Iraq: Interesting Juxtaposition

Seen this morning over at Huffpo:

First headline: Poll: Majority Of Americans Say War Not Worth It

Second headline: Bush: Iraq War Worth It

In other news, although why call it "news" when it's not new and should come as no surprise to anyone, Drunky McStaggers once again attempts to tie 9/11 and his old friend Osama bin Laden (hey, where is Osama, anyway?) to Iraq.

"The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror. For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be the place where al-Qaeda rallied Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs joined with Americans to drive al-Qaeda out. In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his murderous network. The significance of this development cannot be overstated."

No, you pathetic dry drunk drug-addled brainless idiot. Iraq was the proverbial innocent bystander here. Your friends the Saudis who won't increase oil production no matter how much you beg and grovel and publicly fellate them sent 15 of their citizens in a well-funded plot directed by a mastermind your Daddy's hunchmen trained, to damage America. That mastermind, Osama bin Laden, is believed to be hiding out in Afghanistan, where we're losing yet another war, thanks to your failed concepts of military strategy. Or he might be in Pakistan, where your good buddy Musharraf is soon to join the ranks of ex-dictators of Pakistan (notorious mainly for being assassinated).

Remember that picture? Five years ago, this idiot told us the war was over. Since then, 4,000 American troops have died; over one million Iraqis have died, men, women, children, old people, sick people, blind, deaf, and otherwise disabled people; between 3 and 5 million Iraqis are refugees, either in neighbouring nations, or internally displaced, because Shrinky McBrainless hasn't done squat to have the U.S. take in those Iraqis who worked with us and are now targeted by death squads; over 30,000 U.S. servicemen are maimed, injured, and disabled; and who knows how many Iraqis we have left wounded.

For a little perspective on how much this war is costing us and a comparison of timelines, drop by Gordon and Fixer's. Take a bucket, you'll need to puke.

Drunky's liege lord, Senior Puppetmaster and professional impersonator of human life, Snarly McCrashcart, meanwhile, flew his wife and daughter on a junket to the middle-east, that tinderbox of explosive politics. What are they doing, you ask, you humble American taxpayer whose dollars are financing that junket, even as you work your ass off without an inflation-matching raise for a decade? Goin' fishing. No, no kidding. Even as the reptilian bastard snarls in public about the nonexistent links between al Qaeda and Iraq.

When informed that two-thirds of the American people don't support the illegal, immoral war of occupation in Iraq, Snarly gave the American public the rigid digit. See the video clip for yourself.

So, you the two-thirds of the American Public who are against this war? Better get off yer asses and do something about it. And no, electing John McInsane is not the answer, because he can't tell his al Qaeda from a hole in the ground, and wants to start another war &mdash in Iran &mdash so the economy can go even further into the hole than it is already.

Crossposted over at La Casa de Los Gatos

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Inside Halliburton On Camera

Ben Carter, a former Halliburton/KBR water purification specialist, discusses discovering Halliburton was providing dangerously contaminated water to troops, and the serious long-term implication:

Senate Democratic Policy Committee Hearing
“An Oversight Hearing on Whether Halliburton Has Failed to Provide Clean Water to United States Troops in Iraq” [pdf]
Ben Carter, Former Halliburton Employee, January 23, 2006

My name is Ben Carter, and for the last twenty years I have worked as a water purification specialist. I currently reside in Cedar City, Utah. From January 2005 through early April 2005, I worked for Halliburton subsidiary KBR at Camp Ar Ramadi in Iraq, also known as Junction City. Ar Ramadi is home to between 5,000 and 7,000 troops at any given time, served by roughly 70 KBR personnel.
...
Although I was hired to work as a water treatment specialist, I was not allowed to inspect the Ar Ramadi water delivery systems until more than a month after I arrived at the base... After a month, I was finally allowed to work with the ROWPU unit.
...
I had been told by the usual ROWPU lead that the water was chlorinated, and knew that such an organism could not survive in chlorinated water. I decided at that point to test the water in the employee’s bathroom for chlorination. The test results indicated zero presence of chlorine. I then tested at several other locations in the KBR section of the base, and discovered no chlorine at those sites either. I then tested the nonpotable water storage tank and, to my shock, realized that the water in the tank tested negative for chlorine; that the access lid of the tank was not in place, let alone secure; and that the air vents to the tank were turned upward and left unscreened, leaving the water supply vulnerable to contamination from dust, insects, rodents, or even enemy attack. I was stunned. No trained water treatment specialist could claim that the water was fit for human use.
...
When KBR site management learned that I was preparing a report, they insisted on approving its contents before I sent it to Mo. I did, and they offered comments questioning my conclusions. I have brought a copy of that e-mail exchange [pdf] with me today.
...
I accepted a position with Halliburton with the belief that my particular skills would be of service to the troops in Iraq. But when I tried to notify the troops that they may be exposed to a serious health risk, I was told that the military was none of my concern, and to keep my mouth shut. I don’t know how bad the problem might be — how many troops may have been exposed to untreated water, and how many might have gotten sick as a result. I can’t know, because Halliburton apparently has no records and refuses to acknowledge there might be a problem. I do know that I have been diagnosed with an unidentified organism in my digestive tract, and that I sometimes suffer from gastrointestinal problems that I did not experience before going to Iraq.

Let me conclude by saying that I’m here today because I believe that supporting the troops has to be more than a slogan. Our men and women overseas deserve the best our taxpayer dollars can buy, and it saddens me to report that we’re falling short on something as simple and essential as providing them with clean, safe water.

The Sludge Report - Halliburton moves to Dubai:

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Bush Cheney Industries, Inc.

Treason for sale
Larisa at-Largely, January 14, 2008

We know that there are a number of Saudi royals sympathetic to the Jihadi cause. We also know that many in the Saudi royal family fund terrorism in general and al Qaeda in particular. We know that the majority of foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudi nationals - killing our troops. We know too that the majority of 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Yet, the US has continued to supply the Saudis with weapons, despite their role as being the world sponsor of terrorism. The latest is as follows:

"RIYADH (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, trying to counter Iran's growing military clout, made clear his commitment on Monday to go ahead with a major arms sale to Saudi Arabia as he began his first visit to the Islamic kingdom.

Just hours after his arrival in Riyadh, the U.S. administration said it notified Congress of its intention to offer the Saudis a controversial package of advanced weaponry as part of a multibillion-dollar deal with Gulf Arab allies."

Sorry? If I recall we were fighting a war on terror and yet we are providing advanced weapons to the terrorists? How the hell is this not treason? Seriously, I want a Constitutional scholar to tell me how this is not treason. The Saudi regime may be Bush's ally in the mythical war on terra, but they are no ally of the US, and they are certainly no ally of Israel or or India, or to any other democracy in the world.

Oh did I mention what types of weapons we will be handing to the Saudis? Our deal includes - sit down now - Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb kits.

Let's hear a big round of applause for George W. Bush and his idiot supporters....



UPDATE on the flip: [Israeli] Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Israel was concerned the weapons might fall into terrorist hands.

This beady eyed smirking deceitful lying little two faced conscienceless psychopathic mother f'cker is selling weapons to people who are shipping them to people who are using them to kill American soldiers that HE is sending into Iraq as targets for his customers.

Haaretz.com, Israel, 20/04/2007
Gates says Washington to sell smart bombs to Saudi Arabia

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during his visit to Israel that Washington has decided to sell Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs to Saudi Arabia, Haaretz has learned.

A recent discussion in Washington raised the possibility that Jerusalem would ask the U.S. not to sell the satellite-guided smart bombs to the Saudis, but it was decided to reject this request.

The Israel Air Force itself has purchased the high-accuracy JDAMs, and used them against Hezbollah targets during the Second Lebanon War. Defense Minister Amir Peretz expressed Israel's opposition to the sale of the weapons to Saudi or other Persian Gulf states during his visit to the U.S. a few weeks ago. Peretz said Israel was concerned the weapons might fall into terrorist hands. Israel also argues that the presence of such weapons in the Arab countries undermines Washington's pledge that Israel will enjoy a qualitative edge in the region - attained mainly by the possession of advanced weaponry.
...
The main component of the JDAM is not the bomb itself, but rather its tail kit, which can also be installed on an ordinary bomb. The target location is fed to the system by satellite, which can also be done by computer during flight. The computer determines the best moment for the pilot to release the bomb. Pilots and other experts say this type of bomb "can be aimed through a window."

Treason and conspiracy to commit murder.

What else would anyone with half a brain call it?



Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bomb test
Warning: turn down your speaker volume.

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Dick Cheney Confession: The Continuing Story of "The Fall Of The House Of Bush"

Cross posted at Edgeing

During an interview with Craig Unger about his new book "The Fall Of The House Of Bush" Amy Goodman of Democracy Now (transcript here) refers to comments made by Dick Cheney in September 1992 after the first Gulf War, in a speech at the Economic Club of Detroit explaining why the George H. W. Bush administration did not go on to Baghdad after Saddam then.

Cheney's comments in the speech show clearly that they knew irrefutably in 2003 before the invasion, not only that Saddam Hussein was no threat militarily to any country, much less to the United States, but that they also knew exactly what the conditions in Iraq likely to be produced by an invasion would be, and that they did it with eyes wide open, with conscious and full intention of producing the humanitarian crisis and chaos and death that has followed.

And knew that the responsibility for it would be theirs.

Cheney's speech begins at about 3 min 50 sec into this Democracy Now Craig Unger interview video:


Parts two and three of the Democracy Now Craig Unger interview follow here:

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When You Know The Truth, The Facts Don't Seem So Important

Cross posted at DocuDharma and Edgeing

Jason Leopold of Truthout interviews Craig Unger, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, on the Rise of the Christian Right and Neoconservatism.

Unger garnered national attention with his previous book, House of Bush, House of Saud. Michael Moore cited it as a key source for Fahrenheit 9/11, and the film popularized the author's reports on Saudi investments in Bush family enterprises.

In his new book, The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future, Unger turns his attention to neoconservative officials and theorists. At times he focuses so closely on neocon tactics that he misses other forces driving Bush-Cheney policies. Even so, the book offers a vivid account of the use of disinformation to promote extremism.

Leopold: Craig, thank you for being with truthout today. What are some of the issues in your new book that we don't know about - that the public does not know about?

Unger: Well, I think we've been told again and again that we got into the war in Iraq beacause of intelligence failures - that various things just turned out not to be true - that we made one mistake after another.

I actually think we got into the war for exactly the opposite reason - because of intelligence successes - and by that I mean black propaganda operations - disinformation.

Chris Pepus of Chicago Reader takes the book review further for us with...

Bush and the Neocons
By Chris Pepus, Chicago Reader, Thursday 20 December 2007

When you know the Truth, the facts don't seem so important.
Craig Unger, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, garnered national attention with his previous book, House of Bush, House of Saud. Michael Moore cited it as a key source for Fahrenheit 9/11, and the film popularized the author's reports on Saudi investments in Bush family enterprises. In The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future, Unger turns his attention to neoconservative officials and theorists. At times he focuses so closely on neocon tactics that he misses other forces driving Bush-Cheney policies. Even so, the book offers a vivid account of the use of disinformation to promote extremism.

Unger traces the origins of Bush's foreign policy to the 1970s, when prominent bureaucrats and writers gathered around such converts to conservatism as Irving Kristol and Albert Wohlstetter. The neocons scored their first big success in 1976, when two of their allies in President Ford's administration, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, created a group outside the CIA to assess the Soviet threat. That panel, dubbed Team B, was staffed by neocon worthies and led by Richard Pipes of Harvard University. One of the group's advisers was a Wohlstetter protege named Paul Wolfowitz.

Team B concluded that the CIA had vastly underestimated Soviet power and that supporters of detente were merely assisting the Kremlin's drive for world domination. It was an imaginative assessment, given that the economy of the USSR was crippled and its military infrastructure was suffering as CIA officers pointed out. Pipes's group held, for instance, that the USSR had probably deployed a top-secret antisubmarine system, even though U.S. intelligence had found no credible evidence of such a program. As Unger writes, "The absence of evidence, [Team B] reasoned, merely proved how secretive the Soviets were!" It was a bold preemptive attack on fact and logic.

Team B's creativity went unrewarded in the short term, as Jimmy Carter won the presidency that year. But Ronald Reagan would use the panel's report to justify his enormous military buildup (and consequent budget deficits) in the 1980s, and in the '90s Team B alumni and followers took aim at the Clinton administration's Middle East policy. In 1996 a group of neocons led by Richard Perle produced a policy statement, "A Clean Break," that prescribed military action to remove anti-Israel governments like Saddam Hussein's. When George W. Bush entered office, flanked by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, it became a blueprint for war.

Unger is at his best in these early chapters, where he convincingly links neocon biases to the Republicans' most disastrous policies. He gleans a thicket of reports and think-tank papers to reveal that the Bush administration's claims about Iraqi weapons programs followed the same pattern as Team B's exaggeration of Soviet power in the 1970s. Likewise, many of the administration's rosy projections for post-Saddam Iraq originated with the authors of "A Clean Break." In 1999 one of them, David Wurmser, stated that Iraq's Shiite majority "can be expected to present a challenge to Iran's influence" instead of aligning with Iran. Wurmser offered no factual support for his claim, but wrote that his thinking had been "guided" by his ideological allies, such as Ahmed Chalabi. By that point, Unger writes, "the neocon echo chamber had begun to rely on itself to reinforce its own myths."

Four and a half years into the Iraq war, the price of upholding those myths is rising. The president and vice president appear smitten by the idea of air strikes against Iran. Unger cites Philip Giraldi, a former CIA specialist in counterterrorism, who argued that in the case of Iran, Bush officials were "using the same dance stepsódemonize the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux."

Describing three decades of right-wing gambits, Unger paints a stunning portrait of arrogance and duplicity. The Fall of the House of Bush may be the definitive group biography of the neocons. But he makes a few missteps when the story moves beyond that group. For instance, he calls President Bush a "genuine born-again Christian," despite finding evidence that the president's professions of faith are as cynical as anything Team B ever presented. Bush maintains that Billy Graham converted him to evangelical Christianity in 1985, but Graham has disagreed with that and so has Mickey Herskowitz, a ghostwriter of Bush's 1999 autobiography.

Herskowitz told Unger that Bush couldn't recall the details of his 1985 meeting with Graham and replied negatively when Herskowitz asked him whether Graham had said something like, "Have you gotten right with God?" (Herskowitz was "stunned" by the book's account of Bush's conversation with the minister.) "Witnessing" about your relationship with Christ is a key element of evangelicalism. Lying about your conversion experience for electoral gain is just about the last thing a sincere evangelical would do.

Unger also underplays the importance of oil-industry leaders, including his previous subjects, the Saudis. In his 2006 book Armed Madhouse, journalist Greg Palast writes about a 2000 report by the Joint Task Force on Petroleum, cosponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute (named for and headed by Bush I's secretary of state). The panel, which included oil execs as well as foreign-policy specialists, complained that Iraq was a "swing producer" of oil, with a propensity to "manipulate oil markets."

Saddam Hussein had a history of abruptly suspending and restarting oil production. In fact, he interrupted petroleum exports for 12 days the month the task force began its work. His tactics undermined efforts by the oil companies and Saudi-dominated OPEC to control the price of crude. An earlier assessment by the Baker Institute put it this way: "In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived supply risks. Such a market increases the potential leverage of an otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq." For its part the task force recommended "an immediate policy review toward Iraq," including military options. Palast says Cheney got its report early in 2001, and its economic considerations may have provided the strongest impetus for war.

Likewise, the Saudis have played a large role in developing Bush's aggressive approach toward Iran and Shiite Muslims throughout the Middle East. (Saudi rulers are Sunnis.) Bush and his aides choose to blame Iran for the disaster in Iraq, even though it's the Sunnis who've inflicted the majority of casualties on U.S. troops. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh has reported that the administration has joined the Saudis in providing clandestine support to Sunni extremists in Lebanon and Syria. The president hopes these Sunni militias will attack Iran's allies and not America's, even though some of those receiving aid have ideological affinities with Al Qaeda. It's an astonishing policy, completely at odds with the lessons of 9/11 and battlefield realities in Iraq. That contradiction is the best indicator of the House of Saud's continuing grip on Bush-Cheney foreign policy. The administration's close ties with the Saudi royals demonstrate that there are limits to the influence of the neocons, many of whom advocate regime change in Saudi Arabia.

Bush and his aides cite Iran's nuclear capability as justification for air strikes. But Hersh has reported that American intelligence thinks Iran won't have the ability to produce a warhead until sometime between 2010 and 2015. And according to an intelligence estimate released December 3, the country shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003. These assessments appear to have done little to deter the administration's drive toward confrontation. "Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said President Bush in response to the new intelligence estimate. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?"

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Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought

Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought
By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report, Friday 21 December 2007

For US Army soldiers entering basic training at Fort Jackson Army base in Columbia, South Carolina, accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior appears to be as much a part of the nine-week regimen as the vigorous physical and mental exercises the troops must endure.

That's the message directed at Fort Jackson soldiers, some of whom appear in photographs in government issued fatigues, holding rifles in one hand, and Bibles in their other hand.

Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, has been telling soldiers at Fort Jackson that "government authorities, police and the military = God's Ministers,"

Bussey's teachings from the "God's Basic Training" Bible study guide he authored says US troops have "two primary responsibilities": "to praise those who do right" and "to punish those who do evil - "God's servant, an angel of wrath." Bussey's teachings directed at Fort Jackson soldiers were housed on the Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web site. Late Wednesday, the web site was taken down without explanation. Bussey did not return calls for comment. The web site text, however, can still be viewed in an archived format.

The Christian right has been successful in spreading its fundamentalist agenda at US military installations around the world for decades. But the movement's meteoric rise in the US military came in large part after 9/11 and immediately after the US invaded Iraq in March of 2003. At a time when the United States is encouraging greater religious freedom in Muslim nations, soldiers on the battlefield have told disturbing stories of being force-fed fundamentalist Christianity by highly controversial, apocalyptic "End Times" evangelists, who have infiltrated US military installations throughout the world with the blessing of high-level officials at the Pentagon. Proselytizing among military personnel has been conducted openly, in violation of the basic tenets of the United States Constitution.

Perhaps no other fundamentalist Christian group is more influential than Military Ministry, a national organization and a subsidiary of the controversial fundamentalist Christian organization Campus Crusade for Christ. Military Ministry's national web site boasts it has successfully "targeted" basic training installations, or "gateways," and has successfully converted thousands of soldiers to evangelical Christianity.

Military Ministry says its staffers are responsible for "working with Chaplains and Military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as Government paid missionaries" - which appears to be a clear-cut violation of federal law governing the separation of church and state.

"Young recruits are under great pressure as they enter the military at their initial training gateways," the group has stated on its web site. "The demands of drill instructors push recruits and new cadets to the edge. This is why they are most open to the 'good news.' We target specific locations, like Lackland AFB [Air Force base] and Fort Jackson, where large numbers of military members transition early in their career. These sites are excellent locations to pursue our strategic goals."

Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the government watchdog organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose group has been closely tracking Military Ministry's activities at Fort Jackson and other military bases around the country, said in an interview that using "the machinery of the state" to promote any form of religion is "not only unconstitutional and un-American but it also creates a national security threat of the first order."

A six-month investigation by MRFF has found Military Ministry's staff has successfully targeted US soldiers entering basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sam Houston, with the approval of the Army base's top commanders.

"I've said it before and I will say it again," Weinstein said. "We are in the process of creating a fundamentalist Christian Taliban and somebody has to do something to stop it now."

Weinstein points out that on Fort Jackson's Military Ministry web site, the basic training battalion commander, Lt. Col. David Snodgrass, and the battalion's chaplain, Maj. Scott Bullock, who appear in uniform in a photograph with Bussey, is a clear-cut violation of Military rules. MRFF contacted Bussey via email on Wednesday to request information about the "similar programs" he claimed Fort Jackson has for soldiers of other faiths. Bussey, responding to MRFF via email, did not provide an answer to the watchdog group's question, but, instead, he fired back a query of his own asking MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda to direct him to the place in the Constitution where it states there is a "separation of church and state."

A spokesperson for the Fort Jackson Army base did not return calls for comment. Earlier this week, after MRFF exposed the potential constitutional violations between Military Ministry and the Fort Jackson Army base, Bussey added language to Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web site in the form of a "notice to MRFF and ACLU types" in bold red letters that says the Bible study classes are strictly voluntary, not command directed in any way, allows soldiers to exercise for themselves the right of freedom of religion ... and similar programs exist on Fort Jackson for Soldiers of all faiths."

Clause 3, Article VI of the Constitution forbids a religion test for any position in the federal government, and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights says Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion.

In July, the Pentagon's inspector general (IG) responded to a complaint filed a year earlier by MRFF that accused Pentagon officials of violating the federal law governing the separation of church and state. The IG did not address the church/state issue, but he issued a 45-page report admonishing several high-level Pentagon officials for participating, while in uniform and on active duty, in a promotional video sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ's Christian Embassy group. The IG report quoted one high-ranking military official as saying he believed his participation in the video was acceptable because Campus Crusade for Christ had become so embedded in the Pentagon's day-to-day operations that he viewed the organization as a "quasi federal entity."

The IG report recommended the military officials who appeared in the video be disciplined, but the Pentagon would not say whether it has in fact punished the military officers who appeared in the video.

MRFF uncovered another recent Campus Crusade for Christ promotional video filmed at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs that would appear to violate the same military rules detailed in the IG report. Cadets and academy officials appear in uniform discussing how Campus Crusade for Christ helped strengthen their bonds with Jesus.

Scot Blom, the Campus Crusade for Christ director assigned to work at the Air Force Academy, says in the video the organization "has always been very intentional about going after the leaders or the future leaders" and that's why Campus Crusade for Christ picked the Air Force Academy to spread its fundamentalist Christian message. Every week, according to the video, cadets are encouraged to participate in a Bible study class called "cru" short for "crusade."

"Our purpose for Campus Crusade for Christ at the Air Force Academy is to make Jesus Christ the issue at the Air Force Academy and around the world," Blom says in the video. "They're government paid missionaries when they leave here."

Weinstein said the recent promotional video for Campus Crusade for Christ, and the photograph of US soldiers holding Bibles in one hand and rifles in the other posted on the Fort Jackson Military Ministry web site, gives the impression the Pentagon endorses the fundamentalist Christian organization and underscores that the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan appears to be more of a modern-day fundamentalist Christian crusade. That message, Weinstein said, could lead to more "jihads" against the United States.

Indeed. Weinstein, a former White House counsel during the Reagan administration, former general counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and a former Air Force Judge Advocate General, said he had an "unexpected" telephone conversation with several senior Bush administration intelligence officials this week who encouraged him "to continue to fight for the separation of church and state in the US military" because, these senior administration intelligence officials told Weinstein, US troops are being put in harms way.

Weinstein said the senior administration intelligence officials told him they too have been tracking Islamic web sites where people have been discussing on message boards the fundamental Christianity issues Weinstein has raised within the US military. The intelligence officials told Weinstein they are concerned the fundamentalist Christian agenda surfacing in the military could lead to attacks against US soldiers. Weinstein said he could not identify the senior Bush intelligence administration officials he spoke with because they contacted him with the understanding they would not be named.

Fundamental Christianity's Influence on the Bush Administration

While Weinstein has worked tirelessly the past four years exposing the Christian Right's power grab within the military, he says the White House continues to thumb its nose at the constitutional provision mandating the separation of church and state.

Indeed. This week a US District Court judge ruled the White House must disclose its visitor logs showing White House visits by nine fundamentalist Christian leaders.

The ruling was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by the government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and could very well show how much influence fundamental Christian leaders such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell have had on the Bush's administration.

"We think that these conservative Christian leaders have had a very big impact," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. "The White House doesn't want to talk about how much influence these leaders have, and we want to talk about how much they do have."

Bush has been vocal about his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and how God has helped him during his presidency. A couple of weeks ago, the White House sent out Christmas cards signed by President Bush and his wife Laura that contained a Biblical passage from the Old Testament:

"You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you."

The inclusion of the Biblical passage caught the attention of longtime broadcaster Barbara Walters, who was a recipient of the presidential Christmas card.

Walters said she doesn't recall receiving "religious" holiday cards from past presidents and she wondered how non-Christians would receive such an overtly religious greeting.

"Usually in the past when I have received a Christmas card, it's been 'Happy Holidays' and so on," said Walters. "Don't you think it's a little interesting that the president of all the people is sending out a religious Christmas card? Does this also go to agnostics, and atheists, and Muslims?"

The Biblical passage inside the Christmas card did not amount to a constitutional violation because it was paid for by the Republican National Committee, but Weinstein said it's intolerable, nonetheless, because military officials believe they have the approval of the White House to allow fundamentalist Christian organizations and their leaders to proselytize in the military.

Recently, Bush nominated Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson, the deputy Air Force Chief of Chaplains, to replace the outgoing Air Force Chief of Chaplains, and is in line to be promoted to Major General. Richardson was quoted in a front-page, July 12, 2005, New York Times story saying the Air Force reserves the right "to evangelize the unchurched." The distinction, Richardson said at the time, "is that proselytizing is trying to convert someone in an aggressive way, while evangelizing is more gently sharing the gospel."

Weinstein filed a federal lawsuit against the Air Force in October 2005 after Richardson's comments were published alleging "severe, systemic and pervasive" religious discrimination within the Air Force. Weinstein is a 1977 graduate of the Academy. His sons and a daughter in law are also academy graduates. Weinstein's book, "With God On Our Side: One Man's War Against An Evangelical Coup in America's Military," details the virulent anti-Semitism he was subjected to while he attended the academy and the religious intolerance that has permeated throughout the halls over the past several years.

The federal lawsuit Weinstein filed was dismissed, but the Air Force agreed to withdraw a document that authorized chaplains to evangelize members of the military. Still, Weinstein said MRFF would lobby senators to oppose Richardson's nomination because of his past statements Richardson has refused to retract.

"The Military Religious Freedom Foundation will do everything in our power to convince the United States Senate to reject the nomination of Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson to become the chief of Air Force chaplains and his promotion to the rank of major general," Weinstein said in an interview. "We view Richardson as the prototypical poster child of the type of constitutional rapist we are trying to eradicate from existence within the US military."

In September, MRFF filed a lawsuit in federal court against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and US Army Maj. Freddy Welborn, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The complaint filed in US District Court in Kansas City alleges that Jeremy Hall's an Army specialist currently on active duty in Combat Operations Base Speicher, Iraq, First Amendment rights were violated when Welborn threatened to retaliate against Hall and block his reenlistment in the Army because of Hall's atheist beliefs.

"When You Join the Military, Then You Are Also in the Ministry"

The executive director of Military Ministry, retired US Army Major General Bob Dees, wrote in the organization's October 2005 "Life and Leadership" newsletter, "We must pursue our particular means for transforming the nation - through the military. And the military may well be the most influential way to affect that spiritual superstructure. Militaries exercise, generally speaking, the most intensive and purposeful indoctrination program of citizens...."

Moreover, Military Ministry's parent organization, Campus Crusade for Christ, has been re-distributing to military chaplains a DVD produced a decade ago where Tommy Nelson, a pastor at the Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, tells an audience of Texas A&M cadets and military officers when they join the military "then you are also in the ministry."

"I, a number of years ago, was speaking at the University of North Texas - it happens to be my alma mater, up in Denton, Texas - and I was speaking to an ROTC group up there, and when I stepped in I said, "It's good to be speaking to all you men and women who are in the ministry," and they all kind of looked at me, and I think they wondered if maybe I had found the wrong room, or if they were in the wrong room, and I assured them that I was speaking to men and women in the ministry, these that were going to be future officers," Nelson says in the DVD.

.......................................................................................................................................................
Jason Leopold is senior editor and reporter for Truthout. He received a Project Censored award in 2007 for his story on Halliburton's work in Iran.

Also see:

Charges in Religious Lawsuit Against Army Detailed

Soldier Who Sued Army Facing Threats

Pentagon Sued Over Mandatory Christianity

Kill or Convert, Brought To You By The Pentagon

Video, Report Details Evangelism At Highest Levels Of US Military

Swastikas at Hunter Airfield, and a Rabbi on the Run

With God on Our Side: Evangelical Christianity On Steroids In  US Military

Ft. Leavenworth Army Chaplains Preaching Anti-Semitism to US Soldiers

Anti-Semitic Bible Teachings Disappear From Army Site

There's more: "Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought" >>

BushWars Inc. - We Finance Weapons For EVERYONE! No Money Down… EZ Payment Plan!

Cross-posted as a comment on Juan Cole's Informed Comment and my site - My Buffalo River Home:

From the USG Open Source Center translation of "an article from an opposition Afghanistan newspaper alleging that Washington it (sic) deploying Pakistani tribal levies against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.":

"When the White House attacked Afghanistan in 2001 and occupied this country, it dispersed the Taleban and Al-Qa'idah in the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. In the second phase, it maintained direct contacts with the senior leaders of this group. Therefore, America has been using Al-Qa'idah as a tool since the symbolic and self-made event on 11 September 2001."

What part of this doesn't the American public understand?

The U.S. Government is backing almost EVERYONE'S insurgencies in the Middle East. Even organizations that have goals diametrically opposed to the stated 'needs & goals' of U.S. foreign policy.

Two examples:

Hersh: U.S. Funds Being Secretly Funneled To Violent Al Qaeda-Linked Groups

New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the single most explosive element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.

Hersh says the U.S. has been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.

Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of three Sunni jihadist groups who are connected to al Qaeda but want to take on Hezbollah.

Historically:

"During his stint as NATO Supreme Commander (1997-2000), Wesley Clark was in permanent liaison with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Under Wesley Clark's command, NATO directly sponsored a terrorist paramilitary army, with links to Al Qaeda and the trans-Balkan narcotics trade."

That gem is from Project Censored (there's more about AQ, NATO and the West on their site): CIA Double Deals In Macedonia

Lets not forget the PKK and affiliated Kurdish rebels (BushCo WILL abandon them again too... already have.): Professor Cole on the topic

John Robb @ Global Guerrillas on the topic: How to bait Turkey Into A Regional War...


What we have going on globally are 'Straw' insurgencies. I mean... If we can't make peace with them... sell/give them weapons and money through back channels that destabilize their region, give them enough local social control to allow their group a modicum of western media coverage, and maybe NEXT YEAR (or the year after that...) we can make a boogey-organization out of their actions and cut one of those AC-130 gunships and a DynCorp air crew loose from the Horn of Africa (or the Colombian drug wars) to supress them, an organization we initially allowed to prosper.

Here's a writeup one of the (Weapons/Logistics) movers & shakers...
Central Asia, Middle East, Africa.

Victor Bout, the Russian Mobster/Former KGB officer whose Bosnian airline 'vanished' 200,000 AK-47s in Iraq which the Pentagon/CPA contracted for shipment to the Iraqi Security Forces: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Bout

All General Petraus had to say about that was essentially... 'The bookkeeping was bad'.

Petraeus blames bookkeeping for missing weapons
Thursday, August 9, 2007

Bookkeeping problems are to blame for the inability to account for nearly 200,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said late Tuesday.

In Full @ Stars & Sripes

Bout has worked for the U.N., NATO in Kosovo (the KLA connection?), AND the Taliban.

Extrapolate!...At some point in recent history, Osama bin-Laden's buddies flew Victor Bout's air transport network.

We're dealing $$$ with the world's 'finest' thugs in the name of some dysfunctional 'democracy'. An affluent 'democracy' so dysfunctional & callous that can't even willingly supply housing for it's own disabled homeless INCLUDING veterans of their nasty little wars.




Perhaps this is what the government has in mind for our Veterans:



Just add weapons and send 'em back into action.

Just like they do when they've seen one too many of their buddies blown to bloody mush and have to be medicated into submission.

Las Vegas Sun:

September 06, 2007
Rushed back to the front

Experts: A depressed soldier on a potentially dangerous drug needed more time

By Ed Koch and Mary Manning

A Las Vegas Army infantryman who was prescribed Prozac for depression and several weeks later killed himself in Iraq should have undergone at least three months of observation before returning to normal duties, psychiatrists and other medical experts said in interviews Wednesday.

Family and friends of Pfc. Travis Virgadamo say he told them he was prescribed daily doses of 12.5 milligram s of the anti depressant Prozac beginning in July. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound last Thursday outside of Baghdad, the military said.

Medical experts interviewed by the Sun said anyone given prescription anti depressants should be watched carefully and kept out of high-stress duty for at least three months. In Full

More thugs, American thugs... Blackwater... Not just killers of 'in-the-way' Iraqi civilians but implicated in the smuggling of CPA Glock pistols to the Kurdish PKK and onward into the Turkish underworld.

This is one of the secretive parts of Henry Waxman's Blackwater investigantion we may NEVER hear about again.

"Officials in Washington said the smuggling investigation grew from internal Pentagon and State Department inquiries into U.S. weapons that had gone missing in Iraq. Turkish authorities protested to the U.S. in July that they had seized American arms from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, rebels." In full @ the WaPo Archive ($$$)

Another take @ McClatchy:

A former Blackwater employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigation includes a look at whether Blackwater shipped weapons from its Moyock headquarters to Iraq hidden in pallets wrapped tightly in shrink wrap.
.
.
"In December, the prosecutors obtained guilty pleas from two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth "Max" Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C. The men and their lawyers either refused to comment or did not return calls.

The court files are stingy on details of the crimes..."

"...the federal (Nb. criminal) investigation of Blackwater is proceeding behind closed doors," In Full

It's called feeding the voracious maw of the military industrial complex.
The only major "industrial industry" left in America.

You can thank twenty or more years of federal job non-creation negligence for this outcome.

The government's motto for all those years?

"The private sector will provide".

They did... for their corporate friends.

Meanwhile, Detroit and other American cities are becoming ghost towns.



We need a reality check here people.

FoMoCo sells a few cars...

But the REAL $$$ is in Hydrogen powered military UAVs.




I'll bet you wish they spent those R&D bucks on H-powered Excursion SUVs...

...But they won't. Unless the American people DEMAND IT.

That would require Americans to actually DO SOMETHING besides watching '24' & L.A. Law re-runs on the tell-unh-vision.

It will require MORE than simply voting for the hand-picked (just like Iraq) candidates offered up for U.S. presidency.

Truly unlikely, which leaves us rather permanently 'screwed' into war, and rumors of war...

--Da' Buffalo

There's more: "BushWars Inc. - We Finance Weapons For EVERYONE! No Money Down… EZ Payment Plan!" >>

Creating the War OF Terror

Larisa at-Largely reports:

Well, apparently (and again) we find out that the majority of the "terrorists" we are fighting "over there" are actually a our own allies, or as the terrorists call themselves, Our Allies in Iraq (OAI):

"Saudi Arabia and Libya, both considered allies by the United States in its fight against terrorism, were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks, according to senior American military officials.

The data come largely from a trove of documents and computers discovered in September, when American forces raided a tent camp in the desert near Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. The raid's target was an insurgent cell believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.
The most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006."

Ah, the House of Saud, with an ally such as this, who needs any enemies? They are, after all, our number one arms client, and so what if they dabble in murdering Americans, when multi-billion dollar contracts are on the table (where apparently impeachment [and Iraq occupation defunding] is not).

(italicized addition mine)

You've gotta feel for George Bush. Not enough people are buying his WOT fantasy, so as with any other BS product, he simply creates the problem to help him sell his solution.

And lives? Big deal. Lot's more where they came from...

Thanks a lot, George.

This is George Walker Bush, and this is how he would like you to remember him:

This is the real legacy of George Walker Bush (portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders):

Eddie Ryan

Dawn Halfacker

Dusty Hill

Crystal Davis

Jake Schick

Jay Wilkerson

John Jones

Jon Bartlett

Mike Jernigan

Dexter Pitts

Terrel Dawes

Bryan Anderson

Oyoanna Allende

Ryan, Halfacker, Hill, Davis, Schick, Wilkerson, Jones, Bartlett, Jernigan, Pitts, Dawes, Anderson and Allende are real patriots, and true American heroes. How many more heroes like these have to suffer for the folly of George Walker Bush and his legacy?

Happy Thanksgiving, Nancy.

There's more: "Creating the War OF Terror" >>

Jason Leopold | An Interview With Valerie Plame

Valerie Plame Still Wants to Know
By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report, Tuesday 13 November 2007

Former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson would still like to know the identity of the CIA official who passed her name to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney in the spring of 2003, and "under what circumstances."

That's just one of several unanswered questions Plame Wilson has been trying to figure out in the years since several senior officials in the Bush administration leaked her name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak and a handful of other journalists. That leak ended her two-decade CIA career.

"I'd like to know, why did Novak go with my maiden name, Plame, in his original article?" Plame Wilson said during an hour-long, two-part interview with Truthout. "I always thought that was strange. When I married, I took my married name. And then he [Novak] used Valerie Plame [in his column]. It was only the CIA who knew that I worked for them, and my maiden name."

Plame Wilson is promoting her book, "Fair Game," a memoir she wrote about the leak, her job as an intelligence operative working on counterproliferation issues, and the fallout that ensued when she became a public figure after her identity and CIA status were published in newspapers and magazines. Her book landed on The New York Times bestseller list two weeks ago and has more than 350,000 copies in print.

Perhaps the most important question yet to be answered for Plame Wilson is whether President Bush had prior knowledge about the leak of her identity.

"I'd love to know, what did President Bush know about all of this?" Plame Wilson said.

.......................................................................................................................................................
Jason Leopold is senior editor and reporter for Truthout. He received a Project Censored award in 2007 for his story on Halliburton's work in Iran.


See also:

Joe Wilson On Libby Commutation: Administration "Corrupt to the Core"

Bill Moyers On The Libby Sentencing: "Begging His Pardon "

Jason Leopold | An Interview With Joseph Wilson

There's more: "Jason Leopold | An Interview With Valerie Plame" >>

Pakistan: Close To The Edge

Benazir Bhutto speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
London, UK, July 20th, 2007
(Click the "Open Tools" button for program chapters within the video)
Alok Bansal, Research Fellow at New Delhi's Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis.
Musharraf's last gamble

The decision by Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf to declare emergency is the desperate attempt of an autocrat to cling to power. In the process he has irreparably damaged the foundations of constitutionalism in Pakistan, which were never strong to begin with. His actions will not only erode Pakistani state's authority but may sound the death knell for the Islamic Republic.

Also from Bansal,
60 Years of Pakistan

As Pakistan completes 60 years of existence, it is passing through a critical phase. The state's writ does not run over almost half its territory. Most people consider themselves as Sindhis, Baloch, Pakhtoons, Mohajirs and Punjabis first rather than as Pakistanis. Pakistan as a nation is kept together artificially by the only institution that functions - the army.

Despite belated attempts by the judiciary to assert its independence, the fact is that for most part of Pakistan's existence the courts have been dysfunctional and came out with the bizarre 'Doctrine of Necessity' to justify military coups. Pakistan's greatest tragedy has been that barring the armed forces or army to be specific, no other credible institution has emerged. The judiciary, legislature and bureaucracy-all have crumbled during Pakistan's six decades' journey.
...
Sub-nationalism emerged as a serious threat to the Pakistani state. Islamic fundamentalists challenge the writ of the government across the length and breadth of Pakistan. Islamabad's frequent flip-flops on the foreign policy front and frequent incursions by American armed forces within Pakistani territory have compromised its sovereignty in the eyes of its citizens.

Given that history it is not too far a stretch to assume that all of Rice and Bush's protestations are nothing but smoke, mirrors, and bullshit to feed the American public, and that they helped orchestrate Musharraf's martial law, to anger Islamic fundamentalists within the country and destabilize Pakistan as much as possible.

It would not surprise me to find that at least some in the administration, particularly in Cheney's camp, would like nothing better than an Islamic fundamentalist coup or takeover of nuclear armed Pakistan to give them the perfect excuse for cranking up the WOT rhetoric again, nuking Pakistan, and Iran next door. The rapturists on Bush's side of the aisle would love it as well.


Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired),
yesterday at-Largely:

Musharraf has not said how long the emergency will be in effect. This is not to be confused with the state of emergency Mr. Bush declared in his country on September 14, 2001 that is still in effect and will be for the indefinite future. These two states of emergency are completely different, of course. Mr. Bush declared an emergency after terrorists attacked two major cities in his country. Mr. Musharraf declared an emergency as terrorists threatened to take control of his country.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has accused Musharraf of using the specter of terror to maintain his hold on power. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has accused Bush of using the threat of terror to commit "a gross and excessive power grab."
...
America is the first true global hegemon in the history of humanity. Pakistan is not and never will be. America has the largest economy of the world's nations, posting an estimate gross domestic product of over $13 trillion in 2006. Pakistan's 2006 economy, at just under $438 billion, was 26th among the world's countries, and less than four percent the size of America's.

And yet, amazingly, Pakistan can get whatever it wants from America while America can't get anything it wants from Pakistan (see, I told you the two countries were different!). Condi Rice is reviewing whether or not we should try to make Musharraf behave by cutting off his allowance, but as Senator Joe Biden (R-Delaware) has astutely noted, our "hands are tied" from cutting Pakistan's foreign aid because, despite Condi's assertions to the contrary, the Bush administration has in fact put "all its chips" on Musharraf.

That brings up a couple more differences between America and Pakistan. If Musharraf falls from power, Pakistan's nuclear weapons might fall under the control of known lunatics, while America's nuclear weapons are already under the control of known lunatics.
...
And who do we have to handle this situation? Condoleezza Rice and her department full of career diplomats who don't want to deploy to Iraq, the invasion of which created the foreign policy pickle barrel we now find ourselves in.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless this bed that we lie on…

And you thought I was was MAD?

There's more: "Pakistan: Close To The Edge" >>

A Line In The Sand

clammyc asked on Sunday at Docudarma in Selling out values for political expediency is disastrous:

...we progressives constantly find ourselves banging our heads against the wall or just shaking our heads as we read, see or hear about yet another situation where our core values are being sold out for reasons that I can't fathom.
...
Why is this?  Is it out of fear?  Is it out of complacency?  Is it out of not wanting to rock the boat in order to potentially win big next year?  Either way, the answer isn't a good one.  Right now,  we are at a crossroads as the general public still trusts Democrats more on nearly every issue, yet we have always been good at being ahead of the curve.

What happens if a few things that I mention above backfire?

Magnifico noted on Saturday in A Tale of Two Iraqs:

If Americans prove incapable of even admitting we have a problem, let alone working on solutions, in the coming months, then America might be in need of an intervention.

It appears that that intervention is happening, and has been in the works for some time.

The world has had enough of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and of those who enable them.

Time to pay attention, Nancy. Now you are free to concentrate on avoiding an electoral debacle in 2008, by ending the occupation of Iraq.

Iran's Capital, Tehran.

This is the country that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Leadership, through their complicity and their refusal to do what they were elected in November 2006 to do - stop funding and end the Iraq Occupation - are helping George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to expand their Iraq Debacle into with the continued funding that they provide to Bush.

Fortunately, there are clearer heads in the world than Bush's, Cheney's, or Pelosi's, and if the Democrats will not put a stop to or set a limit to Bush's insanity, it now appears that our old "enemies" the Russians, will.

Pepe Escobar wrote in Asia Times on Friday of something that has been, as many things are, almost completely ignored by our complicit mainstream media:

The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration's relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike, against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.
...
Iranian hawks close to Ahmadinejad are spinning that Putin's proposal involves Iran temporarily suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for no more United Nations sanctions. That's essentially what International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei has been working on all along. The key issue is what - in practical terms - will Iran get in return. Obviously it's not the EU's Solana who will have the answer. But as far as Russia is concerned, strategically nothing will appease it except a political/diplomatic solution for the Iranian nuclear dossier.

US Vice President Dick Cheney - who even Senator Hillary Clinton now refers to as Darth Vader - must be foaming at the mouth; but the fact is that after the Caspian summit, Iran and Russia are officially entangled in a strategic partnership. World War III, for them, is definitely not on the cards.

And it's not only the Russians drawing a line in the sand. China and other Asian countries are also doing their best to box Bush And Cheney and the necocons in and render their imperialist ambitions impotent. Unfortunately their strategies will likely impact all of us.

Pluto, a currency trader, noted in a comment at Docudharma last Thursday that from a monetary standpoint:

...the World is killing us:

Last night (while you were sleeping) Japan, China and Taiwan sold U.S. Treasuries at the fastest pace in at least five years in August.

Japan cut its holdings by 4% to $586 Billion, China cut its holdings 2.2% to $400 Billion, and Taiwan's holdings slid 8.9% to $52 Billion... Japan's selling was at the fastest pace since 2000, China's since 2002, and Taiwan's since 2000...

This sell off was the biggest sell off of Treasuries since Russia defaulted in 1998.

Stick a fork in the U.S.

We're done.

We can't borrow any more money to kill people.

The funny thing is that the entire world knows this. And is talking about it today. Only the Americans are kept clueless.

Pluto also explained in Asia Sez to Americans: "All Your Money Are Belong to Us" that:

My focus is on global markets and currencies (with side orders of petroleum and commodities). Meanwhile, the world's focus is on deliberately kicking America's ass (even if it hurts them in the short term). Many nations are willing to take a hard economic hit to rid the world of a dangerous invading nation with an insane leader threatening to "throw atomic bombs" at his make-believe enemies. As a result, experienced U.S. investors have been dumping their US dollars (frantically over the past ten days)

The world has had enough of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the neocons, has run out of patience, and is now sending multiple messages that make it obvious that if we don't put a stop to the idiocy ourselves, we will be slapped down by the world.

There's more: "A Line In The Sand" >>

The Democrats Who Enable Bush

(via truthout)

The Democrats Who Enable Bush
By Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers, Thursday 04 October 2007

Washington - President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?

When the question was put to Clinton, she reverted to her usual cautious equivocation, saying: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."

Obama dodged, too: "I think it would be irresponsible" to say what he would do as president.

Edwards, on whom hopes were riding to show some independence, replied to the question: "I cannot make that commitment."

They have left the voters little choice with those answers.

Some supporters were outraged at the obfuscation by the Democratic front-runners.

On the other hand, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., are more definitive in their calls for quick troop withdrawals.

But Biden wants to break up Iraq into three provinces along religious and ethnic lines. In other words, Balkanize Iraq.

To have major Democratic backing to stay the course in Iraq added up to good news for Bush.

Now comes a surprising Clinton fan.

President Bush told Bill Sammon - Washington Examiner correspondent and author of a new book titled "The Evangelical President" - that Clinton will beat Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination because she is a "formidable candidate" and better known.

Sammon says Bush revealed that he has been sending messages to Clinton to urge her to "maintain some political wiggle room in your campaign rhetoric about Iraq."

The author said Bush contends that whoever inherits the White House will be faced with a potential vacuum in Iraq and "will begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy."

Bush ought to know about campaign rhetoric. Remember how he ridiculed "nation building" in the 2000 presidential campaign? Now he claims he is trying to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush's war.

Pelosi removed a provision from the most recent war-funding bill that would have required Bush to seek the permission of Congress before launching any attack on Iran. Her spokesman gave the lame excuse that she didn't like the wording of the provision. More likely, she bowed to political pressure.

Is it any wonder the Democrats are faring lower than the president in a Washington Post ABC approval poll? Bush came in at 33 percent and Congress at 29 percent.

Members of Congress seem to have forgotten their constitutional prerogative to declare war; World War II was the last time Congress formally declared war.

Presidents have found other ways to make end runs around the law, mainly by obtaining congressional authorization "to do whatever is necessary" in a crisis involving use of the military. That's the way we got into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?

There's more: "The Democrats Who Enable Bush" >>

Iraq: What Television Censors Won't Show You

BUMPED from May 19 - because the cowardly, craven and complicit Democratic Leadership (Understand This!) still keeps funding and refusing to end the Debacle created by the psychotics in the Executive Branch and the Republican Party.

Which makes them different from the psychotics, how?

Courtesy of Information Clearing House: Iraq: The Hidden War

Iraq: The Hidden Story shows the footage used by TV news broadcasts, and compares it with the devastatingly powerful uncensored footage of the aftermath of the carnage that is becoming a part of
the fabric of life in Iraq.

Prod/ Dir: Christian Trumble; Exec Prod: Stephen Phelps; Prod Co: Zenith Entertainment Ltd - 2006

Images of Iraq dominate our TV news bulletins every night but in this film, Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow, questions whether these reports are sugar-coating the bloody reality of war under the US-led occupation

--- Warning ---

This video contains images that should only be viewed by a mature audience.

05/29/06 - Run Time 49 Minutes

George W. Bush's Iraq and Mid-East Debacle:

After 4 years of illegal, violent Occupation the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq total ONE MILLION (UN Population Division and medical literature data). Taken together with 1.7 million excess deaths in the 1990-2003 Sanctions War (UN Population Division) and 3.7 million Iraqi refugees (UNHCR), this constitutes an Iraqi Genocide (as defined by the UN Genocide Convention) and an Iraqi Holocaust in comparison with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million victims). The Iraqi under-5 infant deaths (1990-2007) now total 1.8 million, 90% having been avoidable and due to Western war crimes. Total Iraqi excess deaths (1990-2007) total 2.7 million. The post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan now total 2.2 million (see MWC News: 5 ).

Three quarters of the people of Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan are Women and Children.

The Bush War on Terror is in horrible reality a cowardly War on Women and Children, a War on Asian Women and Children and a War on Muslim Women and Children.

The propaganda campaign of outright lies and criminal deceptions conducted by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and the rest of the neocons, enabled by obsequious sycophants like Alberto Gonzales and done with the complicity of mainstream media in the US, to justify and win political support for the invasion of Iraq, was very successfully prosecuted by the criminals in the White House. It took not very long.

The attack and invasion itself was very successfully prosecuted by the generals and the troops. They are the best at what they do. It also took not very long.

All that is left to be done is the hard work of giving back their country to the Iraqis, somehow compensating them for what has been done to them.

And successfully prosecuting the criminals in the White House who deceived the country into this shameful debacle.

Hopefully that won't take very long to complete.

The conviction of Scooter Libby earlier this year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing into the corruption of Alberto Gonzales two days ago, were only the beginning of a process that should, if any honest morality still obtains, include the impeachment and criminal conviction of Cheney and Bush as war criminals.

That hard work cannot be avoided, because, as scribe writing in a diary at Talkleft described, there is an unavoidable choice to be made:

What we do, and what we vote and say, today, will ring down through the centuries. And those who stand with Bush and Cheney, or oppose removing them, will do so at the peril of being on the wrong side of history.

I wonder what it will be like to live, say a century or two in the future, when people may well look back at these days, shake their head and wonder "what ever possessed them...
...
On the other hand, in a century or two, torture, degradation and authoritarianism may, because of Bush, Cheney and their henchmen, be as normal and accepted as breathing, eating and drinking.
...
The paradigm for the future - for the descendents of those who may have kids today - is what the choices made today will decide. And that is why the precedent we set today is eternal. Once that choice is made, or ducked, it's done and the alternative path now available, is gone and can't be gotten back.

Kapish?

A Cabal of Criminality
By Manuel Valenzuela

Iraq is now, and always has been, a quagmire that has turned into a suffocating and inextricable tar pit for American forces, where the inevitable defeat of George Bush’s policy combines with the greatest strategic disaster in American history, where the total miscalculation of war and mismanagement of peace has resulted in the collapse of Middle East stability, making America and the world less safe, not more, where wet dreams of imperial domination, fused with delusions of grandeur have helped build a monolithic wall of bad karma that will take decades to tear down.
...
What the Iraq/Bush war shows the world is how a Cabal of Criminality, numbering less than a few hundred individuals, can bamboozle a nation into a war whose ramifications on our future we cannot yet fully comprehend. The Bush war, the single-greatest blunder in America’s foreign policy history, was spawned by greed-addicted corporatists and treasonous neoconartists, presstitute lackeys and political hacks, placed in charge of US foreign policy and the propaganda acting as corporate media, easily in control of a nitwit, ignorant puppet, possessing his bully pulpit from which to spew the fabrications and manipulations needed to con America. Delusional, incompetent, dangerous and trapped in bubbles of naked grandeur, expecting fictional flowers and candy to flow from Iraqis expected to greet Americans as liberators, the Cabal of Criminality had no qualms sacrificing thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, for greed, power, profit, wealth and ego.

Through lies, deceit, fear-mongering, immorality, chicanery and criminality a group of a few hundred people led America into war, using the new Pearl Harbor, 9/11, with its plethora of highly charged emotions and fragile psyches, to launch a war they thought would be only the first of many, using Iraq as a beachhead to invade Iran and Syria. Suffocating inside the clouds of 9/11, blinded to reality and captured by delusion, America’s normally stable citizenry was mobilized to seek revenge through war, was conditioned to hate through scapegoats, was silenced by fear and intimidation, was brainwashed to blindly follow through incessant propaganda, jingoism and Madison Avenue style marketing.

In short, Americans were used, enslaved to the dictates of power, branded as sheeple, not people, our emotions of hatred, vengeance, fear and justice used against us, making us impotent conduits of crime and murder. Complicit we became in the delusional game played by the Cabal of Criminality, where the death of 3000 people became the key to unlocking the gates of war upon Mesopotamia. The plan had been set in motion, the new Pearl Harbor was allowed to bear fruit, the cataclysmic event needed to enrage the people and grease up the machines of war would not be stopped.

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Originally posted at Edgeing: Saturday, April 21, 2007

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Pelosi's Pathetic Doubletalk On Iraq

Pelosi's Pathetic Doubletalk On Iraq
By Big Tent Democrat, Talkleft, Sunday September 30, 2007

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer this morning, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi demonstrated she has no intention of doing anything to end the war in Iraq:

BLITZER: Let's talk about the war in Iraq. When you became speaker, you said, "Bringing the war to an end is my highest priority as speaker."

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER: It is.

. . . BLITZER: The war, if anything, is not only continuing, but it's expanding. There's more troops now in Iraq than there were when you became the speaker. What are you going to do about that?

PELOSI: Well, we did, when we took office, we took the majority here. We changed the debate on the war. We put a bill on the president's desk that said that we wanted the redeployment of troops out of Iraq to begin in a timely fashion and to end within a year. The president vetoed that bill.

He got quite a response to that veto, and the Republicans in the Senate then decided he was never going to get a bill on his desk again. So we have a barrier and it's important for the American people to know that while I can bring a bill to the floor in the House, it cannot be brought up in the Senate unless there's a 60 vote, now 60 votes.

He got quite a response? What the heck is Pelosi talking about? He got, FROM HER, a bill with no timetables! Who does Speaker Pelosi think she is fooling? Blitzer is not fooled:

BLITZER: But you could in the House of Representatives use your power of the purse, the money, to stop funding the war if you really wanted to.

PELOSI: I wish the speaker had all the power you just describe. I certainly could do that. That doesn't bar the minority from bringing up a funding resolution. They have their parliamentary prerogative as well.

So Madame Speaker, why not MAKE THEM USE IT! Force them to forward a motion to recommit. Then you can truthfully say Iraq is a Republican War.

BLITZER: You know your base is really frustrated. Really angry...

PELOSI: I'm frustrated myself.

BLITZER: ... that this war continues. And they say you should be doing more, and that's reflected in what former Senator John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate, repeatedly says.

He says this. He says, "Congress must stand up to President Bush and pass a funding bill with a timetable for withdrawal. If the president vetoes that bill, Congress must send it back again and again, as many times as it takes for the president to finally get the message that he can't defy the American people."

Why didn't you do that?

PELOSI: I completely concur. But I just said to you we did that, we sent it to the president, he vetoed it. Any further attempts to do that have been met by the 60-vote barrier in the United States Senate.

Now, I'll be the last person to give you a civics lesson about what that means. But what it does mean is that the Republicans in the Senate have now taken ownership of the war in Iraq. It was President Bush's war. And now it is the Republicans' in Congress war.

Madame Speaker, you can say that over and over again but that does not make it true. It is NOT true when a Democratic Congress chooses to continue to fund the war. It is YOUR war too now.

Blitzer asks the right question:

BLITZER: So, are you telling your angry base out there in the Democratic Party that wants to see this war over with, wants to see the U.S. troops home, that you, as speaker, there's nothing you can do, you have to just throw your hands up and say...

PELOSI: No. I didn't say that at all.

BLITZER: ... given the legislative problems in the Senate and the president's stubborn refusal to back down, that there's nothing that you can do?

PELOSI: How could you have ever gotten that impression?

BLITZER: All right, well, tell us...

PELOSI: What I have said, for those who pay attention, is that we will hold this administration accountable time and time again for the conduct of this war in Iraq. I have to discuss how we went in on a false premise. That's well-known to the American people. What we do have to do is to show them every step of the way how the president is taking us farther down a path in which it is going to be harder to redeploy out of Iraq, and so whether it is...

Holding him accountable while you FUND the Debacle? Puhleeeaze. Blitzer nails Pelosi:

BLITZER: But holding the president accountable, I just want you to explain, what does that mean? Besides just complaining and holding hearings? Specifically, is there anything else you can do?


PELOSI: Well, holding hearings and the oversight that we have on the corruption in contracting in Iraq, the hearings that we're holding and the harm to the readiness of our troops that the president is causing with his obstinance in this war in Iraq.

The retired generals tell us about if we want to talk about stability in the region -- and that's what we're talking abut here. How do we bring -- how do we have a vision of stability in the region?

Democrats are saying our vision for stability in the region begins with the redeployment of troops out of Iraq, and the generals say you cannot have stability in the region until you deploy the troops out of Iraq.

And the generals say you cannot have stability in the region until you redeploy the troops out of Iraq.

So what we're saying is now, with what happened in the past two weeks with General Petraeus' presentation and what happened on the Webb resolution in the Senate, that the Republicans are committed to a 10-year war in Iraq with the highest level of troop presence there, with permanent bases.

The Democrats are proposing a redeployment out of Iraq, a greatly diminished mission there, out of the civil war, protect our diplomats and protect our troops who are there, fight the Al Qaida.

And if we have to train the troops -- if we have to continue to train the Iraqi security forces, we can do -- it doesn't have to be in country and it doesn't have to be all-American. That can be done out of country.

So we're talking about a greatly diminished force there and a redeployment that's safe and responsible within the next year. The president is talking about 10 years and then after that, a Korea-like presence in perpetuity. That's the choice.

Blah, blah blah blah, blsh. She could have just answered "yes," all Dems in Congress are going to do is talk. Pathetic performance by Pelosi.

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