Blairs' Party Starts Eating Its' Own

Labour MPs

blame bombings

on Iraq war
By Colin Brown and Andrew Grice
Published: 16 July 2005 Link



The uneasy truce inside the Labour Party over the London bombings ended last night as an ex-cabinet minister and left-wing Labour MPs linked the attacks with the war in Iraq.

Left-wing Labour MPs said they would use a conference in London today to pile the pressure on Tony Blair to hasten the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. And Clare Short, the former cabinet minister, said in a television interview to be broadcast tomorrow that she "had no doubt" that the bombings were connected to the Iraqi conflict.

Ms Short said the anti-terror legislation being planned by Mr Blair would act as a recruiting sergeant for the terrorists. She said it was wrong that Muslims should grow up in Britain willing to contemplate killing innocent civilians, but coupled her condemnation of the bombing with criticism of British foreign policy.

"Some of the voices that have been coming from the Government that talk as though this is all evil, and that everything we do is fine, when in fact we are implicated in the slaughter of large numbers of civilians in Iraq and supporting a Middle East policy that for the Palestinians creates this sense of double standards - that feeds anger," she said in a recorded interview for GMTV.

John McDonnell, chairman of the 500-strong Labour Representation Committee, which is staging the one-day conference, will lead calls for Britain to pull troops out of Iraq. He will tell the Prime Minister: "Please do not try to tell us that the war in Iraq played no part. This assertion is simply intellectually unsustainable. Now is the time to prevent further violence by renouncing violent solutions ourselves.

"For as long as Britain remains in occupation of Iraq, the terrorist recruiters will have the argument they seek to attract more susceptible young recruits to bomb teams. Britain must withdraw now."

Downing Street has published a list of al-Qa'ida attacks on the West from the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993, to show that they started before the Iraq war. But a member of the left-wing Campaign Group said: "We are going to set the cat among the pigeons. No Labour MP has uttered a word about Iraq since the bombings, but they have to be seen in context. "

Military families urge governors to oppose Guard deployments

July 16th, 2005 5:38 pm
Link Associated Press AP

DES MOINES -- Military parents and spouses are calling on the nation's governors to oppose future deployment of National Guard troops overseas and work harder to bring home troops now serving in Iraq.

"We need our governors to raise their voices louder than ever," said Boston resident Nancy Lessin, who has a son who served in Iraq and traveled from Boston to speak at Friday's rally in Des Moines, where the National Governor's Association is meeting this weekend.

"Now is the time for the governor's to fully support the National Guard by honoring the fallen and opposing the deployment of their Guard by calling for all troops to be brought home now," she said.

The rally and a memorial service planned later in the day were organized by the American Friends Service Committee, Military Families Speak Out and a dozen other groups fed up with rising casualties, the lack of training and equipment and the overseas deployment of soldiers who are needed at home.

Highlighting the casualties, organizers set out 232 pairs of combat boots -- one for each National Guard soldier killed in Iraq -- along a public plaza two blocks from the convention center where the nation's governors are meeting.

Chief executives from 33 states are attending the annual summer meeting of the National Governor's Association, which opens Saturday. Education, health care and Medicaid costs and economic development highlight the agenda.

But concerns some governors have about the broader role of the National Guard and the stress deployments have had on states could come up, said Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, the meeting's host. Vilsack and others have argued that the size of the military is too small and too much reliance is being placed on the National Guard.

Celeste Zappala, of Philadelphia, echoed Vilsack's comments.

Zappala said her son, Sherwood Baker, was killed last year, the first Pennsylvania National Guard soldier killed in combat since World War II.

She criticized the decision to send Guard troops to war zones overseas, saying such missions betray how the Guard is marketed to recruits and contradicts its intended purpose of protecting the home borders or assisting during emergencies and natural disasters.

She joined others in criticizing the war and reports that Guard troops receive inferior training and equipment, and are underpaid.

"This war is a betrayal of the nobility of the Guard, our services and the democracy they seek to protect," said Zappala, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. "And it's based on lies and fabrication."

At the rally, organizers also held enlarged photographs of Iowa guard members killed in combat and a banner stating: Stop the Occupation: Bring Home the Troops."

"Some asked, 'Can they do that?' "

War protester pulled from Oswego County parade, arrested
Saturday, July 16, 2005
By Charles McChesney

Link
Mark Harris, a 20-year veteran of the Air Force, was not pleased to see a sign-carrying Iraq war protester in Thursday night's Mexico Volunteer Fire Department Field Days parade.

What he saw happen to the man, though, raised some questions for him and, he said, his children.

An Oswego County sheriff's deputy pulled Joshua A. Davies, 23, of 25B North St. in Mexico, out of the parade and charged him with disorderly conduct. Davies had been walking in the parade carrying, Harris said, an "Impeach Bush" sign and another sign calling for an end to the war in Iraq.


Harris said he saw Davies get searched, handcuffed and put in a sheriff's patrol car. Harris said Davies was kept in the car until the parade ended about 45 minutes later.

"My kids watched it," said Harris. "Some asked, 'Can they do that?' "

They were talking about what the deputy did, not the protester. And it wasn't just children asking the question, Harris said. "There were older people, senior citizens, saying it too."

Oswego County Sheriff Reuel Todd said Davies was arrested because he was a spectator who jumped into the middle of the parade. "He was not entered in the parade," Todd said.

"We had a complaint that he disrupted the parade," Todd added. "He was arrested and released on an appearance ticket."

A man who answered the phone at the Mexico fire station, who declined to give his name, said Friday that all anyone had to do to be in the parade was ask permission.

"I felt bad that he was there," Harris said of Davies, "but I thought he had the right to his opinion."

"This was a signal to the kids that you can't do that here," Harris said. "Dissent, I mean. I thought that's what being an American means - the right to protest, to speak your mind."

Davies could not be reached for comment.

Never Forget What His Lies Cost Our Nation.

Click to enlarge for detail

C.I.A. Agent Rips Bush To Pieces

The Intelligence Challenge:

Can We Trust Our President?

Link
By Brent Cavan, Jim Marcinkowski, Larry Johnson, and Jane Doe

We trained and worked at the CIA with Valerie Plame. We presented the following statement at a hearing on Capitol Hill in October 2003. In light of the latest White House sanctioned assault on Valerie Plame and her character, our testimony remains relevant and accurate. All of us were undercover. Brent Cavan and Larry Johnson worked as analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence. Jim Marcinkowski and Jane Doe were case officers and served overseas. Jane Doe's real name is not being used because she was involved in counter terrorism operations and could be at risk if her identity were divulged. We've got each other's back.

We slogged through the same swamps on patrols, passed clandestine messages to each other, survived a simulated terrorist kidnapping and interrogation, kicked pallets from cargo planes, completed parachute jumps, and literally helped picked ticks off each other after weeks in the woods at a CIA training facility. We knew each other’s secrets. We shared our fears, failures, and successes. We came to rely on each other in a way you do not find in normal civilian life. We understood that a slip of the tongue could end in death for those close to us or for people we didn’t even know. We were trained by the best, to be the best. We were trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. They may not appreciate what they have created.

Our joint training experience forged a bond of trust and a sense of duty that continues some eighteen years later. It is because of this bond of trust that the authors of this piece and two other colleagues, all former intelligence officers, appeared on ABC’s Nightline to speakout on behalf of the wife Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a sensitive undercover operative outted by columnist Robert Novak. The Ambassador’s wife (we decline to use her name) is a friend who went through the same training with us. We acknowledge our obligation to protect each other and the intelligence community and the information we used to do our jobs.

We are speaking out because someone in the Bush Administration seemingly does not understand this, although they signed the same oaths of allegiance and confidentiality that we did. Many of us have moved on into the private sector, where this Agency aspect of our lives means little, but we have not forgotten our initial oaths to support the Constitution, our government, and to protect the secrets we learned and to protect each other. We still have friends who serve. We protect them literally by keeping our mouths shut unless we are speaking amongst ourselves. We understand what this bond or the lack of it means.

Clearly some in the Bush Administration do not understand the requirement to protect and shield national security assets. Based on published information we can only conclude that partisan politics by people in the Bush Administration overrode the moral and legal obligations to protect clandestine officers and security assets. Beyond supporting Mrs. Wilson with our moral support and prayers we want to send a clear message to the

political operatives responsible for this.

You are a traitor and you are our enemy. You should lose your job and probably should go to jail for blowing the cover of a clandestine intelligence officer. You have set a sickening precedent. You have warned all U.S. intelligence officers that you may be compromised if you are providing information the White House does not like. A precedent, as one colleague pointed out during our brief appearances, allows you to build out a case based on previous legal actions and court decisions. It’s a slippery slope if it lowers the bar.

Ambassador Wilson’s political affiliations are irrelevant. Political differences serve as the basis for the give and take of representative government. What is relevant is the damage caused by the exposure that Ambassador Wilson’s wife as a political act intended to undermine Wilson’s view.

It is shameful on one level that the White House uses the news media, its own leaks, and junior Congressmen from Georgia, among others, to levy attacks on Ambassador Wilson. Moreover they discount what he has to say, his value in the Niger investigation, and suggest his wife’s cover is of little value because she was “a low-level CIA employee”. If Wilson’s comments or analysis have no merit, why does the White House feel the need to launch such a coordinated attack? Why drag his wife into it?

Not only have the Bush Administration leakers damaged the career of our friend but they have put many other people potentially in harm’s way. If left unpunished this outing has lowered the bar for official behavior. Further, who in their right mind would ever agree to become a spy for the United States? If we won’t protect our own officers how can we reassure foreigners that we will safeguard them? Better human intelligence could prevent any number of terror incidents in the future, but we are unlikely to get foreign recruits to supply it if their safety cannot be somewhat assured. If more cases like Mrs. Wilson’s occur, assurances of CIA protection will mean nothing to potential spies.

Politicians must not politicize the intelligence community. President Bush has been a decisive leader in the war on terrorism, at least initially. What about decisiveness now? Where is the accountability he promised us in the wake of Clinton Administration scandals? We find it hard to believe the President lacks the wherewithal to get to bottom of this travesty. It is up to the President to restore the bonds of trust with the intelligence community that have been shattered by this tawdry incident.

We joined the CIA to fight against foreign tyrants who used the threat of incarceration, torture, and murder to achieve their ends. They followed the rule of force, not the rule of law. We now find ourselves with an

administration in the United States

where some of its members have chosen

to act like foreign tyrants. As loyal

Americans and registered Republicans

we implore President Bush to move

quickly and decisively against those who,

if not apprehended, will leave his

Administration with the legacy of being

the first to allow political operatives to

out clandestine officers.


---Hell Yeah, CIA!!!!...Oh, its a party now.---

Bring Them Home

Mosul,Iraq

Save A Soldier. Impeach Bush.

Iraqs' Civil War Has Come

Tonight, full civil war has engulfed Iraq. Not even the liars, who made it so, can deny it anymore.

A slaughter is happening. Right now. It will not stop. Very soon, none of us will be unaffected. They are doing EXACTLY as bush told them to do.

They are 'bringing it on'.

And they will bring it here.

Sleep well.
If you still sleep at all.

Not Hate, Vengeance

Mundher al-Adhami07/16/05
"The Guardian"

- - The two-minute silence brought the tears forth again, as I thought about the victims, and their tenuous connections with me. Shahara Islam, who died on the number 30 bus, is from Plaistow, where one of my daughters lives. All those others, whose pictures stare out of our newspapers, worked in London, where I also work, and I wonder if I ever crossed paths with them. Then there is the 18-year-old who killed them and himself. He is from Leeds where another member of my family lives. He too is a victim of religious madness. And then I think of the 32 children who lived in a poor area of Baghdad and died in a suicide bombing there on Wednesday. I know the area, and I cry for those children too.

Tony Blair talks about "them" hating "our values and our way of life". But I have seen atrocities like last week's London bombings taking place in Iraq over the past two years. Attacks there, as those in London, are not about hating anybody's way of life, but straightforward revenge: revenge for Falluja and al-Qaim - and for Palestine and Afghanistan, which have been subsumed in them.The pictures of Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, with their dust and grime, might be different to the pictures of the London bombs, but they represent a continuity. The war of revenge and collective punishment has arrived in London. And it has its own rationality. Don't give me the nonsense about why do they hate us. They don't.

The response to the neo-colonial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq should surprise no one. Islamist extremism and terrorism, unknown in Iraq before occupation, now fights side by side with the more measured Iraqi resistance. It responds with callous bombs there, and now in the west

.The spirit of revenge becomes more planned, merging with nationalist or faith ideology such as al-Qaida's, and the targets become more diffuse. Perhaps even in the west, identification with innocent people hit by bombs and napalm - their voices unheard and names unknown - in remote lands of the prophets makes for a holy madness among susceptible youngsters.

As other suicide bombers have said, they may regret the loss of innocent lives in their political, murderous acts - but they atone with their own lives and hope God forgives them. The logic is clear: your security is only assured if ours is. If our women and children are killed, then your women and children are killed.

The policies of Bush and Blair have made life much more dangerous for all of us. Muslims in London are as much victims of atrocities as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. And, as happened after September 11, those back home phone, worrying about us here - because of the bombs as much as a racist backlash.

The British public have deep sympathy and understanding of the folly of the Iraq war, and will not condone any backlash. On the other hand, they have not yet made their mark as the people of Spain and others did, forcing their governments to withdraw from Bush's evil "coalition of the willing". And they should.

183; Mundher al-Adhami, an exile from Saddam Hussein's regime, is a co-founder of the Iraq Anti-Occupation Forum - Email - mundher.aladhami@hotmail.com© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Link

11 U.S.Soldiers Arrested, Iraqi Soldiers Attacked, Saturday, In Bagdhad.

The Associated Press
Saturday 16 July 2005

Baghdad - Eleven US soldiers have been charged with assaulting detainees in Iraq, the military said Saturday, while three British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in a rare attack in the relatively stable southern part of the country.

Also Saturday, suicide attackers killed at least nine Iraqi forces in separate attacks in Baghdad and just south of Mosul as insurgents kept up their campaign against the nation's US-trained security force.

Iraqi police also arrested a would-be suicide bomber in the capital before he could detonate an explosive belt among a crowd mourning the victims of an attack earlier this week that killed 27 people, mostly children, an official said. It was the second thwarted attack this week.

The US military said in a statement that the charges against the 11 troops, who served in the Baghdad area but were not otherwise identified, were filed Wednesday after another soldier complained about the alleged assaults.

"None of the insurgents required medical treatment for injuries related to the alleged assault," the statement added. "Only one of the suspected terrorists remains in custody of coalition forces at this time."

The soldiers had been assigned to the Army's Task Force Baghdad but were taken off-duty pending the investigation, the military said, adding that the Army's Criminal Investigation Division would determine whether they should face trial by court-martial.

"Allegations of illegal activities will always be thoroughly investigated," said Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a Task Force Baghdad spokesman.

US commanders have been especially sensitive about alleged mistreatment of detainees since the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison resulted in a major scandal involving America's handling of prisoners both here and in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.>>>>continued

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/071605A.shtml

Suicide Blast at Iraq Gas Station Kills 54

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 16, 2005
Filed at 5:56 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --
An insurgent suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body Saturday,triggering a huge explosion at a gas station near a mosque south of Baghdad and killing at least 54 people. The attack capped
a string of three major bombings over the past four days that killed at least 120. >>>>continued

Police release image of suspects

Police have released the first picture of all four London bombing suspects together, captured on CCTV as they set out on their mission, in a bid to find out more about their final movements.

The still photo shows the men, carrying rucksacks, at Luton station at approximately 7.20 a.m. on July 7, the morning of the attacks which killed at least 55 and injured 700 more.

FULL STORY

Suicide bomber kills 60 near Baghdad

Saturday, July 16, 2005 Posted: 2047 GMT (0447 HKT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a propane fuel tanker parked near a gas station south of Baghdad Saturday evening, killing at least 60 and wounding as many as 100 people, police sources said.
The massive blast occurred in the center of Musayyib along a dangerous stretch in Babil province known as the Triangle of Death about 45 miles south of the capital. Musayyib is predominantly Shiite.

The explosion destroyed a neighboring apartment complex and damaged a Shiite mosque and surrounding businesses, police said.

The tanker entered Musayyib after being searched at the city's entrance and parked at the city center, according to police. The bomber, strapped with an explosive vest, approached the tanker and detonated. Police are calling it a coordinated attack, suggesting the tanker's driver was part of the attack.

In December a suicide bomber exploded a tanker truck filled with gasoline and killed nine people in the Baghdad district of Mansour.
Other violence

Insurgents unleashed more deadly violence across the country.

In a village near the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside an Iraqi police station, killing six police officers and wounding 16 other people, police and the U.S. military said.

In the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, a suicide car bomb targeting a police commando convoy killed a police commando, a civilian and two children, police told CNN.
Also wounded were 11 people, police said.

The attacks come a day after insurgents launched seven deadly car bomb attacks across the capital.(Full story)

British military officials said three British soldiers died early Saturday from injuries they received in hostile action in southern Maysan province.

They were from the 1st Battalion, Staffordshire Regiment, based at Tidworth in Wiltshire.
Two other soldiers were wounded and treated at a facility near Basra.

According to CNN research, 93 British troops have died in the Iraq war.

Other developments

The U.S. military has charged 11 Task Force Baghdad soldiers with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, military officials said Saturday. A report by a Task Force Baghdad soldier alleges military personnel attacked the suspected insurgents in Baghdad July 13, according to a written statement issued by the task force.

The U.S. military said forces in northern Iraq detained nine insurgent suspects in Tal Afar operations, and seized weapons in Mosul.

Two Katusha rockets struck the Risala neighborhood of Mahaweel, near Hilla, wounding two Iraqi civilians, police said

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/16/iraq.main/index.html

We See You!!!

Taken From Somewhere Directly Above You.

Smile, your on Candid Camera.!!!

UPDATE: We have now obtained some smoking hot shower photos of Rossi (a.k.a.Kangaroo), taken from the exact same sattelite. We will be selling them on E-Bay, if at any time she ever runs for public office.

Possibly One Of The Most Disturbing Things I Have Ever Read

Hardball Recruiter Gets Promoted

(CBS)
An Army recruiter accused of lying to young would-be soldiers to meet recruitment goals – has not been disciplined as the Army promised. Instead, he’s been promoted, reports CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan.

Sgt. Thomas Kelt – the Houston soldier that caused a nation wide stand-down of recruiting offices after it was discovered he had threatened a young man with jail – was tracked down by Mark Greenblatt of CBS’s KHOU-TV.

Turns out even though he violated the Army’s strict recruitment guidelines -- and officials promised swift corrective action – Kelt has instead been transferred to another recruiting office where he has been promoted to supervisor.

The Army says he’s the perfect person to

be in charge of other recruiters since he

experienced first hand what happens

when ethics rules are broken.

The Army says it prosecuted 325 cases of recruiter fraud last year. Thirty-five of those were relieved of duty, hundreds more were given reprimands. But as the war in Iraq continues, and the casualties mount, Army enlistments are now about 16 percent behind current goals.

The young man who was threatened by Kelt is disappointed and says the Army’s reaction to the problem is an indication it really doesn’t’ care about how it gets recruits into the army – as long as the enlistment quotas continue to be met.

In May, CBS News Correspondent Bob McNamara reported that the Army planned to halt recruiting for one day to re-instruct its recruiters on what they may and may not legally do to persuade young people to enlist. The retraining "stand-down" occurred on May 20.

As McNamara reported in May, "Going Army" and making history appealed to 20-year-old Chris Monarch, so he called a Houston recruiting office.

"I recognized the name," he said. "His name was Kelt."

Sgt. Thomas Kelt was the recruiter.

But a new baby changed Monarch's plan to enlist and he cancelled his meeting with the recruiter.

"I said I'm a volunteer firefighter and eventually gonna try to go career with it and I'm just not interested anymore and I hung up the phone," Monarch said.

But the recruiter wouldn't take no for an

answer -- with a phone message

threatening Monarch with arrest if he

didn't show.

"By federal law you got an appointment with me at two o'clock this afternoon at Greenspoint Mall." said Kelt. "OK, you fail to appear and we'll have a warrant, OK? So give me a call back."

In fear, Monarch called the recruiter back.

"He said, 'Oh Chris, don't worry about that. That's just a marketing technique I use,"' Monarch recounted.

Reporter Mark Greenblatt of CBS affiliate KHOU-TV questioned recruiter Sgt Thomas Kelt.

Greenblatt: "I'd just like to know why you have called up young men threatening to arrest them if they don't come and talk to you?"

Kelt: "No comment."

Greenblatt: "You told the young man that this is a standard marketing technique that you use. Is that true?"

Kelt: "No comment. No comment."

Responding to the story at the time, General Michael Rochelle, the head of U.S. Army recruiting, said: "It's really an insult to other Army recruiters who are handling themselves and conducting themselves in the proper way," he said.

Kelt's recruiting behavior was one of various questionable tactics that prompted the Army retraining of recruiters. In Colorado, 19-year-old Michael Flaherty's recruiter gave him a laxative to lose weight to pass a physical.

From fake diploma's from phony schools, detox kits to beat drug tests, Denver's CBS station KCNC uncovered a number of recruiter fraud cases.

"It's very stressful," said former recruiter Jeffery Bacon.

Bacon says he's been busted from Sergeant to Specialist for not meeting his quota of 24 soldiers a year.

"I'm losing my house because I'm losing my job, you know. I'm in financial debt," Bacon said.

This year the Army needs over 101,000 new soldiers world-wide. But as the war continues and volunteers are harder to find military recruiters face the toughest sell -- ever.


--Unbelievable....Just incredibly stupid, arrogant, ignorant, and a TOTAL affront to the LAWS that govern US. I, for one, am personally fucking offended. That will be my son in 3 years.--

Art For Girls

The Plame Name Game...Enter;Colin Powell

State Dept. Memo Gets Scrutiny in Leak Inquiry on C.I.A. Officer


By RICHARD STEVENSON
Published: July 16, 2005

This article was reported by Douglas Jehl, David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson and was written by Mr. Stevenson.


WASHINGTON, July 15 - Prosecutors in the C.I.A. leak case have shown intense interest in a 2003 State Department memorandum that explained how a former diplomat came to be dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission and the role of his wife, a C.I.A. officer, in the trip, people who have been officially briefed on the case said.

Investigators in the case have been trying to learn whether officials at the White House and elsewhere in the administration learned of the C.I.A. officer's identity from the memorandum. They are seeking to determine if any officials then passed the name along to journalists and if officials were truthful in testifying about whether they had read the memo, the people who have been briefed said, asking not to be named because the special prosecutor heading the investigation had requested that no one discuss the case.

The memorandum was sent to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, just before or as he traveled with President Bush and other senior officials to Africa starting on July 7, 2003, when the White House was scrambling to defend itself from a blast of criticism a few days earlier from the former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, current and former government officials said.

Mr. Powell was seen walking around Air Force One during the trip with the memorandum in hand, said a person involved in the case who also requested anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about talking about the investigation.

Investigators are also trying to determine whether the gist of the information in the document, including the name of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, Mr. Wilson's wife, had been provided to the White House even earlier, said another person who has been involved in the case. Investigators have been looking at whether the State Department provided the information to the White House before July 6, 2003, when Mr. Wilson publicly criticized the way the administration used intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.

The prosecutors have shown the memorandum to witnesses at the grand jury investigating how the C.I.A. officer's name was disclosed to journalists, blowing her cover as a covert operative and possibly violating federal law, people briefed on the case said. The prosecutors appear to be investigating how widely the document circulated within the administration, and whether it might have been the original source of information for whoever provided the identity of Ms. Wilson to Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist who first disclosed it in print.

On Thursday, a person who has been officially briefed on the matter said that Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had spoken about Ms. Wilson with Mr. Novak before Mr. Novak published a column on July 14, 2003, identifying the C.I.A. officer by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Rove, the person said, told Mr. Novak he had heard much the same information, making him one of two sources Mr. Novak cited for his information.

But the person said Mr. Rove first heard from Mr. Novak the name of Mr. Wilson's wife and her precise role in the C.I.A.'s decision to send her husband to Africa to investigate a report, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear material there.

It is not clear who Mr. Novak's original source was, or whether Mr. Novak has revealed the source's identity to the grand jury.

Mr. Rove also held a conversation about Mr. Wilson's mission to Africa with Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, on July 11, 2003, two days after he discussed the case with Mr. Novak. In an e-mail message to his bureau chief provided to the grand jury by Time Inc., Mr. Cooper said Mr. Rove had alluded to Mr. Wilson's wife as a C.I.A. employee, though, in Mr. Cooper's account, Mr. Rove did not use her name or mention her status as a covert operative.

After his conversation with Mr. Cooper, The Associated Press reported Friday, Mr. Rove sent an e-mail message to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, saying he "didn't take the bait" when Mr. Cooper suggested that Mr. Wilson's criticisms had been damaging to the administration.

Continues...Link Here

Its The Conspiracy, Stupid!

Probe focuses on

donation to GOP

Election official says


he was offered $10,000

Saturday, July 16, 2005
Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Bureau

Columbus - A member of the Franklin County election board said Friday that prosecutors are investigating whether a GOP political consultant tried to bribe the board's director to buy voting equipment made by his client, Diebold Inc.

The director, Matthew Damschroder, has told prosecutors that the consultant, Pat Gallina, came to his office in early 2004, offering him $10,000.

"Pat Gallina came into my office at the Board of Elections and said, 'I'm here to give you $10,000. Who should I direct it to?' " Damschroder recalled. "I said, 'Certainly not to me. But I'm sure the Franklin County Republican Party would appreciate a voluntary donation. That was my first mistake."

The law prohibits Damschroder from accepting political contributions on county property. He said he took the check home and mailed it to the party, where he had just completed a stint as executive director.

Damschroder said Franklin County was in the process of selecting a new electronic voter registration system and that Diebold was not chosen.

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien would not comment on his investigation.

Elections board member Michael Colley, a Republican, said the four-member board has met twice in executive session to discuss the meeting between Damschroder and Gallina, a former aide to Cleveland Mayor Ralph Perk.

"The crux of the issue is whether there was an attempt to bribe an official to influence the board in terms of voting-machine contractors," Colley said.

Gallina did not return calls, directly or through business associates, seeking comment.

Damschroder told prosecutor O'Brien of Gallina's visit after his testimony was sought in a civil suit filed by one of Diebold's competitors, Election Systems and Software.

Continues...Link Here

You think we will ever bring democracy to Iraq, I dont think so, they dont want our democracy 

US charges 11 soldiers with alleged abuse of detainees;

Sameer N. Yacoub

Canadian Press

Saturday, July 16, 2005

In a statement Saturday, the U.S. military said the charges against the 11 troops, who were not identified, were filed Wednesday following a complaint by another soldier that "other soldiers had allegedly assaulted some suspected terrorists." "None of the insurgents required medical treatment for injuries related to the alleged assault," the statement added. "Only one of the suspected terrorists remains in custody of coalition forces at this time." The statement said the soldiers were assigned to the Army's Task Force Baghdad but gave no further details. The statement said the Army's Criminal Investigation Division had begun an investigation, which will determine whether the troops will face trial by court martial. "Allegations of illegal activities will always be thoroughly investigated," said Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, a Task Force Baghdad spokesman. "The unit involved has been pulled off line to complete the inquiry and retraining." More... http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=30c3bfe1-06ed-44cd-8615-8294181270fb

George and Tony Get their al-Qaeda Fix

Monday, July 11, 2005
By Greg Palast

The tooth fairy, Santa Clause, WorldCom profits, the Easter Bunny, al-Qaeda.

The cruel, evil jerks who blew up the London subway last week, despite appropriating al-Qaeda's name for their website and T-shirts, have about as much to do with al-Qaeda as a Beatles tribute band has to do with the Fab Four.

For all the horror, hoopla and hair-pulling, this was no September 11. Timmy McVeigh slaughtered a heck of a lot more people in Oklahoma City with his cow-poop bomb.

I'm not belittling the heartbreaking hideousness of this crime, but let's get the facts straight. If al-Qaeda is the Panzer Division of terrorism, these London bombers were terrorism's Cub Scouts. We're talking a few pounds of nitro wired to a clock -- a design badly copied off the Internet.

A witness watched some Arabic-looking teenager nervously checking his bag on a bus which, London's un-hysterical police now believe, he accidentally triggered, blowing apart himself and a bunch of unlucky commuters.

Al-Qaeda this ain't. All the evidence is that this half-assed attack was the work of some poor young Muslim schmucks, possibly whipped into a frenzy by the mewling mullah of Finsbury Park, Omar Bakri Mohammed, a cleric who enjoyed the comfortable middle-class dullness of England during the week while on weekends preaching, "a 9/11, day after day after day" to punish his Western hosts.

It's not al-Qaeda, but for George and Tony, it's good enough. Blair's Foreign Secretary dramatically dashed out to tell us that the explosions had the "hallmarks of al-Qaeda." Our Commander in Chief, looking as commanding as possible (no reading of kiddie stories this time), could not have been more satisfied.

The "hallmarks of al-Qaeda"? That's not true and Blair knows it. And Bush knows it. And that's no little matter, my friends.

Because Blair and Bush are al-Qaeda junkies. They've sold us on everything from fingerprinting five-year olds to invading Baghdad to tolerating plummeting paychecks all on the slick line that we are under attack by a well-trained, well-armed, well-funded hidden army called al-Qaeda.

But our War President and War Prime Minister are having a little problem with their war on terror. The enemy's gone AWOL. Except when we go LOOKING for trouble -- as in invading a Mesopotamian country -- trouble pretty much stopped looking for us.

Even September 11. Forgive me for pointing this out, but no matter how horrific, it was in the end the deed of a couple dozen fundamentalist fruitcakes with box-cutters hankering for a hot time with virgins in the next life who got "lucky."

Yes, unlike the London attack, the "luck" of the September 11 hijackers required the sick genius of monied operatives and a Washington administration that operated with eyes wide shut toward Saudi gangsterism.

But now al-Qaeda's luck's run out, not because Bush has us taking off our shoes in airports, but because, overwhelmingly, Muslims in this world really have no attraction to killing kids or commuters.

For Bush and Blair, organized terror's diminishing powers was a political problem -- until last week, when the al-Queda addicts of the White House and Downing Street got a new terror fix. Even if it wasn't the real al-Qaeda, it was enough for them to mainline into the body politic a big, fat dose of fear.

Now, with world media all jumped up on its latest fear high, Bush and Blair can resume their sales pitch: more weaponry, less liberty.

FDR calmed a nation when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But the Bush and Blair slogan is, "We have nothing to sell but fear itself."

****
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his commentaries or view his investigative reports for BBC Television at www.GregPalast.com.

Karl Rove's America

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts.

Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/opinion/15krugman.html?oref=login

British keep out of Basra's lethal "Islamic" take-over:

By Oliver Poole (Filed: 15/07/2005)

The bodies of young

women began to appear in

Basra six weeks ago.

First there was a group of three, then two, and last week the corpses of six were found, each victim riddled by gunshots and left on the street to die in pools of blood.

The Iraqi police say they have no strong leads. But it is an open secret in the port city why they died.

They worked as prostitutes and their killers are widely believed to be one of the city's armed militias. In recent months they have become increasingly violent in their campaign to enforce a strict interpretation of the social code of Islam.

The district where the latest victims were discovered is one of the city's poorest. Sewage runs beside the pavement and through the holes in the walls of buildings can be seen thin mattresses and battered pots and pans.

No one wanted to talk about the details of the murders. "I do not want to be killed," one man said. But another told how he had been in a house of "belly dancers" recently in order to drink alcohol - an illicit activity in Basra - when a dozen masked men broke down the front door.

"They started hitting the girls and shooting against the walls and breaking the furniture," he said.
"They bought boxes of vodka and beer outside to smash them. One of the girls ran outside and she had stones thrown at her.

"Everyone in the place was too frightened to help."

For years Basra opposed Saddam Hussein and suffered massacres under his dictatorship. It welcomed liberation by the British two years ago.

It has been spared the worst of the insurgency in Iraq's central provinces, cocooned by distance and its majority Shia population.

For a visitor from Baghdad the contrast is striking: there are none of the blast walls that surround the capital's government buildings and at the night the markets and streets throng with people.
But the calm has come at a price and offers an object lesson to strategists in western capitals that bringing democracy to the Middle East can easily usher into power religious forces at odds with the west.

In January's historic Iraq election a majority of religion-inspired leaders were elected in Basra, but they have struck a deal with the militias which have been influential since 2003 and effectively have free rein in the city.

The militias help impose order and warn of any Sunni infiltrators but only while working to transform the city into a miniature theocracy reminiscent of that found across the Shatt al Arab waterway in Iran.

Pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Iranian revolution, have become a common sight on street corners. Shops selling musical instruments have been bombed after warnings that musicians were the "servants of Satan".

Stores selling DVDs report that groups of men inspect their wares to ensure it contains no items considered too provocative.

Women are approached on the streets and criticised by strangers if they do not wear a headscarf, while parents who allow their daughters to play sports have received envelopes with bullets in them.

The British, who are responsible for the security of the sector, have refused to intervene, saying that it is a domestic matter of political and law and order issues. Political parties have been largely silent.

The city's 41-seat political authority is dominated by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).

This has close links to the Iranian government, and those loyal to Ayatollah Muhammad Yacoubi, a radical cleric friendly with Moqtada al-Sadr whose Mahdi army staged two uprisings last summer.

The local Sciri leader, Furat al-Shara, said last month that there was no need to enshrine Islamic law in the country's legal code because this was already being done "culturally".

The fact is the largest militias have ties to both these organisations. Sciri's Badr Brigade has hundreds of followers in Basra while the Mahdi army, while remaining underground, remains a potent force.

A number of new smaller groups such as the Vengeance of Allah - blamed on the streets for the prostitute murders - and Master of the Martyrs have emerged in recent months. They carry out their deadly trade in plain clothes, scarves wrapped around their faces.

The police do little. In some cases because of fear, but in others because officers are themselves members of the same militias.

Gen Hassan al-Sade, the chief of police, recently admitted that he had lost control of the majority of his officers because of penetration of the force by members of the militias.
In a blunt assessment of where real power lies, he said: "I trust 25 per cent of my force, no more."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/15/wbasra15.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/15/ixnewstop.html

An honorable withdrawal
The London bombings remove any doubt about the damage the Iraq war has done to Western interests. Now, we must figure out the wisest way to extricate ourselves.
By Joe Conason
The London atrocities should quell any doubt about the damage this war is inflicting on our interests and those of our allies, beyond the enormous costs in blood and money and the depletion of our armed forces.


 

July 23rd House Parties

July 23rd House Parties
with Ambassador Joe Wilson, Randi Rhodes

Dear Friend,
July 23rd is the 3-year anniversary of the drafting of the Downing Street Minutes. I am organizing a series of house parties on this date throughout the country in order to broaden public understanding of how Karl Rove and the Bush Administration have manipulated intelligence, deceived the American people, and misled our nation into war.

Given that we learned in the past few days that Karl Rove served as a source for Robert Novak in his column outing Ms. Plame, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to learn not only what and why Rove told the press, but what the president knew and when he knew it. If Rove is willing to spin this issue with the press, as today's New York Times story appears to show, he ought to be willing to come clean with the American people.

Today, 91 of my Democratic colleagues joined me in a letter to the President , demanding that Rove either explain his role in the outing of Valerie Plame or that he resign. I was also joined by 12 Democratic Members of the Judiciary Committee asking Chairman Sensenbrenner for hearings on the growing scandal. I believe these hearings will help illustrate how Rovegate is a part of the puzzle of the ongoing Iraq War deception.

Our country is slowing beginning to confront the truth about the about the Bush Administration's deceitful rush to war in Iraq. This has only happened because of people like you are determined to make a difference by getting personally involved. Over 560,000 people to date have signed our Downing Street Minutes letter to the president . Through this effort, and because of the June 16 th hearing I held in the basement of the Capitol, the mainstream media has been forced to recognize that the American public does care about how we ended up in Iraq.

The house parties I have organized for next weekend provide a platform for people to come together and express their strong opposition to the Bush Administration's conduct of war. Please join us at a house party near you. If you can host a party, click here to sign up. We will provide media kits and other materials to assist with the event. If you would rather attend an event, click here.

I will be conducting a special conference call for house party hosts featuring Ambassador Joe Wilson and Randi Rhodes as my special guests.

Additionally, I would to keep in touch with you through news updates and additional action items. If you would like for me to keep you updated on events here in Washington, sign up for my email updates .

Thank you again for your help and support.
Sincerely,
Congressman John Conyers, Jr.

McClellan Stonewalls

Despite the fact that the questions about the Rove/Plame affair at the last three days of White House Press conferences are actually on a serious matter, they still make for hilarious reading. Press Secretary Scott McClellan has stonewalled virtually every question the press corps has thrown at him with his answer that the White House refuses to comment on the ongoing investigation at the request of the special prosecutor.

Which, frankly, is bullshit because: 1) the White House was happy to comment on the ongoing investigation when the information of the day was exculpatory rather than incriminating; 2) a good number of questions that have been shot down with this defense are actually not 'related to the investigation' in any legal sense of the words; and 3) the special prosecutor never asked the White House to clam up to begin with.

But you've got to admire the press for nonetheless trying to get their quote. They've tried forcing McClellan to defend past statements. They've asked about McClellan's previous willingness to answer 'related questions.' They've asked the simple, deadly, question: does the president think Rove did something wrong? Does the President stand by his statement that anyone who he found was involved in the leak would be shown the door? They've asked about the President and the First Lady's personal feelings for their old buddy Karl, and whether they are "at this point, ebbing or flowing." It's all so creative. But as a wise man once said, you don't have take my word for it:

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, this is a creative way to come out to the same kind of questions.
Q: You're right, it is, and I want an answer.

At least he's impressed by his adversaries. Let's hope their tenacity proves worthy of his admiration as well.

Posted by Clint Hendler on 07/13/05 at 04:13 PM

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2005/07/mclellan_stonew.html

Al Qaeda claims wave of Baghdad attacks

Friday, July 15, 2005.

Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bomb attacks across Baghdad that have killed at least 28 people.

[FULL STORY]


Five suicide attacks kill 6 in Baghdad

Five suicide car bombs have blown up in different locations across Baghdad within hours of each other, including two attacks on Iraqi military patrols.

[FULL STORY]


6 dead as bombers target Iraqi patrols

Bombs on two Iraqi military patrols in different parts of Baghdad have killed six people within minutes of each other, a police source says.

[FULL STORY

Saturday, July 16, 2005.

Three British soldiers killed in Iraq attack

Three British solders have died in Iraq in a suspected roadside bomb attack, the Ministry of Defence said.

[FULL STORY]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/indepth/iraq/

Was Parliament on bombers' hit list too?

by GORDON RAYNER,
Daily Mail 08:31am 16th July 2005

Suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan was given a guided tour of the House of Commons last year - raising the disturbing prospect that Parliament was on the hit list of targets.

Khan, 30, was a guest of Labour MP Jon Trickett, whose wife Sarah is head of a school where the bomber taught.

During the visit in July he also met International Development Minister Hilary Benn, whose constituency includes the school, and was shown areas of Parliament which are off-limits to unaccompanied members of the public.

They included Portcullis House, the new extension where many MPs have their offices and where security has been exposed as worryingly lax in recent years.

'Disturbing'

News of Khan's visit raised alarm bells in Parliament, which was already on a state of high alert after the bombings.

Detectives believe at least one other member of the terror cell which carried out the suicide attacks is still at large.

Khan raised no suspicions when he went to the Commons because he had no criminal record and was at that time regarded as a trusted member of staff at Hillside Primary School in Leeds, where he was a 'learning mentor' to immigrant children.

Mr Trickett, MP for Hemsworth in Leeds, said: "Every year a group of kids from the school comes down to London. They go on the London Eye and then I normally meet them in the Houses of Parliament.

"They came in and we had a sandwich in Portcullis House. Khan was one of the group and I met him. Khan has been known to my family for more than 17 years because he went to the same school as my children.

"My wife came home to me one day and said he had got a job as a teaching assistant and how good it was that he had managed to do so well for himself."

Guest at MP's home

Mr Trickett said Khan had also been a guest at his home.

"It is profoundly disturbing to discover that a person who appeared to care so deeply for the children at that time should so callously take the lives of others only a year later.'

The Labour Party said Khan's group had been fully screened by the House of Commons Security system and was accompanied at all times throughout the visit.

MPs who until now have tried to show a united front against terrorism are beginning to ask searching questions about Government policy.

Clare Short, one of Tony Blair's fiercest Labour critics, has blamed British foreign policy and the Iraq war for the attacks that killed more than 50.

And a group of Labour MPs led by former minister Frank Field has called for Muslims who travel from Britain to attend training camps in Afghanistan to be barred from coming back.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=355990&in_page_id=1770

US commuters to be warned of suicide bombers

Police in New York are to board underground trains and

buses to warn the public how to identify suicide bombers.

The move was made after London was rocked by four blasts

carried out by western Europe's first suicide bombers...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/news/worldnews.html?in_page_id=1811

Lawyer sues US over false arrest

A US lawyer wrongfully arrested over the Madrid train bombings in 2004 is suing the US government.

Brandon Mayfield, 38, was held for two weeks when the FBI linked him to fingerprints found in Spain - but later said it was wrong and apologised.

Mr Mayfield, a convert to Islam, says he was targeted because he is a Muslim.

The Justice Department rejects the charge, saying he was arrested "because fingerprint examiners believed his print to match the Spanish print".

Mr Mayfield's lawyers say they have an internal FBI e-mail that contradicts the government's official position.

The e-mail, from FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele, said the agency had "tied" Mr Mayfield to the attacks but that "there is not enough other evidence to arrest him on a criminal charge".

Material witness

A day after the email was sent, Mr Mayfield was arrested as a material witness.

People arrested as material witnesses do not have the same rights as those charged with criminal offences.

Mr Mayfield is also challenging the sweeping post-9/11 anti-terror law known as the Patriot Act.
He says it allowed law enforcement officials to tap his phone in violation of the US constitution.

When the lawsuit goes to court on Friday his lawyers will ask a judge to order the government to hand over the evidence it gathered against him.

The Madrid attacks on 11 March 2004 killed 191 and injured hundreds of people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4685855.stm

Trafalgar Square vigil

Thousands of people gathered in

London's Trafalgar Square to

remember the victims of the London

suicide bombings. See pictures from

the vigil here...Picture: PA

Prez ex-flack lumped with Rove?

By THOMAS M. DeFRANK
and KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - The special prosecutor probing the outing of a CIA spy is looking beyond who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, seeking whether White House aides tried to cover their tracks after her name went public, sources told the Daily News.
Along with Bush political guru Karl Rove, the grand jury is investigating what role, if any, ex-White House mouthpiece Ari Fleischer may have played in the revelation that the former covert operative Plame was married to former Ambassador Joe Wilson.

"Ari's name keeps popping up," said one source familiar with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's probe.

Another source close to the probe added there is renewed interest in Fleischer, "based on Fitzgerald's questions."

A State Department memo that included background on Wilson - and who in the White House had access to it - appears to be a key to revealing who gave conservative columnist Robert Novak Plame's name, both sources said.

Another person of interest in the case is Vice President Cheney's chief of staff Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who was described as "totally obsessed with Wilson," the sources said.

Wilson traveled to Africa at the CIA's behest to assess Bush administration suspicions - later debunked - that deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein tried to buy nuclear weapons-grade uranium from Niger. The outing of his wife was payback for his later criticism of Iraq policy, Wilson asserts.

A grinning Bush, meanwhile, tried to show support for Rove by walking with him yesterday at the White House while TV cameras rolled.

On the sidelines, Democrats and the GOP traded barbs, press statements and Senate amendments to embarrass Rove, Wilson and their allies.

Wilson appeared at a press conference with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who wants Rove's security clearance yanked. "Even a child knows that if a person can't keep a secret, stop telling them secrets," Schumer said.

But Wilson wants Rove's head.

"The President [should] honor his word that he would fire anybody who was involved in the leak," Wilson said.

Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) said it was a blunder for Schumer to appear with Wilson. "I can't believe that Democratic senators would ally themselves with someone like Joe Wilson, who is a proven liar," King said. "They are shamelessly politicizing this."

With Michael McAuliff

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/328100p-280454c.html

A Soldiers Account...

Snip..

We should have learned a lesson in guerrilla fighting with the Vietnam War only 30 years ago, but history has a funny way of repeating itself. The Vietnam War was a perfect example of how quick, deadly assaults on conventional troops over a long period of time can lead to an unpopular public view of the war, thus ending it.

Che Guevara stressed in his book Guerrilla Warfare that the most important factor in a guerrilla campaign is popular support. With that, victory is almost completely assured.

The Iraqis already have many of the main ingredients of a successful insurrection. Not only do they have a seemingly endless supply of munitions and weapons, they have the advantage to blend into their environment, whether that environment is a crowded marketplace or a thickly vegetated palm grove.

The Iraqi insurgent has utilized these advantages to the fullest, but his most important and relevant advantage is the popular support from his own countrymen.

What our military and government needs to realize is that every mistake we make is an advantage to the Iraqi insurrection. Every time an innocent man, woman or child is murdered in a military act, deliberate or not, the insurgent grows stronger.

Even if an innocent civilian is slain at the hands of his or her own freedom fighter, that fighter is still viewed as a warrior of the people, while the occupying force will ultimately be blamed as the responsible perpetrator.

Everything about this war is political...every ambush, every bombing, every death. When a coalition worker or soldier is abducted and executed, this only adds encouragement and justice to the dissident fervor of the Iraq public, while angering and demoralizing the occupier.

Our own media will prove to be our downfall as well. Every time an atrocity is revealed through our news outlets, our grasp on this once secular nation slips away. As America grows increasingly disturbed by the images of carnage and violent death of her own sons in arms, its government loses the justification to continue the bloody debacle.

Since all these traits are the conventional power’s unavoidable mistakes, the guerrilla campaign will surely succeed.

In Iraq’s case, complete destruction of the United States military is impossible, but through perseverance, the insurgency will drive us out. This will prove to be the inevitable outcome of the war.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WE LOST many soldiers in the final battle for Falluja, and many more were seriously wounded. It seems unfair that even after the devastation we wreaked on this city just to contain it, many more troops will die in vain to keep it that way.
I saw the look in the eyes of a reconnaissance scout while I talked to him after the battle. His stories of gore and violent death were unnerving. The sacrifices that he and his whole platoon had made were infinite. They fought every day with little or no sleep, very few breaks and no hot meals.

For obvious reasons, they never could manage to find time to e-mail their mothers to let them know that everything turned out okay.

Some of the members of his platoon will never get the chance to reassure their mothers, because now, those soldiers are dead.

The look in his eyes as he told some of the stories were deep and weary, even perturbed. He described in accurate detail how some enemy combatants were blown to pieces by army-issued bazookas, some had their heads shot off by a 50 caliber bullet, others were run over by tanks as they stood defiantly in the narrow streets, firing an AK-47.

The soldier told me how one of his favorite sergeants died right in front of him. He was taking cover behind an alley wall, and as he emerged to fire his M4 rifle, he was shot through the abdomen with a rocket-propelled grenade.

The grenade itself exploded and sent shrapnel into the narrator’s leg. He showed me where a chunk of burned flesh was torn from his left thigh.

He ended his conversation saying that he was just a dumb kid from California who never thought joining the army would send him straight to hell. He told me he was tired as fuck and wanted a shower. Then he slowly walked away, cradling a rifle under his arm.


----Wow....Just. Wow.----

AHHHHH,..We were wondering.

For those who were just keen to know, my free Quran has been delayed due to overwhelming response to their service...

Cool...I can dig it. That was VERY nice of them to let me know. Very kind.

I'll wait.

Art For Indy

This is BLOODY...Well.. It's bloody SOMETHING!!!

Rudy Giuliani in London

and sees terror again
By Sam Knight, Times Online

Rudolph Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York so closely identified with his city's recovery after September 11 attacks, was in London this morning, just yards from Liverpool Street station when the bombs went off.

Mr Giuliani, who was given an honorary knighthood by the Queen in recognition of his leadership in 2001 said today's events strongly recalled the attacks on the World Trade Centre.

"They are a very eerie reminder of September 11. I was right near Liverpool [Street] station when the first bombing took place, so I could hear the sirens and then kept hearing reports of different bombings, in different parts of the city," he told Sky News television.

Mr Giuliani was in the City as the Underground system was evacuated and roads were closed in a rush of emergency vehicles and evacuations. A bomb on a Tube train between nearby Aldgate and Moorgate killed seven people and injured dozens.

"As we were walking through and driving through the streets of the city, it was remarkable how the people of London responded calmly and bravely," said Mr Giuliani.

The former Mayor, who now runs Giuliani Partners, a security consultancy and investment bank, said that New Yorkers would be full of sympathy for Londoners caught in today's violence.

"We feel a tremendous empathy with them. I think every New Yorker would join me in saying we feel we very much understand what you are going through," he said.

"This is a difficult time, but the people of London have responded in the exactly right way, with bravery and by moving forward. The emergency services people appear to have responded as if they have been very, very well trained and as if they were expecting attacks, they seem to be prepared for it."

"In a strange way a lot of our response to September 11 was modelling ourselves as much as we could on the people of London during the Second World War and the incredible way they withstood the attacks during the battle of Britain."

Mr Giuliani said the apparently "resolved and determined response" to the attacks had undermined this morning's attempt to induce panic in London today. Although he conceded that cities such as London, New York and Madrid would always present targets to extremists intent on killing civilians.

"All three cities are big, gigantic, open spaces. They have democracy and freedom of movement, just by that very nature the number of targets is endless."

"No matter how good your policing, and the policing in London is right at the very top, one of the very, very best, unfortunately these people can try to figure out the places where people aren’t concentrating, aren’t looking," he said.

Link...


--HOW MANY EXTRAORDINARY COINCIDENCES DO YOU NEED FOR A CONSPIRACY THEORY???? Bloody hell.--

Oh,..Great..Thanks Anyway China

Chinese General

Threatens Use of

A-Bombs if US Intrudes

By Joseph Kahn
The New York Times

Friday 15 July 2005

Beijing - China should use nuclear weapons against the United States if the American military intervenes in any conflict over Taiwan, a senior Chinese military official said Thursday.

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," the official, Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said at an official briefing.

General Zhu, considered a hawk, stressed that his comments reflected his personal views and not official policy. Beijing has long insisted that it will not initiate the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict.

But in extensive comments to a visiting delegation of correspondents based in Hong Kong, General Zhu said he believed that the Chinese government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy and to make clear that it would employ the most powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim over Taiwan.

"War logic" dictates that a weaker power needs to use maximum efforts to defeat a stronger rival, he said, speaking in fluent English. "We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States," General Zhu said. "We can't win this kind of war."

Whether or not the comments signal a shift in Chinese policy, they come at a sensitive time in relations between China and the United States.

--Yeah, thats one way to say it.---

The Pentagon is preparing the release of a long-delayed report on the Chinese military that some experts say will warn that China could emerge as a strategic rival to the United States. National security concerns have also been a major issue in the $18.5 billion bid by Cnooc Ltd., a major Chinese oil and gas company, to purchase the Unocal Corporation, the American energy concern.

China has had atomic bombs since 1964 and currently has a small arsenal of land- and sea-based nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach the United States, according to most Western intelligence estimates. Some Pentagon officials have argued that China has been expanding the size and sophistication of its nuclear bombs and delivery systems, while others argue that Beijing has done little more than maintain a minimal but credible deterrent against a nuclear attack.

Beijing has said repeatedly that it would use military force to prevent Taiwan from becoming a formally independent country. President Bush has made clear that the United States would defend Taiwan.

Many military analysts have assumed that any battle over Taiwan would be localized, with both China and the United States taking care to ensure that it would not expand into a general war between the two powers.

But the comments by General Zhu suggest that at least some elements of the military are prepared to widen the conflict, perhaps to persuade the United States that it could no more successfully fight a limited war against China than it could against the former Soviet Union.

"If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond," he said. "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
Continues..
Go to Original

Art For Everyone

YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS...??? OHMYGOD

Internet service provider, Comcast Corporation has been automatically deleting email sent to Comcast customers with the text "www.afterdowningstreet.org" in the body of the email.

"about two hours after

the bombings [in London],

my email started disappearing."



The BRAD BLOG has learned that cable company and Internet service provider, Comcast Corporation has been automatically deleting email sent to Comcast customers with the text "www.afterdowningstreet.org" in the body of the email.

AfterDowningStreet.org ("ADS") is the citizen's coalition advocacy group organized to raise awareness of the leaked British memos and minutes referred to as the "Downing Street Documents". Those documents, first reported by Michael Smith of the Sunday Times suggest that the Bush Administration had determined to topple Saddam Hussein by military means and planned to "fix" the facts and intelligence around the policy" at least eight months prior to receiving authorization of the U.S. Congress to wage war in Iraq. At the same time, George W. Bush and administration officials were routinely telling both Congress and the American people that no tactical decisions had yet been made regarding regime change in Iraq.

(DISCLOSURE: The BRAD BLOG and an advocacy group co-founded by us, VelvetRevolution.us are members of the ADS coalition.)

The discovery that email was being secretly filtered was made after an investigation conducted by ADS co-founder, David Swanson who reported that many coalition members did not seem to be receiving email alerts and others messages being sent by the group.

"Over the past week we have been having problems reaching our members," Swanson said. "Yesterday we had a conference call scheduled that we'd announced by email and two thirds of the people didn't even know about it."

Eventually Swanson was able to determine that it was only those members of the group who receive email via the cable monolith's Comcast.net domain who were not receiving such notices.

According to a study released in January of this year by TNS Telecoms, Comcast Corporation is the nation's largest single provider of both Cable/Satellite and Internet related services in the country.

The BRAD BLOG has been able to independently confirm that email sent to two different Comcast customers with the text "www.afterdowningstreet.org" in the body of the mail, is not currently reaching those customers as expected. Though messages with only "afterdowningstreet.org" are, in fact, able to get through to those same customers without a problem.

In a statement released by People-Link.org, the Internet host for the AfterDowningStreet.org domain, the directors of the "progressive" firm charge that the filtering is politically motivated and both they and Swanson have requested people contact Comcast to complain. (Contact information at the bottom of this article.)...

While it is not uncommon for Internet Service Providers, or ISP's, to filter out messages sent to their users by domains which are known to send large amounts of unrequested junkmail, or "spam", Comcast acknowledged to Swanson that AfterDowningStreet.org was not on their list of domains alleged to have sent such email.

Swanson spoke with two different employees in the Comcast Email Abuse department, both of whom acknowleged to him that "www.afterdowningstreet.org" seems to have ended up in the Comcast email filter. He was able to receive no explanation from Comcast as to why or how that could have occurred.

When The BRAD BLOG attempted to get a statement on the matter from the Comcast Abuse Department Manager, Jim Janco, -- whom Swanson had previously dealt with in the matter -- we were told that "company policy" dictated he "can't engage with the press in any manner," but that he would ask the Comcast PR Department to get back to us.

We received a call shortly afterwards from Jeanne Russo, corporate spokesperson from the Comcast Online Division, who told us she was not aware of the problem, but would get back to us after she was able to look into it. That was several hours ago. As of this time, we have not yet heard back from her.

In a series of emails, however, shared with The BRAD BLOG between Swanson and another employee from the Comcast Abuse Department, the employee confirms the existence of the problem.

Swanson had sent emails to two different email addresses of the employee, one of which was a comcast.net address, the other at a different service provider. Until Swanson removed the "www.afterdowningstreet.org" from the body of the mail he was sending as a test to the employee, his email was not received by the Comcast employee at their Comcast.net address. The test email messages were received without a problem at the two Comcast customers alternate non-Comcast addresses.

Swanson had previously used "www.afterdowningstreet.org" as part of his automatic email signature.

Another ADS coalition member, Tim Carpenter, explained how the problem began and that he was personally unable to receive any information on the problem from Comcast.

"I called Comcast and they never confirmed for me that there was a problem with my email," Carpenter told us, "but starting Thursday, "about two hours after

the bombings [in London],

my email started disappearing.

It became clearer and clearer as the week when on that something was going on."

continues....See Brad at www.bradblog.com

---WTF IS THIS...???? INSERT SOBBING SCREAMS HERE---