ReBelle Daily Dispatch
Dahr Jamail: 'News about Iraq goes through filters'
How is it that more than 40 percent of Americans still believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though President Bush personally has admitted there are none?
How is it possible that millions of Americans believe the recent election in Iraq showed that Iraqis are in favor of the ongoing occupation of their country? In reality, the determination displayed by the roughly 59 percent of registered voters who participated in the election did so because they felt it would bring about an end to the U.S. occupation.
How do so many Americans wonder why more Iraqis each day are supporting both violent and non-violent movements of resistance to the occupation when after the U.S. government promised to help rebuild Iraq, a mere 2 percent of reconstruction contracts were awarded to Iraqi concerns and the infrastructure lies in shambles?
It's because overall, mainstream media reportage in the United States about the occupation in Iraq is being censured, distorted, threatened by the military and controlled by corporations that own the outlets.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This Is NOT Democracy
Okay. All those who are currently making the claim that Iraq is now a free and democratic country and is no longer on our Axis of evil: A little word with you, please.
Try - PLEASE just try - to step out of your little box and think about this:
Just suppose that you turned on the news and there were reports blaring about four bombings in a major U.S. city. Doesn't matter which city - pick any. Three of those bombings were "suiciders" as Bush would call them. 29 Americans are killed. Scores more injured.
What would happen? A major lockdown of all operations in not just that city, but across America? Probably. Wall-to-wall news coverage? Absolutely. All flights grounded and all transportation venues blocked? You bet. Terror Alert set to Red? In a heartbeat.
America would be under seige. All commerce and life would grind to a halt. We would be in total chaos.
Snap out of it. This is exactly what happened today in Baghdad. And the crackheads who lead this country still insist that life is now a paradise for the Iraqis. There's something horribly wrong with our definition of "freedom."
http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2005/02/this_is_not_dem.html
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hurt Troops Often Denied Pay, Benefits
By John Hendren Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of Army Reserve and National Guard troops returning home after being wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone months without pay or medical benefits they were entitled to receive, military officials and government auditors said Thursday.
Because of a bureaucratic mistake, about 1,000 reservists and Guard members were removed from the active-duty rolls once home, even though their wounds entitled them to extended care, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Thursday.
"This is the equivalent of financial and medical 'friendly fire,' " Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee told military officials at a hearing.
The disclosures represent the latest in a list of problems confronting many returning war veterans, including shortages of physicians, a lack of mental healthcare and spotty medical treatment.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/latimests/20050218/ts_latimes/hurttroopsoftendeniedpaybenefits
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The wealth transfer scheme
Bush's budget uses deficit as excuse for massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich
Everyone saw this one coming. But that doesn't make it any better.
President Bush's FY 2006 budget proposal, unveiled in detail last week, is the other shoe dropping. It's not quite fair to say that this is a budget designed to reduce the deficit. There's still plenty of expansive spending; the Pentagon's budget increases again in this cycle, and pork for favored Republican projects still abounds.
But what it does do is use the deficit, created in four short years by this administration, as an excuse for targeting all the programs Republicans don't like. The Department of Education -- which Republicans once wanted to abolish -- takes a $4.3 billion hit. Money for health care, $1.7 billion in reduced or eliminated programs. $2.5 billion in agriculture. Half a billion in federal housing expenditures. Even aid to local and state law enforcement gets a $1.5 billion reduction.
Regulatory agencies from the EPA to the Forest Service will have to make do with less. Here in the Northwest, the effects will be profound.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18583
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reporter exposed as GOP operative
Guckert linked to male escort sites, Va. orgy party: sources
By JOE CREA mailto:JCREA@washblade.com
Friday, February 18, 2005
Several members of Congress have intensified criticism of the White House’s media credentialing process and are demanding an investigation after a conservative reporter with dubious credentials was unmasked as working for a GOP political operative.
But the story of James D. Guckert, who worked under the alias "Jeff Gannon," took on a more salacious tone early this week, when gay activist John Aravosis provided evidence that Guckert had worked as a gay escort and posted profiles featuring nude pictures of himself on various Web sites, including MaleCorps.com and MeetLocalMen.com . Aravosis reported that Guckert’s profile on an escort site remained active until May 2003 — just before he began writing for Talon News.
Since the Aravosis report, two sources have confirmed to the Washington Blade that Guckert attended a December 1998 Christmas party near Leesburg, Va., that "always turns into an orgy toward the end."
http://www.washblade.com/2005/2-18/news/national/reporter.cfm
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Files suggest US troops tried to hide abuses
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff February 18, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A former Iraqi detainee told Army investigators that a US soldier forced him to sign a statement that he had not been abused even though American interrogators in September 2003 had dislocated his arms, beaten his leg with a bat, crushed his nose, and put an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, according to newly released internal military documents.
In addition, a sergeant at a military camp in southern Afghanistan told an Army investigator in July 2004 that his unit erased a series of digital photographs showing guards beating detainees and aiming guns at hooded prisoners. The sergeant said the pictures were deleted after photos from the Abu Ghraib prison appeared in the media, out of the unit's fear that the pictures could spark a second wave of scandal.
The disclosures provide the first evidence that in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of war, soldiers involved in alleged abuse incidents may have sought to suppress evidence of their actions, muddying any inquiry into how pervasive the abuse of detainees was. Other documents released yesterday also suggest that while the military has said it is investigating all allegations of abuse, it is also closing many of the investigations on the grounds that no conclusion can be reached.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/02/18/files_suggest_us_troops_tried_to_hide_abuses
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fault Lines
By Dilip Hiro
An apt headline, summarizing the results of the elections to Iraq's 275-representative-strong National Assembly on January 30, would be: "No surprises, no upsets."
Given a large voter turnout in the Shiite majority areas and an even a larger one in the Kurdistan region, it was widely predicted that the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated alliances would top the polls. They did. As expected, due to the widespread Sunni boycott of the election, the only Sunni-dominated list that managed to win any seats garnered just five -- one-eleventh of the seats that the Sunnis should have won.
Overall, the poll has exposed and sharpened the sectarian and ethnic fault lines in Iraqi society. At the same time, bolstered by a popular mandate, the new government seems set on a collision course with the American occupiers regarding the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2005/02/iraq_fault_lines.html
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Rumsfeld says US needs deep-penetrating nuclear bomb:-
Washington February 18, 2005 10:15:06 AM IST
The US needs a nuclear bomb that can hit targets buried hundreds of feet deep, a capability it does not have now, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said.
An earth-penetrating nuclear warhead is needed because many countries are burying targets underground and "we have no capability, conventional or nuclear, to go after them," Rumsfeld said testifying before the House Armed Services Committee here yesterday.
However, he said, what is involved now is a feasibility study and not development of a weapon, which Congress had opposed last year.
The goal of the feasibility study, he said, is to see whether the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories could come up with a concept for a warhead casting that could carry a nuclear device down through rock or hardened earth, keeping it intact to explode and destroy an underground facility.
http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=67578&cat=World
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Man 'blinded at Guantanamo'
17 February 2005
A British resident has been blinded in one eye by American military police at Guantanamo Bay, his lawyer claimed today.
Omar Deghayes' family appealed for the British Government to intervene and secure his release, almost 25 years to the day since his father was assassinated by Colonel Gaddafi's regime in Libya.
Mr Deghayes mother Zohra Zewawi, from Brighton, wept as lawyer Clive Stafford Smith described the injuries the detainee has allegedly suffered at the Cuban base.
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/16680139?source=PA
How is it that more than 40 percent of Americans still believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though President Bush personally has admitted there are none?
How is it possible that millions of Americans believe the recent election in Iraq showed that Iraqis are in favor of the ongoing occupation of their country? In reality, the determination displayed by the roughly 59 percent of registered voters who participated in the election did so because they felt it would bring about an end to the U.S. occupation.
How do so many Americans wonder why more Iraqis each day are supporting both violent and non-violent movements of resistance to the occupation when after the U.S. government promised to help rebuild Iraq, a mere 2 percent of reconstruction contracts were awarded to Iraqi concerns and the infrastructure lies in shambles?
It's because overall, mainstream media reportage in the United States about the occupation in Iraq is being censured, distorted, threatened by the military and controlled by corporations that own the outlets.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This Is NOT Democracy
Okay. All those who are currently making the claim that Iraq is now a free and democratic country and is no longer on our Axis of evil: A little word with you, please.
Try - PLEASE just try - to step out of your little box and think about this:
Just suppose that you turned on the news and there were reports blaring about four bombings in a major U.S. city. Doesn't matter which city - pick any. Three of those bombings were "suiciders" as Bush would call them. 29 Americans are killed. Scores more injured.
What would happen? A major lockdown of all operations in not just that city, but across America? Probably. Wall-to-wall news coverage? Absolutely. All flights grounded and all transportation venues blocked? You bet. Terror Alert set to Red? In a heartbeat.
America would be under seige. All commerce and life would grind to a halt. We would be in total chaos.
Snap out of it. This is exactly what happened today in Baghdad. And the crackheads who lead this country still insist that life is now a paradise for the Iraqis. There's something horribly wrong with our definition of "freedom."
http://www.hoffmania.com/blog/2005/02/this_is_not_dem.html
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hurt Troops Often Denied Pay, Benefits
By John Hendren Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of Army Reserve and National Guard troops returning home after being wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone months without pay or medical benefits they were entitled to receive, military officials and government auditors said Thursday.
Because of a bureaucratic mistake, about 1,000 reservists and Guard members were removed from the active-duty rolls once home, even though their wounds entitled them to extended care, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Thursday.
"This is the equivalent of financial and medical 'friendly fire,' " Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee told military officials at a hearing.
The disclosures represent the latest in a list of problems confronting many returning war veterans, including shortages of physicians, a lack of mental healthcare and spotty medical treatment.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/latimests/20050218/ts_latimes/hurttroopsoftendeniedpaybenefits
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The wealth transfer scheme
Bush's budget uses deficit as excuse for massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich
Everyone saw this one coming. But that doesn't make it any better.
President Bush's FY 2006 budget proposal, unveiled in detail last week, is the other shoe dropping. It's not quite fair to say that this is a budget designed to reduce the deficit. There's still plenty of expansive spending; the Pentagon's budget increases again in this cycle, and pork for favored Republican projects still abounds.
But what it does do is use the deficit, created in four short years by this administration, as an excuse for targeting all the programs Republicans don't like. The Department of Education -- which Republicans once wanted to abolish -- takes a $4.3 billion hit. Money for health care, $1.7 billion in reduced or eliminated programs. $2.5 billion in agriculture. Half a billion in federal housing expenditures. Even aid to local and state law enforcement gets a $1.5 billion reduction.
Regulatory agencies from the EPA to the Forest Service will have to make do with less. Here in the Northwest, the effects will be profound.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18583
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reporter exposed as GOP operative
Guckert linked to male escort sites, Va. orgy party: sources
By JOE CREA mailto:JCREA@washblade.com
Friday, February 18, 2005
Several members of Congress have intensified criticism of the White House’s media credentialing process and are demanding an investigation after a conservative reporter with dubious credentials was unmasked as working for a GOP political operative.
But the story of James D. Guckert, who worked under the alias "Jeff Gannon," took on a more salacious tone early this week, when gay activist John Aravosis provided evidence that Guckert had worked as a gay escort and posted profiles featuring nude pictures of himself on various Web sites, including MaleCorps.com and MeetLocalMen.com . Aravosis reported that Guckert’s profile on an escort site remained active until May 2003 — just before he began writing for Talon News.
Since the Aravosis report, two sources have confirmed to the Washington Blade that Guckert attended a December 1998 Christmas party near Leesburg, Va., that "always turns into an orgy toward the end."
http://www.washblade.com/2005/2-18/news/national/reporter.cfm
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Files suggest US troops tried to hide abuses
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff February 18, 2005
WASHINGTON -- A former Iraqi detainee told Army investigators that a US soldier forced him to sign a statement that he had not been abused even though American interrogators in September 2003 had dislocated his arms, beaten his leg with a bat, crushed his nose, and put an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, according to newly released internal military documents.
In addition, a sergeant at a military camp in southern Afghanistan told an Army investigator in July 2004 that his unit erased a series of digital photographs showing guards beating detainees and aiming guns at hooded prisoners. The sergeant said the pictures were deleted after photos from the Abu Ghraib prison appeared in the media, out of the unit's fear that the pictures could spark a second wave of scandal.
The disclosures provide the first evidence that in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of war, soldiers involved in alleged abuse incidents may have sought to suppress evidence of their actions, muddying any inquiry into how pervasive the abuse of detainees was. Other documents released yesterday also suggest that while the military has said it is investigating all allegations of abuse, it is also closing many of the investigations on the grounds that no conclusion can be reached.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/02/18/files_suggest_us_troops_tried_to_hide_abuses
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fault Lines
By Dilip Hiro
An apt headline, summarizing the results of the elections to Iraq's 275-representative-strong National Assembly on January 30, would be: "No surprises, no upsets."
Given a large voter turnout in the Shiite majority areas and an even a larger one in the Kurdistan region, it was widely predicted that the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated alliances would top the polls. They did. As expected, due to the widespread Sunni boycott of the election, the only Sunni-dominated list that managed to win any seats garnered just five -- one-eleventh of the seats that the Sunnis should have won.
Overall, the poll has exposed and sharpened the sectarian and ethnic fault lines in Iraqi society. At the same time, bolstered by a popular mandate, the new government seems set on a collision course with the American occupiers regarding the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2005/02/iraq_fault_lines.html
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Rumsfeld says US needs deep-penetrating nuclear bomb:-
Washington February 18, 2005 10:15:06 AM IST
The US needs a nuclear bomb that can hit targets buried hundreds of feet deep, a capability it does not have now, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said.
An earth-penetrating nuclear warhead is needed because many countries are burying targets underground and "we have no capability, conventional or nuclear, to go after them," Rumsfeld said testifying before the House Armed Services Committee here yesterday.
However, he said, what is involved now is a feasibility study and not development of a weapon, which Congress had opposed last year.
The goal of the feasibility study, he said, is to see whether the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories could come up with a concept for a warhead casting that could carry a nuclear device down through rock or hardened earth, keeping it intact to explode and destroy an underground facility.
http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=67578&cat=World
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Man 'blinded at Guantanamo'
17 February 2005
A British resident has been blinded in one eye by American military police at Guantanamo Bay, his lawyer claimed today.
Omar Deghayes' family appealed for the British Government to intervene and secure his release, almost 25 years to the day since his father was assassinated by Colonel Gaddafi's regime in Libya.
Mr Deghayes mother Zohra Zewawi, from Brighton, wept as lawyer Clive Stafford Smith described the injuries the detainee has allegedly suffered at the Cuban base.
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/16680139?source=PA
posted by Christy at 2:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home