since April of 1979.

KING: How did you get this rap of anti-Israel then?

CARTER: You mean from Dirshowitz?

KING: No, let's put Dirshowitz aside.

CARTER: You'd have a hard time finding others that think that. You know, when I write a book of this kind, with admittedly a provocative title -- and I use the word provocative not in a negative sense, but just to provoke debate and to provoke discussion.

And now we're in an absolute doldrums concerning peace in the Middle East. As I said couple of times on your program already, for six years we've not had one day -- one effort to negotiate peace. I think it's time to get become on the peace track. And I think this book will provoke some discussions and will educate a lot of people about what's going on in the West Bank now. And it has the clearest possible avenue proscribed in this book for peace in Israel and harmony with its next door neighbors.

KING: Why has that been impossible up to now?

CARTER: The debate?

KING: No, not to have a debate.

CARTER: Yes?

KING: President Clinton said that situation is the hardest he's ever had to deal with, harder than Britain and Ireland.

CARTER: Well, it probably is. But, you know, there have been two clear successes. One was when I negotiated between Begin and Sadat and they both agreed to exactly the same document. They both submitted that document with their signature on it to their own parliaments. And their own governments approved it, in Israel with a vote of 85 percent in the Knesset.

And then later the Norwegians negotiated an agreement between Rabin -- Peres on one side and Arafat on the other, for which all three of them got the Nobel Peace Prize. And they proscribed it -- the withdrawal from the occupied territory.

So, there have been previous agreements worked out based on U.N. Resolution 242 and the others, with which the Israeli leaders and their government agreed. So it's not a hopeless case. And I hope that we'll make another effort. In both those cases, there were strong interlocutors or mediators, I in one case and the Norwegians in the other. And that's what we need now.

I think if the United States won't take that role on, then maybe the entire group of the so-called International Quartet, the United States, Russia, the United Nations, and the United -- and the European Union -- those four have written a road map which President Bush has endorsed enthusiastically. And if they can implement their terms -- by the way, on which the Palestinians have accepted 100 percent and the Israelis have rejected almost entirely -- if the road map terms are accepted, then we can have peace in the Middle East.

KING: Our guest is President Carter. His book is "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," not only a guaranteed best-seller, but certainly one of the most talked about books late in the year 2006.

Just ahead, the former president's take on the rising political star of Barack Obama. Don't go away.
(...)

capt said...

Blogger Status

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

There will be a small outage for the new version of Blogger and its Blog*Spot blogs tonight at 7PM, lasting 5 minutes.

Update, 9:45pm: the outage had to be postponed to tomorrow (Wednesday) 10:00am Pacific Time.

Posted by Pete at 15:32 PST

kathleen said...

Just finished reading Corn's "Iran/Contra 20 years later and what it means".

Prior to the 2000 election many of us could see the "Iran/Contra" criminals gathering!

Corn said in the article "As for the current relevance of Iran/contra, one could argue that the affair taught Reaganites and neocons a lesson, the wrong lesson: you can get away with it."

Let's not just hope, as David says in his article that these "One can hope, though, that the disingenuous, reality-defying engineers of the current disaster will be too old or too discredited to return to power two decades from now."

WE NEED TO E-MAIL, LOBBY, CALL, GET OUT ON THE STREETS AND DEMAND THAT THESE WAR CRIMINALS THESE TERROIST WHO HAVE IN THE PAST AND CONTINUE TO USE THE SYSTEM TO MURDER OTHERS (650,OOO DEAD IRAQI PEOPLE, WHO KNOWS HOW MANY INJURED, 3000 AMERICAN SOLDIERS, 20,OOO INJURED) ARE HELD ACCOUNTABLE AND PROSECUTED.

Interesting how it was clearly necessary and critical for Jews and many others to demand that the Nazi's be held accountable for their war crimes. But we are not screaming for these war criminals to be held accountable. Instead we have our representatives like (D-Missouri) Senator McCosker say on Talk of the Nation yesterday that we do not want to play the "blame game" when it comes to holding people accountable for the false pre-war intelligence. Or when (D-Ohio) Senator Sherrod Brown was asked by me about accountability in regard to the false pre-war intelligence he said "we do not want to be about retribution! Our Jews lives more valuable than Muslims? It sure appears to be so!

Can anyone tell me when holding people accountable for such serious crimes started to be defined as "the blame game" or "retribution" instead of JUSTICE?

And now David Corn (thank you for all you do and the article) tells us that we can "hope" that these psycho's are too old in twenty years to cause more death and destruction.

No David we should all do more than hope these warmongers/liars are too old to commit crimes against humanity in 20 years! We should demand that they are all held accountable/prosecuted for their very serious crimes!

Holding those responsible for this war accountble is the very least that our Representatives and the American public can do for those who have needlessly lost their lives in this war of choice! The 650,ooo people in Iraq (and counting) who have died since the invasion and the American and coalition soldiers lives are as important as the people who were brutally murdered during WWII!

REMEMBER "NEVER AGAIN" APPLIES TO EVERY HUMAN BEING NOT JUST JEWS!

kathleen said...

Bush setting the middle east on fire!

kathleen said...

Carter will be on C-span on Sunday for three hours!

Gerald said...

Carter is 82 or 83 years old. His writings will be with us long after he has passed on. I prefer to substitute the word apartheid for the word genocide. Nazi Israel is currently involved in genocide to rid the world of Palestinians and Lebanese. Carter informed me that it has been Nazi Israel that would not listen to or follow through on positive movement for peace with the Palestinians.

From the previous thread!

saladin, there are some countries that can have a democracy and there are some countries that cannot have a democracy. Iraq may be a country that can only function with a dictatorship.

3,000 dead Americans, 26,000 maimed and 10,000 so seriously maimed that they are no longer to fight or work in our society for what? So Iraq can put into place another dictator! Asshole (Bush) does as asshole is!!!

Did I hear it correctly that Hitler Bush cancelled his meeting with the Iraqi leader??? HITLER BUSH IS A TOTAL IDIOT!!!!! THE GLORY OF HITLER BUSH IS MAN FULLY AND TOTALLY DEAD!!!!!!!!!!

capt said...

Rice aide resigns



A top aide to Condoleezza Rice, who said overall progress in the Middle East hinges on Israeli-Palestinian peace, resigned.

Philip Zelikow, the State Department’s counselor, said this week that he was quitting because he needed to earn a private-sector salary.

Zelikow made headlines two months ago when he told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that in order to get Arab states to cooperate with the United States on Iraq, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a "sine qua non."


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Zelikow is a dyed in the wool head-case. Check out the next piece on him . . . . .



capt

capt said...

Some interesting facts about Philip Zelikow that you may not know



For anyone who thinks the 911 Commision was impartial, check the wikipedia entry on Philp Zelikow. It says:
"Prof. Zelikow's area of academic expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, "public myths" or "public presumptions," which he defines as "beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community." In his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called "‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events [that] take on ‘transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene."

"In the November-December 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs, he co-authored an article entitled "Catastrophic Terrorism," in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, "the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently."

So the Executive Director of the 911 Commision is an expert in creating public myths. He also wrote about destruction of the towers being a new pearl harbour back in 1998, even before the PNAC boys. Interesting....


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Creating public myths? How interesting, eh?



capt

Gerald said...

Al-Maliki skips dinner with Bush, Jordanian leader
AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki arrived in Jordan on Wednesday and met with Jordan's King Abdullah. However, he skipped a dinner with President Bush and Abdullah, and is to meet with the president on Thursday, said Counselor to the President Dan Bartlett.

Because that bilateral meeting was held, it was decided that a three-way meeting was not required, Bartlett said.

It had been reported that Bush-al-Maliki meetings -- focusing on the out-of-control security situation across Iraq -- would start Wednesday. There have been reports that the start was put off to Thursday after a U.S. memo cast doubt on al-Maliki's ability to deal with the sectarian warfare in Iraq.

The political bloc of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced earlier Wednesday that it would suspend its activities in the Iraqi government because the meeting was being held. The group also threatened to eventually quit the government if certain demands weren't met.

But Bartlett said there was nothing odd about this arrangement and the leaked memo had no part in it. The schedule change will give Bush and Abdullah an opportunity to discuss other issues in the region, he said. (Posted 1:48 p.m.)

Saladin said...

Mr. Corn, that is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard!! Why do they keep skating around the fact that civil war has been raging for awhile now? And that it was the plan all along? This is pure bullshit, it not only gets bushco off the hook but the war mongering dems as well!! This is a bottomless pit from which there is no escape! AAAARRRRGGGG!!!!

Gerald said...

How about War Crimes Tribunals

capt said...

Consider this:

We step out of Iraq and the Saudis step in.

Who then has all the oil?

It seems clear enough who answers to whom when the Saudis can summon our politicians (VP).


capt

Gerald said...

The coward turd (HItler Bush) to meet Iraqi leader in Jordan

capt said...

Fun with misspelling words:

I have been typing "oilgarchs" for oligarchs and "oplitician" for politician and have been tempted to just post as such. Oilgarchs is a given but I'm not sure what "oplitician" could mean.

HA!



capt

capt said...

Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar's New Book: Perilous Power



Chapter One - Terrorism and Conspiracies

The underlying raison d'etre used to justify the post-9/11 Middle East and Central Asian wars is the so-called "war on terror" and claimed overall threat therefrom, and that's how the dialogue between the two authors begins with moderator Stephen Shalom asking them to define terrorism. Chomsky explained he's been writing about it since Ronald Reagan was elected and declared "war on international terrorism" using rhetoric like the "scourge of terrorism" and "the plague of the modern age." It was clear what the administration had in mind was its own planned Contra war of terrorism against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the one west of it against the FMLN opposition in El Salvador with US regional head of state terrorism John Negroponte (now US Director of National Intelligence in charge of "homeland" terrorism against the public) directing it all through his US Ambassador's office in Hondurus situated between the two conflict zones. The idea was to crush the outlier Nicaraguan government (that wouldn't play by US-imposed rules) and the opposition resistance to the fascist government in El Salvador to establish or solidify reliable right wing client dictators who always understand "who's boss."

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

A good piece - chapter by chapter. The clip is weak the review is excellent from many points of view.



capt

Detroit Don said...

Why would we be surprised if the Saudis provide support to Iraqi Sunni insurgents? Because they're our "allies?" Kind of like the Pakistanis are our "allies?"

Before you know it, the official word will be that we were protecting Al-Queda in Iraq from the terrorist Sunnis. Memory hole, anyone?

capt said...

Pakistan tells NATO to "accept defeat by Taliban"




Remind me again how the Republicans and the Bush White House are supposed to be stronger on national defense?

Telegraph UK:

Senior Pakistani officials are urging Nato countries to accept the Taliban and work towards a new coalition government in Kabul that might exclude the Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, has said in private briefings to foreign ministers of some Nato member states that the Taliban are winning the war in Afghanistan and Nato is bound to fail. He has advised against sending more troops.

Western ministers have been stunned. "Kasuri is basically asking Nato to surrender and to negotiate with the Taliban," said one Western official who met the minister recently. Read on…


(h/t Rasputin)


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

The true conservatives should be coming unglued. This is so insane.



capt

O'Reilly said...

The NewsHour

STALLED SUMMIT
Ray Suarez reports on the troubled Iraqi government and the meeting between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki that was postponed on Wednesday. Then, Suarez discusses the delayed Iraqi-American summit with guests including: Laith Kubba, who served as spokesman for Iraq's previous government from April 2005 until January 2006; and Trudy Rubin, foreign affairs columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer who has been to Iraq six times since the 2003 invasion.

MAPPING THE BRAIN
The NewsHour’s Health Correspondent Susan Dentzer reports on a new tool for medical research, a three-dimensional map of the brain.


CLEARING THE AIR
The United States Supreme Court heard its first case on global warming Wednesday with twelve states asking the court to mandate limits on greenhouse emissions from new cars and trucks. Gwen Ifill reports on the case and speaks with Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal, who was at the Supreme Court. Then, Jeffrey Brown discusses the significance of the case and what it means for the government’s response to global warming with guests including: David Rivkin, an attorney in private practice who wrote a brief defending the EPA and served in the Reagan and first Bush administrations; and, Vicki Patton, a lawyer for Environmental Defense, one of the groups which is a party in the case. Patton also served in the EPA's general counsel's office.

+=+=+=+=+=+
The states will drag the 'out of touch' neocon Bushites kicking and screaming to deal with our neglectful treatment of our earth.

capt said...

Fresh Thread