Stop the war.
While
U.S. casualties steadily mount in Iraq, another toll is rising rapidly
on the home front: The Army's divorce rate has soared in the past three
years, most notably for officers, as longer and more frequent war zone
deployments place extra strain on couples. "We've seen nothing like
this before," said Col. Glen Bloomstrom, a chaplain who oversees
family-support programs....
Between 2001 and 2004, divorces
among active-duty Army officers and enlisted personnel nearly doubled,
from 5,658 to 10,477, even though total troop strength remained
stable....
Martha Rudd, an Army spokeswoman, attributed the
recent surge in divorces to the stress and uncertainty caused by a
stepped-up deployment cycle. "An awful lot of people are going back to
Iraq for a second tour — that must be hard to take," she said. "You can
get through one tour, but then you think, 'Please, no more.'"...
Sylvia
Kidd, director of family programs for the private Association of the
U.S. Army, urges military couples to seek help when needed but fears
many spouses are too isolated....Kidd said the divorce problem could
get even worse, as long the campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and
elsewhere require frequent deployments. "All kinds of couples have
problems, but they don't necessarily break up," Kidd said. "When you
add the additional stress of these separations, it's the straw that
breaks the camel's back."
For those who don't know, the Washington Post wrote in respones to the Downing Street Minutes that they were not
news because everyone already knew everything they
contained--importantly, though the WP carefully avoided mention, the
DSM proving that Bush had decided to go to war prior to figuring out a
reason and also that he in fact began that war prior to recieving
congressional authorization.
This is bullshit. First of all, Secondly it is
certainly not something "everyone" knew, and certainly not something the
news was reporting on. Thirdly, I think perhaps the largest shocker of
all: this is
proof--positive evidence and not mere speculation. It implies the Washington Post knew the war was a fraud from the very start and probably before but pretended it was legitimate.
That, if true, would be treason so far as I'm concerned. In the real definition of the word.
We've at least become sophisticates of our own bamboozlement, I guess.
First,
there is the group of us (we) that have seen through the bamboozlement
from the start. The feeling I've heard over and over hasn't been
sophistication, so much as chagrin...over the fact that Bush could
bamboozle everybody else (despite our protests).
Second, there's
the mainstream press, for whom the Downing Street Memos are old news.
Although they appeared to have been bamboozled, they now say they knew
the truth all along (i.e. they are just as sophisticated as "we"
were). It's just that they didn't care to share their insights with
the American people (thereby facilitating the bamboozlement).
Finally,
there's the group that have been bamboozled on a consistent basis,
until perhaps recently. But Toto has pulled the curtain aside, forcing
Bush to frantically tell them to pay no attention to the man behind the
screen.
This group, I think, will proceed slowly down the
path of opposition to White House policy. Nobody likes to admit that
they had been bamboozed, after all.
But at least it's good to see that the press is now (finally) holding their hand along that journey.
The Empire's New Clothes The
cost of the war in Iraq is almost beyond imagining. But as it comes
into focus, it’s no wonder that the public is turning against it.
This is a bull's-eye of a column by Christopher Dickey of Newsweek:
A
clear head and a calculator will tell you very quickly that the costs
of this conflict in Iraq are on a scale far beyond whatever benefits it
was supposed to bring. If Saddam had been behind 9/11, OK. But he
wasn’t. If he’d really posed a clear and present danger to the United
States with weapons of mass destruction, then the invasion would have
been justifiable. But he didn’t, and it wasn’t. Bringing freedom
and democracy to the Iraqi people is a laudable goal, but not one for
which the administration made any worthwhile preparations—which is why
the occupation has been so ugly, bloody and costly. Tabloids may
amuse their readers with snapshots of Saddam in his skivvies, but it’s
the Bush administration’s threadbare rationales for postmodern
imperialism that have been exposed.
"Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power," the president suggested in his weekly radio address last weekend,"but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror". . . . Our troops are fighting these terrorists in Iraq so you will not have to face them here at home."
Wait a minute. Who disagreed about Saddam?Do you know anybody anywhere, who said, "Hey, the Butcher of Baghdad is a stand-up guy, let’s keep him around"? The problem was always what or who might come after.
What skeptics said was, "Occupying Iraq is a dangerous idea because 1)
it will cost an enormous amount of blood and money, 2) it's an
open-ended commitment that has no defining moment of victory or
scenario for departure and 3) zealous terrorists will thrive there under foreign occupation, then spread anti-American violence far and wide.
. . . If we're safer, it’s largely because the war in Afghanistan and
covert operations in Pakistan managed to round up or kill most of the
key organizers of 9/11 by the spring of 2003. What we’re facing today are new dangers from new terrorists—-and new dangers we are likely to bring on ourselves.
That's exactly it. When Dubya says, "world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front," etc., he's not giving us a reason to support his policies -- he's admitting that they've failed.
The price of a barrel of crude oil is flirting with $60; a Chinese state-controlled oil company has made an $18.5 billion bid for the American oil firm, Unocal -- ExxonMobil has quietly issued a
report, The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, predicting that the moment of "peak oil" is only a five-year hop-skip-and-a-pump away; "Oil Shockwave,"
a "war game" recently conducted by top ex-government officials in
Washington, including two former directors of the CIA, found the United
States "all but powerless to protect the American economy in the face
of a catastrophic disruption of oil markets."
Well, hold your hats, folks. Below Michael Klare, discusses a new bombshell book by oil industry insider Matthew Simmons,
and his unsettling news that everything you've heard about those
inexhaustible supplies of Saudi oil, which are supposed to keep the
world floating for decades, simply isn't so. This is real news and
absorbing its implications is no small matter.
For those oil enthusiasts who believe that petroleum will remain
abundant for decades to come -- among them, the President, the Vice
President, and their many friends in the oil industry -- any talk of an
imminent "peak" in global oil production and an ensuing decline can be
easily countered with a simple mantra: "Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia,
Saudi Arabia." Not only will the Saudis pump extra oil now to alleviate
global shortages, it is claimed, but they will keep pumping more in the
years ahead to quench our insatiable thirst for energy. And when the
kingdom's existing fields run dry, lo, they will begin pumping from
other fields that are just waiting to be exploited.
In a newly-released book, investment banker Matthew R. Simmons
convincingly demonstrates that, far from being capable of increasing
its output, Saudi Arabia is about to face the exhaustion of its giant
fields and, in the relatively near future, will probably experience a
sharp decline in output. "There is only a small probability that Saudi
Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned
to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and
consumption," he writes in Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. "
It is not surprising, then, that the Department of Energy and the Saudi
government have been very nervous about the recent expressions of doubt
about the Saudi capacity to boost its future oil output. These doubts
were first aired in a front-page story by Jeff Gerth in the New York Times
on February 25, 2004. Relying, to some degree, on information provided
by Matthew Simmons, Gerth reported that Saudi Arabia's oil fields "are
in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise
serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the
world's thirst for oil in coming years."
Essentially, Simmons argument boils down to four major points: (1) most
of Saudi Arabia's oil output is generated by a few giant fields, of
which Ghawar -- the world's largest -- is the most prolific; (2) these
giant fields were first developed 40 to 50 years ago, and have since
given up much of their easily-extracted petroleum; (3) to maintain high
levels of production in these fields, the Saudis have come to rely
increasingly on the use of water injection and other secondary recovery
methods to compensate for the drop in natural field pressure; and (4)
as time goes on, the ratio of water to oil in these underground fields
rises to the point where further oil extraction becomes difficult, if
not impossible. To top it all off, there is very little reason to
assume that future Saudi exploration will result in the discovery of
new fields to replace those now in decline.
This being the case, it would be the height of folly to assume that the Saudis are capable of doubling
their petroleum output in the years ahead, as projected by the
Department of Energy. Indeed, it will be a minor miracle if they raise
their output by a million or two barrels per day and sustain that level
for more than a year or so. Eventually, in the not-too-distant future,
Saudi production will begin a sharp decline from which there is no
escape. And when that happens, the world will face an energy crisis of
unprecedented scale.
The moment that Saudi production goes into permanent decline, the Petroleum Age as we know it will draw to a
close.
Oil will still be available on international markets, but not in
the abundance to which we have become accustomed and not at a price
that many of us will be able to afford. Transportation, and everything
it effects -- which is to say, virtually the entire world economy --
will be much, much more costly. The cost of food will also rise, as
modern agriculture relies to an extraordinary extent on petroleum
products for tilling, harvesting, pest protection, processing, and
delivery. Many other products made with petroleum -- paints, plastics,
lubricants, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and so forth -- will also prove
far more costly. Under these circumstances, a global economic
contraction -- with all the individual pain and hardship that would
surely produce -- appears nearly inevitable.
Through his scrupulous research, Simmons has convincingly demonstrated
that -- because all is not well with Saudi Arabia's giant oilfields --
the global energy situation can only go downhill from here. From now
on, those who believe that oil will remain abundant indefinitely are
the ones who must produce irrefutable evidence that Saudi Arabia's
fields are, in fact, capable of achieving higher levels of output.
The Downing Street Memo and related documents returned this summer to
tell us this: the Bush Administration tells the British government a
"truth" that it will not tell the American people or the rest of the
world. Not only will the Bushies not tell Americans what they tell the
British government, they tell Americans almost the opposite.
Things haven't changed. It apparently is happening right now:
BRITAIN is coming under sustained pressure from American military
chiefs to keep thousands of troops in Iraq - while going ahead with
plans to boost the front line against a return to "civil war" in
Afghanistan.
Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster- more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his
summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month.
Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that Blair is preparing to rush
thousands more British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the
country sliding towards civil war, amid warnings the coalition faces a
"complete strategic failure" in the effort to rebuild the nation.
"The Prime Minister was given a pretty depressing run-down of the
prognosis for Iraq while he was in Washington," one senior Ministry of
Defence source said last night. "The Americans are pushing for at least
a maintenance of the troop numbers we have there now. Our latest
intention is to reduce by at least half the number of our troops in
Iraq within a year.
So the Bush Administration tells Blair that Iraq remains on the
brink of disaster. Not could be. Not is sliding towards. REMAINS ON THE
BRINK OF DISASTER.
But this is what we get from the Bush Administration when they speak to America:
"We will succeed in Iraq, just like we did in Afghanistan. We will
stand up a new government under an Iraqi-drafted constitution. We will
defeat that insurgency, and, in fact, it will be an enormous success
story."
Cheney compared the current situation in Iraq to the last months of
World War II, when Germans launched a desperate offensive in the Battle
of the Bulge and the Japanese offered stiff resistance on Okinawa.
He
said the insurgents will "do everything they can to disrupt" the
process of building an Iraqi government, "but I think we're strong
enough to defeat them."
Sound the same to you as what The Scotsman reported that the Bush Administration told Blair?
Me neither.
So, I would say this to the U.S. news media: Find out how The
Scotsman came up with this information. And find out why this kind of
information isn't being shared with America.
Italian Payback for Extraordinary Rendition and Segrena/Calipari Betrayal
ROME - An Italian judge on Friday ordered the arrests of 13 CIA
officers for secretly transporting a Muslim preacher from Italy to
Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts — a rare public objection
to the practice by a close American ally.
The Egyptian was spirited away in 2003, purportedly as part of the
CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which terror suspects are
transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them
to possible torture.
The arrest warrants were announced Friday by the Milan prosecutor's
office, which has called the disappearance a kidnapping and a blow to a
terrorism investigation in Italy. The office said the imam was believed
to belong to an Islamic terrorist group.
The 13 are accused of seizing Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as
Abu Omar, on a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003, and sending him to Egypt,
where he reportedly was tortured, Milan prosecutor Manlio Claudio
Minale said in a statement.
The U.S. Embassy in Rome and the CIA in Washington declined to comment.
The prosecutor's statement did not name the suspects, give their
nationalities or mention the CIA by name. But an Italian official
familiar with the investigation confirmed newspaper reports Friday that
the suspects worked for the CIA.
The official also said there was no evidence Italians were involved
or knew about the operation. He asked that his name not be used because
official comment was limited to the prosecutor's statement.
Minale said the suspects remain at large and Italian authorities
will ask the United States and Egypt for assistance in the case.
The prosecutor's office said Nasr was released by the Egyptians after his interrogation but was arrested again later.
The statement said Nasr was seized by two people as he was walking
from his home toward a mosque and bundled into a white van. He was
taken to Aviano, a joint U.S.-Italian base north of Venice, and flown
to a U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, before being taken to Cairo.
It said investigators had confirmed the abduction through an
eyewitness account and other, unidentified witnesses as well as through
an analysis of cell phone traffic.
In March 2003, "U.S. authorities" told Italian police Nasr had been
taken to the Balkans, the statement said. A year later, in April-May
2004, Nasr phoned his wife and another unidentified Egyptian citizen
and told them he had been subjected to violent treatment by
interrogators in Egypt, the statement said.
Italian newspapers have reported that Nasr, 42, said in the wiretapped calls that he was tortured with electric shocks.
On Friday, the Milan daily Corriere della Sera cited another
Milan-based imam as telling Italian authorities Nasr was tortured after
refusing to work in Italy as an informer. According to the testimony,
he was hanged upside down and subjected to extreme temperatures and
loud noise that damaged his hearing, Corriere reported.
Minale said the judge rejected a request for six more arrest
warrants for suspects believed to have helped prepare the operation. Judge Chiara Nobile ordered the arrests after investigators traced
the agents through Milan hotels and Italian cell phones, said reports
in Corriere and another daily, Il Giorno. Il Giorno said all the agents were American and three were women.
Minale said a judge also issued a separate arrest warrant for Nasr
on terrorism charges. In that warrant, Judge Guido Salvini said Nasr's
seizure violated Italian sovereignty, according to Italian news agency
Apcom.
Nasr was believed to have fought in Afghanistan
and Bosnia and prosecutors were seeking evidence against him before his
disappearance, according to a report in La Repubblica newspaper, which
cited intelligence officials.
Corriere said Italian police picked up details, including cover
names, photos, credit card information and U.S. addresses the agents
gave to five-star hotels in Milan around the time of Nasr's alleged
abduction. It said investigators also found the prepaid highway passes
the agents used for the journey from Milan to the air base.
The report said investigations showed the agents incurred
$144,984 in hotel bills in Milan, and that two pairs of agents took
holidays in northern Italy after delivering Nasr to Aviano.
Italian-U.S. relations were strained after American soldiers killed an
Italian intelligence agent near Baghdad airport in March. He was
escorting a kidnapped Italian journalist after he had secured her
release from Iraqi captors.
Germano Dottori, a political analyst at the Center for
Strategic Studies in Rome, said it is not unusual for intelligence
agencies to have squabbles with allied countries but that he could not
recall prosecutors directly involved in investigating or apprehending
agents involved.
"At some point the Americans will begin to think they can't trust the Italians," Dottori said.
Well, extraordinary rendition from the US is a-ok with Abu Gonzales,
but it looks like Italy doesn't much like it from their soil.
Cell phone usage was mentioned. So it's probable that the agents used
their cover names while on the phone with each other, suggesting their
conversations were being monitored by the Italians, and further
suggesting the possibility of a strong case against them. Hopefully,
the Italians are taking a firm stand over the kidnapping in the pure
interest of upholding law and order for everyone. It would be so
refreshing to know that the law still means something somewhere and
that "Texas cancer" hasn't engulfed the entire world yet.
"At some point the Americans will begin to think they can't trust the Italians," Dottori said.
But isn't it maybe about time the U.S. started worrying about the fact that the Italians, along with a number of others, already evidently no longer trust the Americans?
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart
people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." -
Mark Twain
Has
a post with details from various stories of this incident. Read
all three stories to get the full picture. Each one has details
the others don't, and you need to read them all to get a feel for
what's going on. Nobody expects any of the CIA officers to be turned
over to the Italians, of course, but the big question still remaining
is what happens next: will the Italians treat this like a shot across
the bow and let the case die out, or will they use it to embarrass the
American government as fully as they can? Stay tuned.
Besides, you get to live kinda fine on the public dime for torturin' people:
In hotel bills alone, the group ran up a tab of $150,000, the court papers indicate.
... Once the rendition was completed, several of the agents traveled to
Venice for a celebration, also at a luxurious five-star hotel, the
court papers say. Four others took a vacation along the picturesque
Mediterranean coast north of Tuscany.
Is this a great country or what! The first rule of covert operations: The agent can't pretend he is James Bond while staying at Motel 6.
And I would
think US soldiers have to worry about people shooting at them and
blowing up RDX bombs from material we forgot to secure. Not Dick
Durbin. Oh, and Sen. Durbin, your apology means jack shit. They will
hammer you anyway.
"Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies."
He's right. We want to understand.
We
want to understand why Osama Bin Laden hasn't been captured? Why did
the administration take its eyes off Al Qaida to invade Iraq? I mean,
Al Qaida is the enemy Rove himself said we had to defeat. But we
haven't.
Instead of defeating our enemies, we went to war
against an impotent enemy -- Saddam. And yes, we want to understand.
Like, why did they lie to go to war in Iraq? Why is that war still
going, unabated? Why are we no closer to victory now, than we were in
when Bush declared "mission accomplished"? Why don't our troops have
proper ammo? Why aren't there enough boots on the ground in Iraq? Why
are we still dying in Afghanistan?
He's right. I want to
understand. I don't understand why the administration hasn't called for
sacrifice. Why won't war supporters enlist? Why won't they encourage
their circle of influence to enlist? Why won't they level with the
American people, and give an honest assessment of what's going on in
Iraq and Afghanistan?
I don't understand how our nation, always
the good guys, is now perceived as the "bad guy" the world over. I
don't understand how torture has become a commonplace occurance inside
facilities that bear the stars and stripes.
It seems conservatives send other people to
die in a war they didn't really understand how to fight, much less win.
Funny, I remember liberals supporting them at the time.
It's pretty clear now
that this was a set up orchestrated by the White House in order to
deflect attention away from the disaster that is the war in Iraq, Bush's plumetting polls, and the Downing Street Memos revelations about Bush's lies in the runup to the Iraq war.
President Bush thinks
57% of Americans are traitors who hate America, want to kill our
military, and love Osama bin Laden. 57% of Americans are apparently
happy, or at least not outraged, by the murder of nearly 3,000 people
in NY, VA and PA.
The Democratic Party had better realize that
these people declared war today in a big way. We do not let this issue
go until Karl Rove resigns. There IS no other issue in town, until Karl
Rove resigns.
If Ken Mehlman wants to have a public debate about
who's a bigger man, then "Bring It On". And we'll start by talking
about the President who just killed 1700 Americans in Iraq for a lie,
and still hasn't bothered to attend a single funeral of one of the
soldiers he killed.
Sign the petition to fire Rove here.
The Transportation Security Agency decided to
disseminate a bunch of personal passenger information to private
companies, in violation of a Congressional edict and their own
promises.The issue was naturally brought up at the libertarian magazine Reason's
weblog,prompting this lightning-quick response from somebody who sees
this subterfuge as essential to his not dying a fiery, horrible death:
Who cares? Why does someone's irrational concern about privacy
trump the rest of the passengers being more confident that their plane
will not be used as a human cruise missile by terrorists?
It's part of an
age-old struggle wherein we who are not criminals are constantly called
upon to explain what we're so worried about "If we have nothing to hide."
Sadly, this is what passes for a eulogy at the wake of the Fourth
Amendment(putting aside the lying to Congress, separation of powers,
and completely ineffective airline safety policy).
-- mandatory drug testing for junior high students (Who cares?The
right of your 12-year-old not to pee in a cup outweighs the need to
pacify panicky parents who worry about juiced intrascholalistic chess
competitions?);
-- the ability of cops to basically tear apart your car based on a
busted taillight, or to randomly stop cars for DUI testing on no
probable cause at all (Who cares?Does your quaint addiction to privacy
trumps the confidence by simpletons that the Drug War is being won, two
ounces of weed at a time?).
-- the ability of the FBI to check the reading lists
of library patrons, a power recently rescinded by the House, but it's
not one that they were using anyway, except that they were (Who cares?
What.. you don't want your wife to find out that you've been reading Nancy Drew Mysteries for their erotic passages?)
-- maybe somebody can stop people with forged papers from accessing nuclear weapons plants
first.Or we can continue bask in the feeling of absolute security that
can only come from Grandma having to remove her orthopedic shoes before
flying to Atlanta for Jimmy's graduation.
Well,
I dont know about you guys, but I feel much safer when the government
tucks me in at night...always watching out for me. I just love living in a zero-tolerance society where all problems
are magically solved. There aren't any problems, right?
On the other hand, how will my being treated like a suspicious
criminal prevent another terrorist attack? Based upon news reports I've
read, I
gather that the TSA flunkies will be so busy inspecting my shoelaces
and underwear and looking for plastic explosive in my toothpaste
that they won't have time to check and make sure there are no bombs or
bioweapons in the cargo hold.
Terrorist Mastermind Convicted of manslaughter. So if Bin Laden was somehow, miraculously nailed tomorrow, and brought
before the bar, and was only convicted of felony manslaughter because
he never actually flew any planes into any buildings. How would you
feel about that?
Today shows, when you cut through all of the rhetoric, the elemental
difference between the GOP and the Democratic Party and why, for all of
its faults, it is so fucking easy for me to say proudly thatI am a Democrat.
Why, for a person of conscience, there's really no contest. It's not even close.
Because unlike the Republicans, my party does not court and cultivate and lay out the fucking welcome mat for monsters.
My
Party hasn't sold its immortal soul to hate-mongering theocrats like
Jerry Falwell and James Dobson, who, in every word and deed,
aggressively seek to annihilate the very principles for which my Party
supposedly stands.
In my Party, the worst and basest impulses of the American heart do not find a happy home and a well-laid table.
In
my Party, a sickening number of senior members did not need to duck for
cowardly anonymity and cover when it comes to something as simple as
condemning lynching.
In my Party, we look on the Reign of Terror
that the Klan conducted while wearing a judge's robe and a cop's
uniform as despicable. As one of the darkest and most shameful chapters
in American history. We do not look on it with fucking nostalgia. And some Lyncher's Happy Days, where Jesse "the Fonz" Helms is idolized as a cool-kid role model.
You "Moderates Republicans" want to talk? You want to discuss Social Security and Medicare? National debt and tax reform?
Fine. But first kick the gargoyles that run your Party the hell out of your Party.
Because unlike the GOP, my Party does not negotiate with terrorists...or with those that aid and comfort and admire them.
Fallujah: Napalm By Any Other Name
Napalm = "Mark 77" or "Mark of the Beast."
In August last year, the United States admitted dropping the
internationally-banned incendiary weapon of napalm on Iraq, despite
earlier denials by the Pentagon that the "horrible" weapon had not been
used in the three-week invasion of Iraq.
The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction
between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons
dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs,
and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel.
Officials said that if journalists had asked about the firebombs their
use would have been confirmed. A spokesman admitted they were
"remarkably similar" to napalm but said they caused less environmental
damage.
But John Pike, director of the military studies group
GlobalSecurity.Org, said: *"You can call it something other than napalm
but it is still napalm. It has been reformulated in the sense that they
now use a different petroleum distillate, but that is it. The US is the
only country that has used napalm for a long time. I am not aware of
any other country that uses it." Marines returning from Iraq chose to
call the firebombs "napalm".
Mr Musil said the Pentagon's effort to draw a distinction between the
weapons was outrageous. He said: "It's Orwellian. They do not want the
public to know. It's a lie."
In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Marine Corps Maj-Gen
Jim Amos confirmed that napalm was used on several occasions in the war.
More word games at the Pentagon. They've recently denied reports that
they used napalm against troops in Iraq. Reporters have claimed they
did and so to have Air Force pilots We napalmed both those bridge
approaches said one.
Turns out the weapons used were "remarkably similar" to napalm, the
firebombing agent used extensively during the Vietnam War. Those
burning Vietnamese kids running from giant orange balls of fire in the
classic pictures were being "napalmed." Highly controversial, it was
banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 that the United States
refused to sign. The U.S. did claim to have destroyed its napalm
arsenal two years ago but here it is napalming Iraqi troops.
When is napalm not napalm? When you switch gasoline for for jet fuel
apparently. The new not-napalm has the happy name of "Mark 77," which
sounds more like the latest boy band than the latest firebombing agent.
Marine spokesperson Col. Michael Daily explained the difference between
the gasoline of napalm and jet fuel of Mark 77 in a recent email:
This additive has significantly less of an impact on the environment.
Nice to know the Pentagon is environmentally-senstive when it's roasting people alive.
Rice Says; The American People Were Told About The Generational Commitment to Iraq
That's not true. To build support for the war the administration told
the American people that the conflict in Iraq will be short and
affordable.
In war, truth is the first casualty. This bit of ancient wisdom means
that many a soldier and civilian died because politicians lied. The War
in Iraq is certainly no exception. In fact, this bloody war may well be
the poster child for war on truth.
We were told Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent
threat to US security. It did not. We were told war was the last
resort. It was not. We were told, some 1500 American lives ago, that
the mission was accomplished. It is not, and the carnage continues.
Revelations of some hard truths in the past month alone prove that this
ugly war was predetermined many months before the invasion; that
intelligence was fixed to justify an invasion; that a massive air
assault against Iraq occurred well before the invasion; and that
napalm-like weaponry was used against the Iraqi people during the
invasion.
The only WMDs are the weapons of mass deception emanating from The
White House. We once had a President named George who could not tell a
lie. Now we have one who cannot tell the truth.
As Republican Senators publicly proclaim that the situation if Iraq is
eroding, we learn that there is no "exit strategy" because no exit is
planned.
Not strictly a lie, just a new reality. They told us a long time ago
that they would change reality whenever they wanted to change it. The "Enduring Bases" are designed for an occupancy of at least thirty years OR til Iraq runs out of oil.
Neo-con Dynasty--puts me in mind of a poem that is especially bitter, given that this is father's day:
A Dead Statesman
I could not dig, I dared not rob, And so I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue, And I must face the men I slew. What tale will serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young?
British Sources Say "FIXED" -- Means "Manipulated" or "Cooked"
Conservatives have attempted to dismiss the Downing Street memo,
a secret British intelligence document indicating that intelligence
officials there believed that the Bush administration was manipulating
intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq by insisting that the
term "fixed" has a different meaning in British English than in the
United States. The memo describes Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the
British foreign intelligence agency MI6, stating that in Washington,
"the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." In
fact, British reports -- including one that quoted the memo itself six
weeks before the British Sunday Times published its full text on May 1 -- refute the notion that "fixed" means anything different in British parlance.
Robin Niblett, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, claimed
that "'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than
altered to fit the policy." In an exclusive interview with Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice on the June 15 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Rice eagerly agreed
with Matthews's suggestion that in Britain the word "fixed" really
"means just put things together." In the June 20 issue of the
conservative Weekly Standard, contributing editor Tod Lindberg wrote
of the memo: "'Fix' here is clearly meant in its traditional sense, in
the sort of English spoken by Oxbridge dons and MI6 directors -- to
make fast, to set in order, to arrange."
Other conservatives questioned the meaning of "fixed" without
explicitly suggesting transatlantic miscommunication. On the June 10
edition of PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, National Review editor Rich Lowry claimed
"it was meant in the sense that the intelligence is supporting the
policy asking questions like what will a post-invasion Iraq look like
and questions of that nature." National Review Online contributing
editor James S. Robbins also doubted the meaning of "fixed around the
policy" in a June 6 column and in a June 16 article on the conservative website CNSNews.com. The June 14 edition of CNN's Inside Politics cited a commentary making this argument by the conservative blog Dean's World.
But British sources contradict these claims. In a British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) documentary from March, which quoted the Downing Street Memo more than a month before the Sunday Times
published it, BBC reporter John Ware explained: "By 'fixed' the MI6
chief meant that the Americans were trawling for evidence to reinforce
their claim that Saddam was a threat." The headline of a Sunday Timespreview
of the documentary -- "MI6 chief told PM: Americans 'fixed' case for
war" -- also makes it clear how the British understand "fixed."
Similarly, Sunday Times reporter Michael Smith, who first
disclosed the memo on May 1, ridiculed the notion that "fixed" has a
different meaning in Britain in a Washington Postonline chat:
SMITH: There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I
do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than
fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If
you fix something, you make it the way you want it.The
intelligence was fixed and as for the reports that said this was one
British official. Pleeeaaassee! This was the head of MI6. How much
authority do you want the man to have? He has just been to Washington,
he has just talked to George Tenet. He said the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the policy. That translates in clearer terms as
the intelligence was being cooked to match what the administration
wanted it to say to justify invading Iraq. Fixed means the same here as
it does there.
Moreover, when the Sunday Times first disclosed
the memo on May 1, it noted the Bush administration's attempt "to link
Saddam to the 9/11 attacks" as an example of "fixing" the intelligence
around the policy:
The Americans had been trying to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks;
but the British knew the evidence was flimsy or non-existent. Dearlove
warned the meeting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy".
In a May 2 column in London's Daily Mail, political editor
David Hughes argued that the meeting detailed in the Downing Street
memo "led inexorably to the publication of the 'sexed-up' Iraq weapons
dossier two months later," referring to a now-famous 2003 report by BBC
reporter Andrew Gilligan alleging that a British dossier on Iraq had
been "sexed up" to hype the Iraqi threat. Gilligan's report became the
subject of intense controversy
when British weapons expert Dr. David Kelley committed suicide
following the revelation that he was a key source for that report. An official inquiry into Kelley's suicide criticized Gilligan, his report, and the BBC, which prompted claims that the inquiry was a whitewash.
BOISE, Idaho -- A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose
congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said
he's coming to Idaho tomorrow to picket the memorial for an Idaho
National Guard soldier killed in Iraq.
A flier on the Web site of Pastor Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist
Church claims God killed Cpl. Carrie French with an improvised
explosive device in retaliation against the United States for a bombing
at Phelps' church six years ago.
"We're coming," Phelps said yesterday.
Westboro Baptist either has protested or is planning protests of
other public funerals of soldiers from Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota,
Virginia and Colorado. A protest is planned for July 11 at Dover Air
Force Base, the military base where war dead are transported before
being sent on to their home states.
Phelps gained national notoriety in 1998 when he picketed the
funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student beaten to death in
Wyoming.
Since then, Phelps said his church has been the target of hateful words and actions, including a bomb attack six years ago.
Phelps' church has picketed the funerals of AIDS victims for more than a decade.
French, 19, was a Caldwell High School graduate and varsity
cheerleader. She was killed June 5 in the northern city of Kirkuk.
French served as an ammunition specialist with the 116th Brigade Combat
Team's 145th Support Battalion.
Phelps said the fact that French led an all-American life gives him all the more reason to picket her final public tribute.
"An all-American girl from a society of all-American heretics," he said.
"Our attitude toward what's happening with the war is the Lord is
punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that
are worth a dime," Phelps said.
Caldwell Police Chief Bob Sobba said he cannot bar Phelps from going
to the public funeral, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Albertson
College of Idaho in that city.
"While we respect Mr. Phelps' right to protest, we would hope that
he would respect the family and friends of this young person by not
disrupting the memorial," Sobba said.
Idaho Air National Guard Lt. Tony Vincelli, acting as spokesman for
French's family, said there were no plans to change the funeral
arrangements.
The Rev. Brian Fischer, pastor of Boise's Community Church of the
Valley, and himself a past target of protest by the Westboro Baptist
Church, decried Phelps' plan.
"What Phelps is doing is a reprehensible thing, to take a funeral and turn it into a photo op for his hate cause," Fischer said.
"We hope everyone will ignore Phelps' group."
In 2003, Phelps demanded that he be allowed to erect an anti-gay
monument in a Boise public park. To avoid a lawsuit from his group,
city officials voted in 2004 that a Ten Commandments monument be moved
out of the park.
Ugh...These are the assholes at godhatesfags.com. What kind of sick
bastard even becomes involved with this "ministry"? What a perversion.
What a mess. How disgusting. It makes me sick.
