Vintage For Ally

Repeat After Me... It Is ALL Bull Shit.

The Justice Department brief also contended that some presidential powers are simply "beyond congressional ability to regulate."


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Let me guess... georgies in Crawford...??

Mr. President,

The Terrorists Have Won
by Abhinav Aima
Link Here

By some time between last night and early this morning, the White House staff would have had the singularly uncomfortable task of informing President Bush that, in spite of all his Evangelical Zionist beliefs, the terrorists had in fact won the free and fair parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories.

As of Thursday morning, it is increasingly clear that Hamas is headed to a sweeping victory in a majority of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Palestinian PM Ahmed Qureia has resigned, as has his cabinet of ministers, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is preparing to invite Hamas to form a new government.

Hamas now joins a history of examples where brutal and prejudicial anti-terror policies have done more to propel the cause of the terrorists than to quell it. The only real way of defeating terrorism is to take away the political agenda of the terrorists – to deny them any reasonable grievance whatsoever – and one clear success in recent years has been the disarming of the IRA, once all the nonsensical British name-calling ceased and the Irish Republicans were invited into the political process as equals, not criminals.

The reason why the West, including the United States, remain entrenched in their Cold War ideas of minority-based terrorist groups is partly because of the early experiences of Western powers with small domestic terrorists such as the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof group or the Symbionese Liberation Army. These groups failed precisely because their grievances failed to find a sympathetic ear among any sizeable section of their community.

But it is exactly these successes that have blinded policymakers in the West to the inherent flaws in their approach to anti-colonial terrorists, like Hamas, who actually did have a political platform of genuine grievances. The West was quick to follow Israel’s lead in its “successes” against terrorism but, again, they failed to realize that Israel is fighting a war of occupation, aimed at converting large expanses of Arab territories into sovereign Israeli land.

This violent and heavy-handed Israeli campaign, in effect, created Hamas in the 1980s, and led to its exponential growth over the last twenty years.

The Bush administration is currently sticking to its stand that the Palestinian elections are not a victory for Hamas, but rather a defeat for the corrupt Fatah leadership. No examination, whatsoever, is offered for the U.S. role in this Fatah corruption, but it is an effective way to take away from any legitimacy for Hamas’s victory.

President Bush himself stated Thursday morning that he will not negotiate with Hamas because it is an armed group and because its charter calls for a destruction of the Israeli state. This position is, of course, contradictory to Bush’s advocacy of respect for freedom and democracy. It is also quite hypocritical that Bush is demanding a disarming of Hamas specifically because no such demand has ever been made of Israeli politicians on the question of the armed settler militias that they support in the illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian lands.

The Bush administration’s decision to detach itself from the Palestinian government is not a new phenomenon. This was the precise strategy applied by the Bush administration in its first few months in office during the time that the Israelis had the upper hand and Palestinian casualties numbered 5-to-1 to Israeli casualties in the Second Intifada. Once the Palestinians started killing more Israelis, and the statistics changed to 3-to-1 Israeli casualties, the Bush administration got involved in all earnest, urging restraint and plotting a Roadmap.

That Roadmap was effectively put to sleep by Ariel Sharon who opted instead for a policy of Disengagement wherein Israel would pull out of all territories it could not control militarily, and put up a wall of security around all Palestinian territories it felt it could grab and hold. It seems that the Bush administration is again playing a waiting game to see if Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s election in the upcoming Israeli elections will, once again, give the Neoconmen an opportunity to implement a Clean Sweep of the Middle East along the lines of the Project for a New American Century.

The larger issue here, of course, is of the inability of the U.S. government to respect a democratically elected government that is critical of American policies. This historical U.S. policy of Sulk-and-Destroy is amply substantiated by the history of American actions in Central and South America, where the U.S. has repeatedly preferred to do business with friendly drug dealers and dictators than conduct responsible policy with a democratically elected hostile government.

A Hamas government pitted against Bibi Netanyahu’s Israel might well be the recipe for the Rapture that so enthralls Bush’s Evangelical Zionist base. Given the pinning down of the U.S. military in Iraq, and the rise of radical Muslim groups in Arab states, and the solidifying power base of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a decision to allow Palestinians to be pushed into a corner and be slaughtered can only be seen as a decision to provoke a regional war.

The Bush administration must grow up. A policy of With Me or Against Me is infantile, and most kids educate themselves out of it by their teens. Or at least they used to, before the Bush administration helped turn schools into breeding grounds for religious-fascist fervor by promoting groups that practice intimidation of teachers and supporting law suits to punish schools that deviate from the party line.

At issue here also is the process by which the Bush administration defines its war on terror while repeatedly refusing to acknowledge the fact that beneath the iron grip of pro-U.S. dictatorships in the Arab and Muslim world there is a growing resentment among the Arab and Muslim masses. The only way these people can presently manifest their rage against the Bush administration’s policies is through radical Muslim groups.

And if free and fair elections are allowed, even in limited municipalities, as we have seen in Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and now in Palestine, the anti-American radicals, irrespective of their religion or tribe, are the ones garnering the most votes.

On a much broader level, the American people have to hold their government responsible for a foreign policy that has, for the last 50 years, oppressed and tortured the Arab and Muslim people through U.S.-supported Kings and dictators, in the singular interest of supporting the so-called special relationship with the state of Israel and the supply of Oil.

There has to be a way by which the safety and security of the state of Israel can be preserved while also supporting the democratic hopes and aspirations of the Arab and Muslim people in the region. Up until now, the Bush administration has refused to examine any such policies.

In the current case of the rise of Hamas in Palestine, the failure of the Bush administration to embrace and incorporate the new Palestinian government will send a clear message to the Arab and Muslim people – that America would rather have an American Shah ruling Palestine with an iron fist than respect a democratically elected government.

And that lesson will only embolden and strengthen the ranks of those organizations that have long maintained that the U.S. pretence to spreading freedom, liberty and democracy is but a sham, a lie, a ploy, cunningly designed to disguise an extension of U.S. hegemony in the region.

Hey Rossi..

If you steal someones comp and make it online tonight...

Meet me here ReBelle Dispatch

Let us file this one under the 'Yeah, DUHHHHH' headline...

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INCREASES IN CBO'S REVENUE PROJECTIONS DO NOT SHOW TAX CUTS ARE HELPING THE ECONOMY

Big, Fat, Bloody Hmmmmmm.

Investigator: Diana Inquiry 'Complex'

By DAVID STRINGER
Link Here

LONDON - An inquiry into the death of Princess Diana is "far more complex than any of us thought," the official leading the investigation said Friday without commenting on the conspiracy theories that persist nearly nine years after her death.

Lord Stevens, the former head of London's Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that some of the issues raised by Mohammed al Fayed — whose son, Dodi, was killed in the 1997 car crash with Diana — were "right to be raised." He did not elaborate.

Mohammed al Fayed, the owner of London's famous Harrods store, has claimed Diana and his son were killed by British intelligence officials and their deaths resulted from a plot instigated by Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and Diana's former father-in-law.

Stevens, speaking in a recorded interview to Britain's GMTV Sunday Program, did not reveal which of al Fayed's concerns he believed were correct.

"It is right to say that some of the issues that have been raised by Mr. Fayed have been right to be raised," he told the program, to be broadcast Sunday. "We are pursing those. It is a far more complex inquiry than any of us thought."

Asked why, Stevens said: "I think it is generally the case of these things, when you actually go into them and look into them in minute detail."

The officer said the inquiries had so far thrown up more questions "to be answered ... and that makes it a complex issue," he said.

Stevens also was asked whether the results of his inquiry would surprise the public.

"I have no idea at all, but one thing you can be sure of is that it is a detailed inquiry ... the conclusions that we come to and I come to will be based on the evidence," he said in a transcript released Friday.

Stevens said his team was examining the vehicle in which Dodi was traveling on Aug. 31, 1997, in Paris.

Diana, 36, her companion Dodi Fayed, 42, and their driver, Henri Paul, were killed when the car crashed into a pillar in an underpass. The only survivor, Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was badly hurt.

A French judge ruled in 1999 that the crash was an accident, and an investigation concluded that Paul had been drinking and was driving at high speed.

However, a British-led inquiry was ordered by the Royal Coroner, Michael Burgess, who raised concern about the number of conspiracy theories over the deaths.

"I think what people want is a thorough investigation going where the evidence takes us, and some of the answers to some of the questions that have been raised in national newspapers and in other parts of the world," said Stevens, who stepped down as London police chief in 2005.

"That is the job I have been asked to do and that is the job I'll do."

Stevens has spoken to Prince Charles about the death of his former wife as part of his inquiry.

Art For Girls

"..I've never seen anything like this, and I monitor every single posting coming out from every major insurgent group in Iraq."

Link Here

Snip..

The May 2005 findings were breathtaking. Widespread fraud under Shaalan had resulted in the disappearance of virtually the entire $1.3 billion procurement budget. The report, a copy of which was obtained by the AP, examined 89 contracts and found that all had been paid in full, via cash bank transfers, in advance of any work being done.

All were awarded to Iraqis acting as intermediaries like Stoffel's contact, Zayna, and not to the suppliers themselves.

The finance minister called it "possibly one of the greatest thefts" in Iraqi history.

Holy Shittokki Batman... Some body call...SOMEBODY.

Link Here

Scholars Repudiate Official Version of 9/11


Scholars claim government's account violates laws of physics and engineering.

January 27, 2006 -- An influential group of prominent experts and scholars have joined together alleging that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11. The members of this new non-partisan association, "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (S9/11T), are convinced their research proves the current administration has been dishonest with the nation about events in New York and Washington, D.C.

These experts contend that books and articles by members and associates have established that the World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions and that the available relevant evidence casts grave doubt on the official story about the attack on the Pentagon. They believe that the government not only permitted 9/11 to occur but may even have orchestrated these events to facilitate its political agenda.

The society includes U.S. and international faculty and students of history, science, military affairs, psychology, and even philosophy. According to its spokesmen, S9/11T represents a concerted effort to uphold the standards of truth and justice and to strengthen democracy in this nation, which has taken a terrible hit in the aftermath of 9/11, when "everything changed." Its function is to bring scientific rigor to the study of 9/11 phenomena.

The members of this group are dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11, "letting the chips fall where they may." The evidence has become sufficiently strong that they are speaking out. They are actively devoting themselves to reporting the results of their research to the public by means of lectures, articles, and other venues.

The society includes numerous notable professors and scholars, including:

• Morgan Reynolds, Texas A & M Professor Emeritus of Economics, former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor for President George W. Bush, and former Director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis

• Steven E. Jones, Professor of Physics, Brigham Young University, co-chair of S9/11T and the creator of its home page and its forum

• Robert M. Bowman, former Director of the U.S. "Star Wars" Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, a former senior Air Force Colonel with 101 combat missions, who is also a Catholic Archbishop

• Lloyd DeMause, Director of The Institute for Psychohistory, President of the International Psychohistorical Association and Editor of The Journal of Psychohistory

• James H. Fetzer, Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, author or editor of more than 20 books and co-chair of S9/11T

• Daniele Ganser, Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

• Andreas Von Buelow, former assistant German defense minister, director of the German Secret Service, minister for research and technology, and member of Parliament for 25 years

The society, founded by Professors Fetzer and Jones, who serve as its co-chairs, is approaching 50 members to date. Fetzer, a philosopher of science, observed that the government's "official account" is not even physically possible, because it violates laws of nature. "What we have been told is fine," he said, "if you are willing to believe impossible things. Serious scholars don't believe in tooth fairies."

Beyond encouraging its members to vigorously express their concerns on this score through lectures, conferences, symposia, articles, and books as well as other access routes that publicize their findings, the society's initial activities, which are expected to increase in frequency and intensity, include the following projects and endeavors:

• Professor Jones is refining his influential analysis of the physics of the collapse of buildings at the World Trade Center.

• Professor Fetzer is editing a collection of new studies about 9/11 that will include contributions from the members of S9/11T.

• A major conference is being planned for this fall to further inform the American public about the group's most recent findings

Studies by the society's founders and by prominent theologian David Ray Griffin, who has taken a leading role in exposing false claims about 9/11, are accessible from the association's home page, www.ScholarsFor911Truth.org . Information for those who may want to join S9/11T can also be found there.

'Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law,...'

How Do You Like Your Democracy Now, Mr. Bush?

By Juan Cole
Go to Original


The stunning victory of the militant Muslim fundamentalist Hamas Party in the Palestinian elections underlines the central contradictions in the Bush administration's policies toward the Middle East. Bush pushes for elections, confusing them with democracy, but seems blind to the dangers of right-wing populism. At the same time, he continually undermines the moderate and secular forces in the region by acting high-handedly or allowing his clients to do so. As a result, Sunni fundamentalist parties, some with ties to violent cells, have emerged as key players in Iraq, Egypt and Palestine.

Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law, on stable institutions, on basic economic security for the population, and on checks and balances that forestall a tyranny of the majority. Elections in the absence of this key societal context can produce authoritarian regimes and abuses as easily as they can produce genuine people power. Bush is on the whole unwilling to invest sufficiently in these key institutions and practices abroad. And by either creating or failing to deal with hated foreign occupations, he has sown the seeds for militant Islamist movements that gain popularity because of their nationalist credentials.

In Iraq, which is among the least secure and most economically fraught countries in the world, the Dec. 15 elections brought into Parliament a set of powerful Shiite fundamentalist parties and a new force, the Muslim fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, which gained most of the votes of formerly secular-minded Iraqi Sunni Arabs. Some IAF politicians are suspected of strong ties to Iraq's Sunni insurgency. In Egypt, last fall's election increased representation for the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood from 17 to more than 70 seats in Parliament, making that group a key political player for the first time in Egyptian history. Decades ago, the party once assassinated a prime minister and attempted to assassinate President Gamal Abdul Nasser, but now maintains it has turned to moderation. It aims at the imposition of a rigid interpretation of Islamic law on Egyptians, including Egyptian women.

Now Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, a branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has come to power in Palestine. In his press conference on Thursday, Bush portrayed the Palestinian elections in the same way he depicts Republican Party victories over Democrats in the United States: "The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare." He sounds like a spokesman for Hamas, underlining the irony that Bush and his party have given Americans the least honest government in a generation, have drastically cut services, and have actively opposed extension of healthcare to the uninsured in the United States.

But the president's attempt to dismiss the old ruling Fatah Party as corrupt and inefficient, however true, is also a way of taking the spotlight off his own responsibility for the stagnation in Palestine. Bush allowed then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to sideline the ruling Fatah Party of Yasser Arafat, to fire missiles at its police stations, and to reduce its leader to a besieged nonentity. Sharon arrogantly ordered the murder of civilian Hamas leaders in Gaza, making them martyrs. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements continued to grow, the fatally flawed Oslo agreements delivered nothing to the Palestinians, and Bush and Sharon ignored new peace plans - whether the so-called Geneva accord put forward by Palestinian and Israeli moderates or the Saudi peace plan - that could have resolved the underlying issues. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which should have been a big step forward for peace, was marred by the refusal of the Israelis to cooperate with the Palestinians in ensuring that it did not produce a power vacuum and further insecurity.

Continues....

Congratulations America.. You Inheirit.... The Wind. And yall wondered what I meant when I said this nation would rue the day New Orleans was lost.

Katrina's Latest Casualty

When it Comes to Violent Crime, New Orleans Gain May be Houston's Loss

By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS/DALLAS
Link Here

Crime may be down in New Orleans, but many of the city's bad guys seem to be turning up in Houston, which finds itself caught in the crosshairs of an apparent gang war between Hurricane Katrina evacuees from two rival housing projects. On Friday, Houston's newly formed Gang Murder Squad announced the arrest of eight men from New Orleans suspected in 11 murders in the Houston area over the past three months. "These guys are hooking up with friends and old rivalries are beginning again," Sgt. Brian Harris, a Gang Murder Squad investigator and the top detective on the case, told TIME. Unlike gangs in Houston, which are usually affiliated with the Bloods and the Crips and deal in crack, the New Orleans groups are strictly based on local fault lines, formed around housing projects, and deal mostly in heroin, he said.

The Houston Police Department has acknowledged in recent weeks that a surge in violent crime is directly attributable to the criminal element that evacuated New Orleans after the hurricane. Murders in Houston, which took in an estimated 150,000 evacuees from New Orleans, shot up by nearly 25% last year and are already up 50 % in January from the year before. In Sacramento, California police captured a 20-year-old New Orleans native accused of gunning down two other evacuees in a Houston apartment complex. Other states are reporting similar problems. Three Katrina evacuees from New Orleans were accused earlier this month of gunning down and killing two men outside a music hall in Oklahoma City. Outside Atlanta this week, another Katrina evacuee-rapper Jerome "Slim Rome" Spears-- killed his girlfriend and wounded her son before committing suicide, according to police.

Continues, if you can read through the nausea...



--What a nightmare.--

Yes.. I am being lazy in my news duties today. But this bitch is crazy every day...

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Ann Coulter Suggests Poisoning Supreme Court Justice Stevens - Don't Worry It Was Only A Joke!
by lefty
1/27/2006


Is it legal to joke about killing the president of the United States? I'm just wondering what the boundaries are. I can imagine that such jokes are against the law. The reason I ask is that Ann Coulter made what she described as a joke about killing a Supreme Court Justice.

Maybe I just don't get Republicans' sense of humor. Is that it?

Yesterday, Ann Coulter said, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," speaking to college students in Little Rock, Arkansas. Then, she added, "That's just a joke, for you in the media."

Is that funny? Did I miss something? Joking about killing a Supreme Court Justice is now funny? And creme brulee - really? She just had to get in the French jab, didn't she?

Was Ann joking when she said we should invade other countries and convert their citizens to Christianity?

( "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to christianity.")

Or maybe she was joking when she said, "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

I guess I just need to lighten up. I'll give it a go.

Here's a good one - "When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." I get it Ann! Nice one! I'm rolling on the floor.

Want another one? This one's a killer - "I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote." Man, I do miss the good ol' days of Jim Crow!

And finally, this is my favorite - "I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote. No, they all have to give up their vote, not just, you know, the lady clapping and me. The problem with women voting -- and your Communists will back me up on this -- is that, you know, women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it. And when they take these polls, it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care." Ha! Ha! Ha!

Anyone up for rounding up some Republicans and slaughtering them?

By the way, Ann, that was just a joke.


--- I would personally like to stomp a Louisiana mudhole in this wannabes' face.... I WOULD BE HONORED TOO.

I would do it for love of my country.

If I ever get the chance I will gladly be arrested for mauling her. I would make that bitch scream like a scalded monkey. I could even set up a fund for bail money for those who would pay to see it done anyway.

Maybe it/she won't be so skelatal and angular if someone kicked some curves into her jackbooted ass.

Just playing.

Of course I am.

By the way bitch... Try not to plagerize anyones work today.

Unimaginative skank that you are.---

Random Images From My Iraq Collection

My article is now appearing...

At MWC NEWS.

Go give Shahram some love.

P.S... Check out their front page, lots of indepth discussion on recent events in the Middle East.

Bush For Boys

The Pentagon is planning War On The Internet. No. Not Joking.

Link Here

Snip....

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

The wide-reaching document was signed off by Donald Rumsfeld

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.


C0ntinues....

Arianna goes and kicks NBC in the balls. God I love that Greek scrapper. She is a great American.

NBC News PR Department Gets Down and Dirty...

Arianna Huffington


Somebody's feeling the heat...

How else to explain the widely-off-the-mark responses from NBC's PR department in Lloyd Grove's column to our reporting on Russert's multitude of journalistic ethical conflicts.

Instead of dealing with the charges head on, the media giant and its Washington bureau chief Tim Russert have astonishingly decided to get down and dirty, dredging up and faxing to at least one reporter a 12-year-old false claim that I hired a private detective to snoop on Russert's wife Maureen Orth while she was preparing a hit piece on me for Vanity Fair in 1994.

I've denied this ludicrous charge, put forward without a shred of evidence many times before -- including directly to Russert during the '96 GOP convention in San Diego. But that's not the point. The point is that instead of addressing the issue of his failure to come clean with his audience on a host of ethical questions, Russert has turned the NBC publicity machine into a vehicle for sleaze and rumor-mongering.

How can one of the major news organizations in the world condone this abysmal behavior? Doesn't NBC News have ethical guidelines when it comes to this kind of thing? (And incidentally, why does NBC News refuse to publish its ethical guidelines, claiming that they are an internal document?)

Look, I know NBC News and Russert would much prefer to debate hoary charges against me rather than the real issues at hand. So let me remind them what those issues are.

Russert refuses to come clean with his audience about his role in Plamegate. He is a participant. He was interviewed under oath by Fitzgerald. But he continued to report on Plamegate as if he were a disinterested observer rather than a major player. And he still refuses to come clean and explain why he fought to keep from testifying in front of the Plamegate grand jury about his fateful chat with Scooter Libby -- even after Libby signed a waiver allowing him to do so.

Plamegate is the perfect segue to another unanswered question. How can someone with these ethical issues go and speak on ethics in the media, as Russert is about to do at Ripon College in Wisconsin next Thursday? And why is NBC refusing to disclose what his speaking fee is?

Russert's latest ethical lapse is his unseemly use of Meet the Press to promote James Carville's new XM radio sports show while refusing to come clean about the fact that Carville's co-host is Russert's college-age son, Luke.

NBC News' diversionary strategy might have worked in the days before blogs started holding the MSM's feet to the fire. But not anymore. One thing is for sure: the Huffington Post and many others in the blogosphere will keep asking the questions Tim Russert doesn't want to answer.


--Ker.

Pow.

Beautiful.--

Free The Slaves Of The World.

It can be done.



You can help.



Link Here

Under g w bush the US Military now takes women as hostages. There is simply no other word for it.

Documents Show Army Seized Wives As Tactic

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
Link Here



The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

The issue of female detentions in Iraq has taken on a higher profile since kidnappers seized American journalist Jill Carroll on Jan. 7 and threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women detainees are freed.

The U.S. military on Thursday freed five of what it said were 11 women among the 14,000 detainees currently held in the 2 1/2-year-old insurgency. All were accused of "aiding terrorists or planting explosives," but an Iraqi government commission found that evidence was lacking.

Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that U.S. anti-insurgent units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects' houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning themselves in.

Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and "we are not Saddam." A U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an "imperative threat" are held in long-term U.S.-run detention facilities.

But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story as far as short-term detentions by local U.S. units. The documents are among hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under U.S. court order to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on detention practices.

Continues...


--Impeach.

Arrest.

Tried for war crimes.

That is the ONLY way to regain the respect of the world.--

Very Vintage for Ally

What have I been up to...? Not much...

Why History Will Compare

George W. Bush And Adolf Hitler

By Christy


Imagine.

From that spot you read this from, imagine 100 years into the future. Just see it in your mind slip past you, and for a moment deliver you to an unfamiliar time. Do not join, just observe. Seek out your own descendants.

Providing we survive the next century of global warming, 100 years in the future will be radically different. Note the changes to the environment. Anticipate the funny car-like vehicles. Notice the people. Go ahead and smile at their odd fashions.

Study the people very closely. In that age, my grandchildren, not yet born, will be of the elders. Your own likeness may be reflected from their faces. So close, yet, so far away. See that the people you study view the past just like you do, through a prism of relevance.

Understand that they do not know you, that you are not real to them.

You are but a transcript of history handed down. Watch them go through their days as if the lessons already taught could never be unlearned. One hundred years from now, how we felt will matter less than actual events, as even those who knew us well, will be dust. What ever the future holds, someone, somewhere, will be writing down how it was received. Our taboos will become quaint jokes.

We will be history. They will shoulder the weight of it. Marvelous or desolate, they shall inherit what we leave them with. They will be clever enough to be trying to make sense of it all, and our political correctness will mean nothing to them.

Explore what they will know of us, what they will say. Learn about ourselves through the eyes of those yet to come. Try to find out what became of us.

Look for their sources of history. Their books, their libraries, listen to the stories handed down from our own lives. From our recent past.

Let me tell you what you will find in a bold and untroubled future.

When you see the name George W. Bush, you will also find a study of Adolf Hitler.

They will compare the two, even if we refuse to do so.

In one hundred years they will not care how we felt about the actual comparision. You will find a robust debate on it. Those in our future will not have a knee jerk reaction to the conversations of our day, as we do.

To them, our inability to make the comparison ourselves, do it openly and with honesty, will be seen as one of the most cravenly acts of silence, ever.

For a moment let's go in reverse. Let us travel back and find Adolf Hitler. Not Hitler, eating a pistol, defeated in a bunker, circa. 1945.

Not THAT Hitler. Go back a little further.

A man named Adolf did not suddenly pop onto the world stage from nowhere and start liquidating people one bright afternoon. You do not get that kind of power simply by stating you have it.

It is odd how in the arguments surrounding him and what he did, motive and method are often completely absent from the conversation. It is as if, his crimes were so vast and atrocious, only death gets debated, and the simplicity and clarity of evil is forgotten.

The ORIGINAL SIN is left unidentified. The original crime remains unnoticed.

We argue about the complicated nature of the truth being covered in blood. The nature of evil becomes a philosophical stance. We forget the truths, in themselves, were never hard at all. They were, in fact, obvious all along to those who could accept they were in the presence of such evil in the first place.

The root of all evil is... greed. It has always been so.

What most choose to forget / leave out about the holocaust Hitler commanded was that it did not start out as genocide. It started out as theft. The more that was stolen, the more had to die. It really was that simple.

Right before they became 'Nazis' they were called 'The Civilized Germans'. They had a superior legal system. Once he became their leader he started systematically dismantling it, until he had literally made legal his choice to murder millions.

Hitler was no great enigma. He was a thief. A common thief with extra-ordinary power, the power to change the law. Which he did, year by year, hour by hour.

The power to murder his victims for whatever he said they did wrong. He got away with it so much, he kept doing it. He started murdering whole families. Entire neighborhoods. He simply killed them for their assets, their homes, their businesses, their money, art, and whim... their power. He stole their POWER.

It all started as a theft on a grand scale. Eventually, it became so big, only genocide could cover the nature of it. Mass murder he ruled legal and needed. Why...? Because he could.

And this has WHAT to do with George W. Bush..?? Everything.

Remember Hitler was 'ELECTED' first. Before he unleashed hell on earth, he had to attain a position that could afford him such powers. Nothing occurs in a vacuum.

Hitler did not assume power and immediately ramp up the ovens to throw small children in. There was an Adolph that existed before he became a murderous monster and that Hitler did not dare let the German citizens understand what he was doing, until they, too, were covered in the blood of the innocent.

He used fear to whip them into frenzy. To make them want blood as badly as he wanted stolen power. One ugly little man turned good people into mass murderers with lessons he learned from a hypnotist. All the banners and goose stepping morons made it seem official and patriotic.

He stole the very souls of his own people. He stole an empire.

Hitler seized absolute power by simply demanding more, and more, and more of it, and a willingness to crush anyone who tried to stop him. Whatever he wanted was enacted by LAWS that could be manipulated through corruption. Through loopholes, and re-interpretations, Adolf Hitler evolved into a leader above the law. He followed no law but that of greed and might.

He tried to steal entire races of mankind. He stole nations. It was all nice and legal because otherwise it would have been an obvious crime of inhuman proportions.

Sound familiar...? A tyrant dismantling a justice system so that ANYTHING he does, up to and including SLAUGHTER is legal.

It was not about hate and murder. It was about power, and assets. LOTS of assets. It was about being above the law. A thief with the ultimate powers of burglary. A thief with the ability to murder those he robbed with no consequence.

To a thief, murder is the ultimate convienance.

Did Hitler hate Jews..? Certainly. But he did NOT kill them, simply because he hated them. He killed them because they were rich and he was stealing it ALL. All witnesses and heirs had to die, so the stolen loot could never be 'legally' disputed. He killed them because he COULD. He had lots of help, too. All dedicated thieves, themselves.

A select, loyal few around him helped break, bend, reverse, dismiss, or pervert every single law that made Germans 'Civilized'. They destroyed true patriots, bullied, and blackmailed or shamed others into helping them. A million other conspiracies spawned by one central plot that was completely based on the politics of looting. A central conspiracy of naked greed, carried out by powerful people in high positions of government.

Why else would you kill millions of people? Money. Lots and lots of money. There is no other reason.

Those that resisted were systematically eliminated in the quite that fell when good men went silent. That silence is always the forewarning of a slaughter on the horizon. A collaboration of silence.

Adolf Hitler was not born a monster. He was CREATED as surely as any creature Dr. Frankenstein could patch together from death. A secret law here, a redacted right there, was how it was done. That is exactly how the good Germans awoke to find themselves Nazis one day. It did not happen overnight.

Men with names like Prescott Bush helped Hitler. They financed him. Kept his secrets. Cheered him on. Instigated mass murder on a biblical scale. And why would they do this..? Because they too were direct beneficiaries of the theft. They helped DESIGN the theft. Why would they? Because they COULD.

They used their power to cover up the deeds of a monster. They betrayed their own people to enslave them with the laws of a mad man hell bent on stealing everything. They made sure the masses in their control, saw what they wanted them to see. The brain washing of good people to believe it was all justified was in their hands. Propaganda was an art to them and they were highly skilled at it.

They made decent people believe the smell of charring human flesh in their midst did not matter. Those that refused to adjust to it were thrown into those fires as well. They made them like it and want more.

The ones helping Hitler did it so that their own grandchildren would never have to work a day in their lives. They did it because they were consumed with murderous greed. It was all pure profit they believed had no cost whatsoever because it was not they in the devils path.

The theft of a lifetime, coupled with the lofty promise of legacy. Those above the law made sure their children and friends were immune from accountability as well. Which brings us, full circle, to the grandson who certainly understands what his grandpa did back in the day.

A grandson that has implemented every single tactic Hitler used to turn the 'Civilized Germans' into the 'Nazis' against his own people.

That man now calls himself President of the United States of America. He has followed Hitler's playbook almost word for word. He most certainly learned the inside secrets of these tactics at his own family dinner table.

At every single point, the ascent to power has been a direct parallel. Even right up to the lies that began a pre-emptive, devastating war. Even at this moment a great dismantling of our justice system is under way. Within both Congress and The Supreme Court, high ranking traitors have been installed to steal elections, justify torture, and disassemble any rights that makes us 'civilized'.

These high ranking traitors are even now replacing the very foundation of our government, The Constitution, with an act they believe the name of will hide the treason buried within it. Those not betraying our nation overtly have turned into silent cowards in the face of these bullies and criminals.

That is exactly how Adolf Hitler turned Germany into Nazi Germany.

If it sounds like a duck. Looks like a duck. Walks like a duck. Smells like a duck. If it FEELS like a duck...It is a duck. Pretending it is something more or less romantic has become tedious and vacant.

To not compare them is an exercise in obscene futility. Eventually the truth of what is happening will be written.

George W. Bush is deliberately walking the same path of Adolf Hitler. There is no coincidence their methods fall in lockstep with one another when laid side by side. Their motive is the same. Murderous Greed.

Even their speeches are eerily similar; all talk of lofty ideas like 'freedom' and 'sacrifice' with no real understanding of either word. They cover those surrounding them in medals, as if those that do the dying died for just that. The past repeats itself, even if we refuse to aknowledge its' presence.

Those implicated by history, prefer you do not remember it, lest it seem familiar. For every 1,000,000 second rate burglaries, there will be at least one bold and daring crime, horrific in its nature. And it always begins with a large public theft.

On September 10th, 2001 a huge crime was revealed to the people of the United States Of America. A theft on a grand scale. Staggering even. Possibly the largest in history. Any history.

Rumsfield , himself, announced, TRILLIONS were missing late that evening. To pretend the death that swooped from a clear blue sky less than a day later had nothing to do with this enormous crime is not just ignorant, but down right dangerous.

Who took it? Who was authorized to touch it in the first place... Start there.

At this point giving them the benefit of the doubt betrays this nation, and has led to the great silence that always directly precedes genocide. Once again in history, good men have fallent silent in the face of tyranny.

There is much we should be SCREAMING about.

Especially when you throw in the fact of who benefited on the insurance of the World Trade Centers. Henry Kissinger alone made AT LEAST ONE BILLION DOLLARS, MAYBE EVEN FOUR.... Yes. I said BILLION. Yes. I said Dollars. Yes, I said Henry Kissinger.

A man known as a war criminal, in every country, EXCEPT this one.

Who would you lie to for a billion dollars..? A TRILLION..? 10 Trillion dollars...?

Who would you kill for such money? Who would you kill to keep it? Who could you kill to hide that you took it in the first place...?

Hitler killed MILLIONS before he was stopped.

MILLIONS.

George W. Bush has proven he will kill thousands and tens of thousands for no reason at all, without the slightest trace of remorse, or reflection. Worse, he has proven he will LIE to ensure this death comes to pass. He demands it. Why..? Because he CAN.

Because he makes powerful men, like his father, very, very, rich from it. They protect him by perverting the very laws we live by. By making secret laws. By taking our rights to do anything about it.

He has admitted to breaking the law and dared anyone to stop him. His enablers also spawn out to infect us with a madness that is born of lies meant to inspire that exact reaction, mad confusion. Fear.

The nomination of Alito to the Supreme Court is no less than an obvious pharonic grab to completely immunize himself from any law. He will BE the law. To believe he will not use the power available to him, power he betrayed his own nation's laws for, is cowardly, and gullible.

Wishful thinking, as well, is a delusion of those in denial of their own complicity in history. The record of George W. Bush speaks for itself, his incompetence and twisted desires are obvious even to the dull, and unimaginative. He is no great lover of life nor liberty. Freedom was never the motive. Not OUR freedom, anyway.

This man speaks of life even as he, his family, and friends; gleefully make billions from the butchery he makes sure will continue indefinitely. If a gallon of blood were worth to him what a gallon of oil was, he would not be so eager to command it spilled.

Bush has sought, and found a way, to justify torture. His enablers let him justify any number of killings, no matter how innocent those inflicted with it are. He hides the death from us, as if we are children, and then obscenely yanks it from its secret grave to throw in our faces every time he needs a distraction. Every time we dare question his power he changes the definition of it to give himself even more force and status.

Just like Adolf Hitler.

Bush likes it. He enjoys the power. He revels in the status fear, theft, and murder have put him in. Only the committed stupid would assume that a man above the law would not like it and use it to its' fullest potential to benefit himself, and his cronies.

Only angry and typical semantics keeps us from calling this man what he really is.

George Bush is what Adolf Hitler was in 1939.

And if he is not stopped, it is very likely a World War, possibly a holocaust, will ensue. And soon.

Let us go forward again into that future we sought out before. Seek out those that descended from these times once more, and see the lives we gave them. Is that future still bold, and untroubled...?

Stand and watch their faces, search their eyes from the distance of a century.

Will Bush be to them what Hitler is to us now..? How does our future affect the past they will be born of..? Do their limbs carry the scars of the chains of bondage? Have they been branded like cattle?

Look at them again. Do not blink. Now watch them disappear. Watch as their existence is reversed right before your eyes, and the future becomes a dark prison we, ourselves helped build. A prison where mad leaders torture and murder at will. Because they enjoy it. Need it. Because it makes them rich, famous, and feared.

Because they can. Because we LET them.

We have grown to become the "Civilized Germans' in 1939, powerful and led right up to the thin veil that stands between outrage and atrocity.

We are told to forget the stink of torture, that it is a figment of an unpatriotic imagination. We have been taken to the edge of a great abyss filled with that foul stench. The bleeding, the dying, the maimed. The ones robbed are in that void.

Once we no longer mind the smell of it, they will build ovens. It will all be perfectly legal because they say it is legal. Other traditional 'undesirables' will join the 'enemy' in the flames. All that we know and love will be detained in the dark visions of men like Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush. Men who will take as much as they can, until someone stops them.

Eventually all of history will collide in a place that shatters our future, and is the wreckage those you watch will be born of. This collision is being choreographed for the benefit of the architects. The less we resist the more rapidly they will consolidate their power. We stand between them and all they wish to steal. It is a dark place, indeed.

There will be no discussion of history there, unless it is to praise the great victories of Dear Leaders grandfather. The bush family made a lot of money from Hitler's death camps. There is nothing that says they will hesitate to build more. Once they were again in a place where they COULD.

Unfortunately, we have been on the road there all along, we are now rapidly closing in on that destination. It was a path chosen by one who was supposed to protect us.

In this place the similarities between tyrants will not be hidden any longer. The trumped up political correctness that avoids the debate will be the chains around our throats. Phony outrage over the comparison will be silenced abruptly in the face of familiar slaughter.

If we do not compare G.W. Bush to Hitler, if we are not honest about their motives now, 1941 is only a few seasons away. And the dying has just begun.

Only mass murder can hide the enormity of the crimes they have already committed. The theft of an empire.

God help us all.

Cindy Sheehan...

Link Here


Snip...

We as citizens of the United States of America must stop allowing our leaders to give the orders to kill innocent people. I almost said: we must stop allowing our leaders to "kill" innocent people. But we all know the cowards don't fight their own fantasy battles or send their own children to fight in the causes that they idiotically and diabolically iterate are "noble." No, they order our children to go over and do their dishonest and destructive dirty work! Our soldiers are taught that "Hajis," the brown skinned people of Iraq who clean their toilets, showers, and wash their clothes, are less than people ... which makes them easier to kill. The dehumanization of the Iraqi people is also dehumanizing our soldiers. Our children.

I got a hate email from a "patriotic American" once who told me that when we see the mothers and fathers of Iraq screaming because their babies have been killed, that they "are just acting for the cameras. They are animals, who don't care about their children because they know they can produce another." This is the mentality of General Sherman when he said "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." This wicked rhetoric is the rhetoric that dehumanizes us all.

continues...

'I doubt that this will bother the president any more than any of his other failures. '

A President Who Can Do No Right

by Bob Herbert
Link Here

We should be used to it by now. There are a couple of Congressional committees trying to investigate the tragic Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the Bush administration is refusing to turn over certain documents or allow certain senior White House officials to testify before the committees under oath.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat who is by no means unfriendly to the Bush crowd, said this week, "There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do."

Once again the president has, in effect, flipped the bird at Congress. He's amazing. Forget such fine points as the Constitution and the separation of powers. George W. Bush does what he wants to do. He won fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000 and then governed as if he'd been elected by acclamation. He dispensed with John Kerry in 2004 by portraying himself -- a man who ran and hid from the draft during Vietnam -- as more of a warrior than Mr. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran of that war.

Reality has been dealt a stunning blow by Mr. Bush. The administration's high-handedness with the Katrina investigators comes at the same time as disclosures showing that the White House was warned in the hours just before the hurricane hit New Orleans that it might well cause catastrophic flooding and the breaching of the city's levees.

That was early on the morning of last Aug. 29. On Sept. 1, with the city all but completely underwater, the president went on television and blithely declared, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

This guy is something. Remember his "Top Gun" moment aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln? And his famous taunt -- "Bring 'em on" -- to the insurgents in Iraq? His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence. And that's the real problem. That's where you'll find the mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence.

Fantasy may be in fashion. Reality may have been shoved into the shadows on Mr. Bush's watch. But the plain truth is that he is the worst president in memory, and one of the worst of all time. Many thousands of people -- men, women and children -- have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies.

Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser for George H. W. Bush, counseled against the occupation of Iraq at the end of the first gulf war. As recounted in a New Yorker article last fall, he said, "At the minimum, we'd be an occupier in a hostile land. Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out?"

George W. Bush had no such concerns. In fact, he joked about his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like a frat boy making cracks about a bad bet on a football game, Mr. Bush displayed what he felt was a hilarious set of photos during a spoof that he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association in March 2004.

The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking under furniture in the Oval Office for the missing weapons. Mr. Bush offered mock captions for the photos, saying, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." And, "Nope, no weapons over there, maybe under here."

This week, as the killing of American G.I.'s and innocent Iraqis continued, ....

Continues...

And For What America...??

The Canadian

U.S. invasion responsible deaths of over 250,000 civilians in Iraq

by John Stokes
Link Here

New studies make the Bush administration's "liberation" argument for a 'pre-emptive' war against Iraq seem questionable.

The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by U.S.-led coalition forces has been responsible for the death of at least 150,000 civilians (not including certain of Iraq), reveals a compilitation of scientific studies and corroborated eyewitness testimonies.

The majority of these deaths, which are in addition those normally expected from natural causes, illness and accidents, have been among women and children, documents a well-researched study, that had been released by The Lancet Medical Journal.

The report in the British journal is based on the work of teams from the Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University in the U.S., and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.

A similar methodology was used in the late 1990's to calculate the number of deaths from the war in Kosovo, put at 10,000.

The information was obtained as Iraqi interviewers surveyed 808 families, consisting of 7,868 people, in 33 different "clusters" or neighbourhoods spread across the country.

In each case, they asked how many births and deaths there had been in the home since January 2002.

That information was then compared with the death rates in each neighbourhood in the 15 months before the invasion that toppled president Saddam Hussein, adjusted for the different time frames, and extrapolated to cover the entire 24.4 million population of Iraq.

The most common cause of death is as a direct result of a worsening 'culture of violence', mostly caused by indiscriminate U.S. co-ordinated air strikes, and related military interventions, reveals the study of almost 1000 households scattered across Iraq. And the risk of violent death just after the invasion was 58 times greater than before the war. The overall risk of death was 1.5 times more after the invasion than before.

The on-going American Occupation has also created worsened civil strife as well as mass environmental destructions and related public health problems that is associated with American bomb-related released radioactive and other life-threatening pollutions. The American Occupation has also prevailed over the neglect to the repairing of vital public services-related infrastructure, which include U.S.-led destructions of water systems.

The figure of 100,000 had been based on somewhat "conservative assumptions", notes Les Roberts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, U.S., who led the study.

That estimate excludes Falluja, a hotspot for violence. If the data from this town is included, the compiled studies point to about 250,000 excess deaths since the outbreak of the U.S.-led war.

Many Americans have complained that more than $200 billion U.S. tax dollars have been diverted from vitally needed public services in the United States, into apparently reckless activities. These activities are resulting in inflicted mass-casualities against totally innocent civilians, which have worsened conditions for political extremism, and ensuing "terrorism".

It is well documented that such activities are being viewed by many Iraqis, and other peoples internationally, to undermine a popular feeling of international security in general. Indeed, polls suggest that Americans felt much more secure under the former political ledership of U.S. President Bill Clinton, as compared to the militaristic strategies which are being pursued by the George W. Bush administration.

Yes..

I will be posting today...

Am having a kiddie crisis and playing super mommy right now.

Soon.

Alberto 'The Electrode' Gonzales Gets Treated To REAL Democracy

'...because Osama may be under your bed sharpening his cutlass.'

They Know They Broke the Law

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t

Bush and the boys have taken to the road this week to defend the indefensible. To wit: spying on American citizens without a warrant is fine and dandy, because the President can do whatever he wants, because laws are meaningless in the main, because Osama may be under your bed sharpening his cutlass. The road trip started in Kansas and will wend its way hither and yon, spreading bad information and flat-out lies at every whistle-stop.

A defining moment of glittering idiocy took place on this road trip during an exchange with reporters on Monday. General Michael Hayden, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former director of the National Security Agency, was tapped to be the responsible face of the intelligence community for this junket. The façade didn't hold up for long.

Jonathan Landay, a reporter with Knight-Ridder, queried General Hayden about the central issue behind the recent revelations that Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on thousands of American citizens. "My understanding," began Landay, "is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures."

That's as far as Landay got. Here is the remainder of the exchange:

Gen. Hayden: No, actually - the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. That's what it says.

Landay: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

Gen. Hayden: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

Landay: But does it not say probable ---

Gen. Hayden: No. The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

There you have it. The fellow who used to run the NSA, the agency whose very charter places the Fourth Amendment in greatest peril simply by dint of its ability to peek through windows, does not think the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause. Let's have a look at the text in question, just for the sake of clarity:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So there's that, but it gets better. An excellent writer on the DailyKos blog pointed out another supreme oddity in the administration's defense of its actions. Gen. Hayden insisted that the "reasonable suspicion" standard trumps probable cause when it comes to the issuance of warrants.

It doesn't. Probable cause is still the law of the land. To be clear on this point, "probable cause" for a search warrant requires that a judge find a substantial basis, or a fair probability, that the search will turn up evidence of a crime. "Reasonable suspicion" is a less severe standard that requires specific and articulable facts that would lead an officer to believe that criminal activity is afoot. In other words, with "reasonable suspicion" as the standard, a warrant would be issued simply on the word of the officer.

The phrase itself - reasonable suspicion - brings back a debate that came and went in the summer of 2002. Mike DeWine, Republican Senator from Ohio, attempted in 2002 to add an amendment to the Patriot Act that would lower the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant standard from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion." This amendment, DeWine was specifically careful to note, would only apply to surveillance of non-citizens. Note that well.

The summer of 2002 saw hearings in Congress on the DeWine amendment. One witness during these hearings was none other than James Baker, who was serving at the time as counsel for intelligence policy at the Department of Justice, and was head of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. The Office of Intelligence Policy and Review is the entity that presents to the FISA court all applications for surveillance of "foreign powers and their agents." In other words, Baker was appearing at these hearings as the main expert on the standard for the issuance of FISA warrants.

In his formal statement, Baker essentially shot to pieces the DeWine argument that the warrant standard needed to be watered down from probable cause to reasonable suspicion. "The Department of Justice has been studying Sen. DeWine's proposed legislation," said Baker. "Because the proposed change raises both significant legal and practical issues, the Administration at this time is not prepared to support it."

"It may not be the case," continued Baker, "that the probable cause standard has caused any difficulties in our ability to seek the FISA warrants we require, and we will need to engage in a significant review to determine the effect a change in the standard would have on our ongoing operations. If the current standard has not posed an obstacle, then there may be little to gain from the lower standard and, as I previously stated, perhaps much to lose."

Let's break this down.

In the summer of 2002, an attempt was made to water down the FISA warrant standard from probable cause to reasonable suspicion. This change would only apply to non-citizens. James Baker, speaking for the administration, said such a change was not necessary, and perhaps dangerous. At this time, however, the Bush administration had already authorized warrantless spying on American citizens.

On Monday, Gen. Hayden dug up the "reasonable suspicion" standard as justification for this warrantless surveillance of Americans, going so far as to deny that "probable cause" exists within the Fourth Amendment. He did so to defend the actions of an administration that had, in 2002, flatly stated through Baker that "reasonable suspicion" was an inappropriate standard even for the surveillance of non-citizens.

These people are trying to have it both ways. At one time, they said that "reasonable suspicion" was a dangerous standard for the warrant-authorized surveillance of non-citizens, even as they were conducting non-warranted surveillance of thousands of actual citizens. This week, in an attempt to crab away from the legal ramifications of their actions, they are running back to the dubious justification of "reasonable suspicion."

The mind boggles. One can imagine George W. Bush silently thanking God each night for the fact that he has a Republican congress at his back. Were it otherwise, the man would be neck-deep in impeachment hearings. This road trip, and the tortured convolutions being put forth as justification for spying on Americans, leads to one inescapable conclusion: they know what they did was illegal.





William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

Art For Everyone

Keep These Handy, Use Them Now.. And Again Often.

Free numbers for D.C Capitol Switchboard (they'll connect you to any Congressperson, or give you their address):

1-866-340-9281

1-866-340-9279

1-888-355-3588

'And all hell broke loose.'

Washington Post

Bush the Incompetent

By Harold Meyerson


Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.

In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday's New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government's special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, "by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy." At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That's when you'd think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq's reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq -- indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn't require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.

It's the president's prescription drug plan (Medicare Part D), though, that is his most mind-boggling failure. As was not the case in Iraq or with Katrina, it hasn't had to overcome the opposition of man or nature. Pharmacists are not resisting the program; seniors are not planting car bombs to impede it (not yet, anyway). Continues.....

PLEASE GOD let them FILLIBUSTER!!!!

The Alito Conformation vote right now stands at

Yea 44

Nay 20

LET THE FILLIBUSTERING BEGIN.

It only takes ONE.

Do your damn JOBS and protect WE The People.

No. Unitary. Executive. Ever.

Oh, Hell.

Bush Mine Safety Administrator

Walks Out of Senate Hearing

ThinkProgress has the video


--Coal Miners are NOT the people you want pissed at you.--

Because News Of A Boy, Who Could Be A King Is Always Relevent. And Just Imagine The Propaganda Value To The Blair Witch Project.

Prince Harry could be sent to Iraq

Link Here

LONDON (AFP) - Prince Harry, completing his army officer training, has chosen to join a regiment which could be deployed in Iraq.

Harry, 21, third in line to the throne, has opted to join the Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry, his father Prince Charles's Clarence House residence said Wednesday.

The Household Cavalry are expected to be deployed to Iraq in the future.

He could also have to guard Queen Elizabeth II, his grandmother.

Harry is due to complete his officer training at Britain's elite Sandhurst military college in April. He will become a second lieutenant in the cavalry once commissioned as an officer.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "It's fair to say that if his squadron goes to Iraq, he will probably go with it."

Continues...

MoDo Aims. Fires. Scores Again... "Katrina Determined to Attack New Orleans."

Delusion and Illusion Worthy of Dickens
by Maureen Dowd

Link Here

The Democrats will never win the White House as long as they're stuck in Bleak House. They're slipping and sliding in the same crust-upon-crust of mud and caboose-creeping fog and soft black drizzle and flakes of soot that blacken the chamber of law in the opening of the terrific Dickens novel (now an irresistible PBS series).

The lumbering pace of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce will pale compared with the time it will take the cowed and colicky Democrats to yank back power from Republicans skilled at abusing it.

The party simply seems incapable of getting the muscular message and riveting messenger needed to dispel the mud, fog, drizzle and soot emanating from Karl Rove's rag-and-bone shop on Pennsylvania Avenue.

As the White House drives its truckload of lies around the country, it becomes ever clearer that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore are just not the right people to respond to the administration's national security scare-a-thon.

We got mired in Iraq in the first place partly because Dick Cheney and Rummy thought that, post-Vietnam and post-Clinton, America was seen as soft. One shock-and-awe session, one tyrant stomped on, they reckoned, and the Arab world would no longer see Americans as wimps. That reasoning turned out to be dangerous, flying in the face of warnings from our own intelligence experts.

But Karl Rove is still dishing out the same line, and it's still working: those who want to re-evaluate the strategy in Iraq are soft. Those who want to rein in the Patriot Act are soft. Those who question the Alito doctrine of presidential absolutism are soft. Those who don't want to break the law and snoop on Americans are soft - not just soft, but practically collaborating with the terrorists.

"Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview" on national security, Mr. Rove said last week, "and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong - deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

But you only need to check the paper daily to see that this administration has been deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong on everything: from the promise to rebuild Iraq and the consequences of deploying a strained Army this long in an insurgent war to the failure to respond to the aftermath of Katrina, after dissembling about pre-storm alarms.

The bumbling Bush team that ignored the warning "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" also ignored one that went something like: "Katrina Determined to Attack New Orleans." And now the White House is trying to inhibit Congressional questions on Katrina, just as it did for the 9/11 inquiries.

The administration's p.r. offensive on warrantless - and questionably effective - snooping is so aggressive that it has even risked exposing the president to an occasional unscripted, but still not tough, question. So he rambles on about steering clear of "Brokeback Mountain" and the therapeutic value of mountain biking. And he calls Barney, the Scottish terrier, "the son I never had." (Barney's dad is all bark and no bite.)

The White House is as skittish about bilked Indians as it is about billing-and-cooing cowboys. It admits it has pictures of the president with Jack Abramoff, but won't cough them up.

While he was out defending his scofflaw behavior, W. had to address the fact that the real nuclear threat (Iran), as opposed to the fake nuclear threat (Iraq), is embarrassing him. He told the Iranian people: "We have no beef with you." (State Department reporters puzzled over how that might be translated into Farsi: "We have no cow with you"?)

You couldn't turn on a TV this week without seeing Torture Guy Alberto Gonzales give all-purpose legal cover to Dick Cheney as that Grim Peeper ravages the Constitution. At a Georgetown University speech, W.'s legal lickspittle ignored a few student protesters, but he might have learned something from their banner, emblazoned with words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

In their usual twisted way, the Bushies are reducing their abuse of the law to a test of testosterone - knowing that the Democrats will play Judy to their Punch.

The Dems need to drum up a decent message so they look as if they know what the Dickens they're doing before the November election. Otherwise, they'll look like bowed supplicants holding out gruel cups to Karl Rove and pleading, "Please, sir, I want some more."

Topplebush.com
Posted: January 26, 2006

'Any journalist who uses the label “terrorist surveillance program” isn’t doing their job. '

ThinkProgress.Org Is AWSOME.

Calling A Spade A Spade

The White House is desperate to change the name of Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program. The White House wants people to call it a “terrorist surveillance program.” The press office even released a handy fact sheet:

Domestic Calls are calls inside the United States. International Calls are calls either to or from the United States.

Domestic Flights are flights from one American city to another. International Flights are flights to or from the United States.

Domestic Mail consists of letters and packages sent within the United States. International Mail consists of letters and packages sent to or from the United States.

Domestic Commerce involves business within the United States. International Commerce involves business between the United States and other countries.

It’s good to know that the White House knows the difference between a domestic flight and an international flight. But it’s completely irrelevant. (Afterall, The White House isn’t asking people to call it an “international surveillance program.”)

The program should have a name to accurately describe it. A combination of two things distinguish this program from all other legal surveillance programs:

1. It was conducted without a warrant. (Warrantless)
2. It involved people on U.S. soil. (Domestic)

If this wasn’t a warrantless domestic surveillance program it wouldn’t be a story. A “terrorist surveillance program” is not descriptive. It could be referring to any number of programs, many of which have been around for decades and are not at all controversial.

Journalists are supposed to describe stories as accurately as possible. Any journalist who uses the label “terrorist surveillance program” isn’t doing their job.



---AMEN!!!!!!!---

BTW.. If you only love us for our crazy/sexy Aussi...

She will be back with us soon.

Her birthday must have been lovely, she got a new computer.

Because the old one completely melted down. Happy Birthday Love.

HER tech guys 'official technical description'....??

"It died."

So.. after the funeral ceromonies and proper bereavment period..

Our Rossi Roo will return A.S.A.P.

'Till then you are stuck with my mean, yet still somehow charming, self.

Party On.

Oh, and P.S...

She sends her love, hugs, kisses, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do not be fooled, though, 'cause I am still her favorite.

Oh, yeah.

WHO"S THE MOMMA...???

So Republicans... DID Clinton eat your baby..??

Link Here

Snip...

Under these circumstances, asking about Mr. Abramoff's White House meetings is no mere exercise in reportorial curiosity but a legitimate inquiry about what an admitted felon might have been seeking at the highest levels of government. Whatever White House officials did or didn't do, there is every reason to believe that Mr. Abramoff was up to no good and therefore every reason the public ought to know with whom he was meeting.

Mr. McClellan dismisses requests for the information as an effort to play "partisan politics," and no doubt there is more than an element of partisanship in Democrats' efforts to extract this information. But Republicans wouldn't stand for this kind of stonewalling if the situation were reversed. We can say that with confidence because history proves it. During the 1996 scandal over foreign fundraising in the Clinton White House, Republicans demanded -- and obtained, though not without a fight -- extensive information about White House coffees and other meetings, including photos and videotapes.

@#$%^&* !!@ #$%^&* (*&^% *&^%$#@!#$%!!!!!!!!!!

I do not even know if there are words to describe the RAGE I feel.

Very Vintage

Supreme Court For Sale. Scalia Caught Breastfeeding From Lobbiests

Supreme Ethics Problem?

What Was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Doing on Day of Supreme Court Swearing-In?

By BRIAN ROSS
ABC NEWS

At the historic swearing-in of John Roberts as the 17th chief justice of the United States last September, every member of the Supreme Court, except Antonin Scalia, was in attendance. ABC News has learned that Scalia instead was on the tennis court at one of the country's top resorts, the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Bachelor Gulch, Colo., during a trip to a legal seminar sponsored by the Federalist Society.

Not only did Scalia's absence appear to be a snub of the new chief justice, but according to some legal ethics experts, it also raised questions about the propriety of what critics call judicial junkets.

"It's unfortunate of course that what kept him from the swearing-in was an activity that is itself of dubious ethical propriety," said Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, who is a recognized scholar on legal ethics.


Scalia Mum

Scalia spent two nights at the luxury resort lecturing at the legal seminar where ABC News also found him on the tennis court, heading out for a fly-fishing expedition, and socializing with members of the Federalist Society, the conservative activist group that paid for the expenses of his trip.

At a press conference, almost two weeks later, Scalia was not inclined to tell reporters his whereabouts during Roberts' swearing-in.

"I was out of town with a commitment that I could not break, and that's what the public information office told you," he said.

It "doesn't matter what it was. It was a commitment that I couldn't break," Scalia continued when questioned further.

According to the event's invitation, obtained by ABC News, the Federalist Society promised members who attended the seminar an exclusive and "rare opportunity to spend time, both socially and intellectually" with Scalia.

"I think Justice Scalia should not have gone on that trip for several reasons," Gillers commented. "They are a group with a decided political-slash-judicial profile."

One night at the resort, Scalia attended a cocktail reception, sponsored in part by the same lobbying and law firm where convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff once worked.

"You know a lot of people would be embarrassed at that. I don't think Antonin Scalia will be embarrassed," Gillers continued.


Other Justices Received Gifts

While there are ethics rules in place for lower federal court judges, there is no explicit code of ethics for the nine Supreme Court justices. Some practices have in turn come under scrutiny, such as accepting trips from groups with political and judicial agenda and gifts from private parties who may at some point have business before the court.

Ron Rotunda, a law professor at the George Mason School of Law, author of a textbook on legal ethics and who is himself a member of the Federalist Society, finds no problem with the Supreme Court justices attending events sponsored by the organization. "I'm a member of the Federalist Society, the NAACP, and the justices get invited to both, and I think that's a good idea," he said. "The organization doesn't have litigation before the judge and is unlikely to have litigation before the judge."

An examination of the Supreme Court disclosure forms by ABC News found that five of the justices have accepted tens of thousand of dollars in country club memberships. And Justice Clarence Thomas has received tens of thousands of dollars in valuable gifts, including an $800 leather jacket from NASCAR, a $1,200 set of tires, a vacation trip by private jet, and a rare Bible valued at $19,000.

"The rules dealing with gifts don't apply to Justice Thomas because the rules only apply to lower court judges," Gillers explained. "People give gifts to judges and justices because they have power. And they have power because of their position that they hold in trust. And to suggest that it doesn't matter, no one will care, seems to me to be whistling in the dark."


At a Crossroads

Some argue that the Supreme Court justices are setting a bad example for other judges, who have been criticized for accepting free trips to luxury resorts for education seminars.

"I think the judiciary is really at a crossroads right now. There is a multibillion-dollar influence peddling industry in Washington, and it really has the federal judiciary in its sights at this point," Doug Kendall, director of Community Rights Counsel and author of a study on trips for judges, said.

The issue of accepting paid trips found its way into the confirmation hearing for now Chief Justice John Roberts.

"So I'd like to know, Judge Roberts, if confirmed, whether you will use your power as chief justice to set a high ethical tone," Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wis., asked.

In reply, Roberts said, "Well, I don't think special interests should be allowed to lobby federal judges. Stated that way, I think the answer is clear."

Roberts, Scalia and Thomas declined comment and requests for interviews by ABC News. A spokesman for the Federalist Society also declined to comment.


Rhonda Schwartz and David Scott contributed to this report.


--Isn't that... Quaint..?

I mean.. Like Geneva Convention QUAINT....--