Art for Everyone 

Waking the Dead: Jeb Seeks Revenge in Schiavo Case
Jeb Bush Seeks New Inquiry Into Schiavo Case (NYT)

Yes, of course this is vile: a blatant, brutal misuse of state power to wage culture war on behalf of a ruthless extremist ideology -- and a petulant, petty attempt to smear a man who, by standing on the law, has embarrassed the little tinpot despot who rules Florida.

But get used to it, folks. Jeb is being readied for the dynastic succession -- he'll be on the ticket somewhere in 2008, either at the top or VP. And believe it or not, Jeb is even worse than George W. He's sharper, he's dirtier, he's meaner, he's greedier and far more energetic. When he gets in, things are going to get even worse.

It's part of the terrible devolution of GOP politics. Everytime you think it can't get any worse -- it does. Nixon once seemed the abyss of political crime and corruption; but my God, his administration seems like a golden age of enlightened government compared to what has come after it. Then we thought it couldn't get worse than Reagan; then it couldn't possibly get any worse than Bush/Quayle; and yet we keep descending deeper and deeper into the pit.

But we've not hit bottom yet, not by a long shot. Keep your eye on Florida. There's a rough beast slouching out of those swamps, raising a tsunami of slime that will sweep away the last few bastions of genuine democracy and human decency left in our gutted, battered, betrayed and broken Republic.

See also: Code Red: Jeb Bush Strikes Back and Miami Vice: The Mobbed-Up, Money-Grubbing Moralist From Florida

http://www.empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/

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Neck-Deep in the Big Muddy

Harsh truth-telling from Andrew Greeley

:Expect Terrorists to Bring the War to Us.

http://www.empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/

Oh God here we go again how do they stop these Bastards:
He got Prosecutors checking into time line because Michael Schiavo, is sueing him,
what is your bet, trying to scare him off you reckon. and how about a diversion from the Downing Street Memos.

Gov. Bush Says Prosecutor Will Investigate Accusation Of Delayed 911 Call For Schaivo
June 18, 2005, 04:55 AM

(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) -- Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a prosecutor has agreed to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, citing an alleged time gap between when her husband found her and when he called 911.

Bush said his request for the probe was not meant to suggest wrongdoing by Michael Schiavo.
"It's a significant question that during this ordeal was never brought up," Bush told reporters.
Michael Schiavo's attorney has said his client called for help right away.

In a letter faxed to Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, the governor said Michael Schiavo testified in a 1992 medical malpractice trial that he found his wife collapsed at 5 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1990, and he said in a 2003 television interview that he found her about 4:30 a.m. He called 911 at 5:40 a.m.

"Between 40 and 70 minutes elapsed before the call was made, and I am aware of no explanation for the delay," Bush wrote. "In light of this new information, I urge you to take a fresh look at this case without any preconceptions as to the outcome." >>>continued

How Evil are these Bastards:
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=3488326

Art for Everyone 

Gunmen take over Ramadi as bomb kills five marines :

A huge bomb killed five American marines yesterday and showered body parts on to rooftops, fuelling suspicion that armour-piercing technology is being developed and tested in Ramadi.


http://snipurl.com/fnnq

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Blair and Howard could face charges over Iraq - lawyer:

Video and transcript.

Philippe Sands, QC, director of the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals at University College London, said Mr Howard, along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair could face charges amid claims the Iraq war was illegal.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9171.htm

http://snipurl.com/fnnl

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Democratic Members of House Judiciary Committee.

Meeting on Downing St. Memo and Iraq War

Video - In Full

Rep. John Conyers, House Judiciary Cmte. Ranking Member, chairs a meeting on the Downing Street Memo and pre-Iraq War intelligence. Witnesses include former ambassador Joe Wilson, CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen American soldier, and constitu-tional lawyer John Bonifaz. Click here to view. Real Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9160.htm

http://snipurl.com/fnnm

ANOTHER BUSH MORON;
AMERICA REALLY HAS PROBLEMS, WHEN THEY SEND
THESE KIND OF IDIOT MORONS, TO FIGHT A WAR
THIS IS THE REAL PROBLEM FOR THE AMERICAN ARMY
CHRISTY, HE IS YOUR PROBLEM

Recruit's website: Make a papier-mache pig with the Quran
RAW STORY
Quran contest destroys U.S.'s reputation, imam says: The following excerpts come from an article by Pam Greene, writing in the (information-restricted) Syracuse Post-Standard. ( Full story here.)
#
Jon Alvarez is two months away from reporting to military boot camp training, but he has already been flagged by his superiors as a potential troublemaker.

Alvarez, a staunch Republican from Baldwinsville who enlisted in the Army Reserve in April, has gained notoriety for political antics that include hanging a statue depicting the likeness of filmmaker Michael Moore from a noose and accusing those who speak against the military of treason.

Maj. Jeff Wildeboer, operating officer with the Army Reserve 403rd Civil Affairs Battalion in Mattydale, said Thursday he plans to alert commanding officers to Alvarez's latest campaign: a contest called "Create A Pig With The Koran."
On his Web site, http://www.pabaah.com/, Alvarez invites people to create a papier-mache pig using pages of the Quran. Links show how to get a free copy of the Quran and how to make papier-mache.
Alvarez said the contest will illustrate the hypocrisy of Muslim extremists who burn the American flag, "because of the supposed desecration of the Quran," Alvarez said.
"They haven't apologized for burning our flag, yet they expect people to apologize for supposedly desecrating the Quran," he said.
Wildeboer said the contest only serves to be hurtful and stereotype Muslims. The purpose of the battalion is to go overseas and build bridges with Muslims through an understanding of the religion, culture and language, he said. Alvarez's antic is "180 degrees" from the mission of the battalion, he said.
#
On the recruit's website, RAW STORY has found a picture suggesting that conditions of Gitmo are so favorable that terrorists read the New York Times. Only, neither of those in the photograph ('shoe-bomber' Richard Reid and alleged senior Qaeda official Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) are being held at Guantanamo Bay.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005
/Recuits_website_Make_a_papermache
_pig_with__0617.html

Not in my name

Peace be with you little one

The real war in Iraq

Schiavo autopsy rattles politicians
By Anne KornblutWashingtonJune 17, 2005

The autopsy on Terri Schiavo
- particularly the findings that she had irreversible brain damage and was blind - has left Republicans who had pushed for federal intervention struggling to defend their argument that she should have been kept alive.

Although the autopsy could not determine the mental state of the Florida woman, who died on March 31 after a judicial and legislative battle over her "right to die", it established the permanence of her physical condition.

Mrs Schiavo's brain damage "was irreversible . . . no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed it", said the pathologist who performed the autopsy.

Republican senator Mel Martinez, who pressed the case to extend Mrs Schiavo's life, said he had had second thoughts about Congress' involvement.

Senator Martinez said the case "seems like the kind of issue the state courts deal with".

Mike Pence, a Republican member of the House of Representatives, said that in his five years in office, he saw Congress do its "worst job communicating" during the Schiavo episode.

The case has reverberated politically for months, contributing to a sharp drop in approval ratings for the Republican-controlled Congress, whose leaders convened an extraordinary emergency session in March to pass legislation protecting Mrs Schiavo.

The case has also given Democrats ammunition against Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a transplant surgeon who voiced his opinion about Mrs Schiavo's condition based on videotapes in which she seemed to react to some stimuli.

- New York Times, Washington Post
http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Schiavo-autopsy-rattles-politicians/2005/06/16/1118869040714.html

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Charged With Murder
Thursday June 16, 2005 11:46 PM
By PATRICK QUINN
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. Army staff sergeant was charged with murder in connection with last week's deaths of two Army officers at a base outside Baghdad, the military said Thursday.

Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez, 37, a supply specialist with the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 42nd Infantry Division, New York Army National Guard, was charged Wednesday in connection with the June 7 deaths of the two officers at Forward Operating Base Danger, near Tikrit - Saddam Hussein's hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad.

The officers killed were Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, 30, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34, of Milford, Pa. Esposito was company commander and Allen served as a company operations officer. >>continued

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5079747,00.html

Do you believe it they just keep getting more and more when does it end

Halliburton to build another Gitmo camp

U.S. awards $30 million contract to add new prison facility; 'Air conditioning.'

http://www.rawstory.com/

Like Mother Like Son

US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war

US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war

By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
17 June 2005
American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.

Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."

Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets "away from civilian targets", he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.

Britain, which has no stockpiles of the weapons, ratified the convention, but the US did not.

The confirmation that US officials misled British ministers led to new questions last night about the value of the latest assurances by the US. Mr Cohen said there were rumours that the firebombs were used in the US assault on the insurgent stronghold in Fallujah last year, claims denied by the US. He is tabling more questions seeking assurances that the weapons were not used against civilians.

Mr Ingram did not explain why the US officials had misled him, but the US and British governments were accused of a cover-up. The Iraq Analysis Group, which campaigned against the war, said the US authorities only admitted the use of the weapons after the evidence from reporters had become irrefutable.

Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the group, said: "The US has used internationally reviled weapons that the UK refuses to use, and has then apparently lied to UK officials, showing how little weight the UK carries in influencing American policy."

He added: "Evidence that Mr Ingram had given false information to Parliament was publicly available months ago. He has waited until after the election to admit to it - a clear sign of the Government's embarrassment that they are doing nothing to restrain their own coalition partner in Iraq."

The US State Department website admitted in the run-up to the election that US forces had used MK77s in Iraq. Protests were made by MPs, but it was only this week that Mr Ingram confirmed the reports were true.

Mike Moore, the Liberal Democrat defence spokes-man, said: "It is very serious that this type of weapon was used in Iraq, but this shows the US has not been completely open with the UK. We are supposed to have a special relationship.

"It has also taken two months for the minister to clear this up. This is welcome candour, but it will raise fresh questions about how open the Government wished to be... before the election."
The MK77 bombs, an evolution of the napalm used in Vietnam and Korea, carry kerosene-based jet fuel and polystyrene so that, like napalm, the gel sticks to structures and to its victims. The bombs lack stabilising fins, making them far from precise

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=647397

The real Bush War that the Cable and Media do not show you

http://www.missouri.edu/~quinnl/news/fallujaposts.html

http://www.brandonblog.com/photos-iraq-war.html

http://www.brandonblog.com/photos-iraq-war.html

Image: Salon.com)
What more are they hiding, who is responsible

Deadly immunity

When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

- - - - - - - - - - - -By Robert F. Kennedy Jr

June 16, 2005 In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines - thimerosal - appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants - in one case, within hours of birth - the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment - I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. ...Continued

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/061605HA.shtml

Treasures From Iraqs Past 

In case you missed it:

Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil :

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed. Windows Media.

BBC Newsnight Video Report

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US. Windows Media
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8307.htm

http://snipurl.com/fmpm

===

On Loyalty

An Open Letter to US Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq

By STAN GOFF

You do not have to follow illegal orders EVER, under any circumstances, and you ARE bound by International Law. You should also be bound by what you know is right, by your sense of plain common decency.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9158.htm

http://snipurl.com/fmpn

===

Camilo Mejia: An American We Can All Be Proud Of

The Objector

It's a really scary thing to stand up to a captain or a colonel and say, "No, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to humiliate this man." And out of fear you do things like that.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9154.htm

http://snipurl.com/fmpo

===

In case you missed it:

Seymour Hersh : The US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison:

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

Real video and transcript.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article6492.htm

http://snipurl.com/fmpp

WHATS THIS? THEY STARTING TO RUN SCARED, FOR ALL THEIR LIES,
SHAME ON YOU WESLEY CLARK, JOINING RANKS WITH A BUNCH OF LYING BUSH LAP DOGS.

Fox News signs Wesley Clark
RAW STORY
From a snippet in the Baltimore Sun.:

Fox News Channel has signed Gen. Wesley Clark as a military and foreign affairs analyst, Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming, said yesterday.
Clark, briefly a candidate in the 2004 Democratic primary before throwing his support behind Sen. John Kerry, said, "I am excited by this opportunity to ... offer my perspective to the important issues facing the United States and the global community."

Clark spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Army where he rose to the rank of four-star general and NATO Supreme Allied Commander from 1997 to 2000. Clark holds a master's degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes scholar.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Fox_News_signs_Wesley_Cl_0616.html

Scientists make blood from stem cells

Using human stem cells, Australian scientists have made human blood.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=8809066&src=rss/scienceNews

Act of Now for Impeachment 

Is this verified?

Press release from the office of Congressman Steny H. Hoyer, House
Democratic Whip:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 17, 2005
CONTACT:
Stacey Farnen Bernards
(202) 225 - 3130

Hoyer Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Repeal 22nd Amendment
Resolution Would Repeal Two-Term Limit for President, Restore Power to the
People

WASHINGTON, DC – House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) introduced
bipartisan legislation today to repeal the 22nd amendment, which states that
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Representatives Berman (D-CA), Pallone (D-NJ), Sabo (D-MN) and Sensenbrenner
(R-WI) joined Hoyer in sponsoring the resolution.

Representative Hoyer released the following statement regarding the
resolution:

“I introduced today a joint resolution to repeal outright the 22nd Amendment
to the Constitution. The 22nd Amendment requires that no person who has
served two terms, or who has served more than two years of another
President’s term and their own elected term, be permitted to serve another
term of office.

“The time has come to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, and not
because of partisan politics. While I am not a supporter of the current
President, I feel there are good public policy reasons for a repeal of this
amendment. Under the Constitution as altered by the 22nd Amendment, this
must be President George W. Bush’s last term even if the American people
should want him to continue in office. This is an undemocratic result.

Last week we launched our effort to draft Judge Ed Prado for the next Supreme Court vacancy. This week we describe some of the issues that are at stake in the coming debate about Supreme Court vacancies and why we are promoting Judge Ed Prado.

The separation of church and state and the preservation of religious liberty. The Supreme Court will be charged with maintaining both the guarantees of free exercise of religion and the boundaries between religious practice and government policy.

The promise of civil rights. In the coming decades, the Supreme Court will have the power to build on its legacy as a guarantor of all our civil rights or it could become an instrument that slowly erodes those fundamental liberties.

The right to privacy. The Supreme Court will be the forum that can guarantee the basic freedoms of Americans to live their lives as they themselves see fit. On these issues, and others, Judge Edward Prado has demonstrated a balanced, independent approach in his 21 years on the federal bench (read about his record here). We need to send a message to President Bush that we want a mainstream, thoughtful jurist on the Court, like Judge Prado. We need your help make sure that message is heard. Here is what you can do right now:

Send a message to President Bush. We want an experienced moderate on the Supreme Court.
Tell your friends about DraftPrado. We need your help to spread the word.
Check out the coverage of DraftPrado. Click here to see a story about DraftPrado on CNN. Thank you, Arkadi, Marc, Tim, and the entire StartChange team

This morning, I appeared as a guest on Talk Radio WMET, a FOX radio affiliate, in Washington, D.C. Steve Eldridge, who has covered this story extensively from the start, was today's host.

The interview is now available on HonestChief.com. When you have a free moment, visit HonestChief.com, and click on the link to the audio library to hear the interview.

Please keep the story alive and help spread the word by forwarding this email to one or more persons who might not have received this message.
Thanks for all you do and for continuing to support me and my family. We'll keep you posted!

Teresa Chamberstcchambers@honestchief.comwww.honestchief.com

House Votes To Curb Patriot Act

Conservative Republicans, worried about government intrusion, join with liberal Democrats in handing President Bush the first defeat in his effort to preserve the legislation.


Bush Is Expected to Address Specifics on Iraq

The downturn in public opinion about the Iraq war is forcing President Bush to take a more public role in reassuring Americans about the plan for victory.


Exit Strategy on Social Security Is Sought

With the Senate Finance Committee at an impasse on Social Security and House leaders anxious about moving forward, Republican congressional leaders have told the White House in recent days that it is time to look for an escape route.

Live Links

Bring Them Home.  

Art for Girls. 

Greg Palast Submits Testimony

Palast for Conyers: The OTHER ' Memos' from Downing Street and
Pennsylvania Avenue

Greg Palast, unable to attend hearings in Washington Thursday, has
submitted the following testimony:

Chairman Conyers,

It's official: The Downing Street memos, a snooty New York Times "News Analysis" informs us, "are not the Dead Sea Scrolls." You are warned,
Congressman, to ignore the clear evidence of official mendacity and
bald-faced fibbing by our two nations' leaders because the cry for
investigation came from the dark and dangerous world of "blogs" and
"opponents" of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush.

On May 5, "blog" site Buzzflash.com carried my story, IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED," bringing the London Times report of the Downing Street memo to US media which seemed to be suffering at the time from an attack of NADD -- "news attention deficit disorder."

The memo, which contains the ill-making admission that "the
intelligence and facts were being fixed" to match the Iraq-crazed fantasies of our President, is sufficient basis for a hearing toward impeachment of the Chief Executive. But to that we must add the other evidence and secret memos and documents still hidden from the American public.

Other foreign-based journalists could doubtless add more, including the
disclosure that the key inspector of Iraq's biological weapons, the
late Dr. David Kelly, found the Bush-Blair analysis of his intelligence
was indeed "fixed," as the Downing Street memo puts it, around the
war-hawk policy.

Here is a small timeline of confidential skullduggery dug up and
broadcast by my own team for BBC Television and Harper's on the secret plans to seize Iraq's assets and oil.

February 2001 - Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney
inauguration, the State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam. US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator.

On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained,

"It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was
to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime."

March 2001 - Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company
executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq. Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose. Harper's has since learned their plan and purpose -- see below.

October/November 2001 - An easy military victory in Afghanistan
emboldens then-Dep. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to convince the
Administration to junk the State Department "coup" plan in favor of an invasion and occupation that could remake the economy of Iraq. And elaborate plan, ultimately summarized in a 101-page document, scopes out the "sale of all state enterprises" -- that is, most of the nation's assets, "… especially in the oil and supporting industries."

2002 - Grover Norquist and other corporate lobbyists meet secretly with
Defense, State and Treasury officials to ensure the invasion plans for
Iraq include plans for protecting "property rights." The result was a
pre-invasion scheme to sell off Iraq's oil fields, banks, electric
systems, and even change the country's copyright laws to the benefit of the lobbyists' clients. Occupation chief Paul Bremer would later order
these giveaways into Iraq law.

Fall 2002 - Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, is brought in
by the Pentagon to plan the management of Iraq's oil fields. He works
directly with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. "There were plans,"
says Carroll, "maybe even too many plans" -- but none disclosed to the
public nor even the US Congress.

January 2003 - Robert Ebel, former CIA oil analyst, is sent, BBC
learns, to London to meet with Fadhil Chalabi to plan terms for taking over Iraq's oil.

March 2003 - What White House spokesman Ari Fleisher calls "Operations Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) begins. (Invasion is re-christened "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

March 2003 - Defense Department is told in confidence by US Energy
Information Administrator Guy Caruso that Iraq's fields are incapable of a massive increase in output. Despite this intelligence, Dep. Secretary
Wolfowitz testifies to Congress that invasion will be a free ride. He
swears, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be
U.S. taxpayer money. …We're dealing with a country that can really
finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," a deliberate
fabrication promoted by the Administration, an insider told BBC, as "part of the sales pitch" for war.

May 2003 - General Jay Garner, appointed by Bush as viceroy over Iraq,
is fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The general revealed in
an interview for BBC that he resisted White House plans to sell off
Iraq's oil and national assets.

"That's just one fight you don't want to take on," Garner told me. But
apparently, the White House wanted that fight.

The general also disclosed that these invade-and-grab plans were
developed long before the US asserted that Saddam still held WDM:

"All I can tell you is the plans were pretty elaborate; they didn't
start them in 2002, they were started in 2001."

November/December 2003 - Secrecy and misinformation continues even ter the invasion. The oil industry objects to the State Department plans for Iraq's oil fields and drafts for the Administration a 323-page
plan, "Options for [the] Iraqi Oil Industry." Per the industry plan, the
US forces Iraq to create an OPEC-friendly state oil company that
supports the OPEC cartel's extortionate price for petroleum.


The Stone Wall

Harper's and BBC obtained the plans despite official denial of their
existence, then footdragging when confronted with the evidence of the
reports' existence.

Still today, the State and Defense Departments and White House continue to stonewall our demands for the notes of the meetings between
lobbyists, oil industry consultants and key Administration officials that would reveal the hidden economic motives for the war.

What are the secret interests behind this occupation? Who benefits?
Who met with whom? Why won't this Administration release these
documents of the economic blueprint for the war?

To date, the State and Defense Department responses to our reports are
risible, and their answers to our requests for documents run from
evasive to downright misleading. Maybe Congress, with it's power of
subpoena, can do better.


Blogs, the Media and Democracy

Let me conclude with a comment about those pesky "blogs" that so bother the New York Times. We should stand and offer a moment of quiet gratitude to the electronic swarm of gadfly commentators who make it so much harder for the US media to ignore news not officially blessed. Yes, Judith Miller's breathless reports for The Times that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction may have maintained "access" for the mainstream press to its diet of White House propaganda, but the blogs insure that, whatever nonsense the US press is biting on, the public need not swallow.



********
This week Greg Palast's investigative team was named winner of a 2004-5 Project Censored award from the California State University at Sonoma Journalism School for their exposé of the secret US plans to seize
Iraq's oil assets. Special thanks to the chief investigator on Iraq, Leni
von Eckardt, as well as additional support from Matt Pascarella. The
investigation was conducted for Harper's Magazine, BBC Television
Newsnight and "blog" outlet TomPaine.com.

View the BBC television reports and the Harper's and related reports at
www.GregPalast.com

Arlington... Let us NEVER forget the price they have paid for us. 

Arlington

Arlington

I never thought that this is where I’d settle down

I thought I’d die an old man back in my hometown

They gave me this plot of land

Me and some other men

For a job well done

There’s a big white house, sits on a hill, just up the road

The man inside, he cried the day they brought me home

They folded up a flag

And told my mom and dad

‘We’re proud of your son’

And I’m proud to be on this peaceful piece of property

I’m on sacred ground, and I’m in the best of company

I’m thankful for those thankful for the things I’ve done

I can rest in peace, I’m one of the chosen ones

I made it to Arlington

I remember Daddy brought me here when I was eight

We searched all day to find out where my granddad lay

When we finally found that cross

He said ‘Son, this is what it costs

To keep us free’

Now here I am, a thousand stones away from him

He recognized me on the first day I came in

And it gave me a chill

When he clicked his heels

And saluted me

And I’m proud to be on this peaceful piece of property

I’m on sacred ground, and I’m in the best of company

I’m thankful for those thankful for the things

I’ve done I can rest in peace, I’m one of the chosen ones

I made it to Arlington

And every time I hear twenty-one guns

I know they brought another hero home to us

We’re thankful for those thankful for the things we’ve done

We can rest in peace, ‘cause we are the chosen ones

We made it to Arlington

Yeah, dust to dust

Don’t cry for us

We made it to Arlington

by Trace Adkins

Kangaroo Australia
From Down Under

Shame on you Mr Powell,
oh what lies you did tell to the World Community

The rush to invade Iraq - the inside story Pt. I

At one point, according to several witnesses, Powell tossed several documents in the air and snapped, "This is b*******!"

Says it All

How badly does the U.S. need Abu Ghraib and Gitmo?

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prison have come to symbolise all that is wrong with the "war on terror", but at what cost will the U.S. keep them?

Activists gather on Capitol Hill to protest the Bolton's nomination
as U.S. ambassador to the UN

Partisan politics delay John Boltons confirmation

The confirmation of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN remains deadlocked as the situation turns into partisan politics.

Bomb kills five U.S. marines W. Iraq
6/16/2005 10:00:00 AM
Five U.S. marines were killed in Iraq
when their vehicle struck a bomb near Ramadi,
the U.S. military said Thursday.

Memo: Pentagon Concerned About Legality of Interrogation Techniques
Document Shows Top Pentagon Officials Warned About Guantanamo Bay Interrogation Tactics
//
June 15, 2005 — The interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in 2002 triggered concerns among senior Pentagon officials that they could face criminal prosecution under U.S. anti-torture laws, ABC News has learned.

Notes from a series of meetings at the Pentagon in early 2003 — obtained by ABC News — show that Alberto Mora, General Counsel of the Navy, warned his superiors that they might be breaking the law.

During a January 2003 meeting involving top Pentagon lawyer William Haynes and other officials, the memo shows that Mora warned that "use of coercive techniques … has military, legal, and political implication … has international implication … and exposes us to liability and criminal prosecution."

Mora's deep concerns about interrogations at Guantanamo have been known, but not his warning that top officials could go to prison.

In another meeting held March 8, 2003, the group of top Pentagon lawyers concluded — according to the memo — "we need a presidential letter approving the use of the controversial interrogation to cover those who may be called upon to use them."

No such letter was issued.

White House: Tactics Are Legal

Today, the White House insisted that tactics used at Guantanamo Bay are now — and have been — legal.

"All interrogation techniques that have been approved are lawful and consistent with our obligations," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

In another internal memo obtained by ABC News, a Navy psychologist observing the interrogation warned that the tactics used against Mohammed al Qahtani — dubbed "the 20th hijacker" — revealed "a tendency to become increasingly more aggressive without having a definite boundary."

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said on Tuesday that interrogating al Qahtani had produced results.

Continued1. 2. NEXT»

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=852458&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Art for Everyone 

Palast for Conyers: The OTHER ' Memos' from Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue

Greg Palast, unable to attend hearings in Washington Thursday, has submitted the following testimony:

Chairman Conyers,

It's official: The Downing Street memos, a snooty New York Times "News Analysis" informs us, "are not the Dead Sea Scrolls." You are warned, Congressman, to ignore the clear evidence of official mendacity and bald-faced fibbing by our two nations' leaders because the cry for investigation came from the dark and dangerous world of "blogs" and "opponents" of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush.

On May 5, "blog" site Buzzflash.com carried my story, IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED," bringing the London Times report of the Downing Street memo to US media which seemed to be suffering at the time from an attack of NADD -- "news attention deficit disorder."

The memo, which contains the ill-making admission that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed" to match the Iraq-crazed fantasies of our President, is sufficient basis for a hearing toward impeachment of the Chief Executive. But to that we must add the other evidence and secret memos and documents still hidden from the American public.

Other foreign-based journalists could doubtless add more, including the disclosure that the key inspector of Iraq's biological weapons, the late Dr. David Kelly, found the Bush-Blair analysis of his intelligence was indeed "fixed," as the Downing Street memo puts it, around the war-hawk policy.

Here is a small timeline of confidential skullduggery dug up and broadcast by my own team for BBC Television and Harper's on the secret plans to seize Iraq's assets and oil.

February 2001 - Only one month after the first Bush-Cheney inauguration, the State Department's Pam Quanrud organizes a secret confab in California to make plans for the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam. US oil industry advisor Falah Aljibury and others are asked to interview would-be replacements for a new US-installed dictator.

On BBC Television's Newsnight, Aljibury himself explained,

"It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime."

March 2001 - Vice-President Dick Cheney meets with oil company executives and reviews oil field maps of Iraq. Cheney refuses to release the names of those attending or their purpose. Harper's has since learned their plan and purpose -- see below.

October/November 2001 - An easy military victory in Afghanistan emboldens then-Dep. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to convince the Administration to junk the State Department "coup" plan in favor of an invasion and occupation that could remake the economy of Iraq. And elaborate plan, ultimately summarized in a 101-page document, scopes out the "sale of all state enterprises" -- that is, most of the nation's assets, "… especially in the oil and supporting industries."

2002 - Grover Norquist and other corporate lobbyists meet secretly with Defense, State and Treasury officials to ensure the invasion plans for Iraq include plans for protecting "property rights." The result was a pre-invasion scheme to sell off Iraq's oil fields, banks, electric systems, and even change the country's copyright laws to the benefit of the lobbyists' clients. Occupation chief Paul Bremer would later order these giveaways into Iraq law.

Fall 2002 - Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, is brought in by the Pentagon to plan the management of Iraq's oil fields. He works directly with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. "There were plans," says Carroll, "maybe even too many plans" -- but none disclosed to the public nor even the US Congress.

January 2003 - Robert Ebel, former CIA oil analyst, is sent, BBC learns, to London to meet with Fadhil Chalabi to plan terms for taking over Iraq's oil.

March 2003 - What White House spokesman Ari Fleisher calls "Operations Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) begins. (Invasion is re-christened "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom.)

March 2003 - Defense Department is told in confidence by US Energy Information Administrator Guy Caruso that Iraq's fields are incapable of a massive increase in output. Despite this intelligence, Dep. Secretary Wolfowitz testifies to Congress that invasion will be a free ride. He swears, "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. …We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," a deliberate fabrication promoted by the Administration, an insider told BBC, as "part of the sales pitch" for war.

May 2003 - General Jay Garner, appointed by Bush as viceroy over Iraq, is fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The general revealed in an interview for BBC that he resisted White House plans to sell off Iraq's oil and national assets.

"That's just one fight you don't want to take on," Garner told me. But apparently, the White House wanted that fight.

The general also disclosed that these invade-and-grab plans were developed long before the US asserted that Saddam still held WDM:

"All I can tell you is the plans were pretty elaborate; they didn't start them in 2002, they were started in 2001."

November/December 2003 - Secrecy and misinformation continues even after the invasion. The oil industry objects to the State Department plans for Iraq's oil fields and drafts for the Administration a 323-page plan, "Options for [the] Iraqi Oil Industry." Per the industry plan, the US forces Iraq to create an OPEC-friendly state oil company that supports the OPEC cartel's extortionate price for petroleum.

The Stone Wall

Harper's and BBC obtained the plans despite official denial of their existence, then footdragging when confronted with the evidence of the reports' existence.

Still today, the State and Defense Departments and White House continue to stonewall our demands for the notes of the meetings between lobbyists, oil industry consultants and key Administration officials that would reveal the hidden economic motives for the war.

What are the secret interests behind this occupation? Who benefits? Who met with whom? Why won't this Administration release these documents of the economic blueprint for the war?

To date, the State and Defense Department responses to our reports are risible, and their answers to our requests for documents run from evasive to downright misleading. Maybe Congress, with it's power of subpoena, can do better.

Blogs, the Media and Democracy

Let me conclude with a comment about those pesky "blogs" that so bother the New York Times. We should stand and offer a moment of quiet gratitude to the electronic swarm of gadfly commentators who make it so much harder for the US media to ignore news not officially blessed. Yes, Judith Miller's breathless reports for The Times that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction may have maintained "access" for the mainstream press to its diet of White House propaganda, but the blogs insure that, whatever nonsense the US press is biting on, the public need not swallow.

********
This week Greg Palast's investigative team was named winner of a 2004-5 Project Censored award from the California State University at Sonoma Journalism School for their exposé of the secret US plans to seize Iraq's oil assets. Special thanks to the chief investigator on Iraq, Leni von Eckardt, as well as additional support from Matt Pascarella. The investigation was conducted for Harper's Magazine, BBC Television Newsnight and "blog" outlet TomPaine.com.

View the BBC television reports and the Harper's and related reports at www.GregPalast.com

Art for Everyone 

The Base: Chronicle of a Quagmire Foretold

NOTE: This is a column I first published in The Moscow Times on October 18, 2002 -- six months before the invasion of Iraq. I'm no prophet -- it didn't take much to see that Bush was goose-stepping into a quagmire. Still, it's eerie to note that so much of the hell we see in Iraq today was already discernible long before. Of course, we've not yet seen the use of nuclear "bunkerbusters" described here; then again, this piece of proleptic fiction is set in 2006.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Base: Annals of Occupation

NSA Echelon 33, CentComm: Email monitored 10/22/2006.
Dispatched DC.Yo,

Ed! I'm looking out the window of Watchtower 19 in Force Zone Seven. They're loading up the dead wagon. Three friendlies, two uncardeds, the usual collateral - and one bug. We zapped the market before the bug got his hard-on - another one of those Czech AK-47 knock-offs that our friendly neighborhood warlord keeps bringing in. He says he doesn't know how the bugs get hold of them - they drop down from heaven, I guess.

Last night Chrome and Dietrich got clipped by two bugged-up pseudo-friendlies outside the Halliburton whorehouse. They'd just finished three weeks on kyptonite duty, guarding the perimeter where those baby-nuke bunkerbusters went in. It's still space-suit city over there, your wang wired up to the piss-bag for ten hours while you watch the Pentagon geek squad calibrating the kill ratio and the Guantanamorons in their plastic chains, suitless and bootless, bagging up body parts.

Chrome was telling us how some bug hacker got into the helmet frequency one day and flooded their gourds with Donny Osmond songs. Four hours of it. What could you do? You couldn't take the helmet off or you'd over-geiger like the morons. Nearly drove them crazy. "And they call it puppy love." Chrome was crooning for us, laughing, riding high. He'd just bagged Laila, the one who used to be on TV here - half a week's pay, but they said get her now because some wheel at CentComm was about to privatize her. Then he stepped outside with Dietrich and was gone.

Four more guys got shipped out this week for going burqa. Bent their knee to the bug god. It's the damnedest thing. Officially, it's not happening and there's no punishment for it either. The Press Office gave us soundbite cards on it for media days: "Faith and freedom go together; each makes the other stronger. The Forces of Liberation welcome all faiths within our ranks." Non-denial denial. But everybody knows it's spreading like the clap, and they'll rotate you back to Homeland or Eurodisney the first time you step inside a mosque.

I guess I can understand it. I mean, personally, I don't see the point of trading one load of lies and fairy tales for another. But we're all wading through a cesspit here, you feel it on your skin all the time. You can't wash it off, you can't buy it off, you can't drink it away. For some guys, the bug-god bull looks new, pure. However hokey it is, it's not the same thing that led them into this stinking mire. So they snap, they turn - they shut off their brains and submit. Hell, isn't that what they teach us to do in basic training? But I feel sorry for the suckers. It's gonna go hard for them when they realize the bug god is just like all the others: one big rotting empty skull, staring down at you with those black holes, those no-eyes that see nothing and give back nothing.

I tried talking about it with Captain Davis the other night; he's about the only officer who doesn't strut around here like a Wal-Mart floor manager among the peons. I'd just come off night patrol in Deep-City Zone, hardcore bugland, backing up some Special Ops doing a Guantanamo run on terrorperp suspects. Banging down doors, barrel in the face of some shrieking bug-woman in her black bag, children scuttling in the dark like rats, the perp calling down an airstrike from Allah on our heads. You know the drill. You know the jangle. Not even the new meds can keep you blanked out completely.

So there's always the overstep somewhere. Woman's cheekbone cracking from a backhand, some kid stomped or booted out of the way. Some perp putting his hand in one of those damned dresses they wear, going for who knows what - Koran? Mosquito bite? Scimitar? Czech special? - and you open up. More shrieking, more screaming - and then the splatter on the wall.

Is this what we're here for? I said to Davis. These bulging eyeballs, these reeking guts, this splatter? And the deals, the grease: the trade in whores, the pipeline siphons, the warlord bribes, CentComm and DefSec and BigVeep cutting their buddies a slice of the pie? Mr. Homeland Headboy talks about Jesus and Jefferson all the time - is this what Jesus really wants us to do? Is this what Jefferson had in mind?

Davis shook his head. Don't go all Gandhi on us, Jim, he says. Ideals are fine, but you've got to make an accomodation with reality. You can't have civilization without power. Nothing will hold together if you can't back it up with force. That splatter - those guts - that dead girl in the ditch over there, with the flies and the dogs - that's what power is. That's the foundation, the base, of civilization. It ain't pretty, but I just have to believe that we're a special nation, and now that we hold this dreadful power, we'll use it wisely, so that one day we'll make those ideals real. I've got to believe that - because otherwise, Jim, it's just nothing but crap. Crap, chaos, murder and noise. And what the hell can you build on that?

So that's the answer then. We're special. Our grease is special. Our bunkerbusters are special. Our pissbags are special. Our splatter is the most special thing of all.

May No-Eyes have mercy on us all.

http://www.empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/.

Welcome to the real War 

An Iraqi man mourns the death of his son as the body lies waiting in a wooden coffin.
 

Bombers strike as Kurds prepare to install president

At least 29 people have been killed and 60 wounded in bombing attacks in northern Iraq, as the autonomous Kurdish region is set to install its first president.

[FULL STORY]

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Dumped bodies found in Iraq

Iraqi police say they have discovered two dozen bodies dumped west of Baghdad.

[FULL STORY]

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Iraq 'statistically' no safer since Saddam overthrown

Iraq is "statistically" no safer today than it was after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was overthrown, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

[FULL STORY]

The Daily Death Toll 

Suicide bomber kills more than 50 in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) - A militant carrying about 50 kilograms of explosives and disguised in an army uniform blew himself up in a crowded mess hall Wednesday as brutal attacks across Iraq killed more than 50 people.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2005/05/06/1029142-ap.html

Art for Everyone 

US military jet crashes near homes

A US military jet has crashed in a residential area of the city of Yuma in Arizona but there are no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.

Yuma police Lieutenant Mike Erfert says the jet went down about 2:30pm local time.
A spokesman for the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma says the Harrier jet that crashed was operating from the base.

Lance Corporal Kamran Sadaghiani says the jet "went down in town" but could provide no further information.

The American ABC radio network reported that the pilot of the jet had ejected from the aircraft.
Police, fire and military personnel were responding to the crash and the area was being evacuated.

-Reuters

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200506/s1393351.htm

Celebration ... Mr Wood has asked for a VB stubby
and news on Geelong results / AP

Wood freed in military raid

LIVE LINKS

DEVELOPING STORY: Australian hostage Douglas Wood was freed by Iraqi troops who stumbled on him during a search for rebel weapons in Baghdad.

Wood speaks Rescue joy: Wood's release came against the odds Relief: Family elated at news Crisis Timeline Saved: Operation Lightning Dog's name does it

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15629861-2,00.html

Will he succeed with his lies,
how many more innocent lives
will the World Community have to lose.

Enabling Evil

Bush's Willing Executioners

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

If Germans were complicit, how can Americans avoid the charge of complicity in Bush's crimes against Iraq when Americans are in possession of such damning facts and have the power of impeachment? Why do Americans tolerate a liar and a war criminal as their president?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9147.htm

http://snipurl.com/flsi

Hhhhhmmmm 

Dean, His Democrats, and Mr. Bush's War
By Steve Weissman t r u t h o u t Perspective
Wednesday 15 June 2005

Why do Democratic Party leaders and their friends in the mass media spend so much time attacking Howard Dean? And why do so many of us who oppose Mr. Bush's war in Iraq now shower Dr. Dean with praise, even love, despite his reluctance to join with us in opposing the continuing presence in Iraq of American troops?

Answers to both questions focus on the current fight among Democrats over the direction the party should take.

Those who've led the party in past years never wanted Dean to win the chairmanship. They prefer the status quo and feel indebted to the major financial contributors, who have little interest in seeing the party resume its traditional role as a true champion of the poor and middle classes.

Dean is now confirming the old leaders in their worst fears. He is attempting to weaken the influence of the big donors by raising money in small increments over the Internet, much as he did in his own campaign for president. He is also revitalizing state and local party groups, giving more clout to grassroots activists, many of whom want the party to come out strongly against the war.

Unlike the Old Guard, Dean understands two key dynamics needed for the Democrats to win elections. The party must engage the passion and conviction of the grassroots activists. And it must reach out to millions of people who no longer believe that politicians of either party fight for the interests of average working families.

"People want us to fight," Dean told the party's executive committee. "We are here to fight."

The Old Guard fear that the party will get out of their control and are naturally fighting back. The conflict has grown so severe that three major fund-raisers quit the Democratic National Committee, one of them citing "strategic differences."

At least for now, most of the differences are over style and political dynamics. The bluestocking Dean might at times sound like a populist, but he remains a centrist Democrat and fiscal conservative. And, like most leading Democrats, he argues that the United States must stay in Iraq no matter how much our presence there fuels greater conflict.

"Now that we're there, we're there and we can't get out," he told the Minnesota ACLU on April 20 of this year. "The president has created an enormous security problem for the United States where none existed before. But I hope the president is incredibly successful with his policy now that he's there."(1)

Many of us who want to bring the troops home believe that Dean is dead wrong, and we will continue to tell him so. But that's just the point. By revitalizing the party's base and reducing the power of big money, he is giving us an increased chance to make our arguments and move the party in our direction.

This is an opening we cannot afford to ignore. Activists like the Progressive Democrats of America have already gotten several state party organizations to come out strongly against the war, and the battle has only just begun.

In time, Dr. Dean may join the anti-war movement. But, even if doesn't, he needs and deserves our support in his fight to keep the Democratic Party open and democratic.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061505A.shtml

Judiciary GOP pulls the plug on Conyers 'forums'

Judiciary GOP pulls the plug on Conyers 'forums'
By Albert Eisele and Jeff Dufour

If the Financial Services Committee is the best in the House when it comes to bipartisan comity, then the Judiciary Committee may well be the worst. In December, ranking Democrat John Conyers (Mich.) began holding “forums” — gatherings with all the trappings of official hearings — after Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) refused to hold hearings on topics Conyers requested.

Full Article

Wolfowitz says cuts in agriculture subsidies needed

BOBO-DIOULASSO,
Burkina Faso (Reuters) -

New World Bank' President Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday the key to helping Africa's poor cotton growers was to cut the subsidies paid to U.S. and European agriculture producers.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050615/pl_nm/africa_wolfowitz_dc_4

American Democratic Constituents,
you only deserve 20 seats the basement of Capitol Hill

Update: Downing Street hearings on CSPAN; In Capitol

In the Capital, who are we kidding here, If I am not mistaken
it was held in the basement of the Capitol Building, which seated
Ohhhhhh How many people 20 is the number that I heard, amazing
Conyers and the Democratic constituents were demoted to the
Basement of Capital Hill.

America the Land of the Free, the Land of Liberty

http://www.rawstory.com/

I HOPE SCIAVO TAKES THE LOT OF THEM, THROUGH THE HIGHEST
COURTS IN THE LAND

They are the worst kind of Trash there is:

Autopsy: Schiavo's husband was right

Medical examiner: Brain 'profoundly atrophied,' damage irreversible; Blind.

http://www.rawstory.com/

Just Because It Makes Me Smile! 

THIS IS NOT A JOKE. IT is NOT parody. From British Paper New Nation 2003. Click to enlarge and read. (re-posted) 

Who Is Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?

--Re-posted--

What CAN Scare Even Bloggers?

I have to admit right off, I am a blogger and this story scares the hell out of me, too. After a very WIERD incident with a cable guy named Larry...I have been thinking ALOT about paranoia. I have been wondering about when it is actually appropriate, when it's not.

And I keep coming back to one issue that seems to scare absolutely everyone. As I said, it frightens me too, but not in ways I can easily relate, or even articulate.

Perhaps thats why no one, and I mean NO ONE, wants to talk about it. I imagine the way my stomache twists and my knee jerks is contagious because all those who are willing to WHISPER it are immediately struck with thier own uncomfortable paranoia. Appropriate or not.

Some try to chalk it up as a 'tinfoil hat' type of thing perhaps to dispell thier own uneasy questions, or perhaps, to try to discredit the questioner.I don't really know WHY but even good men have fallen silent now. On this one issue in particular the silence is SO profound it is in fact the bigger question.

What is it that has even the vicious 'liberal-left-whatever' shocked into a stunned silence? Something so explosive, not even 'fearless bloggers' will dare touch it much less speak of it? What could possibly inspire so much fear?

Her name was Margie Schoedinger. And she was ,in fact, a real human being.

The following facts are her facts, not my own. The accusations are hers, not mine. I do not know the Truth of them, but the FACT of them is pretty damn...scary.

If you simply Google this womans name, you will indeed instantly start getting a story about a woman who accused a sitting president of rape.

In 2002 Schoedinger accused THE sitting president G. W. Bush of RAPE. And much more.

These are the facts we know.

SOMEONE tried kidnapping this woman, her would-be kidnappers were foiled by a passing highway patrol, who broke up the melee, and for whatever reason, let them go after she vehemetly told the officer they were going to kill her and she knew why. Margie Schoedinger and many people in her family were brought into police custody for 'vigorous questioning' . After this she went public with rape allegations against GW Bush and filed 4 VERY INTERESTING lawsuits.

Not one newspaper, not one tv news, not one cable news, not one radio program, not one TABLOID in the US media reported it. It was as if a tree fell on us, and no one heard it.

Four months after the accusations were filed in Fort Bend County Texas the USA invaded Iraq. Bush was ORDERED to come to court in Texas on RAPE charges.

His accuser openly says in these lawsuits that she fears she will be suicided. Nine months after accusing THE president of RAPE, Margie Shoedinger was dead, a bullet in her brain.

She died the same day Bush appeared before the UN, Sept 22, 2003.

Did I mention she was black and could apparently PROVE she had dated GW Bush as a MINOR...?

Surely there are things to talk about here...?

And then the quiet falls and thats where things get REALLY bizarre. In that silence three immediate questions cause an awful ripple in your gut.

Number 1)
What in the HELL happened to the so called 'Free Media'...?

Number 2)
Is it possible my president is a RAPIST?

AND
Number 3)
WHAT ELSE are we NOT hearing about?

By the way, did I also mention there are accusations of HOMOSEXUAL RAPE as well? Yet NO ONE can find any words to ask ANYTHING...? Here the current black out becomes a literal void of nothingness.

I suppose anyone brave enough to approach it would ask the simple questions first, like who is Schoedinger and is she credible?

The truth is, I don't know the TRUTH. But the FACTS are disturbing, twisted and wrong in unimaginable ways. I do not KNOW what happened between these two people. IS SHE CREDIBLE...? I simply do not know because those who were SUPPOSED to report such matters, never said a damn thing. Not even when she died did it make any press ANYWHERE inside the borders of the USA.

Yet the Russians, Brits and Aussies were aware AS IT WAS HAPPENING.
At some point HER CREDIBILITY actually becomes moot. His Iraqi lies surely could be used against him, and don't look good for his credibility either. The FACTS alone, so far, can niether prove, nor disprove, her story. Which brings up another very odd question.

IF she WAS crazy/gold digging/a political pawn ...WHY did the media NEVER ONCE TRY to DISCREDIT HER? They didn't even bother to report her existance. Or her untimely death. She is dead and apparently no one cared.

This was not just a story blacked out, it was purposely overlooked by every single decent, bad or half assed reporter in the nation. Even after all this time the bloggers don't want to hear a word of it. I know exactly how they feel, unfortunately this story will not die as easily as she did. It will not die because NO ONE answered ANY of the questions.

And even now two years later her story is still un-impeached. The facts still lay there like the twitching dead, uncomfortable and unacknowledged.

One day we may have answers to the many questions the facts raise, but perhaps, that may be what scares the hell out of simply everbody. Do we REALLY WANT to know?

If you ever cared about the TRUTH, then that is YES...YES WE MUST KNOW.

But if even bloggers are afraid, My God, Who can POSSIBLY be left to ask? If I know certain facts of the case, SURELY Congressmen and Senators can not plead ignorance, so where in the hell are THEY?

I did not know Margie Schoedinger. I do not know what to make of her life or her death. But knowing what limited amount I do know, makes me question such fundamental issues that everything I know, or thought I knew, hangs in the balance.

One day Margie Schoedinger may rise from her gave and tell us it was all a joke. She may tell us it was true, but unimportant. Perhaps she would beg any she had harmed in life to forgive her. Or Perhaps...just perhaps, she may arise and SCREAM for justice.

I wonder if anyone will HEAR HER either way?

I wonder will they still FEAR her so...?



Christy Cole



---NOTICE...This womans name I believe is spelled Schoedinger...
HOWEVER...Shoedinger is also to be found in refrence to her. If you are still not sure where to go for more on this I recommend looking up the lawsuits she filed with the clerk of court in Fort Bend County Texas. One of the lawsuits was brought against Sugar Land Police Dept. (Yes Tom Delays stomping ground)...Apparently the final lawsuit was dropped because she was in fact dead.(Convienant)... If anyone DOES look deeper into this story..Good Luck friend and welcome to HELL... Please do let us know what you find.---

For the court documents go to this page and type in Schoedinger

http://ccweb.co.fort-bend.tx.us/search.asp?cabinet=civil

Interesting sidenote: The biggest whistle blower of ENRON, also 'suicided' not to far from where Schoedinger lived.

A yellow ribbon is tied around a flag pole as a reminder of Desert Storm.
SLEEP LAST NIGHT?
Bed a little lumpy...
Toss and turn any...
Wish the heat was higher.
..Maybe the a/c wasn't on..
.Had to go to the john...
Need a drink of water...
?
?
?
Scroll down
Baker Company Iraq Photos

Think of them 

Think of them 

Think of them 

Yes... It is like that!
the next time when...
the other car cuts you off and you must hit the brakes,
or you have to park a little further than you want to be,
or you're served slightly warm food at the restaurant,
or you're sitting and cursing the traffic in front of you,
or the shower runs out of hot water,
Think of them...

Our own Christy made Raw Story today with her post
Preaching to the Choir
For your kids Christy
be proud of your mother kids, be very very proud

When will Democrats retake the South?

http://www.rawstory.com/

http://watchingthewatchers.org/index.php?p=523

Art For Boys. 

Pattern of Deception Persists in Tillman's Death
By Robert Scheer The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday 14 June 2005

Army's latest statement just doesn't wash.

On Saturday, Mary Tillman went to a graduation party, corrected essays written by her junior high school students and got the house ready for a visit from her mother. Life goes on, even though the "friendly fire" death in Afghanistan of her famous football-playing son never fully leaves her thoughts.

And how could it? Although Pat Tillman, 27, was shot to death on a mountain pass in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004, his family has been tortured ever since by a pattern of official deception over how he died - killed by U.S. Army machine-gun fire - and why the family was kept in the dark.

That deception has continued with the latest and allegedly definitive government statement. Last week, the Army unconvincingly claimed that the suppression of field reports that Tillman was killed by friendly fire did not amount to an official cover-up but was merely the result of confusing regulations that should be changed - "an administrative error," in the words of Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the head of Army public affairs.

Mary Tillman, however, begs to differ with this convenient conclusion to the investigation. When I met with her on Sunday near the Northern California suburb where she raised her three sons, she was measured but firm in rejecting the Army's report and latest statements.

"As far as our family is concerned, the case of Pat's death is not closed, as the Army suggests," she told me. "It concerns us that the documents we received state that Gen. [John P.] Abizaid knew on April 28 that Pat was absolutely killed by fratricide. Why were we not told prior to Pat's memorial service, which was nationally televised on May 3? We weren't told until five weeks later, and only because the troops that were with Pat came home from Afghanistan and the story was unfolding."

The documents that Mary Tillman is referring to are gathered in a six-volume record of the military's investigation, which were recently made available to the family but not to the media or public. Although heavily redacted, including one wholly censored volume, the files I have read make unmistakably clear that the true cause of Tillman's death was known in the field shortly after he was killed and reported as fratricide up through the military command. Yet those facts were systematically kept from the family - including Pat's brother and fellow Army Ranger, Kevin Tillman, who was serving in the same unit in Afghanistan - while a markedly inaccurate story played itself out in the world's media. >>>continued

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer14jun14,0,1246392.column?coll=la-home-headlines

The publicly unreleased files also present major contradictions of fact and logic as to how this fratricide occurred, including questions about the decision to split Tillman's unit; why the shooting continued even after the identification of the target as friendly by the driver of the attack vehicle; what were the light conditions and distances involved; what was the medical treatment administered; and how was it decided to burn Tillman's clothes and body armor, which bore tell-tale markings of penetration by U.S. ammunition.
The files also make plain that in the rush to honor Tillman with the Silver Star before a much-publicized memorial service, the Army deliberately obfuscated the fact that Tillman was a victim of friendly fire - implying in the official press release that he had been killed by Taliban or Al Qaeda forces while taking "the fight to the enemy forces … on the dominating high ground." In fact, no physical evidence was ever found that proves enemy fighters were even in the area.
None of this, of course, lessens the fact that Tillman died acting heroically in what he initially believed to be a battle with an enemy he had forsaken fame and fortune to fight.

Another Christy Made Article...

WHY did 3000 People DIE HERE, on September 11th 2001?

I have been told that bin Laden is a freedom hater, that is why so many died.

WHY ...Because he HATES our freedom, that is what we have been told, over and over again.

And now FREEDOM is on the march. We are delivering LIBERTY, at the point of a rifle. NO, No, Not to bin Laden. What Can't be found, shan't be found. Three thousand people are dead, and all we get is these lousy excuses. Excuse after excuse.Day after day. So many dead yet so few answers. Could it have anything to do with ALL that missing money?

What money? Lets go back to Sept. 10th of 2001. On that day Rumsfield announced 2.3 TRILLION dollars was 'missing' from the Pentagon. He admitted one-fourth of the entire budget went 'poof'. Within the next 12 hours we would be attacked and the 2.3 TRILLION dollars?...It has never been explained.

Nine BILLION dollars is missing from Iraqi re-construction money. Another 8 Billion is missing from teachers retirement funds in Texas. On the morning of Sept 11th 2001, 120 BILLION dollars was due the Phillipino government to cover gold bond deals. The Government of the Phillipines has yet to get paid, cause bin Laden is a freedom hater I guess. Damn Him.

The Medicaid Trust Fund has been thouroughly looted. Our troops are digging in the trash for armor. The children of Iraq are starving to death on our watch. And as far as explainations we are told that 'Democracy is messy.' So it would seem.

Since we already know TRILLIONS are missing lets start there. How MANY TRILLIONS...? Could be tens of trillions. Or HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS. After all this is just the money they ADMIT is missing. It COULD litterally be...What comes after TRILLIONS?...It could be Gabillions.

And since Iraqis are standing in line 12 hours for 2 liters of gasoline, where in the hell is all that oil going too? We are building TWENTY-something US bases on top of Iraqi pipelines. Even if insurgents blew up half of it there would still be enough oil for Iraqis, so you would think.

And all those children WE have in PRISON at Abu Graib?...Well you see SADDAM was a really terrible man. And FREEDOM is on the march.

If you ask at this point, 'Ok.. WHO is taking so much money from us?' I ask instead, 'WHOM was authorized to touch that kind of money in the first place?

Two-point three TRILLION dollars...lets write that out with all its zeros... $2,300,000,000.00 ... This is NOT money you just leave in your other pants. I don't care how messy democracy is, it is not so 'messy' that they will let ME hold 8 billion dollars.

Can YOU just walk up and say 'I know..I'll just take a few billion and go down the street, I'll be back later to explain'.....?'

In every case of Genocide or attempted Genocide that we know of the first step was ALWAYS a theft. A VERY BIG THEFT. Hitler wanted the Jews money and assets, The government of the USA wanted the native indians land. In both cases the genocide escalated in DIRECT relation to the scale of the theft. The more they stole, the more had to die. It was simply a matter of getting rid of witnesses and killing the HEIRS to what they stole.

It is the politics of theft that determine whom shall die.

If one among us stole GABBILLIONS, WHOM would have to die to cover it up?

Would it take 3 deaths or 3000...? Would the blood of the Iraqis cover a trail that was cut into the heart of AMERICA?

Christy Cole

You Decide 

Polls, and Reports from Iraq, Reveal Pessimism on War
Editor & Publisher
Monday 13 June 2005

New York - A flood of pessimistic articles in major newspapers this weekend, calls by some in Congress for a timetable for withdrawal, and now a new Gallup poll suggest to at least one military historian that the American public has reached a "tipping point" on Iraq.

The new Gallup survey finds that 59% of Americans say the United States should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq, the largest number in that category ever. Nearly half of that number, 28%, want all troops out. And, for the first time, most Americans say they would be "upset" if President Bush sent more troops.

Accounts from the field in Iraq this weekend and today in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Knight Ridder newspapers, among others, all painted a picture of an Iraqi army unable (and to some extent, unwilling) to take over the lion's share of military activities for at least two years and perhaps much longer.

Tom Lasseter, longtime Knight Ridder correspondent in Baghdad, wrote for today's papers: "A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. service members during the past two years. Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerrilla war is through Iraqi politics, an arena that so far has been crippled by divisions between Shiite Muslims, whose coalition dominated the January elections, and Sunni Muslims, who are a minority in Iraq but form the base of support for the insurgency."

"We have reached a tipping point," Ronald Spector, a military historian at George Washington University, told USA Today's Susan Page. "Even some of those who thought it was a great idea to get rid of Saddam [Hussein] are saying, 'I want our troops home.'"

The pattern of public opinion on Iraq is reminiscent of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, he said. A different poll last week found that 42% now liken the Iraq war to the Vietnam experience. Even Rep. Walter Jones, the man behind the "freedom fries" campaign, came out for withdrawal over the weekend.

Gallup also found that 56% of Americans now feel the war was "not worth it." An ABC News-Washington Post poll last week found that nearly three-quarters called the casualty level unacceptable. The count reached 1,700 over the weekend.

Of those who say the war wasn't worth it, the top reasons cited were: false claims and no weapons of mass destruction found; the casualty count; and belief that Iraq posed no threat to the United States.

In today's New York Times, a field report on Iraqi performance by John F. Burns and Sabrina Tavernise concludes: "Despite the Bush administration's insistent optimism, Americans working with the Iraqis in the field believe that it could be several years, at least, before the new Iraqi forces will be ready to stand alone against the insurgents....

"Earlier this year, the Pentagon suggested that an initial drawdown of the 140,000 American troops in Iraq might begin by the end of this year. Now, American generals are saying it could be two years, perhaps longer."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000955496

Art for Everyone 

Still no apology for slavery. 

Critics: Frist vetoed full vote on lynching

RAW STORY


From the (registration-restricted) Atlanta Journal Constitution, a claim that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has waded into a political whirpool.

#
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.

And there was disagreement Tuesday over whether Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia's two Republican senators, had supported the measure when it was approved Monday night.


Bob Stevenson, Frist's chief spokesman, said Tuesday evening the procedure the majority leader established was "requested by the sponsors."

The chief sponsors of the resolution, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen (R-Va.), disputed that assertion.

Landrieu said Monday before the resolution was adopted she would have preferred a roll call vote but had to accept the conditions set by Senate leaders.

When Stevenson was informed of Landrieu's statement, he amended his comments to say "at least one of the sponsors" had requested adoption on a voice vote and in combination with a resolution related to Black History Month.

Allen press secretary David Snepp took issue with Stevenson. "I don't know why Bob Stevenson would characterize it that way," he said.


---From a southernors perspective on that apology..Guess what, too little, too late. I respect Landrue , and in certain political circles down here the apology makes her look good, but its too late for all those innocent people lynched like common criminals for nothing but the color of thier skin. Try an apology for slavery. NOW THAT'S something black people can actually use.---

Saddam Interrogation Screened - in Silence. The Question Is: Why?
By Robert Fisk The Independent UK
Tuesday 14 June 2005

There he was, just as his victims looked on his own television screens, his words censored, his arguments unknown, his case as undemocratic as the "judicial" courts in which Saddam destroyed his own enemies.

The Iraqis - or, let us speak frankly, the Americans who tried to censor the old reprobate's previous court appearance - decided yesterday that his words would also be censored. That is Saddamism. This is how Saddam ran Iraq.

The words were obliterated. And now the Americans and their obedient, Shia-led government, are acting out the same Saddamite line.

The pictures, the BBC admitted, were "mute". What in God's name did this mean? Who emasculated the BBC to such a degree that it should say such a ridiculous thing? Why were they mute? The BBC didn't tell us.

If Saddam was really being charged with war crimes over the killings of Shias - which I hope he was - then why, in heaven's name, didn't we hear what he had to say? Why use the methods of Saddam himself? The silent film, the assumption of guilt? Or was Saddam telling the court that the United States was behind his regime, that Washington had given him the means to destroy the Halabja Kurds with gas?

How can we know? And when so many of our journalistic brethren failed to challenge the reason why this tape should be "mute", what does this say of us? We are told, by Saddam's jailers of course, that he is being questioned about the murder of Shia villagers south of Baghdad in 1982. I hope so. But how do we know?

The reality is that Saddam is from Iraq's past, something from the era before "our" insecurity and destruction and the rape and insurgency and death which has now overwhelmed Iraq.

Yes, there are those who would like to see Saddam brought to justice. But they want safety and law and order and freedom - freedom from us, too - before they care about this crazed old man's trial. But we insist the Iraqis have bread and circuses before they have freedom. And they must experience our democracy by understanding that the defendant in a court must be shut up and denied his own words in order to appear on the BBC.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=646753

Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani woman whom a tribal council
sentenced to be gang-raped,

Maybe You should have gone into Pakistan to liberate the Pakistani women
Hey Mr G W Bush Ahhhhh no Oil I forgot

Raped, Kidnapped and Silenced
By Nicholas D. Kristof The New York Times
Tuesday 14 June 2005

No wonder the Pakistan government can't catch Osama bin Laden. It is too busy harassing, detaining - and now kidnapping - a gang-rape victim for daring to protest and for planning a visit to the United States.

Last fall I wrote about Mukhtaran Bibi, a woman who was sentenced by a tribal council in Pakistan to be gang-raped because of an infraction supposedly committed by her brother. Four men raped Ms. Mukhtaran, then village leaders forced her to walk home nearly naked in front of a jeering crowd of 300.

Ms. Mukhtaran was supposed to have committed suicide. Instead, with the backing of a local Islamic leader, she fought back and testified against her persecutors. Six were convicted.

Then Ms. Mukhtaran, who believed that the best way to overcome such abuses was through better education, used her compensation money to start two schools in her village, one for boys and the other for girls. She went out of her way to enroll the children of her attackers in the schools, showing that she bore no grudges.

Readers of my column sent in more than $133,000 for her. Mercy Corps, a U.S. aid organization, has helped her administer the money, and she has expanded the schools, started a shelter for abused women and bought a van that is used as an ambulance for the area. She has also emerged as a ferocious spokeswoman against honor killings, rapes and acid attacks on women. (If you want to help her, please don't send checks to me but to Mercy Corps, with "Mukhtaran Bibi" in the memo line: 3015 S.W. First, Portland, Ore. 97201.)

A group of Pakistani-Americans invited Ms. Mukhtaran to visit the U.S. starting this Saturday (see www.4anaa.org). Then a few days ago, the Pakistani government went berserk.

On Thursday, the authorities put Ms. Mukhtaran under house arrest - to stop her from speaking out. In phone conversations in the last few days, she said that when she tried to step outside, police pointed their guns at her. To silence her, the police cut off her land line.

After she had been detained, a court ordered her attackers released, putting her life in jeopardy. That happened on a Friday afternoon, when the courts do not normally operate, and apparently was a warning to Ms. Mukhtaran to shut up. Instead, Ms. Mukhtaran continued her protests by cellphone. But at dawn yesterday the police bustled her off, and there's been no word from her since. Her cellphone doesn't answer.

Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer who is head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said she had learned that Ms. Mukhtaran was taken to Islamabad, furiously berated and told that President Pervez Musharraf was very angry with her. She was led sobbing to detention at a secret location. She is barred from contacting anyone, including her lawyer.

"She's in their custody, in illegal custody," Ms. Jahangir said. "They have gone completely crazy."

Even if Ms. Mukhtaran were released, airports have been alerted to bar her from leaving the country. According to Dawn, a Karachi newspaper, the government took this step, "fearing that she might malign Pakistan's image." >>>continued

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/061405WC.shtml

Douglas Wood freed in military operation

[6:54pm] Australian hostage Douglas Wood has been rescued in a military operation more than six weeks after being kidnapped in Iraq. more

Could This Zygote actually be the Devils child? 

America the Free, Some example for the World Community,
Lies Lies and more Lies

You decide

Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000
October 27, 2004
- Guerrilla News NetworkWar on my mind
By Russ Baker

Houston: Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz.

“It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.

”Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.

” That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work – and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war – has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush’s unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters – well before he became president.

In 1999, Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of George W. Bush about a ghost-written autobiography, which was ultimately titled A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House, and he and Bush signed a contract in which the two would split the proceeds. The publisher was William Morrow. Herskowitz was given unimpeded access to Bush, and the two met approximately 20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that within two months he had completed and submitted some 10 chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters still on his computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush’s ghostwriter after Bush’s handlers concluded that the candidate’s views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.

http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/randirhodes/messageboards/index.php?act=ST&f=131&t=54829

Is Iraq safer, are we as a World Community safer,
You decide

Rumsfeld: Iraq not safer than in 2003

After two years of urban war, Defense Secretary admits Iraq is no safer.

http://www.rawstory.com/

FOCUS Kelpie Wilson: Saving Species, Saving Ourselves
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061405X.shtml

Programming Note: Tomorrow we begin webcasting a short video clip we call “The Smoking Gun," from the documentary film "Hijacking Catastrophe." The clip shows the bottom-line importance of the Downing Street Memo and how it confirms the insights of Daniel Ellsberg and the firsthand testimony of Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. TO will also send a crew to Washington to cover the John Conyers hearing on the Downing Street Memo. For the latest details on that event go to www.afterdowningstreet.org.

For You, Johnny Reb.

Art From Americas' Past.

When Honest Abe heard the news about your fall,
The folks thought he called a great Victory Ball.
But, he asked the band to play the song 'Dixie',
For you, Johnny Reb,
And, all that you believe.

Preaching to the Choir.

Excuse me, Blue State people. May I have your attention please..? Thank you.

I make it an obsessive habit to watch everything in our country lately. From down here in Louisiana, because of the 'Information Revolution' I keep surprisingly up to date on the current clusterfuck our nation has become.

Now, normally, I don't see things in red state/blue state terms. I was taught to believe we are ALL Americans first. Period. However, there is a red/blue problem that I simply can not remain silent on anymore. It touches on EVERYTHING we hope to do.

I see all our democratic and activist leaders, all on the move. It is truely a beautiful thing. The people are waking up, and the message is trickling out, slowly but surely. Our opposition to the tyranny of the Bush family bonds us in ways that transcend blue state red state and hold us firm against the fear. I see our leaders holding rallies in N.Y., L.A., Phoenix, and D.C.

What I do not see is rallies in Jackson, Shreveport, or Birmingham.

There may be a speech now and then, that gets heartily protested by the very loud minority, and then they are gone. Back to the blue states to preach to the chior. There is no democratic hope in the south because there are no democratic generals here fighting the republicans on thier own turf. Don't get me wrong there are dems here hard at work trying desperately to spoon out the ocean. But these dems are underfunded and COMPLETELY INVISIBLE in our daily lives.

Now perhaps, you have been told that we are all morons down here that spit at outsiders and dream of the days when slaves were ours to own. Perhaps thats the image you have. But nothing could be further from the truth. By tradition the southerners are DEMOCRATS. We are only red state because the damn republicans have been rigging elections down here for more than a century. You think Ohio was ugly...? Try Louisiana EVERY election day. But, who do we tell? We are left with the corrupted leaders or telling those who will pass it on to the yankees, who then turn around and forget they once violently overthrew and occupied the very soil I am sitting above as I write this. And there were consequences.

MANY MANY consequences. All of them political. None of them easy. I wonder at times, if Martin Luther King had been from Cali would he have found it worth dying for? I doubt it.

Coming down here to make a speech and then outrun the fruit throwers on your way back to bluer borders WILL NOT WORK. You are simply overlooking the TRUE problem of the south because it is what..? Distasteful?..Tedious?.. Dangerous?


And you are missing the opportunity of the ages.

The current shuck and jive campaign coming out of D.C. these days is being delivered with a southern accent. But, not eveyone who SPEAKS with an accent, THINKS with an accent. And it is WAY past time to come and engage those people in a VERY lengthy discussion. One that we can sleep on, and engage again in the morning. I have never once believed the republicans outnumber democrats down here. ONLY at the polls is this a republican stronghold, and if you believe the numbers from Florida can be skewwed it's not a hard leap to see the truth about the south.

The truth is, you have abandoned us, and we need you now more than ever. We have the numbers, and the courage, and the will. But, we can not go anywhere without leaders who are willing to risk just as much as we are.

When a hero does come forth I do not know if he will be northern, or southern, black, white, red nor blue. I do NOT know if that hero that leads us to rally down here will even survive the experience. What I do know is this, WHOMEVER that hero is, when they rise from the ashes of the old south, their names will live forever in the halls of heros among men.

When that hero does come, many, including me, will give all we have to protect them. But we can not protect what we can not reach.

When the rallies that electrify the blue states are over, and the chior goes home, there will STILL be a quiet sense of desperation in the deep south. As a region we are the poorest and most illiterate, even now. You could get it all back, and win the very heart and mind of the country.

But you can not take what you refuse to touch.

Christy Cole

What Democracy  

No Direction Home

This is another searing indictment of what Mark Twain accurately termed "the damned human race": Lost to the Only Life They KnewAn excerpt: Gideon is one of the "Lost Boys," a group of more than 400 teenagers — some as young as 13 — who authorities in Utah and Arizona say have fled or been driven out of the polygamous enclaves of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City over the last four years. His stated offenses: wearing short-sleeved shirts, listening to CDs and having a girlfriend. Other boys say they were booted out for going to movies, watching television and staying out past curfew. Some say they were sometimes given as little as two hours' notice before being driven to St. George or nearby Hurricane, Utah, and left like unwanted pets along the road.Authorities say the teens aren't really being expelled for what they watch or wear, but rather to reduce competition for women in places where men can have dozens of wives...

The Backwash of Empire
Shanghai SurpriseEverything old is new again -- the press-gangs are back
.When Marine Recruiters Go Way Beyond the Call(via Altercation)

Dark as a DungeonBush does so have an exit strategery in Iraq -- it's called "civil war"
:Pepe Escobar in The Asia Times.

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to LoseBush and Putin do a tag-team to thwart investigation of the massacre by Bush's favorite dissident-boiling despot:
U.S. Opposed Calls at NATO to Block Probe of Uzbek Killings

http://www.empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/

Art for Everyone 

How many more grieving families will there be
Welcome to the real war of Mr Bush and his Administration

At least 24 killed in 2 bombings in Iraq; bodies of 24 slain men found

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - A bomb exploded outside a bank in this northern city on Tuesday, killing 19 people, including pensioners waiting for cheques and child street vendors. The bodies of 24 men killed in ambushes were taken to a Baghdad hospital.
Full Story

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/Iraq/

'Beating a political stake in your black heart will be fulfillment of my life.

GI's mother slams Bush over war
Ouch: 'Beating a political stake in your black heart will be fulfillment of my life.'

Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.

"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.

Since her son's death, Sheehan has made opposition to the Bush administration a full-time job.

"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered.

NBC NEWS VERIFIES MEMOS

TIMELINE: THE PATH TO WAR IN IRAQ
New documents; Memos:
UK official knew Iraq case weak
- Condi pledged regime change in 2002 -
Brits knew Iraq WMD bid stalled
'Need to wrongfoot' Saddam -
PDFs: Iraq options doc - Legal case


http://www.rawstory.com/

State Dems:
Impeach Bush Cheney, Rumsfeld too
By David Callender June 13, 2005

Wisconsin Democrats are calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Loyalists at this weekend's state party convention in Oshkosh passed a resolution calling for Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against the three officials for their role in the war in Iraq.

The resolution contends that the administration "lied or misled" the United Nations, Congress, and the American public about the justification for the war. It cites the so-called "Downing Street memo" from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, as well as reports from U.N. weapons inspectors as evidence of widespread deception.

"Democrats, not only in Wisconsin but throughout the U.S., have been outraged by what we believe has been a clear cover-up of why the U.S. went into Iraq," said newly elected state party Chairman Joe Wineke.

Wineke said the resolution expresses the "the sense of frustration that Democrats in Wisconsin have over fighting a war for the wrong reasons."

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/local/index.php?ntid=43364&nt_adsect=edit

YOU LOSE FOX NEWS YOU DID NOT CONVICT HIM
Michael Jackson found innocent on all 10 counts in his child molestation trial.

Michael Jackson found not guilty
07:20 AEST Tue Jun 14 2005
AAP

AP - A jury acquitted Michael Jackson on Monday of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland ranch, vindicating the pop star who insisted he was the victim of mother-and-son con artists and a prosecutor with avendetta.
Jurors also acquitted him of conspiring to imprison his accuser and the boy's family at the storybook estate - a huge legal victory but one that may do little to improve his bizarre image.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=52061

Art for Everyone 

WHAT IS IN ROSSIS MAIL

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cheney: U.S. Not Aiming To Close Guantanamo

Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the administration has no plans to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as some prominent Democrats have recommended, but other Republicans said that reports of mistreatment of prisoners there have made the prison a growing global liability.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


In the opinion, Souter noted that black jurors were questioned more aggressively about the death penalty, and the pool was "shuffled" at least twice by prosecutors, apparently to increase the chances whites would be selected.



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

As progressives breathe a shallow sigh of relief over the "nuclear option" compromise, floundering GOP social security plans, and chatter of George Bush's "lame duck" presidency, a new team of Republican extremists are stepping up. Just as you thought Republicans in Washington were hearing voices of moderation, think again.

Remember Katherine Harris of Florida in 2000? Now, imagine Senator Katherine Harris?
Harris, now a congresswoman, who as Secretary of State of Florida in 2000 became a best friend of the Bush family, has set her eyes on the Senate.

But it's not fair to only point out Harris. All across the battleground states right wing contenders for office at all levels are making their intentions -- and their policy stances -- crystal clear. Look no further than Ohio where another Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who played the "Katherine Harris" role in last year's election, has his eyes set on the governorship.

Extremism takes root down-ballot and has matured within the Republican party for many years -- from candidates to operatives, financial contributors to policy analysts. While voices of moderation do remain, power rests in the base. Harris, Blackwell, Ralph Reed running for Lt. Governor in Georgia, Jerry Kilgore for Governor in Virginia, the list goes on and on.

ACT is on the ground in the battleground states today, analyzing the results from 2004, monitoring the current political climate, conducting polling and building carefully-targeted voter contact campaigns to test our strategies in '05 races -- at all levels -- to prepare for major races of 2006 and 2008. Our work isn't splashy or high-profile, especially in this off-year, but it is critically important to keep our work going year-round.

In the coming days we'll be rolling out our Democracy At Your Doorstep program. ACT State Directors will be posting weekly political reports from our targeted states and offering volunteers across the country the chance to respond to these reports and engage with battleground state voters on the issues that are most important to them. Our first outreach will be to new voters in Ohio, the tens of thousands of first-time voters who turned out in 2004 to make a difference. We need to keep these voters engaged and informed. And for that, we need you.

Together, we empowered millions of new and infrequent Democratic voters in 2004. These voters -- and many more communities outside of the GOP base -- are the keys to fighting extremism and changing our country. Now is the time to reach them.

So, as the days of summer come upon us and your attention turns away from politics, stay tuned to http://activist.acthere.com/page/m/xa4prsdynur/yLllNk for information, conversation and opportunities to play a role in fighting extremism where it starts -- on the ground.

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The Scourge of Militarism
By Chalmers Johnson

COMMENTARY: Imperial dreams are undermining our political institutions. Is America going the way of the Roman Republic?

For Marc. You are a Shiney Star type of Guy. 

NEWSFLASH NEWSFLASH NEWSFLASH NEWSFLASH
June 12, 2005
Cabinet Office paper: Conditions for military action

The paper, produced by the Cabinet Office on July 21, 2002, is incomplete because the last page is missing. The following is a transcript rather than the original document in order to protect the source.
PERSONAL SECRET UK EYES ONLY

IRAQ: CONDITIONS FOR MILITARY ACTION (A Note by Officials)

Summary

Ministers are invited to:

(1) Note the latest position on US military planning and timescales for possible action.

(2) Agree that the objective of any military action should be a stable and law-abiding Iraq, within present borders, co-operating with the international community, no longer posing a threat to its neighbours or international security, and abiding by its international obligations on WMD.

(3) Agree to engage the US on the need to set military plans within a realistic political strategy, which includes identifying the succession to Saddam Hussein and creating the conditions necessary to justify government military action, which might include an ultimatum for the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq. This should include a call from the Prime Minister to President Bush ahead of the briefing of US military plans to the President on 4 August.

(4) Note the potentially long lead times involved in equipping UK Armed Forces to undertake operations in the Iraqi theatre and agree that the MOD should bring forward proposals for the procurement of Urgent Operational Requirements under cover of the lessons learned from Afghanistan and the outcome of SR2002.

(5) Agree to the establishment of an ad hoc group of officials under Cabinet Office Chairmanship to consider the development of an information campaign to be agreed with the US.
Introduction

1. The US Government's military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace. But, as yet, it lacks a political framework. In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it.

2. When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine Crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq's WMD through the UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted.

3. We need now to reinforce this message and to encourage the US Government to place its military planning within a political framework, partly to forestall the risk that military action is precipitated in an unplanned way by, for example, an incident in the No Fly Zones. This is particularly important for the UK because it is necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action. Otherwise we face the real danger that the US will commit themselves to a course of action which we would find very difficult to support.

4. In order to fulfil the conditions set out by the Prime Minister for UK support for military action against Iraq, certain preparations need to be made, and other considerations taken into account. This note sets them out in a form which can be adapted for use with the US Government. Depending on US intentions, a decision in principle may be needed soon on whether and in what form the UK takes part in military action.

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1648758,00.html

The doctor who left a town for dead
WANTED BIG TIME IN QUEENSLAND

HEY CHRISTY THIS IS THE DOCTOR WHO IS WANTED BIG TIME HERE IN
QUEENSLAND. HE HAS THE STATE UP IN ARMS

US woman says she saw Patel A surgeon wanted in Queensland has been sighted in the US state of Oregon showing people through a house for sale a short distance from his home.

Full report

Background: The doctor who left a town for dead

Illusion As Art. 

This is a must watch video

Video: Hijacking Catastrophe :

Documentary featuring Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Tariq Ali, and many more experts speaking about the Neo-Con agenda and the cloud of fear which the Neo-Cons have settled over America.

This is a must watch video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6895.htm

http://snipurl.com/awgc

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Banned Contractor Soliciting Iraq Deals

An American firm accused of stealing millions from Iraq reconstruction projects and banned from further government contracts - have continued doing contracting work and have formed new companies to bid on such projects, The Associated Press has learned.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5069343,00.html

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War game latest weapon in US Army recruitment drive:

The war in Iraq is having a devastating effect on the willingness of Americans to sign up for military service. Officials have come up with an ingenious way of trying to address a growing recruiting crisis. They are giving away copies of a computer game called 'America's Army'. Real Video
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200506/r49562_131314.ram

http://snipurl.com/fj1h

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Iraqis find 20 bodies bound and shot in head:

The bodies of 20 people, bound and shot in the head, have been found on a military firing range in the eastern suburbs of Baghdad, police said today.
http://www.deepikaglobal.com/latestnews.asp?ncode=28720

http://snipurl.com/fj1d

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Downing Street Memo Protest In D.C. June 16th.

DSM PROTEST
Being held the same day the as the hearings on the Downing Street Memo!!!
Click to enlarge.

Art for the Boys 

“We don’t do body counts”
General Tommy Franks, US Central Command

Return of the body counts

With Americans souring on the war in Iraq, the U.S. military has started talking up the number of insurgents killed. Are we headed down the same corrupting road we did in Vietnam?

- - - - - - - - - - - -By Mark Benjamin

June 11, 2005 "Marines Kill 100 Fighters in Sanctuary Near Syria" was a front page headline in the Washington Post last month. The body count, coming from a Marine spokesman, was carried in other major papers that day. What was striking about the factoid, besides the elegantly even number, was that it showed how the U.S. military has increasingly released body counts in reports depicting successful operations in Iraq -- despite decrees from the highest levels of the Pentagon, throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that "we don't do body counts."

As the bloody insurgency continues in Iraq, the U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign is yielding frustratingly few tangible ways to show progress to the American people. If anything, the insurgency seems firmly entrenched, from reports of its air-conditioned underground bunkers to its own Ho Chi Minh Trail. Counting enemy bodies at least offers a number to grab on to, some sense of incremental victory.

"It may be that they regard it as being part of the good news story: that we are winning the war," John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, said about the military's stepped-up use of body counts in Iraq.

An extensive review of combat accounts from military commanders reveals that regular reporting of body counts appears to have begun with the battle for Fallujah in November 2004. US Marines' assault on the insurgent stronghold, launched immediately after the US presidential election, was considered critical to showing progress in the war. The Pentagon estimated 1,200 to 1,600 enemy fighters killed - though at the time the media noted a large and "mysterious" discrepancy in the body count reported following the battle.

If history offers any clue, counting dead insurgents is a misleading endeavor that can destroy trust in the Pentagon and ultimately lead to atrocities on the battlefield. During the Vietnam War, historians say, inflated body counts that sometimes included civilians shattered the Pentagon's credibility with the American people and undercut support for that war. Former soldiers from that era say that relying too much on body counts can drive soldiers in the field to commit atrocities in order to achieve a high number of kills - though there is no indication that is happening in Iraq. >>>continued

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061205B.shtml

Democracy in Action?
By Chip Pitts t r u t h o u t Perspective
Sunday 12 June 2005

Friday's Congressional hearing on the USA Patriot Act and civil liberties was indeed an interesting experience.

The hearing, called under a special rule by the Democratic minority members, was one of the relatively rare recent opportunities that a diverse selection of Patriot Act critics have had to voice their concerns to Congress, and the only opportunity thus far to begin to highlight the links between the depredations of rights at home and abroad.

It was also unique in ending abruptly in what the New York Times described as "an angry uproar," the Washington Post called "a cacophony of protests," and other news outlets simply agreed was "chaos."

At issue was the USA Patriot Act, portions of which sunset at the end of this year. The President gave yet another major speech urging complete renewal of those provisions last week, and the Senate Intelligence Committee after closed door hearings agreed with him that the law should not only be preserved, but expanded.

As if it's not enough that law enforcement can now obtain your library and bookstore records in secret and without probable cause, clandestinely search your home without prior notice, and consider you a terrorist for peaceful civil disobedience, the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to expand FBI administrative subpoena authority to obtain all kinds of records without even the semblance of judicial review, and even allow them to get copies of your mail.

Not only my organization, Amnesty International, but groups ranging from the ACLU and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, to Bob Barr's conservative coalition of gun owners and professional organizations ("Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances"), fault the administration's unwillingness to acknowledge the invasions of constitutional rights occasioned by the Patriot Act, and strongly oppose the unjustified additional powers sought.

As Fox News reported, "the hearing ended abruptly when committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., abruptly gaveled the meeting to an end and walked out, followed by other Republicans." Points of order raised by the Democrats were ignored.

Several Congressman at the hearing strongly criticized Amnesty International, mischaracterizing our positions and even stating that we were actually endangering American lives by documenting the administration's tragic and counterproductive torture policy. I was prevented from responding, until the barrage became so great that Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D- N.Y.) insisted, as a "point of decency," that I be allowed to do so. >>>continued

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061205X.shtml

VIDEO SPECIAL GOP Walks Out on Patriot Act Hearing

http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

Ministers Were Told of Need for Gulf War 'Excuse'
By Michael Smith The Sunday Times UK
Sunday 12 June 2005

"The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal."

Ministers were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

"US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia," the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality "would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation". >>>continued

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1650822,00.html

Hell On Earth In Iraq.

---I just heard reports over 20 people found shot execution style, while bound, found on military firing range this morning, didn't hear the location other than Iraq.---


June 10th, 2005 1:52 pm
In Baghdad, corpse on a street no longer shocks


BAGHDAD, June 10 (Reuters) - A few motorists passed by. They glanced over casually. Then looked away from the body lying on a street with fresh blood oozing from bullet wounds to the face.

The scene would shock people in most cities. But after two years of suicide bombings, shootings and kidnappings, the people of Baghdad seem numb to bloodshed that has scarred their city.

No police rushed to the scene. The body just lay face down near a pile of garbage as people went about their business in the southern district of Doura.

And even if police had shown an interest, delivering justice is a daunting task for officers who can barely defend themselves from insurgents who have killed many of their comrades.

The slain man might have fallen victim to anyone from guerrillas to criminal gangs thriving on the chaos of Baghdad.

Two men, a woman and a boy on a bicycle approached the body, lying face-down and covered by an old tablecloth weighed down by a chunk of cement to keep the makeshift shroud from blowing away. Who put the cover there was not clear.

One of the passers-by pulled it back, exposing a face hit by several bullets. He said carjackers had carried out the killing.

"I called the police when the carjackers were still here," he said. But no police came. Other motorists drove by.

"I hope God does not bless you," said the woman in the group, referring to the carjackers. "You are immoral dogs."


---My God...Please, be merciful. NOT IN MY NAME.---

Why?... WHY?...WHY?..WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? NEVER FORGET, We still do not have the answer to that question. 

Illusion as Art. 

From Britain...

The leak that changed minds on the Iraq war
Michael Smith



Six weeks ago The Sunday Times published the leaked minutes of a July 2002 Downing Street meeting in which Tony Blair committed Britain to war in Iraq months before parliament was consulted.
They detailed a secret pledge to President George W Bush to help oust Saddam, showed that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, had warned such action could be illegal and that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, had thought the case for war was “thin”.

By any standards these were fascinating revelations. Nothing, however, could have prepared us for what a worldwide impact the story would have. More than a month later it still features in the daily top 10 most popular stories on our website, with 330,000 people estimated to have logged on to read it.

Though it remains unclear to what extent the leaked documents had on the general election (held four days after the story broke), anger about the war is widely seen as the key reason for the government’s severely reduced majority.

What is clearer is that they are having a strong effect on public perception in America, where there has been a wave of interest in the leak. At least two websites, afterdowningstreet.org and downingstreetmemo.com, have been set up to draw public attention to the leaked minutes. The former received more than 1.6m hits on a single day last week (it averages above 1m a day) while the latter has been selling out of T-shirts bearing the legend: “Did you get the Downing Street Memo?” Last week the leaked documents stormed the mainstream US media when they were raised at a White House news conference, forcing Tony Blair and George Bush to address the issue.

The minutes showed that Sir Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, warned Blair’s war cabinet that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. The prime minister, who had chaired that July meeting, told the White House briefing room that “the facts were not being fixed in any shape at all”.

The American public is not so sure. Last week a Washington Post-ABC News poll found for the first time that a majority of Americans — 52% — felt the war in Iraq had not made the United States safer.

Today we publish further revelations in the news section in the form of a July 2002 Cabinet Office briefing paper.

It makes clear that both Blair and Bush have a lot to apologise for: “When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change,” it states, adding that “regime change per se is illegal”.

As a prime minister had agreed to do something that was illegal under British interpretation of international law, it was “necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support regime change”, the briefing paper says.

For Blair, “creating the conditions” meant going to the United Nations to get a unanimous resolution warning Iraq to co- operate with the inspectors or else. Bush needed the backing of Congress and he didn’t get that until October 11, 2002.

But as Geoff Hoon, then British defence secretary, said in that Downing Street meeting in July 2002, the “US had already begun ‘spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime”.

No bombs were dropped on southern Iraq in March 2002 but by July, with the “spikes of activity” in full flow, about 10 tons of bombs were being dropped a month. The problem was that the Iraqis didn’t retaliate. They didn’t provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed.

So at the end of August the allies started the air war anyway. The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone.

The authenticity of these figures is not in doubt. They were obtained from the government by parliamentary questions put by the Liberal Democrats so they are up on the Hansard website for all the internet bloggers to see.


Continues...link in headline.

Art From Americas' Past. 

St. Petersburg Times wakes up Florida!

The American people have been had
By PHILIP GAILEY
Published June 12, 2005

The war has taken a dangerous turn - not in Iraq but here at home. It has lost the support of a majority of Americans.

According to the latest Washington Post/ABC News Poll, for the first time since the war began a majority of the American public doesn't believe the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime has made the United States more secure. The survey also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents say the casualty rate in Iraq is unacceptable; two-thirds believe the U.S. military is bogged down; 60 percent say the war was not worth fighting.

If we learned anything from Vietnam, it is that it's difficult to wage and win a protracted war without public support. Lyndon B. Johnson learned that the hard way; so will George W. Bush. Johnson used a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. vessels in the Tonkin Gulf to ask Congress for a blank check he used to dramatically escalate the war in Vietnam. Bush used the post-9/11 fear of terrorism and slanted intelligence to claim Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened our security.

In both cases, the American people were had.

The growing pessimism about the war in Iraq suggests the public is not buying the upbeat assessments coming out of the Bush-Cheney administration. Americans don't need access to top secret documents to know the war is not the "cakewalk" administration hawks predicted it would be.

Bush may not realize it, but Amnesty International may have done him a big favor. The controversy the human rights group ignited over the treatment of Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has deflected the attention of journalists and war critics from an even more disturbing story - how all the president's talk about going to war as a last resort was just a ruse.

Seven months before the "shock and awe" bombing began in Baghdad, the Bush administration was bending intelligence to suit its purpose, which was to go to war come hell or high water.

Who says so? The head of British foreign intelligence, that's who.

It's all in the Downing Street memo, which was leaked to the Sunday Times of London just before last month's British elections. It created an uproar in Britain but has barely registered in the United States, mainly because the press was more interested in whether U.S. interrogators were desecrating the Koran at Guantanamo.

The top secret memo was written by Matthew Rycroft, a top aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair. It summarizes a report Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, gave Blair and his inner circle on July 23, 2002 after returning from talks with U.S. officials in Washington.

Sir Richard told the prime minister Bush seemed determined to topple Saddam Hussein by military force and that U.S. intelligence was "being fixed around that policy," according to Rycroft's notes of the meeting. "Military action was seen as inevitable," the notes said, quoting Sir Richard as saying, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction). But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, was quoted as saying the case for war was "thin" as "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

At a joint White House news conference last week, both Bush and Blair denied that intelligence had been "fixed" to justify military action.

"There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush said.

"No," Blair added, "the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all."

Some will ask: What's the point of bringing up the Downing Street memo now, two years after the invasion and at a time when terrorist suicide bombers are making life hell not only for U.S. troops but the Iraqi people? The point is this: President Bush didn't level with the American people before going to war. And he still hasn't.

Philip Gailey's e-mail address is gailey@sptimes.com

CHRISTY READ THIS GO TO PAGE TWO AND READ WHAT THE A******* DO TO THEIR SOLDIERS

Ten-Hut!
The Army's Bungling Recruitment
By Don EdwardsSunday,
June 12, 2005; Page B05


Nearly every day, anywhere from one to several U.S. soldiers or Marines die in Iraq, and even more are wounded. The news doesn't always make the front pages anymore, but the casualty rate has apparently registered deeply in the consciousness of young Americans and their families. The result is a dangerous decline in new enlistments that is depleting U.S. military resources and weakening our capacity to face additional conflicts or threats from abroad.
>>>continued

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100174.html

Art for Everyone 

WHATS IN ROSSIS MAIL BOX

About the Downing Street Memo...

US Media Shamed by Brit Journalist

By DAVE LINDORFF

At this stage, it seems almost pointless to say it, but once again, the corporate media in America have been exposed as a cowardly mass of toadies who cannot bring themselves to publish or air anything remotely critical of the administration unless compelled to do so by cattle prods...or a reporter from a foreign news organization doing what reporters are supposed to do routinely.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9109.htm

http://snipurl.com/fi2h

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Sixteen people killed execution-style found in Iraq:

The bodies of 16 people who were killed execution-style have been discovered in western Iraq, witnesses said on Friday, the latest grisly killings fueling fears of civil war in Iraq.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO021503.htm

http://snipurl.com/fi2j

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Roadside Bomb Kills Five Marines in Iraq :

Five U.S. Marines have been killed by a roadside bomb in western Iraq, the military said Friday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050610/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

http://snipurl.com/fi2m

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U.S. Military Chief Admits, 'Good and Honest' Iraqis Are fighting US forces :

He predicted attacks would continue to surge in intensity, as key milestones were reached, including the upcoming constitutional referendum.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9103.htm

http://snipurl.com/fi2t

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Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable:

Project in North Reveals Deep Divide Between U.S. and Iraqi Forces
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9106.htm

http://snipurl.com/fi2u

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The Occupiers Will Lose In Iraq:

America's military mission [in Iraq] has become impossible to succeed in," the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies has just written. The dramatic situation in Iraq is, indeed, well known. On the military side, violence goes on unabated.
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=168534

http://snipurl.com/fi4k

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What the Iraq fight really costs us:

Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard, argued that to defeat the insurgency in Iraq and establish a modicum of stability there would take one million U.S. soldiers and possibly 30 to 60 years.
http://snipurl.com/fi35

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Iraq sees no early prospect of oil export increase:

Iraqi crude exports will remain severely limited at just 1.5 million barrels daily until Baghdad is able to get foreign investors to boost output, Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said Friday.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=reutersEdge&storyID=8758073

http://snipurl.com/fi38

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Tribes Accused of Iraq Oil Protection Racket:

The state-owned North Oil Company (NOC) alleges that tribes paid to protect pipelines are behind many of the attacks on them around the Kirkuk oil fields.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-10-03.asp

http://snipurl.com/fi39

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Desertions blow hits Afghan army :

Hundreds of soldiers have deserted the Afghan National Army complaining of poor conditions and fierce resistance from the Taleban, US officials say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4078118.stm

http://snipurl.com/fi3b

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Chris Floyd: Blood Group :

The brutal system of torture, corruption, lawlessness and war established in Washington by the faction of President George W. Bush is now backed by the greatest military power in history, able to wipe whole nations from the face of the earth in minutes.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9098.htm

http://snipurl.com/fi3c

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Art for Everyone 

Randi Rhodes exposes Bush and his buddies business interests in Saddam's Iraq.

Listen here

GOP Chairman Walks Out of Meeting

Pelosi's Statement on Sensenbrenner

Chairman Silences Democrats at a Hearing

Memo on 9/11 Plotters Blocked

The Interrogation Room

See video here: http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/6/10/54149/5115

http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/randirhodes/index.php

THE ROVING EYE
Exit strategy: Civil war
By Pepe Escobar
Jun 10, 2005


"In reality, the electoral process was designed to legitimize the occupation, rather than ridding the country of the occupation ... Anyone who sees himself capable of bringing about political reform should go ahead and try, but my belief is that the occupiers won't allow him."
- Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

As Shi'ites and Kurds fought for three months to come up with an Iraqi cabinet, it is emerging from Baghdad that soon a broad front will emerge on the political scene composed of politicians, religious leaders, clan and tribal sheikhs - basically Sunni but with Shi'ite participation - with a single-minded agenda: the end of the US-led occupation.

This front will include, among others, what we have termed the Sinn Fein component of the resistance, the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and the Sadrists. It will refuse any kind of dialogue with new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and his government unless there's a definite timetable for the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces. Even the top Marine in Iraq, Major General Stephen Johnson, has admitted, "There will be no progress as long as the insurgents are not implicated in a political process."

But the proliferation of what many moderate Sunnis and Shi'ites suspect as being Pentagon-organized black ops is putting the emergence of this front in jeopardy. This is obvious when we see Harith al-Dhari - the AMS leader - blaming the Badr Brigades (the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution - SCIRI - in Iraq, a major partner in the government) for the killing of Sunni Arab clerics.

Breaking up Iraq

Several Iranian websites have widely reported a plan to break up Iraq into three Shi'ite southern mini-states, two Kurdish mini-states and one Sunni mini-state - with Baghdad as the seat of a federal government. Each mini-state would be in charge of law and order and the economy within its own borders, with Baghdad in charge of foreign policy and military coordination. The plan was allegedly conceived by David Philip, a former White House adviser working for the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). The AFPC is financed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has also funded both the ultra-hawkish Project for a New American Century and American Enterprise Institute.

The plan would be "sold" under the admission that the recently elected, Shi'ite-dominated Jaafari government is incapable of controlling Iraq and bringing the Sunni Arab guerrillas to the negotiating table. More significantly, the plan is an exact replica of an extreme right-wing Israeli plan to balkanize Iraq - an essential part of the balkanization of the whole Middle East. Curiously, Henry Kissinger was selling the same idea even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Once again this is classic divide and rule: the objective is the perpetuation of Arab disunity. Call it Iraqification; what it actually means is sectarian fever translated into civil war. Operation Lightning - the highly publicized counter-insurgency tour de force with its 40,000 mostly Shi'ite troops rounding up Sunni Arabs - can be read as the first salvo of the civil war. Vice President Dick Cheney all but admitted the whole plan on CNN, confidently predicting that "the fighting will end before the Bush administration leaves office".

But the destiny awaiting this counter-insurgency may be best evaluated by comparing it to Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 classic, The Battle of Algiers - one of the most influential political films ever, and supposedly a "must see" at the Pentagon. The French in Algeria in the early 1960s did indeed break the back of the guerrillas - but in the end lost the Algerian war. Talking about Vietnamization - the precursor to Iraqification - the Vietcong's Tet offensive in 1968 was lethal, but the counter-insurgency - Operation Phoenix - was even more lethal. In the end, though, the US also lost the war.

There's no Operation Phoenix going on in Iraq. The US has little "humint" (human intelligence), so it is incapable of penetrating the complex resistance tribal net - and not only because of its cultural and linguistic shortcomings. Even a west Baghdad neighborhood such as Adhamiyah is essentially an independent guerrilla republic. The daily, dreadful car-bombing litany will persist: whatever intelligence it comes across, the Pentagon does not share it with the Iraqi police, and the Iraqi police for its part is not exactly the best.

The US also does not have sufficient troops - so it has to resort to doomed Iraqification, using Shi'ites and Kurds to fight Sunnis. And to top it all, the US is blocked in the political sphere, because the real intelligence victory would mean convincing Sunni Arabs of the legitimacy of the political process: it's not going to happen, with only two Sunni Arabs in the 55-member committee in charge of drafting the new Iraqi constitution, and with Shi'ite death squads killing Sunni Arabs. >>>continued

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF10Ak03.html

Art for Everyone 

MEDIA MATTERS;

Live Links Below

This week:

"Scurrilous, despicable and politically motivated": New anti-Hillary attack book gets facts wrong, traffics in gay-baiting sexual innuendo

Downplaying the Downing Street Memo

News flash: Kerry was a war hero; Swifties are liars

Hypocritical coward Bill O'Reilly continues to attack Media Matters

MSNBC hires Jay Severin to make Tucker Carlson look neutral

http://www.mediamatters.org/

FOCUS: John Cory We Love Howard Dean
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061005Y.shtml

VIDEO SPECIAL: William Rivers Pitt Stand with Us
http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

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US in Talks with Iraqi Insurgents
By Rory Carroll The Guardian UK
Friday 10 June 2005

OUTKILL

Dean Was Right
By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t Perspective
Saturday 11 June 2005

"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth."
-- Revelation 3:15-16

If the leadership qualities of those in charge of the national Democratic Party could be squeezed into a shampoo bottle, the directions on the back of the bottle might read something like this: “Make tentative statement. Offer equivocation to avoid appearing adamant. Scramble for cover when colleague offers stinging critique of opposition. Stab colleague in back in public. Palpitate and fret, hem and haw. Lather, rinse, repeat.”

Quite a recipe for success, yes? Not lately.

For the last several years, the Democratic Party has been, for the most part, leaving skid marks on the street as they have retreated from confrontation after confrontation with the radicals who now control the Republican party. This retreat has gone from the ridiculous to the sublime to the utterly outrageous.

Here and there resistance has been put forth - on the Social Security issue, on the stem cell legislation, on the nomination of Bolton as UN ambassador - but all too often the most effective resistance to these and other disastrous policy initiatives has come from other Republicans, and not from the Democrats. It was the eloquence of Republican Senator Voinovich that threw sand in the gears of the Bolton nomination, and it was Republican Senator Specter’s promised override of any Bush veto of the stem cell legislation that has made that issue a problem for the White House.

And then along comes Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC, outspoken and uncompromising, swinging Willie Stark’s meat ax with a will and a purpose. He dared to say that he hates Republicans, that the leadership of that party hasn’t worked a day in their lives, that the GOP has become a radical hothouse of right-wing Christians, almost all of whom are white, and that House majority leader Tom DeLay should go back to Texas and get his looming prison sentence over with. Insert palpitations. Suddenly, Democrats like Joe Biden and Bill Richardson start knocking over furniture and old ladies in their rush to get to a microphone so they can distance themselves from the wild man.

Yes, yes, lather and rinse and repeat. The problem with all the equivocation is that it obscures a simple fact that requires exposure and discussion in this country: Dean was right. Ninety nine percent of Republicans in the state legislatures in all 50 states, and in Congress in Washington DC, are white. Even in states and districts with large minority populations, the Republican representatives for those places are almost uniformly white Christians.

Of 3,643 Republicans serving in state legislatures across the country, only 44 of them are minorities, amounting to 1.2%. Texas, with a minority population of 47%, has 106 Republicans in the state legislature. There are exactly zero African Americans and exactly zero Hispanics serving in that body as Republicans. In Washington, 274 of the 535 elected Senators and Representatives are Republican. Exactly five are minorities.

Of course, there are ethnic and religious minorities within the rank and file of the GOP, but every demographic analysis of the party’s makeup clearly shows the vast majority of Republicans fit exactly into the description offered by Mr. Dean. His point, by the way, was not that white Christians are bad people. His point was that, in this pluralist society made up of so much diversity, the Republican Party does not represent the true face of this country. He was also pointing out that the GOP has been taken over by that small, radical minority of white Christians who believe separation of church and state is evil, and who believe Biblical law is a better tool of governance than that pesky Constitution.

As for hating Republicans, the employment record of the GOP leadership, and DeLay’s date with a Houston cellblock, there is method to the supposed madness here. Those who question the wisdom of Dean firing broadsides like this look to the old lawyer’s maxim: When you have the law on your side, pound on the law, and when you have the facts on your side, pound on the facts, and when you have neither the law nor the facts on your side, pound on the table. On so many issues facing us today, Dean and the Democrats have both the facts and the law on their side. The question becomes, then, about why Dean is pounding on the table.

The answer is straightforward, and appropriately bold after several years of ineffective limp-noodle Democratic leadership. Every time Dean fires off one of his salvos, reporters flip open their notebooks. Headlines get made, discussion begins, and a whole lot of people start debating the facts and merits of his statements. Is the Republican leadership run by right-wing yahoos?

Is DeLay going to jail? Controversy begets press. Dean can see, as well as anyone else, how effective the moderate, soft-touch, treading-lightly approach has been working lately for the Democrats.

But how are we going to win those white Christian middle-America voters to our side by having Dean basically call them out? asks the ruffled Democratic leadership. The answer to this lies at the heart of what the Democratic party has been failing at for a while now. The voters who are supposedly going to be alienated by this kind of talk are the very same voters who look for guts, strength and straight talk from the leadership of this country. All too often, Democratic leaders come off sounding like they are saying seven things at once, leaving the impression that their spines are somewhat slippery. Boldness, on the other hand, begets confidence, even in disagreement.

These Dean statements also, coincidentally, whip the Democratic base into a roaring frenzy as they hear an actual Democratic leader speak their beliefs out loud and in public. One of the things Dean is working on every day is to redirect DNC fundraising away from the big-dollar donors who give equally to both parties in order to hedge their bets. Dependence on this breed of donor causes the party to crab towards the middle and avoid anything resembling true opposition.

Dean wants DNC fundraising efforts to be focused on the common citizen, the Democratic activist who has been screaming at the party to say what must be said, and Dean’s inflammatory statements spark the kind of donation avalanche that turned his Presidential campaign into a financial juggernaut. He may have lost in the end, but the manner in which he raised campaign money changed the face of electoral politics. He is porting those lessons into national DNC fundraising efforts, and statements like these go a long way towards making those efforts wildly successful.

Memo to Dean: Keep doing what you are doing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061105Z.shtml

THE BIG PICTURE;
At the fork of two rural roads in Mississippi, members of the Ku Klux Klan killed Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney sometime between the night of June 21 and and the morning of June 22, 1964.
(Photo: John F. Sugg)

Mississippi Terror: Roses for an Unmarked Killing Field
By John F. Sugg t r u t h o u t Report
Saturday 11 June 2005

It was an impulse, stopping at a florist in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on a pilgrimage south down State Road 19. I bought three white roses.

Two months ago, scoping out the town where three civil rights workers had been killed in 1964, I'd found the now-deserted food store on SR 19 where Ku Klux Klansmen had stopped the activists.

But it wasn't until my current visit that I found the off-the-main-road site, about two miles from where the chase ended, that became a killing field. No marker recounts the sensational tragedy. Even accident victims get little crosses along the roadsides, but not slain toilers for liberty.

The three voter registration workers - New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi - had been arrested on trumped-up traffic charges, and then freed late in the evening of June 21, 1964. The release by local cops was coordinated with the Klan, whose members followed the three men.

After forcing the activists off SR 19, the Klansmen drove Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman back to where County Road 515 branches off. CR 515 winds about a half mile before forking with CR 284. It was at that fork that the three courageous young men were murdered.

I don't know if someone had planned to cover up what happened at that nondescript junction, but where the blood actually spilled there are now electric transformer boxes sitting atop a concrete slab. I put the three roses on the ground next to the slab. I shuddered trying to imagine the three men's final minutes of terror.

Edgar Ray Killen - an 80-year-old, part-time Baptist preacher - is scheduled to go on trial Monday for the 1964 killings. He was tried in 1967 on federal civil rights charges - and the jury couldn't reach a decision. The vote was 11-1 - the lone dissent came from a woman who couldn't believe a minister would kill people.

Killen lives on SR 515, only about a mile down the rural road from the murder scene. I walked up to his front door; no answer although I could hear voices inside. Next door, a one-armed man wouldn't give his name, but confirmed his neighbor was Killen. He told me I'd better leave. Good advice. Two weeks ago, a British journalist knocked on the door of one of Killen's neighbors and was assaulted by a man wielding a metal pipe.

A brown car followed me after I left Killen's house. I turned in a driveway and went back towards SR 19. The brown car stayed on my tail. I stopped where I'd left the flowers. They were gone. I don't think it was the birds.

Killen is accused of being the mastermind of the assassinations. He allegedly pre-selected the spot for the killings. I wanted to ask him what he thinks when he drives by the junction. I noticed that across from his house is a Ten Commandments yard sign. I wanted to ask him about the Sixth Commandment.

John Sugg, senior editor of the Creative Loafing and Weekly Planet newspapers is covering the trial of Edgar Ray Killen.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061105B.shtml
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Poll: Bush Job Approval Dips to New Low
By Will Lester The Associated Press
Friday 10 June 2005

Washington - When it comes to public approval, President Bush and Congress are playing "how low can you go." Bush's approval mark is 43 percent, while Congress checks in at 31 percent, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found. Both are the lowest levels yet for the survey, started in December 2003.

"There's a bad mood in the country, people are out of sorts," said Charles Jones, a presidential scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Iraq news is daily bad news."

The public also is showing concerns about the direction of the country as the war in Iraq drags on. Only about one-third of adults, 35 percent, said they thought the country was headed in the right direction. Forty-one percent said they supported Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, also a low-water mark.

Gail Thomas, an independent who leans Democratic from Prattville, Ala., said the war in Iraq was a distraction after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack ordered by Osama bin Laden.

"They're not going after the one who did it," said Thomas. "They were too anxious to go after Saddam Hussein. All they're doing is getting our guys killed."

Car bombings and attacks by insurgents killed 80 US troops and more than 700 Iraqis last month. Pentagon officials acknowledge the level of violence is about the same as a year ago, when they were forced to scrap a plan to substantially reduce the US troop presence in Iraq.

While Bush has gotten generally low scores for his handling of domestic issues for many months, Americans have been more supportive of his foreign policy. Not any more.

The poll conducted for AP by Ipsos found 45 percent support Bush's foreign policy, down from 52 percent in March.

David Fultz, a Republican from Venice, Fla., is among those who are sticking with the president.

"In terms of where we're going in the future, President Bush is laying out a plan," said Fultz, an assistant principal at a middle school. "When it's all said and done, we'll be where we want to be. We need to help establish democracy in the Middle East."

Bush's popularity reached its zenith shortly after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when various polls found nearly 90 percent approved of the job he was doing. It was close to 80 percent when Ipsos started tracking attitudes about Bush at the start of 2002, and was just over 50 percent when the AP-Ipsos poll was started in December 2003.

Approval for Congress has dipped from the 40s early this year into the low 30s now. A majority of Republicans and Democrats said they don't approve of Congress.

Those figures, combined with Bush's low numbers, could make some lawmakers a little nervous.

"Presidents who are low in the polls have a hard time getting Congress to go along with them," said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "He has to persuade the people in Congress to follow his legislative agenda and they're all worried about 2006."

Support for Bush's handling of domestic issues remained in the high 30s and low 40s in the latest AP-Ipsos poll.

Thirty-seven percent support Bush's handling of Social Security, while 59 percent disapprove. Those numbers haven't budged after more than four months of the president traveling the country to sell his plan to create private accounts in Social Security. Support for his handling of the economy was at 43 percent.

The low numbers for Congress as an institution don't necessarily spell trouble for all incumbents.

"It's easier to despise an institution than to work up animosity toward an individual lawmaker," said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist who studies Congress. "The institution is held in low regard, but many of the individual representatives and senators are held in high regard."

The AP-Ipsos poll of 1,001 adults was taken June 6-8 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/10/AR2005061000338_pf.html

Memogate: Americans and Brits Demand Answers

t r u t h o u t Press Release
Saturday 11 June 2005

Military Families Against the War, in Britain, and AfterDowningStreet.org, in the United States, are working together to demand answers to the questions raised by the Downing Street Minutes and related evidence suggesting that the rulers of both nations conspired to deceive the public, Congress, and Parliament with regard to justification for the Iraq War.

Military Families Against the War is an organization of people directly affected by the war in Iraq. Our relatives and loved ones are members of the British Armed Services. We are opposed to the continuing involvement of UK soldiers in a war that is based on lies.

AfterDowningStreet.org is a coalition of organizations, including Gold Star Families for Peace and Veterans for Peace, and many other individual veterans and military families, including members of Military Families Speak Out.

Court Case Being Prepared Against Blair

Military Families Against the War (MFAW) is preparing to take Prime Minister Tony Blair to court to force through the demand for an independent and effective public inquiry into the background and decision to go to war in Iraq. This legal action is being taken in the names of 18 of the families whose sons and husbands have been killed in Iraq.

Memogate Hearings Scheduled for June 16 in Washington

On Thursday June 16, 2005, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and other Democratic Members will hold a Democratic hearing to hear testimony concerning the Downing Street Minutes and the efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence.

On May 1, 2005 a Sunday London Times article disclosed the details of a classified memo, also known as the Downing Street Minutes, recounting the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair that describes an American President already committed to going to war in the summer of 2002, despite contrary assertions to the public and the Congress. The minutes also describe apparent efforts by the Administration to manipulate intelligence data to justify the war. The June 16th hearing will attempt to answer the serious constitutional questions raised by these revelations and will further investigate the Administration's actions in the lead up to war with new documents that further corroborate the Downing Street memo.

Rally Scheduled for June 16 in Washington

Directly following the hearing, Rep. Conyers, Members of Congress, and concerned citizens plan to hand deliver to the White House the petition and signatures of over a half million Americans that have joined Rep. Conyers in demanding that President Bush answer questions about his secret plan for the Iraq war. For details on time and place and for downloadable flyers promoting the rally, please watch the top of the website AfterDowningStreet.org.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061105C.shtml

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Democrats List More Names in Inquiry on Bolton's Access

By Douglas Jehl
The New York Times
Saturday 11 June 2005

Worse than lying
While bullshit is hardly a new ingredient in personal and social lives, it seems to be growing in magnitude
 

POSTED FOR OUR KEV;

Worse than lying
11 June 2005

AS well as all the bull in politics, there's even more in our metaphoric and colloquial language. People are bullish, bull-headed and take the bull by the horns. A Hereford herd of bulls at the gate also wrecks china shops and thunders down Wall Street – to lock horns with the Angus, Longhorns and Brahmins that provide bullshit, bulldust and bullshit artists.

And now bullshit is the subject of serious philosophical inquiry in a little book called On Bullshit, published by the highly respected Princeton University Press. To the surprise and delight of the author, it's stampeding out of bookshops all over the world.

The words of wisdom on this improbable subject come from a 76-year-old moral philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt. Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at Princeton University in the US, he has been studying bullshit for more than 20 years and has come to the conclusion that bullshitting is at least as bad, and probably worse, than lying.

When we chewed the cud about it, Frankfurt pointed out that a liar has some respect for the truth. Otherwise he wouldn't feel the need to lie about it. Whereas a bullshit artist doesn't care about the truth. What he cares about is what you think about him.

To demonstrate, Frankfurt cited the example of a humbugging politician giving a Fourth of July address. (You may like to transpose what follows to Australia Day, Anzac Day or any other national celebration.) He drones on about "our great and blessed country" and how the founding fathers enjoyed God's guidance in providing the world with "a new beginning for mankind". But he doesn't really care what the audience feels about founding fatherhood or God or manifest destiny. First and foremost, he wants to make the right impression, to be seen as a patriot.

Frankfurt agreed that echoes of such humbuggery could be found in almost every speech given by an incumbent or would-be president. It's only when the humbugger starts making claims for, say, WMDs that we move from bullshit into lying.

But bullshit is bad enough.

The bullshitter does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does. "He pays no attention to it at all," says Frankfurt. "By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," says the professor. Thus the liar and the honest man are linked by a common, if not identical, regard for it – for both, the truth is a real concern. But not for the bullshitter.

Yet while the liar is disapproved of, even despised, the bullshitter is effectively forgiven. He gets away with it. And profits from it. The professor agrees that it's because the bullshitted are often complicit. Though people insist they can pick it a mile off, they hunger for it. The audience for a political stump speech knows it's bullshit but claps all the louder; the audience for some ranting buffoon of a televangelist sends him donations; and women viewing nonsensical cosmetics commercials run straight from the telly to the chemist's shop.

While bullshit is hardly a new ingredient in personal and social lives, it seems to be growing in magnitude and stench with our communication technologies, and the public can't get enough.
We probably take it lightly because we know the bullshitter knows he's talking bullshit and he probably knows we think it's bullshit.

So what's the harm?

Trouble is, says Frankfurt, that it gets harder and harder to "know how things truly are".

Matters of substance become impoverished and tawdry. At least lying has its standards.
So Frankfurt believes that the bullshit artist can be, already is, a threat to democracy.

We talked of pre-war speeches by Bush and Blair, how bullshit crossed the line into lies but was bad enough without them. Frankfurt factors in contemporary views – postmodernism comes to mind – where truth and falsity dissolve, where nothing can be claimed as a certainty. Is this is an environment that encourages, or at least tolerates, bullshit?

What was it that Marx said about everything solid melting into air?

On one level, Frankfurt's book is a great entertainment. But that doesn't entirely explain the way it's selling. Readers, it seems, share the good professor's anxieties about the problem.

Writing without resorting to jargon, Frankfurt has a reputation for trying to get "to the bottom of things" and has struck a chord by examining something that we've taken for granted, something short of a sin and outside the Commandments, that nonetheless undermines our public lives. "Even the most basic questions about bullshit," he says, "are not only unanswered but unasked."

He's right. And bullshit is getting thicker and thicker in our public and political lives. Before we get bogged in it, let's fight fire with fire.

There's only one antidote.

Whenever and wherever you hear it, call out . . . "BULLSHIT!"


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/

Art For Girls. 

The Foggiest War.

American Troops Open Fire On Iraqi Police, Officials Say

POSTED: 7:20 am EDT June 11, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi police said U.S. soldiers have mistakenly killed two security guards during a gun battle.

A military spokesman said the soldiers started shooting when a car came too close to an American armored patrol.

An American soldier in the lead vehicle of the convoy fired a warning shot to make the Iraqi vehicle move away, but its occupants returned fire on the convoy and sparked the gun battle.

In a separate attack in Baghdad, a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman blew himself up at the heavily guarded headquarters of a feared commando unit.

Five people have died from that attack.

Also, two Oil Ministry employees were shot and killed in a southern district of Baghdad.

http://www.wpxi.com/news/4597427/detail.html

Art For Boys. (Re-posted by request, sorry it took so long!) 

Art For Everyone. 

When Marines Meet Mercenaries.

---NOTE: MERCENARY is the word the MARINES were using.---

RENO, Nevada (AP) -- Security contractors were heckled, humiliated and physically abused by U.S. Marines in Iraq while jailed for 72 hours with insurgents, one of the detainees said Friday.

"It was disbelief the whole time. I couldn't believe what was happening," said Matt Raiche, 34, an ex-Marine who was one of 16 American and three Iraqi contractors detained at Camp Falluja last month.

"I just found it crazy that we were being held with terrorists, that we were put in the same facility with them," he told The Associated Press in an interview at his lawyer's office. "They were calling us a rogue mercenary team."

Defense officials said Thursday that the security guards for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Zapata Engineering were detained for three days. The contractors fired on Iraqi civilian cars and U.S. forces in Falluja, 40 miles west of Baghdad, the Defense officials said.

Company president Manuel Zapata said the only shot fired by his workers was a warning blast after they noticed a vehicle following them. (More on Falluja incident)

The military has denied the contractors were abused. No charges have been filed against any of the contractors, who the military said were separated from suspected insurgents.

Raiche, of Dayton, Nevada, said the contractors were stopped and taken into custody on May 28. He said a Marine told him that shots had been fired, and Raiche told him, "It wasn't us."

Raiche said several of the contractors were interrogated before they were released June 1 with no official explanation for their detention.

Raiche said guards intimidated the detainees with dogs, made them strip and told them to wear towels over their heads going to the restroom, so insurgents in the facility would not recognize and harm them, Raiche said.

One of his colleagues was slammed to the ground by a guard, he said.
"His head bounced off the asphalt." Raiche said. "He told me he heard one guard say to another, `If he moves, let the dog loose."'

Raiche said his colleague told him that a guard then reached down and "squeezed his testicles so hard he could barely move."

When Raiche first arrived at the facility, he said a guard ordered him to the ground and put a knee in his back. He said he heard one Marine say, "How does it feel now making that big contractor money?"

Continues, link in headline...

---Sooo let me get this straight. You can ride around shooting at innocent Iraqis at random, then deliberately fire on MARINES and NO CHARGES ARE FILED?...OH and BTW..MERCENARIES ARE UNAMERICAN and you cowards cry awful easy when war profits come hard you chickenshit warhawking spree killers!

Whaaa we got abused, they treated us like Iraqis..WHAAAWHAAA FUCKING WHAAA...Welcome to the party assholes.----

Art For Everyone. 

From the San Francisco Chronicle..

EDITORIAL.Link Above.

Bush and 'the memo'
Friday, June 10, 2005


PRESIDENT BUSH apparently thinks he can dismiss the damning "Downing Street memo" with a few glib words.

If he is right, it is a sad commentary on the state of American democracy and values.

The memo, recounting the details of a July 23, 2002, meeting at British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official residence on 10 Downing St., strongly suggested that the message had been sent across the Atlantic that the Bush White House had made the decision to wage war on Iraq. The minutes of the meeting indicated that Blair and his top-level intelligence and foreign-policy aides were given clear signals that military action was "inevitable."

In the most disturbing passage of the minutes, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, reporting on his recent trip to Washington, told the group that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

Bush was finally asked about the memo directly this week, during a media availability with Blair. Bush tried to discredit the memo because of the timing of its disclosure -- just days before Blair's re-election. But it is important to note that no one has challenged the authenticity of the memo nor the accuracy of its account of the meeting.

Bush also scoffed at the suggestion that the decision to go to war had been made by July 2002, nearly a year before U.S. bombs began raining on Baghdad. "There's nothing farther from the truth," Bush told reporters. "My conversation with the prime minister was, how can we do this peacefully?"

Americans deserve to have a more intensive investigation and expansive explanation to the extremely serious allegation that their government "fixed" intelligence to justify a pre-emptive war. The White House wants to dismiss it as "old news" and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress assume they can shrug off the demands of a bloc of Democrats -- led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. -- for hearings on the Downing Street memo.

There should be no statute of limitations -- or shortness of public attention span -- on an issue that cuts to the core of this government's integrity and credibility. Congress must fully investigate the actions in Washington that led the highest officials in Great Britain to be convinced that the Bush administration was hell-bent on war and working to concoct a rationalization for it.

Tell me again georgie...WHY do they hate us?