Friday, January 19, 2007

Casual Work Friday


After three days of vigorous juror-selection watching in the Scooter Libby trial, I'm going to take a day off from blogging (unless something truly inspires me). I'm still processing all the data received while observing the jury-picking process. For example, did you know that the average Washingtonian called for jury duty does not regularly read the newspaper, does not regularly watch broadcast or cable television news, and does not regularly visit news-related websites or blogs? Most do not even regularly watch Tim Russert on Meet the Press. One juror was asked if he had read Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the War. Get this: he said no. What are these people doing instead of assiduously following the news (or reading this blog)? They're walking their dogs, going to the gym, tracking celebrity news, reading the Bible. And this is in Washington. So I'm knocking off early this week. Hey, did I hear something about Paula Abdul being drunk during some interview? Gotta check that out.

Posted by David Corn at January 19, 2007 11:53 AM

109 comments:

Anonymous said...

I went to salon.com, which can be serious, to find out what's going on of importance: Paris Hilton's droopy eyelid is a hot news item. Isaiah Washington is bad for using a gay slur. Oprah is very, very rich, especially for a woman, a black one at that. Borat and United 93 were both nominated for a Writers' Guild award, but neither one had a real screenplay. Alec Baldwin is looking into on-line dating, he wants to fall in love again! Larry King's guests are the kidnapped teenager's parents.


Don't fail to miss these stories if you can.

Gerald said...

I needed to rush this info to you because Bush has an incredible gift that can save our world.

Bush can save the world

Gerald said...

Iraqi Christians lose all hope

Yes, Hitler Bush is doing a good job of spreading democracy. Hitler Bush is just a big screw up!!!

Jeanne said...

Ok...I'd like to add my opinion to the Paula Abdul drunk during interview story. That was "plastered" all over the channel 9 news in my state. My sister is convinced that she has a neurilogical disease.

Jeanne said...

Gerald,
Spreading democracy? How about Christianity? George and friends have done a great job in Iraq. Taking hope away from fellow Christians. Bravo.

Gerald said...

The war has started

David B. Benson said...

Chicken Little? Sky falling?

Quick, catch it and we have chicken soup! Good for colds...

Hey, with global warming I won't have so many colds. Good plan. Good plan.

Gerald said...

Jeanne, there are two of many components that make a country a democracy.

1. freedom of religion
and
2. no rigged elections

Gerald said...

Bush is gearing up to cancel the 2008 elections

He wants absolute power by 2008! And, he has it!!!!!

Gerald said...

The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis.


-------

capt said...

A Couple of Soup Jokes


The fabulously wealthy banker Baron von Rothschild was traveling through the countryside and stopped for breakfast at a little deli. The soup was absolutely delicious. When he finished, the waiter brought him the bill. Rothschild was stunned: $100 for a bowl of chicken soup, he exclaimed. That's impossible. Is chicken soup so rare in these parts? No, replied the waiter, but Rothschilds are.


When their little boy wouldn't speak, mom and dad took him to the doctor, who was also baffled. Finally one day the boy said, "My soup is too cold." His parents were ecstatic. "Why haven't you spoken to us up to now?" "Because the soup was never too cold before."


What's Martha Stewart's recipe for chicken soup? First, boil the chicken then dump the stock.


Mrs. Goldberg refuses to believe that her husband is dead. She sits by his gurney in the mortuary and continues to forcefeed him chicken soup. The doctor comes by and asks her what she thinks she's doing. It may not help, she says, but it couldn't hurt.


George W. Bush just got a lovely birthday present from Laura--a gold-plated vacuum flask. He put it proudly on his desk and waited for an aide to ask about it. At last: "what is it?" asks one. "Laura says it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold." "So what have you put in it?" asks the aide. "Soup and ice cream."

Gerald said...

Americans will need to impeach Hitler Bush or reinvent the French Revolution!!!!!!!!!!!

Gerald said...

With Hitler Bush in control I am not in a humorous mood!!!!!

Gerald said...

It's difficult to laugh in the middle of puking!!!

Gerald said...

Do Americans want Bush to resign and Cheney be the president?

Gerald said...

El Wacko Is a Picture of Defeat

Gerald said...

Can you believe it another crazy Nazi wants to be president?

Gerald said...

Praying Each Day: January 19

Gerald said...

This Libby trial is becoming something of a circus. Every juror has an opinion about those two crazies: Cheney and Scooter Libby. We are reaching the point of no more trials by juries.

Gerald said...

I awake every day and marvel how screwed up Nazi America is!!!!!

And that's only about 8:00 am!

By 9:00 pm it will be even worse!!!!!

Gerald said...

The Coffee Crusaders

The town of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, was already reeling from one of the most severe winters in decades, but when its independent coffee shop closed due to escalating costs, it proved to be too much.

“It seemed our town was depressed for months,” says writer Kathy Shorr. Many of the town’s residents began searching for a way to reopen the town coffee shop. In the process, they discovered a new awareness of community and fellowship. Civic relations began to take on new meaning. They learned “it can be everything from helping out a neighbor to voting at a town meeting,” says Shorr.

The Wellfleet town coffee shop has reopened under new ownership. And the lesson Wellfleet learned will likely stand the test of time. Says Shorr, “It boils down to feeling connected to your community.”

Community and community service can take many forms. What can you do to improve your neighborhood?

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. …wisdom…knowledge… faith…gifts of healing. (1 Corinthians 12:7,8,9)

Remind me, Lord Jesus, that I am not meant to be alone.

Gerald said...

Unexpected Bargain

Linda Stafford’s hobby of shopping at garage sales had gotten her 30 years of good-natured kidding from her family. After all, who needed all that junk?

The kidding stopped, however, when Stafford tried to move a chair she’d purchased several years earlier at one of those garage sales. When her daughter heard something rattle inside the chair, they removed the chair’s bottom and found $3,070 in cash tucked into two envelopes.

The price she’d paid for the chair? $2.00.

If you have a hobby, skill or interest that brings you joy, celebrate it proudly. After all, it could have unexpected dividends, even beyond the pleasure it brings you!

Rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy. (1 Peter 1:8)

Lord, thank You for all the people who bring me joy. May I, too, offer them joy. And thank You, too, for every thing in Your creation which delights me.

Gerald said...

Art Scene? Crime Scene?

Some visitors to New York’s famed Frick Museum are not just there to enjoy beautiful art; they are there to be better cops.

Amy Herman, the museum’s director of education has been conducting classes for high-ranking police officers since 2004. The program, a spin-off of one begun several years earlier for medical students, has also been taken by FBI agents and London police officers.

Called “The Art of Observation,” the program tries to sharpen officers’ perceptions to enable them to better solve crimes. “I want them to look at crime scenes more thoroughly and think about the different ways things can happen,” says Herman. They look at paintings as diverse as Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait of “Frans Snyder” and Claude Lorraine’s the “Sermon on the Mount.”

Improving our observational skills can also help each of us better appreciate our world and the people around us. Open more than your eyes.

Take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Luke 6:42)

Holy Trinity, guide me in using the talents with which You have blessed me, for my good and that of others.

David B. Benson said...

capt --- Absolutely my favorite, chicken soup and Emmm, Peach ice cream.

Hah!

Gerald said...

This is an old soup story and so many of you may have heard it.

I went to a restaurant for lunch and I ordered soup. The waiter brought me the soup and he left and I looked at my soup and I noticed that their was a fly in my soup.

I called the waiter back and I asked him, "What was a fly doing in my soup?" He replied, "The backstroke!"

capt said...

The War Tapes



Support Vets: Throw a party, help people learn about the issues, and make a difference.

On Saturday, January 27th, IAVA supporters nationwide are throwing house parties to help Iraq and Afghanistan veterans get the counseling they need. You can search for an event in your area by entering your zip code below, or you can organize your own house party. Watch The War Tapes with friends and IAVA supporters, take part in a free conference call with IAVA Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff and Iraq Veteran Steve Pink, star of the film, and help us collect signatures for a petition to Jim Nicholson, Secretary of the VA, calling for increased mental health funding at VA hospitals.

More HERE

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

Check this out. Play the trailer (short video)

The IAVA (originally Operation Truth) is a worthy cause. The IAVA are always looking for ways to help the troops and spread the truth.



capt

capt said...

"Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!"

"Shhhhhh. Everyone will want one."

That's funny. There were two when I left the kitchen"

"Don't worry, sir, the spider in the bread roll will get it."

"That's possible. The chef used to be a tailor."

"Now that fly knows a good soup." (Milton Berle)

"Okay, I'll bring you a fork."

"So what? There's soup on your fly."

"Don't worry, it's not hot enough to burn him."

"No, sir, that's the essential vitamin bee."



From:
http://www.soupsong.com/sjokes.html


capt

Gerald said...

The Divi Divi Tree

On the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, there’s a tree that grows in the direction of the trade winds. It’s called the Divi Divi, or Watapana in Arawak.

Instead of growing straight up, its branches yield to the trade winds, permanently swept in one direction.

Much can be learned from the Divi Divi’s growth pattern. There are times in our lives when the wind blows us in a different direction from others.

Will we stiffen against it? Do we realize that resisting our path can be as challenging as accepting it? Yet, by accepting it, will we gain the individual shape meant for us?

The Divi Divi beautifies its corner of the world by adapting.

May we also adapt, becoming who we are supposed to become; beautifying our corner of God’s good earth.

The trees once went out to anoint a king over themselves. So they said to the olive tree, ‘Reign over us’. The olive tree answered them ‘Shall I stop producing my rich oil…and go to sway over the trees?’ (Judges 9:8-9)

Loving Creator, give us the courage to be no more and no less than the beings You created us to be.

Gerald said...

Finding Solace for the Journey

Airports are by nature busy, noisy places. But some of them provide a chapel offering quiet and solitude for people of all faiths, or no faith.

The non-denominational Vancouver Airport Chapel, for example, is open 24/7. Bibles in half a dozen languages are available. Muslim guests find the direction of Mecca needed for their daily prayers.

Visitors include stranded passengers, refugees and travelers flying because of an emergency or death in the family, as well as airline and airport workers. The chapel is also the site of weddings, memorial services and fear-of-flying seminars.

Head chaplain Rev. Layne Daggett says, “It’s a microcosm. People that you see here are reflective of the larger community. They are part of the beautiful mosaic of culture as a whole. And for me it’s all part of the daily routine.”

We are all travelers. Wherever our journey takes us, let’s celebrate the richness of life that God has created.

I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. (Exodus 23:20)

Beloved God, thank You for the gifts of prayer and solitude. Enable us to use them to appreciate Your holy presence.

capt said...

God can be realized through all paths. All religions are true. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole.
~ Ramakrishna

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.
~ John Schaar, futurist

David B. Benson said...

"Waiter, there's a bush in my
soup!"

"H.W. or W., sir?"

"Whichever, I want my Emmm, Peach ice cream now!"

"Er, emm peach, sir?"

"Yes, Emm, Peach!"

capt said...

Tell Bush: Darfur MUST Be a Top Priority



Please urge President Bush to make ending the crisis in Darfur a main point in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, January 23rd and one of his top priorities in 2007.

There is no time to waste! President Bush must act NOW to prevent infamous Sudanese President Bashir from seizing control of the African Union.

Fill out the fields below to add your name to send your urgent message to the President.

More HERE

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

I bet Darfur will get more lip service than action. Bunnypants is preoccupied with his quagmire but I always sign these things.



capt

Gerald said...

You may have heard me tell this story in the past. It is not a soup story.

Joe and John were great friends. They did many things together. They loved baseball. They visited all the major league stadiums.

Joe died and John was very saddened by the death of his dear friend. John prayed really hard to have God give him a chance to speak to Joe.

One day Joe appeared and John asked Joe, "Is there baseball in heaven?" Joe said, "That he had good news and bad news. The good news is that there is baseball and the bad news, 'John, you're pitching on Friday'."

Gerald said...

Begin from the End

I just ask a question to myself: From where should I begin the subject of my speech? I have made up my mind. I will begin from the end.

Gandhi died on 30th January 1948. When I take cognizance of the great contribution that he has made to human history for the establishment of peace, for which he had to pay the price of his life, I am reminded of a speech delivered by Simon Peres, the Israeli Labour Leader, who addressed the Socialist International's 20th Congress at which I was present. While charting out his path for peace and freedom, he gave a very interesting analogy. He said that ensuring peace is not like securing a commodity in a market. And in his characteristic style, he said at the Congress that when you go to the market with a credit card to purchase a commodity, you secure the commodity first, and then you pay the price afterwards. But as far as struggle for peace and freedom is concerned, you pay the price first, and then you get peace afterwards. And revealing his own history, he said: "I have paid a very heavy price for my struggle for peace. I lost the elections, I lost my power." And he emotionally said: "I may lose my life as well." He concluded his speech by saying: "Even if I have to lose my life, I will not be worried. My march towards peace will be from life to death, and it may end at my graveyard." And when he said this, sitting in the audience at the Socialist International Congress, in these words of the Israeli leader, I really felt the warmth of Gandhi's human touch.

Gerald said...

"Even if I have to lose my life, I will not be worried. My march towards peace will be from life to death, and it may end at my graveyard."

Let us remember Gandhi's words and make our life until our death a march toward justice and peace!!!

Gerald said...

Praying Each Day: January 18

capt said...

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.

If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further.

Live simply that others may simply live.

No cost is too heavy for the preservation of one's honor.

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

To conceal ignorance is to increase it. An honest confession of it, however, gives ground for the hope that it will diminish some day or the other.

~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)


From: Quotationspage.com

Gerald said...

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

Let our destiny be love, mercy, justice, and peace for all of God's children!!!

David B. Benson said...

Wow! Jaun Cole today hints at calling it cheneyism!

I guess he views bush as too ******-** or too ****** or too ****** to call it bushism...

Anonymous said...

CHEAP TRANSPORTATION TO WASHINGTON DC FROM DOZENS OF AREAS -- BUSES, VANS, TRAINS, RIDE SHARES, PEOPLE SEEKING RIDES, PEOPLE OFFERING RIDES

United for Peace and Justice: Transportation Center for January 27th

Check it out.

capt said...

"It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return." : Socrates 469 - 399 BC

=
Crime Against Peace: A basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate or wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so is a crime: Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocJac14.htm

=
"I'm often amazed at the way politicians, who spend hours poring over opinion poll results in a desperate attempt to discover what the public thinks, are certain they know precisely what God's views are on everything.": Simon Hoggart

=
"Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car.": Garrison Keiler

===

Read this newsletter online http://tinyurl.com/dy6yy


Thanks ICH Newsletter!

David B. Benson said...

And in this alternate reality, Pongyang claims that the CIA printed the counterfeit $$ which "the U.S. blaims on us."

Duhhh?

uncledad said...

Apparently it was the booze! Thats what made the good republican congressman sell goverment favors for his own personal gain. Note: He has to pay a $6,000.00 fine! What a joke. Didn't here much of this story on the news today?

uncledad said...

O’Reilly screws up again!

uncledad said...

watch the whole thing if you can! We all know O'Reilly's a scumbag. But why was this kids face ever broadcast to begin with? Isn't THAT against the law?

kathleen said...

Thanks for the update Micki, I thought Hilton's eyelids were looking droopy.

We know what the majority of Americans are busy doing, keeping their pedal to the metal, and heads in the clouds, just the way the Bush administration and the big C Capitalist like it.

Heaven forbid that Americans concern themselves with what their government and military are doing for too long. Who wants to think about the fact that we have turned the Iraqi peoples lives into a living hell, (the ones who have not either died or left) when you can go to the mall and read magazines about Paris Hilton!

Americans do have their priorities!

kathleen said...

Madeline Albright spoke with congres on Wednesday. saw a replay on C-Span yesterday. She oh so articulately ripped on the Bush administration and the war.

Before the invasion I heard her on numerous programs say that it was not a good idea.

It is a program well worth watching. Congresswoman Ros Lehtinin gets hammered!

Saladin said...

Kathleen, is that the madeline albright who, when asked if she thought the deaths of 1/2 million children in Iraq thru brutal sanctions was worth it, said yes? Estimates for the dead Iraqis are around 1 million while clinton and his partners in crime in Britain conducted the longest bombing campaign against that country since WW11! Maybe albright thinks clinton murdering innocent people by the thousands is fine and dandy, or maybe she has forgotten all about it? I guess most people have now that bushcos in charge. They're just mopping up.


Squeezed to death
Half a million children have died in Iraq since UN sanctions were imposed - most enthusiastically by Britain and the US. Three UN officials have resigned in despair. Meanwhile, bombing of Iraq continues almost daily. John Pilger investigates

Saturday March 4, 2000
Guardian Unlimited


People have such short memories.

Saladin said...

Iran masses troops along borders with Iraq -- source

MIL-IRAQ-IRAN-TROOPS
Iran masses troops along borders with Iraq -- source

IRBIL, Jan 19 (KUNA) -- An Iraqi Kurdish source said Friday that Iran is massing troops along its borders with north Iraq.

A Pishmerga source said that Iran has beefed up its troops stationed along the main border crossing (Pashmakh), midway between the Kurdish Penjavin city and the Iranian Miriwan city.

He added that Iran sent more reinforcement troops to the Kirban border position with Iraq, between Daza castle north of Suleymania.

Also the Iranian border authorities are applying a lot of pressure on businessmen at the border crossing and tightening the inspection process there.
========
Oh shit.

Saladin said...

HILLARY CLINTON IS IN
Saturday, January 20, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has announced that she is forming an exploratory committee for president, thereby launching a bid to become the first female chief executive of the United States. "I'm in," she said on a Web site, hillaryclinton.com. "And I'm in to win. -ABC
=======
God help us.

capt said...

Carlyle Covers Up



Less than twenty-four hours after The Nation disclosed that former Secretary of State James Baker and the Carlyle Group were involved in a secret deal to profit from Iraq's debt to Kuwait, NBC was reporting that the deal was "dead." At The Nation, we started to get calls congratulating us on costing the Carlyle Group $1 billion, the sum the company would have received in an investment from the government of Kuwait in exchange for helping to extract $27 billion of unpaid debts from Iraq.

We were flattered (sort of), until we realized that Carlyle had just pulled off a major public relations coup. When the story broke, the notoriously secretive merchant bank needed to find a way to avoid a full-blown political scandal. It chose a bold tactic: In the face of overwhelming evidence of a glaring conflict of interest between Baker's stake in Carlyle and his post as George W. Bush's special envoy on Iraq's debt, Carlyle simply denied everything. The company issued a statement saying that it does not want to be involved in the Kuwait deal "in any way, shape or form and will not invest any money raised by the Consortium's efforts" and, furthermore, that "Carlyle was never a member of the Consortium." A spokesperson told the Financial Times that Carlyle had pulled out as soon as James Baker was appointed debt envoy, because his new political post made Carlyle's involvement "unsuitable." Mysteriously, there was no paper trail--just Carlyle's word that it had informed its business partners "orally."

You have to hand it to them: It was gutsy. In the leaked business proposal from the consortium to the Kuwaiti government--submitted almost two months after Baker's appointment--the Carlyle Group is named no fewer than forty-seven times; it is listed first among the companies involved in the consortium; and its partner James Baker is mentioned by name at least eleven times. In interviews, other consortium members, including Madeleine Albright's consulting firm, the Albright Group, confirmed that Carlyle was still involved, as did the office of the Prime Minister of Kuwait. Shahameen Sheikh, the consortium's CEO, told me that when Baker was named envoy in December, Carlyle was "very clear with us that they wanted to restrict their role to fund managers," but she said the firm was very much still a part of the deal.


More HERE

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

Between the comments Ms. Albright made about the children being killed and knowing she is war-profiteering with the Carlyle Group - I just about heave my cookies when I hear her name.



capt

capt said...

James Baker's Double Life: A Special Investigation



Until now, there has been no concrete evidence that Baker's loyalties are split, or that his power as Special Presidential Envoy--an unpaid position--has been used to benefit any of his corporate clients or employers. But according to documents obtained by The Nation, that is precisely what has happened. Carlyle has sought to secure an extraordinary $1 billion investment from the Kuwaiti government, with Baker's influence as debt envoy being used as a crucial lever.

The secret deal involves a complex transaction to transfer ownership of as much as $57 billion in unpaid Iraqi debts. The debts, now owed to the government of Kuwait, would be assigned to a foundation created and controlled by a consortium in which the key players are the Carlyle Group, the Albright Group (headed by another former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright) and several other well-connected firms. Under the deal, the government of Kuwait would also give the consortium $2 billion up front to invest in a private equity fund devised by the consortium, with half of it going to Carlyle.

More HERE

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

Is it just me or has The Nation strayed from the stellar journalism they used to produce? So much of their stuff seems like fluff these days.

Probably just me.



capt

Robert S said...

Hi Capt., all,

It seems (IMHO, of course) The Nation has done well historically on some issues and less well on others. It appears to dread to tread on anything that can be thought of as "conspiracy-related." The JFK assassination comes to mind, as I believe that they are still convinced it was a lone nut and a "magic bullet" which caused multiple wounds in both Kennedy and Connally, before being discovered nearly intact on Connally's hospital gurney...

Robert S said...

Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus
By Robert Parry
January 19, 2007

In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative.

For instance, the First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Applying Gonzales’s reasoning, one could argue that the First Amendment doesn’t explicitly say Americans have the right to worship as they choose, speak as they wish or assemble peacefully. The amendment simply bars the government, i.e. Congress, from passing laws that would impinge on these rights.

Similarly, Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that “the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English law principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial.

That Attorney General Gonzales would express such an extraordinary opinion, doubting the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, suggests either a sophomoric mind or an unwillingness to respect this well-established right, one that the Founders considered so important that they embedded it in the original text of the Constitution.

Other cherished rights – including freedom of religion and speech – were added later in the first 10 amendments, known as the Bill of Rights.

Ironically, Gonzales may be wrong in another way about the lack of specificity in the Constitution’s granting of habeas corpus rights. Many of the legal features attributed to habeas corpus are delineated in a positive way in the Sixth Amendment, which reads:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses.”

Bush's Powers

Gonzales’s Jan. 18 statement suggests that he is still seeking reasons to make habeas corpus optional, subordinate to President George W. Bush’s executive powers that Bush’s neoconservative legal advisers claim are virtually unlimited during “a time of war,” even one as vaguely defined as the “war on terror” which may last forever.

In the final weeks of the Republican-controlled Congress, the Bush administration pushed through the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that effectively eliminated habeas corpus for non-citizens, including legal resident aliens.

Under the new law, Bush can declare any non-citizen an “unlawful enemy combatant” and put the person into a system of military tribunals that give defendants only limited rights. Critics have called the tribunals “kangaroo courts” because the rules are heavily weighted in favor of the prosecution.

Some language in the new law also suggests that “any person,” presumably including American citizens, could be swept up into indefinite detention if they are suspected of having aided and abetted terrorists.

“Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,” according to the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in September and signed by Bush on Oct. 17, 2006.

Another provision in the law seems to target American citizens by stating that “any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States ... shall be punished as a military commission … may direct.”

Who has “an allegiance or duty to the United States” if not an American citizen? That provision would not presumably apply to Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, nor would it apply generally to foreign citizens. This section of the law appears to be singling out American citizens.

Besides allowing “any person” to be swallowed up by Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside from appealing to the traditional American courts until after prosecution and sentencing, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out.

The law states that once a person is detained, “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever … relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.”

That court-stripping provision – barring “any claim or cause of action whatsoever” – would seem to deny American citizens habeas corpus rights just as it does for non-citizens. If a person can’t file a motion with a court, he can’t assert any constitutional rights, including habeas corpus.

Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights – such as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail and the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” – would seem to be beyond a detainee’s reach as well.

Special Rules

Under the new law, the military judge “may close to the public all or a portion of the proceedings” if he deems that the evidence must be kept secret for national security reasons. Those concerns can be conveyed to the judge through ex parte – or one-sided – communications from the prosecutor or a government representative.

The judge also can exclude the accused from the trial if there are safety concerns or if the defendant is disruptive. Plus, the judge can admit evidence obtained through coercion if he determines it “possesses sufficient probative value” and “the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.”

The law permits, too, the introduction of secret evidence “while protecting from disclosure the sources, methods, or activities by which the United States acquired the evidence if the military judge finds that ... the evidence is reliable.”

During trial, the prosecutor would have the additional right to assert a “national security privilege” that could stop “the examination of any witness,” presumably by the defense if the questioning touched on any sensitive matter.

In effect, what the new law appears to do is to create a parallel “star chamber” system for the prosecution, imprisonment and possible execution of enemies of the state, whether those enemies are foreign or domestic.

Under the cloak of setting up military tribunals to try al-Qaeda suspects and other so-called “unlawful enemy combatants,” Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress effectively created a parallel legal system for “any person” – American citizen or otherwise – who crosses some ill-defined line.

There are a multitude of reasons to think that Bush and advisers will interpret every legal ambiguity in the new law in their favor, thus granting Bush the broadest possible powers over people he identifies as enemies.

As further evidence of that, the American people now know that Attorney General Gonzales doesn’t even believe that the Constitution grants them habeas corpus rights to a fair trial.

capt said...

RS,

Right you are.

I do miss reading more from Naomi Klein. I always love her stuff.



capt

Robert S said...

Coincidentally, it was Arlen Specter who was reponsible for promulgating the "Magic-Bullet" theory...

capt said...

And Gerald Ford was on the Warren Commission.

HA!


Such stuff bred a deeply seated disrespect for politicians when I was a much younger man.


capt

capt said...

Carlyle Empire


[…]

"It's not possible to get closer to the administration than Carlyle is," asserts Charles Lewis, Director of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan organization in Washington. "George Bush senior earned money from private interests that worked for the government of which his son was president. You could even say that the president could one day profit financially, through his father's investments, from the political decisions he himself took," he adds.

The collection of influential characters who now work, have worked, or have invested in the group would make the most convinced conspiracy theorists incredulous. They include among others, John Major, former British Prime Minister; Fidel Ramos, former Philippines President; Park Tae Joon, former South Korean Prime Minister; Saudi Prince Al-Walid; Colin Powell, the present Secretary of State; James Baker III, former Secretary of State; Caspar Weinberger, former Defense Secretary; Richard Darman, former White House Budget Director; the billionaire George Soros, and even some bin Laden family members. You can add Alice Albright, daughter of Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State; Arthur Lewitt, former SEC head; William Kennard, former head of the FCC, to this list. Finally, add in the Europeans: Karl Otto Poehl, former Bundesbank president; the now-deceased Henri Martre, who was president of Aerospatiale; and Etienne Davignon, former president of the Belgian Generale Holding Company.

Carlyle isn't only a collection of power people. It maintains holdings in close to 200 companies and, above all, provides returns on its investments that have exceeded 30 % for a decade. "Compared to the five hundred people we employ in the world, the number of former statesmen is quite small, a dozen at most," explains Christopher Ullmann, Carlyle Vice-President for communication. "We're accused of every wrong, but no one has ever brought proof of any kind of misappropriation. No legal proceeding has ever been brought against us. We're a handy target for whoever wants to take shots at the American government and the president."


More HERE

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

A rouges gallery if ever there was one.



capt

Robert S said...

"Who Else?" Buchwald bemoaned the growing shortage of Communists in the U.S., and he sympathized with party members whose ranks have been heavily infiltrated by FBI agents: "It isn't too farfetched to assume that in a couple of years the entire Communist Party will be made up of FBI informants"—who pay their dues, in contrast to regular party members, who do not. "In no time at all," concluded Buchwald, "the Communists could become the leading political party in the country." He suggested its candidate for President: "J. Edgar Hoover, of course. Who else?"

From Buchwald's Washington

Art Buchwald - R.I.P.

Robert S said...

"the scandal here is not what's illegal but what's legal." - The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group by Dan Briody (2004)

Robert S said...

The picture of David Corn w/Guitar calls for a ditty, as if I needed an excuse...

Crooked Judge

Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: David Nelson

Paid my money to a crooked judge
Set out to find an honest man
That's how I came to be in Boston
Looking like I am

If by now we stop to sleep
We can't make no midnight creep
Only time can ever say
Pack my cat and haul away

Rained all night and it rained all day
Rain come floated my house away
Didn't it rain oh didn't it rain?
Didn't it rain that day!

If by now we step by, then
Someday we may meet again
Run down high, look down low
Call the Captain up from the hole

I was down in some low dive
Talkin' all the usual jive
Like: Say Buddy gimme five
I ain't drunk enough to drive

Wipe that grin right off your face
Before I throw you through the wall
No one needs a wise guy, Jack
Specially one don't check his facts

If by now we step by, then
Someday we may meet again
Who cares what you have to say?
Even this too shall pass away

Pass away, pass away
Even this too shall pass away
Hey, hey, crooked judge
Even this too shall pass away
Even this too shall pass away

Robert S said...


Protesters Will Urge Congress to Stand Up to Bush
t r u t h o u t | Press Release , from: United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ)


Peace march expected to be among largest since war began.

New York, New York - Americans angered by Bush's plans to escalate the Iraq war will flood the streets of Washington on Saturday, January 27, in a massive national peace march organized by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). Marchers will call on Congress to listen to the voters, not Bush, by using its power to end Bush's war and bring the troops home. The last three national marches organized by UFPJ each attracted between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

MoveOn.org has called upon its 3.2 million members to join UFPJ, describing the march as potentially a "turning point for the war" comparable to how "Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington in 1963 was a turning point in the fight for equality and civil rights." The National Organization for Women (NOW) is mobilizing its chapters to participate. Local anti-war groups in cities and towns across the nation are mobilizing.

On Monday, United for Peace and Justice's web site received more than 700,000 hits. District Council 37 in NYC, AFSCME's largest district council, and New York's United Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers union local in the country, are sending busloads of their members to Washington. Car caravans and peace trains are heading to Washington, DC, from all over the East Coast, Midwest and Southeast. Buses and vans are coming from more than 30 states and 111 cities, including from as far away as Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Judith LeBlanc, UFPJ Co-Chairperson, said, "Bush's announcement of plans to escalate the war has backfired. Every day people call or send email to say they will be marching in Washington with United for Peace and Justice on January 27th to call for an end to this war. They are demanding that Congress stand up to Bush. There is no doubt: This is the right action at the right time."

Among those slated to speak at the pre-march rally are Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, who last year led an anti-war march of thousands, the largest protest in Salt Lake City history; Reverend Jesse Jackson Jr.; Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio); Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.); Bob Watada, father of Lt. Watada, the first military officer to refuse deployment to Iraq and currently facing court-martial; and active-duty service people.

On Monday, January 29th, UFPJ is sponsoring a Grassroots Lobby Day, in which hundreds will press the case for withdrawal from Iraq directly with their Congressional representatives and senators. The weekend's activities will include a Saturday morning interfaith peace service and organizing workshops on Sunday.

On Thursday, January 11, United for Peace and Justice member groups and allies staged more than 1,000 local protests of Bush's escalation of the Iraq war. UFPJ's March on Washington is the next step in the anti-war movement's national surge of opposition to Bush's escalation of the war.

********************************

"Won't you please come to Chicago (Washington DC, Elsewhere) for the help that we can bring - We Can Change the World" Graham Nash

Saladin said...

Kissinger hails Iraq troop surge, says withdrawal not an option

Mike Sheehan
Raw Story
Saturday, January 20, 2007

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, an iconic conservative who continues to command the attention of the White House, praises President Bush's moves in Iraq and says that leaving the war-torn nation is not possible under present conditions.

Kissinger has penned an editorial in which he states that Bush's "bold decision to order a 'surge' of some 20,000 American troops for Iraq has brought the debate over the war to a defining stage. There will not be opportunity for another reassessment."

The elder statesman remarks that the early strategy of replacing U.S. forces with Iraqis was "in retrospect, premature," and says that the "most flagrant shortcoming of Iraqi forces" is that they are unclear on what they're fighting for and for whom.

Kissinger asserts that the Iraq war is part of a larger conflict, namely "the assault on the international order conducted by radical groups in both Islamic sects," particularly against the United States. He insists that despite public disenchantment with the war in Iraq, "under present conditions, withdrawal is not an option."

He calls America "the indispensable component of any attempt to build a new world order."

Perhaps most telling, Kissinger declares that the U.S. is in Iraq as "an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend."
==========
New World Order? Just a conspiracy theory. As for the troop surge, according to kissinger military men are just dumb animals to be used as pawns, for the greater glory of Israel apparently. He and albright deserve a special place in hell, temporarily if nothing else. How do people become so sick and twisted?

Saladin said...

Presidential Explorer Paul: Investigate 9/11 'cover-up'

9/11 Blogger
Saturday, January 20, 2007

Dr. Ron Paul, Texas Congressman exploring a run for President, appeared on The Alex Jones Show Wednesday [MP3 link] and had the following to say about 9/11:

"CALLER: I want a complete, impartial, and totally independent investigation of the events of September 11, 2001 . I'm tired of this bogus garbage about terrorism. Ask Michael Meacher about how he feels about this bogus war on terrorism. Can you comment on that please?

HON. DR. RON PAUL: Well, that would be nice to have. Unfortunately, we don't have that in place. It will be a little bit better now with the Democrats now in charge of oversight. But you know, for top level policy there's not a whole lot of difference between the two policies so a real investigation isn't going to happen. But I think we have to keep pushing for it. And like you and others, we see the investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on.

JACK BLOOD, GUEST HOST: I think it's fair to say that of all the candidates out there, the one most interested in reopening the investigation and clearing the questions is Dr. Paul; and you should be commended for that.
-----

Dr. Paul's Presidential exploratory committee need not report contributions under $200 to the FEC. Why not show your support for a new 9/11 investigation by sending him a check for $199.11?
==========
YES!!! Go Dr. PAUL!!!

capt said...

Big Brother's new toy: Another bloated gas bag watching you from the sky



Last week, a fire ignited at the Akron Airdock that once housed a fleet of Goodyear blimps. Firemen rushed to the 211-foot-tall structure and quickly doused the flames. Reporters and photographers descended on the landmark. Many were surprised to learn the blimps were no longer being stored there.

Turns out Lockheed Martin -- the company that gave us the Trident intercontinental ballistic missile -- was renovating the site for an upcoming project when the fire started. It's being turned into a hangar for a prototype airship. If you're frightened of this administration's habit of spying on American citizens, you may want to stop reading.

The prototype is called the High Altitude Airship, or HAA. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors in Akron won the $40 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency to build HAA in 2003. It is essentially another blimp. A giant one. Seventeen times the size of the Goodyear dirigible. It's designed to float 12 miles above the earth, far above planes and weather systems. It will be powered by solar energy, and will stay in a geocentric orbit for up to a year, undetectable by ground-based radar. You can't see it from the ground. But it can see you.

"The possibilities are endless for homeland security," says Kate Dunlap, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson. "It could house cameras, and other surveillance equipment. It would be an eye in the sky."

According to a summary released by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the HAA can watch over a circle of countryside 600 miles in diameter. That's everything between Toledo and New York City. And they want to build 11. With high-res cameras, that could mean constant surveillance of every square inch of American soil. "If you had a fleet of them, this could be used for border surveillance," suggests Dunlap.

Launch date: 2009.

Of course, mimicking its defense of warrantless wiretapping and phone-log data mining, the government maintains it only wants to protect its citizens from external threats. But as any geek can tell you, blimps were ubiquitous in The Watchmen, the seminal '80s graphic novel in which heroes have been driven underground and Nixon is still president.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching you.


More HERE

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

How special.



capt

Saladin said...

George Bush's Crusading Scorecard (2001–2007)
by Tom Engelhardt


Lew Rockwell

...This crusade, this war on terrorism. It had such a ring to it; in the Arab world, of course, it was a ring many centuries old and deeply disturbing. And it came so naturally, so easily off the President's tongue (though it took days of backtracking by his spokesmen and prominent presidential references to "the peaceful teachings of Islam" perverted by "a fringe form of Islamic extremism" to begin to make up for it). But that little "slip" of the tongue spoke volumes. It signaled that George W. Bush was already in his own heroic dream world and, only those few days after the 9/11 attacks, had both a "crusade" on the brain and "victory" in that crusade firmly in mind. As a result, he made this promise to the American people: "It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century."

Now, here we are, just over five years further into the 21st century, and the President, who only nine months ago was still proudly (if a little desperately) trumpeting his "strategy for victory" in Iraq, now speaks vaguely about "success," or about a "victory," no longer decisive, that "will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved… [with a] surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship." And when it comes to our "children and grandchildren living peacefully into the 21st century," tell that to the 21,500 Americans about to be "surged" into the murderous streets and alleys of Baghdad...
==========
This article mentions the Patriot missiles which made me think of the Patriot act, both designed to destroy something, life or liberty.

Saladin said...

Capt, they better crank up the presses over at the fed. they're going to need more dollars toot sweet!

capt said...

Invisible 'Radio' Tattoos Could Identify Soldiers



Somark Innovations announced biocompatible RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) ink, which can be used to tattoo cattle and laboratory rats and can be read through animal hair.

It might even be used on humans eventually.

This is a passive RFID technology that contains no metals; the tattoos themselves can be colored or invisible.

Cows first

The Somark ID System creates a "biocompatible ink tatoo with chipless RFID functionality."

The RFID ink tatoo does not require line of sight to be read, as is the case with other RFID devices (making them better than a barcode for some applications).

RFID ink tattoos also solve the annoying problem of ear tag retention. Conventional RFID ear tags sell for about $2.25; about 60-90 percent of them eventually fall off. Also, Somark claims that the biocompatible RFID ink system will improve readability rates as well.

Humans next?

Somark Innovations co-founder Mark Pydynowski noted that the RFID ink is fully biocompatible and was safe for use in humans. He noted that RFID ink tattoos could be used to track and rescue soldiers. "It could help identify friends or foes, prevent friendly fire, and help save soldiers' lives," Pydynowski said.

Readers should note that VeriChip tags for patients are FDA approved and VeriChip tags have been proposed for immigrants.

This technology reminds me of Jack Vance's spray-on conductive wire; it also makes you think about the other possibilities that having an ink that can be used to create a functioning circuit. You don't need to tattoo it; you could print it onto flexible surfaces, like the sleeve watch from the 1981 novel Dream Park.

Maybe now they can get that Dattoos skin circuit idea off the ground. Story Invisible RFID Ink Safe For Cattle And People via VCTB.


More HERE

capt said...

Open Letter to the President



Dear President Bush:

I have read your address to the nation on "The New Way Forward in Iraq" and wish to share some observations.

You say "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me." You then quickly change the subject. Whoa now, what does it mean when you say the responsibility for mistakes rest with you?

Responsibility for "mistakes" that led to the invasion-which other prominent officials and former officials say were based on inaccurate information, deceptions, and cover-ups?

Responsibility for the condoning of torture, even after the notorious events at abu-Gharib prison were disclosed?

Responsibility for months and months of inability to equip our soldiers with body armor and vehicle armor that resulted in over 1,000 lost American lives and many disabilities?

Responsibility for the gross mismanagement over outsourcing both service and military tasks to corporations such as Haliburton that have wasted tens of billions of dollars, including billions that simply disappeared without account?

Responsibility for serious undercounting of official U.S. injuries in Iraq-because the injuries were not incurred in direct combat-so as to keep down political opposition to the war in this country?

Over and over again, during your political campaigns you called for consequences to attach to bad or failing behavior. Responsibility means consequences, you said.

Well just how does that belief apply to you, as a failed and disastrous commander-in-chief and caretaker of both American soldiers, American tax dollars and, under international law, the safety of Iraqi civilians?

You said, "I've made it clear to the Prime Minister... that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people.." But you have stated on many prior occasions that a U.S. retreat from Iraq would be catastrophic. Now you imply that if the Iraqi government does not deliver, the U.S. commitment will end. Which is it?

And the Iraq war has lost the support of the American people some time ago.

What are the people to believe "not open-ended" means? Especially since your new Secretary of Defense told the Congress that within two months it will be known whether your troop escalation strategy is working or not.

You said that your Administration will "partner a coalition brigade with every Iraqi Army division." Why do you continue to use misleading euphemisms? They are not "coalition brigades"-they are U.S. soldier brigades. Even the British want to draw down their small number of troops.

You said that a discovered al Qaeda document describes "the terrorists' plan to infiltrate and seize control of [Anbar Province]." "This would bring al Qaeda," you asserted, "closer to its goals of taking down Iraq's democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad." Since your field commanders' estimate a total of 1300 al Qaeda, mostly foreign fighters, widely disliked and increasingly opposed by the local people and their tribal leaders, why are you continuing to engage in this preposterous sequence of doom, this politics of mega fear ala your neo-conservative advisors? Why indeed, do you do this when your own intelligence officials, including your former Director of the CIA, Porter J. Goss, and military leaders in Iraq, have said publicly that the U.S. military occupation has been a magnet for the attraction and training of more and more terrorists, including those from other countries who will acquire demolition and other skills before leaving Iraq.

Your comment that victory in Iraq will bring a "functioning democracy that. upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties, and answers to its people," invites the response, "Have you done this in our country?"

Given your serial civil liberties' violations, frequent mockery of the rule of law and our Constitution, and your ignoring the judgment of last November's election (not to mention the desire by 70 percent of U.S. soldiers polled last January in Iraq wanting you to leave within 6 to 12 months), there is a pronounced lack of consistency here.

Finally, you conclude that "We mourn the loss of every fallen American-and we owe it to them to build a future worthy of their sacrifice. Fellow citizens: The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve."

Why not some exemplary sacrifice from the Bush family? What is keeping those bright, capable daughters-Jenna and Barbara-from showing that the family is not expecting everybody but the Bush family to sacrifice? Why are they not demonstrating their sacrifice and resolve for your Iraq democracy war by enlisting into the armed forces?

Could it be that they disagree with your policies? Or could it be that they do not consider your war-quagmire "worthy of their sacrifice?"


More HERE

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

Go Ralphy-boy! (ala the Honeymooners)



capt

capt said...

Show Me The Intelligence



Have you noticed? Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any U.S. intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq. This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in order to trick Congress into giving its nihil obstat for the attack on Iraq.

Why no intelligence justification this time around? Because there is none.

Having successfully cooked intelligence four years ago to get authorization for war, the Bush administration has zero incentive to try a repeat performance. Nor is there any sign that the new Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees will even think to ask the intelligence community to state its views on the likely effect of the planned "surge" in troop strength. This, even though an NIE on Iraq has been "almost ready" for months.

For the Bush administration, it has been difficult enough whipping its fickle but ultimately malleable generals into line. The civilian intelligence chiefs have proven more resistant. So the White House is playing it safe, avoiding like the plague any estimate that would raise doubts about the wisdom of the decision to surge. And that is precisely what an honest estimate would do. With "sham-dunk" former CIA director George Tenet and his accomplices no longer in place as intelligence enablers, the White House clearly prefers no NIE to one that would inevitably highlight the fecklessness of throwing 21,5000 more troops into harm’s way for the dubious purpose of holding off defeat for two more years.

More HERE

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

And the MSM goes about their selling of the lies never once asking a single important question.



capt

kathleen said...

David Do you know what happenned to the investigation of the effect the outing of Valerie Plame had on U.S. National Security? Where are the results of that investigation?

David several weeks ago Senator Rockerfeller was on Keith Olbermann and was asked about intelligence investigations. Neither one of them mentioned the status of PHASE II OF THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE.

WHAT IS HAPPENNING WITH THIS? I will be calling Rockerfellers office.


Capt "show me the intelligence" applies to the repeated claims having to do with Iran's "alleged" nuclear weapons program too. NOT THAT WE HAVE HEARD ANY REPORTERS OR THE MEDIA SIMPLY ASK "WHERE IS THE VERIFIABLE INTELLIGENCE?" LET ME REPEAT "VERIFIABLE INTELLIGENCE"!


Saladin you have a solid point about Madeline Albright. But, that does not mean she can not as a citizen (she was against the invasion) share her opinions about what is taking place now in regard to Iraq and Iran. She stands solid on diplomacy at this point and is pushing hard for the Bush administration to talk to Iran

I challenge you to go listen and watch her at C-Span last Wednesday when she shared her views with Congresspeople. She hammered away, the pro-war/surge folks were pissed. Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen (radical Israeli firster) was flattened by Albrights statements.

When I diagree with someone on very serious issues that does not mean I do not listen to their views and opinions. Especially when they are as incredibly intellgent(and it's true that she was part of killing people during the Clinton Administration) as Madeline Albright. Go watch the congressional briefing.

Carter's conference in Athens Georgia called
"The Carter Presidency:Lessons for the 21st Century" was aired on C-Span yesterday. Brian Williams was the host, and it was simply incredible. Really worth watching. They are replaying it today.

Saladin, many people stood up and asked about his use of "apartheid" in his title and tried their best to make him wrong for telling the truth about "some" of the horrible actions of the Israeli government against the Palestinian people. Carter whittled their statements down to dust.

So worth watching the Carter conference, and contacting your colleges and universities to bring him to your community!

Yesterday (saturday )attended the Senator Sherrod Brown inauguration (all ready done in Washington) in Columbus Ohio. Sherrod Brown is going to ever so politely kick some ass.

kathleen said...

On Chris Matthews this morning when asked about the Libby trial, the concensus seemed to be that Fitzgerald has the goods on Libby. Let's hope that Fitzgerald is trying to trap Cheney by trapping Libby.

Did someone say "pardon"?

capt said...

"Pardon me?"

If the trial seems to be going well for Scooter the WH will wait in the wings - if it goes badly a pardon seems likely.

Why would Bunnypants care as his poll numbers cannot be much worse. He will pardon Libby (and maybe a few others) if and when Cheney tells him to do so.


capt

capt said...

Physicists Closing In On Mysterious Missing Particle That Gives Matter Mass



University of Toronto researchers are now closer to answering contemporary physics' most pressing question: where is the missing particle that gives matter mass, known as Higgs-boson? The breakthrough comes after researchers discovered that the mass of another subatomic particle -- the W boson -- is slightly heavier than previous measurements, pointing them in a new direction.

So far, the Higgs-boson only exists in mathematical formulas and has stumped physicists since it was theorized by Peter Higgs in 1964. It is the missing link that will complete the standard model of particle physics, which studies the basic elements of matter and radiation, including other observable subatomic particles such as quarks and leptons.

Working at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the team of researchers made the world's most precise measurement of the mass of the W-boson and found that it is somewhat heavier than previously measured, which in turn lowers the target mass for the Higgs-boson.

"What happens is that the Higgs-boson interacts with other subatomic particles, causing drag -- the heavier the particle, the more drag the Higgs-boson applies," says Professor William Trischuk of the Department of Physics and team leader. "From precise measurements of the W-boson, we can then infer the mass of the Higgs-boson. The W-boson, being among the heaviest particle in the standard model, is the current limitation in being able to pin down the Higgs."

Trischuk predicts that if the Higgs-boson exists, researchers will find it in the next couple of years and the importance of the discovery cannot be overstated. "While the observation of a Higgs, at just the mass indicated by current precision measurements of the W mass might close the standard model, an inconsistency between the two would lead to the much more interesting prospect of starting us down the path to particle physics beyond the current paradigm."


More HERE

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

First the top quark now this? I really need more education to be able to even wonder about the stuff these sub-atomic folks wonder about. It is interesting just the same.



capt

capt said...

Report: Pakistan supporting Taliban



QUETTA, Pakistan, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- There is evidence Pakistan is supporting a Taliban resurgence along the border of Afghanistan, the New York Times said Sunday.

Pakistani officials denied the allegations from Western diplomats, saying it supported U.S. and NATO forces that drove Taliban militants from control in Afghanistan in 2001, The Times said.

But the newspaper said interviews with many residents indicate Pakistani officials are "encouraging" the Taliban.

A former Taliban commander told the newspaper he was jailed in Pakistan for refusing to fight in Afghanistan. Other former Taliban members who would not re-enlist have been arrested or killed, sources told The Times.

"The Pakistanis are actively supporting the Taliban," a Western diplomat told the newspaper.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, President Pervez Musharraf said he would battle Islamic extremism in Pakistan.

But analysts told The Times Pakistani officials are preparing for the day when Western troops leave Afghanistan.


More HERE

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

Of course some of the Pakistanis are supporting the Taliban, the idea that such an issue is black and white (or binary) is ridiculous. It is not very different from the support OUR insane religious fundies get. All very crazy but humans are odd animals and we all tolerate many odd things, dogmas and doctrine if at times only by degree.

I am sure if I lived in those mountains I would show thirsty strangers where the well was even if I disagreed with their politics or religiosity. Would that make me a supporter?

Suppose I know the strangers are likely Taliban and therefore organized and ruthless - I would not join them but I might be very careful not to piss them off. That could look like tacit support and maybe it is in a way.





capt

capt said...

"We Think the Price Is Worth It"



Media uncurious about Iraq policy's effects- there or here


Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It's also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).

But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote--in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale--a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one's political ends--does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media.

It's worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl--a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions. In general, the response from government officials about the sanctions’ toll has been rather different: a barrage of equivocations, denigration of U.N. sources and implications that questioners have some ideological axe to grind (Extra!, 3-4/00).


More HERE

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

The problem with warmongers and war-profiteers is the profiteers think they can keep the blood off of their hands.

If war wasn't profitable there wouldn't be war investors and without investors or profit in war the "market forces" would revert to peaceful profiteering.



capt

capt said...

What We Do




The Albright Group is a global strategy firm that works with businesses and organizations to achieve their objectives, improve their returns, and enhance relationships with key stakeholders. We meet the needs of our clients with insight, innovation and integrity.

We help clients:

Broker agreements with governments and businesses

Find and build business relationships

Secure capital

Develop public-private partnerships

Identify and address political and regulatory risks

Enhance corporate responsibility and citizenship

Manage crises

Build strategic relationships with opinion leaders


More HERE

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

Sad that Albright's LLC is so blatantly profit-centric. I expect more from a "public servant" (that is what we used to call some politicians).

The idea that the return on investment is good enough to justify acts of war and crimes against humanity is sick.

Anybody in the fan base for any of these warmongers and war profiteers should be calling them out for what they are not urging others to listen to them because they say what you want to hear.

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."
~ John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)


capt

Gerald said...

capt, I,too, read that Pakistan is helping the Taliban. Muslims may fight among themselves but they have one common enemy: NAZI AMERICA.

salsdin, this question keeps haunting me. Has Nazi Kissinger ever met a dead body that he did not like?

Gerald said...

Praying Each Day: January 21

capt said...

For the Republic



The experience of the earlier round of the crisis in the Nixon years offers food for thought. That episode presents a paradox. Faced with the most dangerous President in American history so far, the public passed up the easy route for getting rid of him--voting him out of power in 1972--and instead chose the harder route of impeachment two years later. More paradoxical still, opposing the unpopular war had a political cost attached, whereas impeachment did not. The challenge to Nixon's misguided war policies in 1972 by Democratic candidate Senator George McGovern, leading to Nixon's landslide re-election that year, created a horror of opposing any President's war policies that has paralyzed the Democrats down to this day. But the more drastic remedy of impeachment produced no such backlash, leading in fact to huge Democratic gains in the Congressional races that fall and to Jimmy Carter's election as President in 1976. It is true that between the 1972 re-election and the 1974 impeachment, American combat operations in Vietnam had ended. Therefore, a vote for impeachment was no longer a vote against the war. The curse of looking "weak" on national security had been lifted. Still, it remains a noteworthy fact, on which today's Congress members may want to reflect, that the drastic remedy of impeachment was more acceptable to the public than the apparently less drastic one of defunding a rogue President's war. Should Congress, then, impeach President Bush while letting him fight his war? Decency and respect for human life forbid such a conclusion. What is quite permissible, however, is to recall that investigations that could lead to impeachment may, as one ingredient of Congress's activity, strengthen rather than weaken the efforts to end the war. Investigations, resolutions, legislation, not to mention citizen action, can all find their place as part of the common effort. For the Republic, for peace, let all these surge together.

More HERE

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

The Nation Editors come out in favor of impeachment?



capt

kathleen said...

Does anyone think Rove might be one of Fitzgerald's aces?

He sure has been quiet. Has he been talking to Fitzgerald to save his own neck?

Still Busy—But Staying Out of the
Though staying behind the scenes, Rove remains plenty powerful
Newsweek
Jan. 29, 2007 issue - Don't write Karl Rove's political obituary just yet. After the GOP's midterm thumping, President Bush's top aide fell out of the spotlight. But behind the scenes, according to administration officials (anonymous in order to discuss White House matters), Rove has been laying the groundwork for Bush's State of the Union address and mulling how the GOP can regain momentum in 2008. Earlier this month Rove showed up at a weekly meeting of influential D.C. conservatives, surprising attendees with his bubbly demeanor after weeks of rumors that he might be headed out.


"I think some people had given him up for dead, but he was good old Karl, upbeat and enthusiastic," says GOP activist Grover Norquist, who hosts the weekly sit-down. At the meeting Rove previewed Bush's final two years in office, saying Social Security reform was likely off the table and that Iraq and the economy would be the biggest issues for 2008. Rove offered a $5 bet to anyone in the room that Bush would not raise taxes during his final years in office. According to Norquist, two attendees took the bet. Norquist admits he's also skeptical about Rove's taxes claim. "I personally think it's going to happen," he tells NEWSWEEK. Rove has been busy trying to find common ground with Dems, organizing two meetings between Bush and the Blue Dog Democrats, a coalition of conservative lawmakers who offer the White House its best chance at compromise with the new Congress. Rove also sat in on many of Bush's meetings with members of Congress in recent weeks about Iraq; he didn't say much, according to one attendee who requested anonymity because the meeting was private. Still, the Architect, as Bush dubbed him after his 2004 re-election win, was notably absent from last week's Republican National Committee meetings in Washington, where last year he delivered a blistering attack on "cut and run" Dems. "I don't know anyone who holds him personally responsible for what happened to us in the election," said a GOP national committee member, who declined to be named talking about the inner circle. "But his stature isn't quite the same." The big question in D.C. now: Will Rove testify at Lewis (Scooter) Libby's criminal trial over the leak of a CIA officer's identity? Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who ruled out charges against Rove in the case, has said he won't call the top Bush aide, but Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, hasn't ruled it out.

—Holly Bailey

Gerald said...

The Iraq War Is an Act of Treason

capt said...

Gerald,

The Taliban have always been supported by the Paki's - it is the way they came to power to begin with.

UGH!


capt

Gerald said...

We know Bush is trying mightily to provoke Iran. He has illegally attacked an Iranian consulate in Iraq (an act of war), taking six protected consular officials there captive. He is sending a second aircraft carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf, and is setting up Patriot anti-missile missile bases along Iran's western border. This buildup has all the earmarks of a pre-invasion. All that's needed now is a pretext--a real or faked attack on an American ship, perhaps, ala the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" that launched America into the Vietnam War.

The way I see it, either way the president is committing treason, because he is sending American troops off to be killed for no good reason other than for aggrandizing power he shouldn’t have, and/or simply covering his own political ass.

Treason is the number one impeachable crime under the Constitution, and we're at a point where Congress is going to have to act or go down in history as having acquiesced in the worst presidential crime in the history of the nation.

capt said...

"Rove might be one of Fitzgerald's aces?"

The quiet from Rove gives me chills. He and Darth Cheney have some big plans, at least that is the gut feeling I get.


DOUBLE UGH!


capt

kathleen said...

FINALLY

Leading Senator Assails Bush Over Iran Stance
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the new chairman of the Intelligence Committee, questioned the administration’s understanding of Iran.

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: January 20, 2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 — The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday sharply criticized the Bush administration’s increasingly combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who took control of the committee this month, said that the administration was building a case against Tehran even as American intelligence agencies still know little about either Iran’s internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East.

“To be quite honest, I’m a little concerned that it’s Iraq again,” Senator Rockefeller said during an interview in his office. “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.”

Mr. Rockefeller did not say which aspects of the Bush administration’s case against Iran he thought were not supported by solid intelligence. He did say he agreed with the White House that Iranian operatives inside Iraq were supporting Shiite militias and working against American troops.

Mr. Rockefeller said he believed President Bush was getting poor advice from advisers who argue that an uncompromising stance toward the government in Tehran will serve American interests.

“I don’t think that policy makers in this administration particularly understand Iran,” he said.

The comments of Mr. Rockefeller reflect the mounting concerns being voiced by other influential Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, about the Bush administration’s approach to Iran. The Democrats have warned that the administration is moving toward a confrontation with Iran when the United States has neither the military resources nor the support among American allies and members of Congress to carry out such a move.

Because Mr. Rockefeller is one of a handful of lawmakers with access to the most classified intelligence about the threat from Iran, his views carry particular weight. He has also historically been more tempered in his criticism of the White House on national security issues than some of his Democratic colleagues.

Mr. Rockefeller was biting in his criticism of how President Bush has dealt with the threat of Islamic radicalism since the Sept. 11 attacks, saying he believed that the campaign against international terrorism was “still a mystery” to the president.

“I don’t think he understands the world,” Mr. Rockefeller said. “I don’t think he’s particularly curious about the world. I don’t think he reads like he says he does.”

He added, “Every time he’s read something he tells you about it, I think.”

Last week, the Intelligence Committee heard testimony from John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, that an emboldened Iran was casting a shadow across the Middle East and could decide to send Hezbollah operatives on missions to hit American targets.

Mr. Negroponte testified the morning after President Bush had, in a televised address to the nation, said he was determined to confront what he called worrying activities by Iranian operatives in Iraq, and announced that the Pentagon was building up the American naval presence in the Persian Gulf and sending a battery of Patriot missiles to deter Iranian aggression.

Some Democrats have suggested that Mr. Bush’s speech was the beginning of a meticulously choreographed campaign to demonize Iran, much the way the administration built its public case against Iraq.

In a speech on Friday, Mr. Reid warned the White House not to take military action against Iran without seeking approval from Congress.

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said in response to Senator Rockefeller’s comments that Iran was taking provocative actions both inside Iraq and elsewhere, and that American allies were united in efforts to end what intelligence officials believe is a covert nuclear weapons program inside the country.

“It has been clear for some time that Iran has been meddling in Iraq, and the Iraqis have made the concerns known to the Iranians,” Mr. Johndroe said. He noted that the administration has said it would be willing to begin direct talks with Iran — which have not occurred since 1979 — if Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers on Thursday that over the past year and a half he had come to a “much darker interpretation” of Iran’s activities inside Iraq.

“I think there’s a clear line of evidence that points out the Iranians want to punish the United States, hurt the United States in Iraq, tie down the United States in Iraq, so that our other options in the region, against other activities the Iranians might have, would be limited,” he said.

Mr. Rockefeller’s committee is working to complete a long-delayed investigation into the misuse of intelligence about Iraq in the months before the American-led invasion.

He said that the committee was nearing completion on one part of that investigation, concerning whether the White House ignored prewar C.I.A. assessments that Iraq could disintegrate into chaos.

That report, Mr. Rockefeller said, could be released within months and was “not going to make for pleasant reading at the White House.”

Mr. Rockefeller said that with Democrats now in charge of the Intelligence Committee, he expected the panel to be much more aggressive, both in investigating the use of intelligence to fashion White House policy and in subjecting secret intelligence programs to new scrutiny. He mentioned the C.I.A’s network of secret prisons and the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program as likely subjects of investigations.

“We weren’t able to drill down on a lot of stuff” during the years in which the Intelligence Committee was under Republican control, Mr. Rockefeller said. “Now, there’s a very different attitude.”

More Articles in Washington »

Gerald said...

HITLER BUSH WILL NUKE IRAN!!!!!

NOT JUST TO PROTECT OUR MASTERS, NAZI ISRAEL OR FOR THE OIL BUT THIS IS THE RELIGIOUS RIGHTS' CRUSADE TO KILL ALL THE MUSLIMS!!!!!

REMEMBER MY WORDS, "NAZI AMERICA IS AN EVIL, A VILE AND A WICKED NATION!!!!!"

David B. Benson said...

Military intelligence: a contadiction of terms...

Gerald said...

The demonic duo of Rove and Cheney must have some devilish plans up their sleeves!!!!!

We know them by their nasty and vicious ways!!!!!

More swiftboating may be on their agenda!!!!!

Saladin said...

Kathleen, it isn't that I agree or disagree with her stand on Iraq today, or don't think she's very intelligent, what I DO have a problem with is the overt hypocrisy. As strong as she is in her opinions today is also how she should have been when clinton was doing the very same thing bushco is currently doing. Has she expressed regret over what she said, or the decisions she was part of? Taking a moral stand now does not, in my view, remove the blood from her hands in any degree. Once a person has chosen a course like she did, they rarely stray. It is just politically expedient to speak out against the slaughter now because the majority of Americans are against it and are a lot more aware then they were 15 years ago about what is happening. clinton got away with it due to the ignorance of the people, that isn't the case any more. That may seem like a harsh stand to you, but I don't trust her one little bit.

Gerald said...

Posters, God does not speak directly to me. What thoughts that I have come to me in a semi-sleep. These thoughts whether right or wrong may be through Divine Providence.

Attack upon Iran by Nazi America will be wrong and immoral and God will punish Nazi America's sinful ways. That prediction can be taken to the bank.

Gerald said...

Since I Love You and Humanity, I Share These Words for All the World to Hear

capt said...

"Military intelligence"


A oxymoron if ever there was one.


capt

Gerald said...

Maybe now these words will come through

Sorry for the mistake in linking!!!

capt said...

"Mr. President, there is no lack of confidence in you whatsoever. The trouble is ... some of these Democratic senators ... The problem is these bastard traitors we have in this country."


Henry M. Kissinger
U.S. Secretary of State (Republican)
U.S. National Security Advisor
Telephone call with President Richard M. Nixon, June 10, 1973


Text may be copied and used consistent with our permissions. Credit should read " Courtesy: Eigen's Political & Historical Quotations." This permission does NOT extend to the pictures and graphics."

Context:


This passage from the Watergate tapes show how even after the Watergate scandal had started to unravel, Nixon and his staff were oblivious to what Nixon's behavior had been and blamed critics for all the problems. It also shows the mindset that existed then in the White House that political opponents were enemies of the state and traitors. It was a throwback to monarchies were any opponent or critic of the King was by definition a traitor. This quotation is used by historians to not only show the Nixon paranoia about critics, but it shows the way Kissinger pandered to the President's paranoia at the time. Whether Kissinger's behavior was self-serving and hypocritical as his critics charge or a clever attempt to manage the President and Watergate crisis into a "soft landing" with Nixon's resignation, as his supporters argue, it is hard to tell.

From: HERE

kathleen said...

Interesting
January 19, 2007
Stop the Next War
Before it starts. Support H. J. Resolution 14.
by Justin Raimondo
The times, they sure are a-changin'! Why, I remember when you could count congressional opponents of the war on the fingers of one hand. Back then, it was just the likes of Ron Paul and Neil Abercrombie who were introducing resolutions trying to get us out of the Iraqi quagmire, but today there are no less than eleven such resolutions vying for attention. The great problem with most of them is that they are either unconstitutional – such as the Kennedy bill, that would prohibit the spending of war funding on Bush's "surge" – or non-binding resolutions, which have no effect except to distance Democrats who initially voted for the Iraq war from their own handiwork.

All these legislative initiatives deal with Iraq, with only one – House Joint Resolution 14 – confronting the key issue on the war-and-peace front: Iran. This is a binding resolution that forbids the President from ordering an attack on Iran absent military action against U.S. forces, or a demonstrably imminent threat of attack. Authored by Rep. Walter B. Jones, of North Carolina – the formerly pro-war Republican who did a dramatic turnaround long before it became fashionable to do so – the resolution has an impressively bipartisan list of co-sponsors, including GOPers John Duncan (Tennessee), Wayne Gilchrest (Maryland), and Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican congressman from Texas whose announcement of a presidential exploratory committee is causing much excitement in antiwar circles.


@anti-war.com

David B. Benson said...

Only congress has the power to declare war. Looks like George XLIII needs reminding, good'n'hard.

kathleen said...

The time for Accountability was three years ago! We are waiting! Agents of Influence

By Robert Dreyfuss

01/20/07 "The Nation" -- -- Did Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, run a covert program with operatives in high-level US government positions to influence the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq? The FBI wants to know.

That's the story behind the latest Washington spy scandal, involving Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and a mid-level civilian Pentagon employee allegedly caught red-handed trying to deliver US secrets to the Israelis.

It's not a routine spy case. According to sources familiar with the investigation, the FBI is looking at a group of neoconservatives who have occupied senior posts at the White House, the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office. It's not that they are supporters of Israel--no crime there--but that some of them might be conspirators in a clandestine operation launched by Sharon's Likud Party. They make up the very network of ideologues--from civilians at the Defense Department to fellow travelers at right-wing think tanks--who have been accused of pushing George W. Bush into war. The point of the probe, sources believe, is not to examine the push to war but rather to ascertain whether Sharon recruited or helped place in office people who knowingly, and secretly, worked with him to affect the direction of US policy in the Middle East. The most likely targets of the inquiry are Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and Harold Rhode of the Pentagon's Offic!
e of Net Assessment.

It's an explosive inquiry and one that raises the most sensitive hackles, since it involves the possibility that US officials (most, but not all, Jews) are working on Sharon's behalf. They include Feith and a handful of other officials, including those in the inner circle of his policy office who formed the core of the Office of Special Plans (OSP). The probe faces stiff political resistance. Yet it may have legs.

The investigation burst into the news in late August when CBS News reported that the FBI had caught a Feith staffer, later identified as Larry Franklin, trying to deliver what turned out to be a classified draft of a presidential memo on Iran to AIPAC and an Israeli Embassy diplomat. Subsequent attention focused largely on whether Franklin was a spy for Israel, but in fact he is only a minor figure in a far more sweeping probe that began two years ago.

What triggered the original investigation isn't known, but it is known that it began at a critical moment, as Feith and Rhode began assembling a team, which included Franklin, to form the OSP. It's been widely reported that the OSP manufactured exaggerated intelligence reports on the threat from Iraq, but less reported is the fact that the OSP also carried out unauthorized operations. Several OSP officials--including Rhode, Franklin and Michael Maloof, one of the two original staffers of the forerunner to OSP, joined by Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)--took part in a rogue Pentagon initiative, beginning in 2001 with unsavory wheeler-dealers in Rome and Paris, to discuss regime change beyond Iraq, in Iran and Syria. The CIA found out about the Rome meeting, and the agency may have asked the FBI to start watching Feith, Rhode, Ledeen, Franklin et al. Former CIA and Defense intelligence officials familiar with the case stress that the FBI is looking at!
an operation run by the Israeli prime minister, not by the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, and that the investigation is based solely on concerns about foreign influence. "It's about Sharon," says a former senior CIA operations officer. "This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism."

Some familiar with the case suggest that the FBI's investigation is looking back as far as 1996, when Feith, Richard Perle, Feith's boss at the Pentagon in the 1980s and until recently chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, and David Wurmser, a co-founder of OSP who is now Cheney's Middle East adviser, wrote a radical memo, called "A Clean Break," to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for confrontation with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the PLO.

Since the investigation came to light, Sharon's closest allies have led an effort to derail it. Screaming the loudest is Marc Zell, Feith's former law partner, who is now an attorney in Israel tied to the Likud's right wing and to the settler movement. "It's a cheap shot by certain people inside the government to embarrass Doug and the Pentagon leadership," Zell told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Certain elements inside the military and intelligence communities are unhappy with the policy decisions of people in the upper echelon and attempt, sometimes in a very crude way, to embarrass them." News of the investigation stunned AIPAC, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, AEI and others in Likud's Washington circuit. And, of course, AIPAC's friends in Congress are hopping mad. Ha'aretz, the Israeli daily, said that news of the inquiry landed like the "diplomatic equivalent of an unexploded cluster bomb."

Perle is demanding that the White House clamp down on the investigators, according to the Boston Globe. "It's pretty nasty, and unfortunately the Administration doesn't seem to have it under control," the Globe quotes Perle as saying. But according to the Financial Times, the White House is quietly doing just that: The London daily reports that the White House is pressuring the FBI and the Justice Department not to issue indictments in the case.

Other voices are also being heard. Democratic Representative John Conyers wrote to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee demanding an investigation into "substantial and credible evidence that Pentagon officials...have engaged in unauthorized covert activities." Conyers specifically cited Feith. And the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is now deep into phase two of its own probe, which includes examining the work of the OSP; its report is expected after the November election.

The FBI has an ace in the hole that may allow it to resist White House pressure. "By now," says a retired intelligence official, "the FBI has gathered up so much material in grand jury records and things like that that they are in a position to push back against pressure from the Administration to back away from this. When they get pressure, they leak to somebody. And the potential of disclosure is a real threat to the Administration." In addition, the counterintelligence probe could spin off investigations in several possibly related scandals, including the Ahmad Chalabi case and the Valerie Plame leak, not to mention the Franklin matter.

"They have no case," says AEI's Michael Ledeen. We'll see.

kathleen said...

Juan speaks people listen.

Cheney blew off Iran in 2003
For the Love of God Impeach this Man

Lawrence Wilkerson, an aide to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state says that Iran in 2003 offered to help stabilize Iraq and to cut off aid to Hizbullah in Lebanon and to Hamas. Wilkerson says that the State Department was interested in pursuing the offer, which presumably came from reformist president Mohammad Khatami. He says that when the issue was broached with VP Richard Bruce Cheney, Cheney shot down any notion of "talking to evil." As if Mohammad Khatami is evil and Richard Bruce Cheney is not. (Cheney's lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and connection to 9/11 have gotten hundreds of thousands of people killed).

Because Khatami kept promising that his reforms would make Iranians better off, and because the US rejected all his overtures and left him with no achievements to show for them, the Iranian electorate turned against the reform movement and put Mahmud Ahmadinejad into power, a loud-mouthed braggart of a sort that Cheney's Likudniks could then build up into a bogey man to frighten Americans with. Cheney created Iran as a menace.

What this article doesn't mention is that the rightwing Likud cabal in Cheney's office, such as Irv Lewis Libby, with its connections to the Israeli far right, almost certainly played a key role in this rejection. I think John Hannah was already there then, too. David Wurmser came later, after getting up the fraudulent case against Iraq in the Pentagon "Office of Special Plans" (i.e. foreign policy plumbers) set up by Likudnik Douglas Feith, then the number 3 man in the Pentagon.

Libby is now on trial for lying to the special prosecutor about his role in betraying CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. Wilson had been working on anti-proliferation efforts versus . . . Iran. She was outed to punish her husband for publicly challenging Cheney's lies about WMD in Iraq.

Cheney is the most fascistic high official in US government in history. He recently implied that al-Qaeda is glad that the Democrats won the mid-term elections, as his way of trying to create the impression that anyone who disagrees with him is a terrorist-loving traitor. But it is Cheney who is the traitor, with his office having betrayed Valerie to the Iranians (and everyone else in the world).

Fascism depends on the creation of straw man enemies said to be dire threats to the Homeland. Iran is a poor weak third world country and poses no threat to the US. It hasn't aggressively invaded another country for over a century. But Cheney needs Iran to substitute for the old Soviet Union, otherwise how could he get you to agree to let him listen in on your telephone calls without a warrant, or let him torture people?

Cheney is the much bigger threat to the integrity of the US constitution than any foreign force. He should be impeached. If lying about a tawdry affair that did not even get to third base is grounds for impeachment, then lying us into a war, slapping Iran's overtures away and setting the stage for another war, and outing a CIA operative certainly are.

At least let us investigate the extent of his crimes.

posted by Juan @ 1/19/2007 06:22:00 AM 12 comments

David B. Benson said...

Kathleen --- Hot d**n! Maybe actually indict Feith. Maybe even Perle? Maybe instead get them to squeal on Darth Cheney...

Maybe a ray of hope!

David B. Benson said...

Comment 101.

Sounds like a freshman course. :-)

kathleen said...

"All we are saying..is kick Kagan and Kristol's lilly white asses"


All We Are Saying . . .
Is Give Petraeus a Chance
Members of Congress should ask themselves, "What can we do to help Petraeus succeed?"
by Frederick W. Kagan & William Kristol
01/29/2007, Volume 012, Issue 19

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has returned from her visit to Iraq with a bold (if not entirely new) recommendation: Congress should vote to cap the number of U.S. forces the president can deploy to Iraq. (She notes that her demand has precedent in the experience of Lebanon in the early 1980s: Was she pleased with the results of that congressional intervention?) She thereby joins Senators Christopher Dodd and Barack Obama, among others, in the demand that Congress assume responsibility for operational military decisions--and, in fact, for the conduct of the war.


@ weekly standard

Saladin said...

Mr. Benson, congress abdicated their duty, claiming they were deceived and misled, that's why we must send more meat into the grinder, it's supporting the troops dontcha know?

At Last!!
by Paul Hein
The news media are already bringing us news of candidates for president in the election of 2008. Modesty forbade my announcing my candidacy first, but now that there are already hats in the ring, I’ll put an end to the suspense that was torturing so many of you and announce that I will once again run for the presidency. (Actually, it will be more of a stroll than a run). Yes, I’m sure you’re relieved. This is your chance to join that mini-multitude (fifteen, actually) who voted for me last time.

Do not expect me to campaign, if, by that, you mean traveling about telling people what I plan to do if elected. In the first place, I plan to do almost nothing, and in the second, I wouldn’t spend the money traveling even if I had it. We have TV, the press, and radio; they will have to do. From time to time I may step onto my front porch to disburden myself of something that may need saying. If you would like to shake my hand, make your way to the porch, or just find some stranger and shake his. My hand is very similar.

A platform? I have none. The president is an administrator; he sees that things get done the way they should be done. He doesn’t need a "platform" to do that. If elected, I will do those things which I will have sworn to do: I will be Commander in Chief, but the only command I am likely to issue will be to bring American troops back home where they belong. I will grant reprieves and pardons, emptying our prisons of those hapless souls who have harmed no one but themselves. I shall make very few Treaties, since they supercede the Constitution that I am bound to uphold. I shall appoint ambassadors and judges. I will fill vacancies in Congress that occur during recesses; and from time to time I’ll send Congress a report on the state of the union, and recommend for their consideration such measures as I think necessary and expedient. This latter duty, in fact, will be the only one requiring more than a few minutes of my time each week. Rarely, I might convene both houses, or, adjourn them. I’ll receive ambassadors, take care that all the laws be faithfully executed (that might also occupy some of my time) and commission officers of the United States. That’s all there is to it.

It’s hardly a full-time job, and certainly not a particularly important one. There would seem little reason for the president to fly about the world, and I won’t. A weekly news conference? Why? As things are now, if the president has something important to say, the news commentators tell us what he’s going to say before he says it. If I have something to say to the country at large, I’ll send a letter to the editor.

As far as legislation is concerned, I will veto virtually everything that hits my desk, since we have too many laws already, and nearly all of them, as well as bills proposed for enactment, are unconstitutional on their face. We’ll acknowledge defeat in the war on drugs, and get out of that business. Federal aid of all types will end. The term "general welfare" doesn’t mean that the general public provides welfare for the few.

There is nothing in the constitutional list of presidential duties that directly involves foreign policy, but that seems to be generally regarded as an executive function nonetheless. My foreign policy will be isolationism. Foreign aid is a preposterous idea that will carry no weight in my administration. There will be no "most favored" trading partners; no foreign entanglements.

I’ll spend most of my time pottering around in the White House gardens, taking pictures, reading, practicing the piano and, if it can be uncovered without undue bother and expense, swimming in the White House pool. From time to time I suppose I’ll have to be the gracious host to visiting dignitaries, but, unless they’ve just come as tourists, I don’t see why there should be any visiting dignitaries. We certainly won’t encourage them to come! And I don’t plan any foreign junkets myself. I dislike eating with strangers, and eating with stuffy officious strangers, at some dreary state dinner, would be intolerable.

A lesson I’ve learned in life is that you can only plan so far in advance. Best just to start out and take things as they come, so my proposed presidential term may be more or less different from what I’ve proposed. I don’t have the answers to every question, but I can pledge that, in whatever situation I find myself, I’ll be guided by my oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and will do as little as possible to disturb the free and unfettered flow of American life.

An inaugural ball? Well, no. I’ll have a few close friends over to the White House for dinner. A parade, with jets soaring overhead, as a military band plays stirring music? Probably not. And I promise there will be no Presidential library when I leave office. We’ve got enough of those already. And there will be no state funeral. I’ve arranged to leave my body to my alma mater, so there will be a simple private memorial service, hopefully presided over by my son.

Oh, and one more thing: no political party will touch me with a ten – or even twenty – foot pole. So just write me in. And thanks!
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I know that staunch democrats will hate that idea, but to me it sounds absolutely refreshing. My motto, keep it simple!

kathleen said...

"Faster Please" say the American people! Hold the liars accountable!


I will support the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"

Yes Feith, Franklin, Wurmser, Rhode, Ledeen, Cheney, Bolton, Hannah....Are they enemies from within? Sure is looking like it!


I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

kathleen said...

Albright warned against the invasion early on.

No one is asking you to trust her. Just go listen to the congressional hearing at C-Span where she slams the Bush administration, says talk to Iran and enough of the "bushit"

capt said...

OMG:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI

The future is not as bright as it was yesterday. Is this for real?


capt

capt said...

Albright, Madeleine K.



"What's the point of having this superb military your always talking about if we can't use it?"


Madeleine K. Albright
U. S. Secretary of State (Democrat)
U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations (Democrat)
Question asked of Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a policy debate over Bosnia.


Text may be copied and used consistent with our permissions. Credit should read " Courtesy: Eigen's Political & Historical Quotations." This permission does NOT extend to the pictures and graphics."

More HERE

capt said...

New thread for quicker loading!

Gerald said...

Imprint thesw words on your brain for eternity!!!!!

MILITARY MEN ARE JUST DUMB STUPID ANIMALS TO BE USED AS PAWNS IN FOREIGN POLICY.

Henry Kissinger says that military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. Does this mean our American soldiers are only cannon fodder to be murdered and maimed through our evil foreign policies and practices?