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Saturday, March 25, 2006

The Nation | Neglect in New Orleans


More than six months after one of the worst natural disasters to hit the United States, a perfect storm of malign neglect on the federal, state and local levels continues to batter the victims of Hurricane Katrina, according to The Nation. The overwhelming scale of destruction wrought by the hurricane required a comprehensive, federally directed plan of reconstruction, including the rebuilding of levees and the restoration of coastal wetlands, yet the record of the past six months is one of promises unkept, funding delayed and denied, and machinations of politicians and their corporate cronies to profit from the catastrophe

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Red Cross Fires Administrators in New Orleans



In a major shake-up of its relief operations in New Orleans, the American Red Cross dismissed two key supervisors yesterday as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the improper diversion of relief supplies after Hurricane Katrina.




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Sucker Punch



Thursday, 23 March 2006

Not only thugs, but suckers too. NY Daily News reports on transcripts of tirades by Saddam Hussein, wondering what he has to do to get the West to believe that he has destroyed his WMD as ordered:

"We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show. At another meeting, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether UN inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked.

In another meeting, deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz (a Christian by the way; when do you think we'll next see a Christian as deputy prime minister of Iraq?), pipes up: "We played by the rules of the game. In 1991, our weapons were destroyed."

Just imagine these guys, who came to power with the help of not one but two murderous CIA-assisted coups, who reaped billions in underhanded cash, weapons and WMD material funneled to them illicitly (and licitly) by Daddy Bush, wringing their hands over the fact that "playing by the rules" cuts no ice with the American government! Not just thugs, not just suckers, but great gullywhopping fools as well. The perfect foils for Junior Bush, in fact: they were probably the only group of national leaders in the world dumber than his own gang.

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Road Warrior: Dick Cheney Sits in Darkness
Friday, 24 March 2006

The Smoking Gun finds the smoking gun behind the Bush Administration's unbending ignorance, arrogance, incompetence and stupidity. From the "Vice Presidential Downtime Requirements" sent by Dick Cheney's staff to all hotels where Deadeye will be cooling his heels between public bouts of warmongering mendacity, the seventh item on the list tells us everything we need to know:"

All televisions tuned to Fox News.

"Get thee behind me, reality!

OPERATION SOME STUPID NAME


Everytime I see you falling, I get down on my knees and pray

- New Order

Aka Bu$h's approval ratings at all time low....LET'S EXPLOIT OUR SOLDIERS. I'm surprised that they didn't choose today to nuke Iran. I mean, why not? Everytime Bu$h's rating fall (plummet to be exact) or something negative crawls into the light in regards to this foul administration, we either bomb something or up the goddamn terror level. They simply tug on your fear string or they get all the patriotic juices flowing by parading our soldiers in front of the camera as they head off to get shot at. One of these days they're gonna make SURE it's not a false alarm.

Two days ago they proudly declared the beginning of OPERATION SWARMER....a "major" operation with "thousands" of troops. I think they said it was supposedly the "biggest" attack since the early days of the war. I'm sure. Looked more lie "Operation Photo-Op" to me. Did you see the video of those soldiers landing on what looked like the north side of mars and running through a completely empty desert? I've heard since that not a shot was fired and that they released all the prisoners they had taken. What are we doing in Iraq?So Bu$h is down to a 34% approval rating (according to either Time or Newsweek, I can't remember which). 34% sounds about right. I've been declaring for about a year or so now that 34 % of the American people are simple drones. This trend is apparent on any internet poll you may engage in. No matter how OBVIOUS the question (last one I saw was "Is the U.S. Ready For A Female President?) the ridiculous answer is always holding a strong 34%. How many Americans is that? Lets see....300,000 million Americans (give or take) and 34% would be, what....102,000,000 people? WOW. No wonder I don't leave the house. I have a 1 in 3 chance of stumbling into a zombie pit and having my brain sucked outta my skull. So 34% percent of these assinine idiots support the continued killings in Iraq, support the bombing of Iran, the revocation of our constitutional rights, the instalation of right wing christian fascism into every facet of our lives, the continued bankrupting of our coffers to pay for this insane war and to provide tax cuts to the rich and every other piece of shit legislation that has occued since the Supreme Court declared Bu$h our Fuhrer in 2000. How nice. That should be 102,000,000 people lining up at the military recruiting offices to enlist. Right?

Did the terror level go up today too? I stopped paying attention to that the second I cut off my cable television. Now I only get SUPER basic cable and a cable modem. I no longer chance turning past O'Reilly's lie fest by mistake or Chris Matthews oral session with one republican lawmaker or another. The only news I watch is the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. They don't bother with the rainbow colored terror chart. That is reserved for the 34% of America who must plan their day around a pretty color chart provided by Faux News. The kind of people who stare into the sun and then wonder why they can't see. >>>cont

Posted by America is Fucked

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MIGRAINE

Currently suffering from a blinding migraine most likely brought on by viewing Russ Feingold (D. Wisconsin) being eviscerated by the reich on the floor of the Senate yesterday. Feingold DARED to call for Bu$h to be censured and the reich, knowing no other thing to do, fell back on their old trusty word "terror" and accused Feingold of assisting the terrorists. I hate these people.


That's when the pain and the vomiting began and it hasn't subsided since. I think I was actually blind for a few minutes yesterday, but it may have been a pain induced hallucination. I've mentioned before that I gave myself high blood pressure from being so furious all the time and I'm sure this migraine is a result of a sudden spike in blood pressure. It took me three full hours just to get my throbbing head off the pillow to type this. I lay there thinking "Ok, if you can just get up you can type SOMETHING on the blog." The thought of actually rising from my death bed was ludicrous, and I was sure the light from my monitor would blind me forever and cause sudden, unstoppable emesis. So I lay there for three hours trying to get up enough courage to rise. I almost passed out when I stood up to walk the 2 feet to my computer and a wave of nausea swept over me like a tsunami. I have been swallowing Excedrin like its candy (goodbye, liver!) and I'm hoping to recover by tomorrow. If not, I will kill myself. One can only survive a migraine for so long. Back to my death bed I go. I'll be back ranting and raving tomorrow (if I'm still amongst the living.)

posted by America Is Fucked at 3/14/2006 07:28:00 PM

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Since the christo-fascists and apparently the government feel it's necessary to restrict our rights



Fight Begins To Overturn South Dakota Abortion Ban...



ALTERNATIVES to PLAN-B


Since the christo-fascists and apparently the government feel it's necessary to restrict our rights to make choices regarding our OWN bodies by restricting the access to PLAN-B (the mornig after pill) I am posting here the ALTERNATIVES to using PLAN-B. MOST birth control pills can be taken as morning after medication since all PLAN-B is is a high dose of the hormone found in most BC pills. The list can be found below as well as the link to the website from which I obtained it. OVRAL is the easiest to take for it requires only 2 tablets at a time. This medication is LEGAL (it's simply birth control) and can easily be obtained with a prescription from any doctor. I have been filling prescriptions for years and we have dispensed this medication NUMEROUS times for this exact use. Unless your pharmacist is a christo-fascist there is NO REASON you should be denied a prescription for OVRAL. Simply have your MD write the directions as "AS DIRECTED" so they won't give you some big goddamn hassel if they learn you're planning on having them on hand "just in case." It is up to we WOMEN to take matters in our own hands from now on. Sadly, we can no longer rely on our own Constitution to protect our reproductive rights. I will be posting the easily obtainable (via prescription from your MD, of course) "abortion pills" soon.

I obtained the following information from the link posted below. Always check with your physician before taking your medication in this way, but I felt it important to let women know there ARE options to PLAN-B (which is often hard to find due to the whole "morality" issue.)>>>cont

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Uncle Bucky Makes Out Like... A Bush



George W. Bush's Uncle Bucky (William H.T. Bush), brother of George H.W. Bush, has collected about $1.9 million in cash, plus $800,000 in stocks, from the recent sale of Engineered Support Systems, Inc. ESSI, of which Bush was a director, was sold to DRS Technologies for $1.7 billion at the end of January, after the company experienced record growth from expanded military contracts, most related to activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The contracts, some awarded on a no-bid basis, include a $77-million deal to refit military vehicles with armor for use in Iraq.

Securities and Exchange Commission filings indicate that there are two investigations of ESSI in progress. One involves a stop order from the U.S. government on field generator units. It seems ESSI did not tell its shareholders about the stop order until seven months after it was issued. During that seven month period, several of the company's executives, including William Bush, cashed in millions of dollars worth of stock and stock options.

DRS is not commenting on the investigations (the second one involves an insurance contract), other than to say it is cooperating with SEC officials.

Posted by Diane E. Dees on 03/23/06

FOCUS | Madeleine Albright: Good Versus Evil Isn't a Strategy





The Bush administration's newly unveiled National Security Strategy might well be subtitled "The Irony of Iran," according to Madeline Albright. Three years after the invasion of Iraq and the invention of the phrase "axis of evil," the administration now highlights the threat posed by Iran - whose radical government has been vastly strengthened by the invasion of Iraq.


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FOCUS | Justice Department Allows Monitoring of Lawyers' Calls

The National Security Agency could have legally monitored ordinarily confidential communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients, the Justice Department said Friday of Bush's controversial warrantless surveillance program.

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Captured suspect sent troops to hostage house


By Tim Ross and Helen William, PA
Published: 23 March 2006

Peace activist Norman Kember was freed just hours after coalition forces captured a suspect who knew where the hostages were being held.

The hostages were found tied up in the same room of a house in western Baghdad, said coalition forces spokesman Major General Rick Lynch.

The kidnappers were not caught during the raid and operations are continuing, he added.
Maj Gen Lynch told reporters in Baghdad: "Late last night, coalition forces conducted an operation and it came up with two detainees.

"These two detainees provided actionable intelligence about the location of the Christian Peacemaker Team hostages. >>cont

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Battle for Baghdad 'has already started'



By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil
Published: 25 March 2006

The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest.

"The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.

Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.

Throughout the capital, communities, both Sunni and Shia, are on the move, fleeing districts where they are in a minority and feel under threat. Sometimes they fight back. In the mixed but majority Shia al-Amel district, Sunni householders recently received envelopes containing a Kalashnikov bullet and a letter telling them to get out at once. In this case they contacted the insurgents who killed several Shia neighbours suspected of sending the letters.

"The Sunni will fight for Baghdad," said Mr Hussein. "The Baath party already controls al-Dohra and other Sunni groups dominate Ghazaliyah and Abu Ghraib [districts in south and west Baghdad]."

The Iraqi army is likely to fall apart once inter-communal fighting begins. According to Peter Galbraith, former US diplomat and expert on Iraq, the Iraqi army last summer contained 60 Shia battalions, 45 Sunni battalions, nine Kurdish battalions and one mixed battalion.

The police are even more divided and in Baghdad are largely controlled by the Mehdi Army of the radical nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Organisation that has largely been in control of the interior ministry since last May. Sunni Arabs in Baghdad regard the ministry's paramilitary police commanders as Shia death squads.

Mr Hussein gave another reason why the army is weak. "Where you have 3,000 soldiers there will in fact be only 2,000 men [because of ghost soldiers who do not exist and whose salaries are taken by senior officers]," he said. "When it comes to fighting only 500 of those men will turn up."

Iraqi officials and ministers are increasingly in despair at the failure to put together an effective administration in Baghdad. A senior Arab minister, who asked not to be named, said: "The government could end up being only a few buildings in the Green Zone."

The mood among Iraqi leaders, both Arabs and Kurds, is far gloomier in private than the public declarations of the US and British governments. The US President George W Bush called this week for a national unity government in Iraq but Iraqi observers do not expect this to be any more effective than the present government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. One said this week: "The real problem is that the Shia and Sunni hate each other and not that we haven't been able to form a government."

The Shia and Kurds will have the advantage in the coming conflict because they have leaders and organisations. The Sunni are divided and only about 30 per cent of the population of the capital. Nevertheless they should be able to hold on to their stronghold in west Baghdad and the Adhamiyah district east of the Tigris. The Shia do not have the strength and probably do not wish to take over the Sunni towns and villages north and west of Baghdad.

Though the Kurds have long sought autonomy close to quasi-independence, their leaders are worried that civil war will increase Iranian and Turkish involvement in Iraq. Mr Hussein said he feared that civil war in Baghdad could spread north to Mosul and Kirkuk where the division is between Kurd and Arab rather than Sunni and Shia.

Already Baghdad resembles Beirut at the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when Christians and Muslims fought each other for control of the city.

The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest.

"The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.

Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.

Throughout the capital, communities, both Sunni and Shia, are on the move, fleeing districts where they are in a minority and feel under threat. Sometimes they fight back. In the mixed but majority Shia al-Amel district, Sunni householders recently received envelopes containing a Kalashnikov bullet and a letter telling them to get out at once. In this case they contacted the insurgents who killed several Shia neighbours suspected of sending the letters.

"The Sunni will fight for Baghdad," said Mr Hussein. "The Baath party already controls al-Dohra and other Sunni groups dominate Ghazaliyah and Abu Ghraib [districts in south and west Baghdad]."

The Iraqi army is likely to fall apart once inter-communal fighting begins. According to Peter Galbraith, former US diplomat and expert on Iraq, the Iraqi army last summer contained 60 Shia battalions, 45 Sunni battalions, nine Kurdish battalions and one mixed battalion.

The police are even more divided and in Baghdad are largely controlled by the Mehdi Army of the radical nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Organisation that has largely been in control of the interior ministry since last May. Sunni Arabs in Baghdad regard the ministry's paramilitary police commanders as Shia death squads.
Mr Hussein gave another reason why the army is weak. "Where you have 3,000 soldiers there will in fact be only 2,000 men [because of ghost soldiers who do not exist and whose salaries are taken by senior officers]," he said. "When it comes to fighting only 500 of those men will turn up."

Iraqi officials and ministers are increasingly in despair at the failure to put together an effective administration in Baghdad. A senior Arab minister, who asked not to be named, said: "The government could end up being only a few buildings in the Green Zone."

The mood among Iraqi leaders, both Arabs and Kurds, is far gloomier in private than the public declarations of the US and British governments. The US President George W Bush called this week for a national unity government in Iraq but Iraqi observers do not expect this to be any more effective than the present government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. One said this week: "The real problem is that the Shia and Sunni hate each other and not that we haven't been able to form a government."

The Shia and Kurds will have the advantage in the coming conflict because they have leaders and organisations. The Sunni are divided and only about 30 per cent of the population of the capital. Nevertheless they should be able to hold on to their stronghold in west Baghdad and the Adhamiyah district east of the Tigris. The Shia do not have the strength and probably do not wish to take over the Sunni towns and villages north and west of Baghdad.

Though the Kurds have long sought autonomy close to quasi-independence, their leaders are worried that civil war will increase Iranian and Turkish involvement in Iraq. Mr Hussein said he feared that civil war in Baghdad could spread north to Mosul and Kirkuk where the division is between Kurd and Arab rather than Sunni and Shia.

Already Baghdad resembles Beirut at the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when Christians and Muslims fought each other for control of the city.

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Year Four of Iraq Civil War: 51 Killed



AP reports that guerrilla violence in Iraq killed 51 on Friday. In addition to bombings and drive-by shootings, police discovered 25 bodies, killed execution-style, in Kadhimiyah and Binok districts. (Kadhimiyah is largely Shiite). AP adds, "The rising death toll among Iraqis on Friday included five worshippers killed in a bombing outside a Sunni Muslim mosque after Friday prayers. At least 15 were wounded in the blast in Khalis, northeast of Baghdad."

The bomb blast outside a Sunni mosque is especially disturbing, since it fits a patter of recent escalation in Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence. This week, over a dozen Shiite pilgrims were killed in Sunni areas of the capital, on their way to and from the holy city of Karbala.

A Danish soldier was killed in the south, and two US troops were killed by guerrillas in Anbar province.

AFP/ Al-Zaman report that the Iraq political blocs in parliament failed in their Friday discussions to agree on the powers and constitutionality of a "national security council." The mechanism of such a national security council has been used in Pakistan and Turkey to circumscribe the power of elected politicians in parliament. But in both of those countries there is a strong military, unlike Iraq. Why elected members of parliament would agree to such an institution is obscure, and, indeed, they may not in the end.

posted by Juan @ 3/25/2006 06:39:00 AM

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Senate Sets Hearing On Call To Censure Bush...



Associated Press March 25, 2006 at 08:03 AM
READ MORE: George W. Bush

The Republican-led U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Friday it would hold a hearing next week on a call by a Democratic lawmaker to censure President George W. Bush for his domestic spy program.

In a one-sentence notice, the panel said the hearing would be held next Friday by the order of its chairman, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, who has opposed censure.

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Senators Pressure Iraq As Gunbattle Rages


By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - As a gunbattle raged south of Baghdad Saturday, two key U.S. senators told Iraqi leaders that American patience was growing thin and they needed to urgently overcome their stalemate and form a national unity government.

Seven people died and 24 were wounded in the clash between forces of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia and Sunni insurgents near Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of the capital, according to police and doctors.

The delegation led by Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), an Arizona Republican who supported the invasion of Iraq, was the second group of top American politicians in less than a week to journey to Baghdad to pressure Iraqi leaders to speed the process of forming a government.

"I come away with the impression that the Iraqi leaders understand the sense of urgency we have conveyed to them. We all know the polls show declining support among the American people," McCain said at a news conference. "So I am guardedly optimistic that this will happen within weeks."

Wisconsin Democrat and war opponent Sen. Russell Feingold joined McCain in pressing for the quick formation of a government, but he also declared his concern that the continued presence of American forces was prolonging the conflict.

"It's the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true," Feingold said.

Before speaking with reporters in the heavily fortified Green Zone, the American politicians met with President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, who has formed a coalition of with Sunni and secular politicians against a second term for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

The move deepened the stalemate more than three months after the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.

The U.S. politicians met separately with Talabani and al-Jaafari as well as the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey.

Earlier Saturday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told assembled Iraqi athletes assembled at a community sports center that the country was at a "defining moment."

"As I speak Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a government of national unity. This is a critical step for the future of Iraq, it's a defining moment," Khalilzad said.

The main challenge, the U.S. envoy said, was "to overcome the strife that threatens to rip apart Iraq."

On Tuesday, Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Michigan Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), the ranking Democrat on the panel, delivered the same tough message to Talabani and al-Jaafari.

They too warned that Americans were running out of patience and could force U.S. leaders to decrease troop strength if the delays in forming a government continued.

In other violence Saturday, a female teacher was killed by Iraqi soldiers as she drove past their convoy, police said.

Gunmen also killed a Sunni mosque preachers when he stopped to have his car repaired in west Baghdad.

Earlier, a bomb exploded in a traffic police hut in north Baghdad, killing four civilians. Five people, including a traffic policeman, were wounded in the attack near the Iraqi Finance Ministry, police said.

Three people in a car were killed by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul and two were wounded, one critically police said.

In Balabroz, 55 miles northeast of Baghdad, two men were killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police checkpoint, authorities said.

Iraqi police also found two more bodies, with their hands and legs tied and shots to the head. One was in southeastern Baghdad; the second was floating in the Tigris River, 55 miles south of the capital.

On Friday, at least 51 other people were reported to have died in violence, including two U.S. soldiers killed in western Anbar province.

Perhaps anticipating the meeting with the American delegation, Talabani on Friday issued a highly optimistic report on progress toward hammering out the shape of a new unity government.

He said the government could be in place for parliamentary approval by the end of the month, though he acknowledged "I am usually a very optimistic person." He spoke to reporters after a fifth round of multiparty talks among the country's polarized political factions.

Khalilzad brokered the sessions, with the Bush administration applying extreme pressure on Iraqi politicians to form a government. Washington hopes to begin withdrawing troops this summer, banking on a decrease in violence once a national unity government is in place.

A less optimistic al-Jaafari has said a Cabinet list could be ready by the end of April, a full month beyond the Talabani estimate.

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Hero of Katrina, sheriff may be prosecuted (Seized FEMA Ice Trailers)


Randy Walker swears he would have died from his diabetes after Hurricane Katrina had a sheriff not seized two FEMA trucks filled with ice and distributed it to residents, many of whom had to keep their insulin cold.

Now, that sheriff could be prosecuted on charges of interfering with a federal operation.

Forrest County Sheriff Billy McGee commandeered two 18-wheelers full of ice from Camp Shelby, a Federal Emergency Management Agency staging area, after five days passed with little relief for residents living without electricity in the wake of the deadly storm.

“Man, I was wanting to hug Brother Billy when I saw that ice. We were glad somebody was there to help us,” Walker, who would not give his age, said Wednesday.

McGee had worked out a deal to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of interfering, intimidating and impeding a federal officer, but U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton withdrew from the case without explanation and the Justice Department sent it to federal prosecutors in Louisiana.

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Fight Begins To Overturn South Dakota Abortion Ban...


Reuters March 24, 2006 at 11:34 PM
READ MORE: Supreme Court

Abortion-rights supporters launched a referendum drive on Friday to overturn a South Dakota abortion ban designed to challenge the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing the practice nationwide.

A new coalition, South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, said it would try to collect thousands of signatures aimed at giving state voters a chance decide in November on what it called "the nation's most extreme abortion law."

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Sudden increase in tracking down Vietnam deserters appears tied to Iraq war

Patriot Daily has a good analysis of the current trend of the U.S. military to track down Vietnam war deserters in what the authors call "an effort to set an example to deter the growing number of Iraq War military resisters who are fleeing to Canada." Since the war in Iraq began, at least 8,000 soldiers have deserted, a number which represents a decrease in desertions since September 11, 2001. The U.S. military denies that it has stepped up its campaign to find deserters, but there is some evidence to the contrary.

At least one Marine official has acknowledged that his office was being more aggressive in tracking down Vietnam war deserters. Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart said that he had ordered cold cases reopened, and that in his first year on the job, his sqad had brought in 27 deserters.

One case of particular interest is that of U.S. Marin Allen Abney, who lives in Canada but who has crossed the border "hundreds of times" to shop to take other trips. Just this month, he crossed the border and was arrested and transferred to military custody. Abney's case received publicity in both the American and Canadian press, and perhaps coincidentally, he will probably be released soon. Abney, like many soldiers, did not apply for amnesty under either the Ford clemency plan or the Carter amnesty plan. Though the Carter plan was much less punitive than the Ford plan, it gave unconditional amnesty to draft evaders only.

Posted by Diane E. Dees on 03/22/06 at 05:00 PM

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FOCUS | William Rivers Pitt: The Mouse That Roared

By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t Perspective
Friday 24 March 2006

When I walked into the headquarters of the Christine Cegelis for Congress campaign, I was immediately struck by the bustling energy in the hallways and offices. Campaign headquarters was on the third floor of a cookie-cutter building on Highland Street, a nice space with all the amenities. There was a body at every phone, groups gathered in conference rooms to pour over maps and walking sheets, and volunteers banging through the glass doors on their way to work the precincts.

The frenetic energy within campaign headquarters reflected the overall mood of the race itself. This was no ordinary primary. It had turned into a David v. Goliath brawl within the Democratic party, a challenge to see just how far a grassroots organization could carry the fight against a well-funded campaign that was supported by some of the leading lights of the Democratic establishment.

The story of the race for the Illinois 6th District House seat, which encompasses portions of both Cook County and DuPage County, shakes out like this. In 2004, Christine Cegelis, a mother of two who worked in the technology sector, challenged Henry Hyde for the seat. Hyde had been an institution in the 6th to this point, holding the seat for sixteen terms in a district that had been reliably Republican for decades. Hyde, as well as many others, were quite surprised when Cegelis managed to get 44.2% of the vote after stomping her primary opponent by nearly a 2-1 margin.

Hyde chose to retire in 2005, making the Illinois 6th an open seat for the first time since the Carter administration. The work done by the Cegelis campaign in 2004 essentially established, for the first time in a long time, a serious Democratic presence in the district. Cegelis chose to continue campaigning even after the '04 election, and had been working ever since towards a run in 2006. She had established a ground game and name recognition among the constituents she hoped to represent, and based her campaign on the need to bring jobs back to the area.

Enter Rahm Emmanuel and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Emmanuel, himself a congressman from a neighboring district, has been a kingmaker with the DCCC as chairman. He saw the open seat in the 6th as an excellent opportunity to cut into the GOP majority in the House, and made the race for that seat a central priority of the DCCC. For whatever reasons, however, Emmanuel chose to ignore Christine Cegelis and the work she had done, and instead endeavored to pull a different candidate into the race.

Emmanuel spent eleven months searching for an alternative to Cegelis. He started with an Illinois state senator, who turned Emmanuel down for personal reasons. He next approached Peter O'Malley, a lawyer who works with the Illinois Mediation Service. O'Malley got into the race, but finding his campaign unable to raise any money to challenge Cegelis, dropped out in the summer. Emmanuel next approached Brian McPartlin, Chief of Administration of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, who did not want to leave his job and turned the offer down. A local businesswoman was approached after McPartlin refused the job, but the campaign never materialized. It appeared, for a time, that Christine Cegelis was going to weather this inter-party storm and stand as the candidate.

After a long and fruitless search, Emmanuel finally located a candidate willing to challenge Cegelis. Tammy Duckworth was an Army Major and an Iraq War veteran who had lost both legs when her helicopter was attacked. Duckworth was not a resident of the district, and has a voting record that is only two years old. Emmanuel and the DCCC, however, believed her status as a veteran would be a boon to fundraising efforts, and would be attractive to moderates and conservatives who swoon over anyone who has worn a uniform. The running of Iraq veterans is a DCCC plan being enacted in a variety of other districts across the country.

During Emmanuel's long search, a third candidate for the Democratic primary in the 6th district emerged. Lindy Scott, an evangelican Christian college professor, jumped into the race with the belief that he could bring religiously-oriented voters back into the party. Throughout the primary, Scott polled in the low teens, but would wind up having a significant effect on the overall outcome.

The Cegelis campaign, meanwhile, was sailing through rough waters of its own. The campaign manager managed to spend $250,000 on nothing, putting the campaign into a deep financial hole. The ground network established since 2004 was left fallow. Six weeks before the primary, Cegelis fired her campaign manager, along with virtually her entire staff, and brought in a man named Kevin Spidel. Spidel, who was at the time serving as Deputy National Director for Progressive Democrats of America, took a leave of absence from PDA to take over as campaign manager. He organized a whole new staff, took a look at the money they had on hand, and engineered a whole new plan based on the ground network that had once been the main strength of Cegelis' run.

The challenge was daunting. Emmanuel brought in Senators Durbin, Obama and Kerry, along with a variety of other leading lights, to do vigorous fundraising for Duckworth. He reached out to David Axelrod, a powerful campaign and media consultant in Chicago, to help with a media blitz. By the end of the campaign, the Duckworth crew had sent eleven different pieces of direct mail to voters in the district, covered the airwaves with commercials, and had spent close to $1,000,000.

The Cegelis crew, however, was not interested in quitting. First of all, their candidate's stand on a variety of local and national issues was far clearer than those of Duckworth, especially on the issue of the Iraq occupation. They believed their candidate to be more than a match for the GOP opponent they would face in November, a far-right DeLay clone named Peter Roskam.

More than anything, however, was a sense of outrage directed at Emmanuel, the DCCC and the Democratic party establishment in general. Where did they get off bringing in an outsider with no local support? Where did they get off trying to poach the hard work Cegelis had done over the previous two years to establish a Democratic presence in a district that had not known of such a thing for decades? All the money in the world, and all the endorsements from Democratic worthies, could not change the essence of their beliefs.

And so, last Tuesday, the primary to determine the Democratic challenger for the 6th District went down. Cegelis lead by a whisker throughout the night, until the results from Cook County began trickling in. The campaign had expected to do poorly in Cook, and their expectations were met. By the time the clock wound past midnight, the slim advantage Cegelis had enjoyed in DuPage County also began to bleed away. Thanks to the mayhem that took place in Cook County's election stations that night, a winner in the race for the 6th was not declared until the wee hours of the morning. It was Duckworth by a nose.

The final numbers are telling. Duckworth got 43.8% of the vote to Cegelis' 40.4%. The margin of victory for Duckworth was exactly 1080 votes. The 6th District has 512 precincts, which means Duckworth's margin of victory was 2.1 votes per district. Given the fact that her campaign spent nearly a million dollars to win this race, the price tag on those 2.1 votes per district is staggering.

It was that close. Had Spidel been brought in a few weeks earlier, and had the previous campaign manager not spent a quarter of a million dollars worth of campaign funds on shadows and dust, the outcome probably would have been much different. The Lindy Scott factor likewise cannot be ignored. In the end, he got nearly 8,000 votes, amounting to somewhere around 16%. It is telling, when thinking of Scott, to see the blog post he made days before the election, in which he bragged that a majority of the votes he expected to get would come from erstwhile Cegelis voters.

The "If" factor cannot alter the outcome, but there is a significant lesson for the Democratic party establishment to learn here. Tammy Duckworth, Rahm Emmanuel, the DCCC and all those big-time endorsers got brought down to the wire by a grassroots campaign with a tenth of the money, and in the end came within an eyelash of losing. Conventional wisdom says Cegelis should not have made it that close. She didn't have the cash, the endorsers, or the media team Duckworth had. It should have been an easy win, but it wasn't.

The next time the Democratic establishment decides to come barnstorming into a district to force an outsider candidate upon a grassroots network that has been working day and night for an already-established and campaign-seasoned candidate, they will look at what happened in the Illinois 6th and, perhaps, think twice. The next time a grassroots organization in a district looks at a big-money primary challenger and sees no chance to succeed, they will look at the Illinois 6th and, perhaps, think twice.

In the meantime, many Cegelis supporters have begun the process of swallowing the bitterness of defeat in order to organize for the defeat of Peter Roskam. They do this not because they suddenly like Tammy Duckworth, but because of the larger issues at hand. Kevin Spidel noted in the aftermath of the election that the point is not to elect Duckworth in November simply for the sake of electing Duckworth. The point is to win the November race in order to take one step closer to ending the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

The point, Spidel will tell you, is to see Rep. John Conyers Jr. sitting as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when all is said and done.

That, Spidel says, is the worthiest and most progressive-minded goal he could possibly imagine.

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.

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Walter Cronkite | Documentary Sends Warning to Congress

Walter Cronkite writes: Not unlike the Vietnam quagmire on which I reported in 1968, we are today presented with the Iraq quagmire. The threat of world communism has been replaced by international terror as a pretext for another misbegotten and mismanaged war, but the falsehoods, broken promises and withering national faith are too familiar.

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Prominent Former Insider Breaking the Silence

Andrew Natsios has taken a lot of flak over his role in Iraq. In the ensuing three years, Natsios, a lifelong Republican, has played the loyal soldier for the administration, regularly defending the US reconstruction effort in Iraq. For the first time, Natsios publicly gave vent to his long-suppressed frustrations over the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq occupation. In an interview with Newsweek he harshly criticized the administration.

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Mike Whitney : 60 Minutes joins the propaganda war :

The fact that 60 Minutes would stake its reputation on such a pathetic example of state propaganda illustrates the desperation that’s spreading like wildfire through the political establishment to their colleagues in the corporate media.

The Road To Guantánamo


The Road To Guantánamo

How three young men from the UK, ended up in the world's most notorious prison.

Every American Should Be Required To Watch This Video

This docudrama shows the sadism and stupidity of the US and British soldiers. The guards behave with the same cruelty you expect to see from SS officers in lurid second world war movies. It takes a moment or two to realize that these events reflect the reality of those held in Americas notorious gulag.

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Children Continue To Be Main Victims Of U.S. Occupation





By Dr. César Chelala

03/24/06 "ICH" -- -- New York - One of the most tragic consequenes of the Iraq war has been its effect on children. The war continues to claim them among its main victims, while the health of the majority of the population also continues to deteriorate. In the 1980s, Iraq had one of the best health care systems in the region. Following the 2003 invasion by the coalition forces, an ongoing cycle of insurgent violence and occupation forces’ counter-attacks have significantly damaged the basic health infrastructure in the country. As a result, Iraq’s health system cannot respond to the most basic health needs of the population.

In 1991, there were in Iraq 1,800 health care centers. A decade and a half later, that number is almost half and almost a third of these require major rehabilitation. This is paralleled by the country’s fall in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index from 96 to 127, one of the most dramatic declines in human welfare in recent history.

According to Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission’s special expert on the right to food, the rate of malnutrition among Iraqi children has almost doubled since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in April 2003. Today, at 7.7 percent, Iraq’s child acute malnutrition rate is roughly equal to that of Burundi, an African nation ravaged by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than the rates in Ugand and Haiti, countries also devastated by unrelenting violence.

The population health problems are dramatically different than those facing young Iraqis a generation ago, when obesity was one of the main nutrition-related public health concerns. High rates of malnutrition started in the 1990s as a result of the U.N.-imposed sanctions to punish the Saddam Hussein regime for invading Kuwait in 1990.

Lack of dependable electricity and shortages of potable water throughout the country have led to the deterioration of the population’s health, resulting in outbreaks of typhoid fever, particularly in southern Iraq. The collapse of the water and sewage systems is probably the cause of outbreaks of hepatitis particularly lethal to pregnant women. According to the Iraq Living Conditions Survey of 22,000 households, a joint effort of the Iraq government and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme,) some 47% of urban households and only 3% of rural households have a sewage connection.

Presently, thousands of children born after the war have none of their required vaccinations, and routine immunization services in major areas of the country are all but disrupted. In addition, the destruction of the refrigeration sytems needed to store vaccines have rendered vaccine supplies virtually useless.

Even antibiotics of minimal cost are in short supply, increasing the population’s risk of dying from common infections. Hospitals are overcrowded and many hospitals go dark at night for lack of lighting fixtures. The Iraqi Minister of Health claims that 100 percent of the hospitals in Iraq need rehabilitation. As a result of all these public health failures, Iraq is the country that has least progressed in reducing child mortality since the 1990s.
There are increasing number of orphans, many of whom have become homeless and have had to resort to prostitution to survive. Although the Iraqi Ministry of Labor has created programs to eliminate this problem, its efforts have not been successful.

War has affected the psychilogical well-being of adults and children alike, many of whom present serious symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is estimated that less than one hundred psychiatrists remain in Iraq (approximately one for every 300,000 Iraqis) and none of them specializes in child psychiatry.

That children continue to suffer the terrible consequences of the war indicates that new ways have to be found to protect them better. An independent international medical commission should investigate children’s health status, and suggest measures for its improvement. Iraqi children should urgently be provided with basic nutrition, immunization and psychological care to alleviate the tremendous damage brought by a war that has taken a brutal toll on their health and quality of life.

Dr. César Chelala, an international public health consultant, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

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Iraq on its own to rebuild, U.S. says


Didn't Colin Powell tell you Georgie, you break it you fix it , You were pretty happy to bomb the country of the face of the earth and kill innocent women and children in their thousands, with your WMDs releave it of all its oil resources. You broke it Georgie now you fix it.

I dont believe the Persian Gulf Nations broke it, do you. Its Amazing Georgie you are so, so good at breaking things, but so pitiful at restoring them, but then what do you expect from a spoilt child who has never achieved anything, and then been handed the White House by the supreme Court. Sick Sick Sick beyond all bounds.

By Thomas Frank

The head of the U.S.-led program to rebuild Iraq said Thursday that the Iraqi government can no longer count on U.S. funds and must rely on its own revenues and other foreign aid, particularly from Persian Gulf nations.

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My heart is Iraqi:

The present uprising of Iraqis is not merely a part of the wider struggle against savage globalisation and "free" capital; it is its forefront battle. It is because the Iraqis refuse to surrender their sovereignty to multinational corporations that Iraq is being destroyed so blatantly. We should all be humbled by the loses this people has been prepared to endure for our sake and demand the complete, unconditional and immediate withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraqi soil, along with the cancellation of any law, treaty, agreement or contract passed under occupation and the fair payment of reparations and compensations for the human and material loses the Iraqis have suffered.

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Friday, March 24, 2006

Justice Department responds to House questions on NSA wiretapping program

John ByrnePublished: Friday March 24, 2006

The US Justice Department has responded to questions from Republican and Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee on President Bush's warantless wiretapping of international calls, releasing their responses quietly on a Friday afternoon.

The Justice Department's responses were provided to RAW STORY late Friday by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. They were approved by Assistant Attorney General William Moschella under the aegis of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

At their core, the responses echo previous assessments by the Bush Justice Department which maintain that the eavesdropping program was legal and met the demands of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

"The FISA court of review discussed the President's inherent authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance in 2002, twenty-four years after FISA was enacted," the authors write.
The responses provide little new information about the program. The Attorney General refused to disclose how many Americans were spied upon, and declined to provide specifics on how "terrorists" are defined. Critics of the program say it is ripe for abuse and violates federal law.

The Bush Administration enacted the program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and said they were intended as a tool in detecting terrorist activity by intercepting calls between alleged terrorists and American citizens. The program, operated by the National Security Agency, was revealed last December by the New York Times who sat on the scoop for over a year.

The Washington Post later revealed that thousands of Americans were caught in the surveillance net and that few of the taps produced viable leads (link).

Democrats say the responses are "vague" and "evasive" and don't provide meaningful answers to questions about the legality and specifics of the program.

"The Department of Justice continues to thumb its nose at the American people and their elected representatives," ranking Judiciary Democrat John Conyers said in a statement. "The evasiveness of the Department prevents Congress from exercising its constitutionally mandated oversight role and obstructs Congress's ability to draft meaningful legislation to provide guidelines for this activity."

Conyers calls attention to the Justice Department's answer to question 45 of the Democrats' questions. In it, the Department says it cannot rule out the possibility that the program would tap calls between individuals and their doctors or attorneys.



"In one of the few revealing answers," Conyers adds, "the Department suggests that communications between attorneys and clients or doctors and patients may be captured through warrantless wiretaps. Moreover, some of the Department's responses leave open the possibility that other surveillance programs exist with a scope far beyond this program."
The responses can be read in the PDFS below.

Reponse to GOP questions
Response to Democratic questions

DEVELOPING...

FEMA breaks promise on Katrina contracts!!Agency will extend, not rebid, deals with politically connected firms


FEMA won't reopen no-bid contracts



Four contracts awarded in wake of hurricane are quietly kept despite plan.

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement




Bush says won't follow Patriot Act







President says he may not follow disclosure provisions of Patriot Act revision.

In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding

Programmer who alleged plot to steal Florida election runs for Congress

Homeland Security Chief: US Would Be Safer If Dubai Company Owned Ports...


This is the Guy speaking, that abandoned New Orleans to Katrina, now you are supposed to trust his words.

Associated Press March 24, 2006 at 08:33 AM
READ MORE: Homeland Security

The U.S. missed an opportunity to make its shores safer when it drove away a Dubai-based company poised to operate cargo terminals at several American seaports, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Chertoff said the international shipping firm DP World could have helped implement stronger security at many ports where the U.S. now has limited influence.

READ WHOLE STORY

Reebok Recalls 300,000 Bracelets After Child Dies Of Lead Poisoning...

The Boston Globe Chris Reidy Posted March 24, 2006 08:39 AM

Sneaker-maker Reebok International Ltd. said yesterday it is recalling about 300,000 charm bracelets after one was linked to the lead-poisoning death of a 4-year-old in Minnesota.

The bracelets, which have heart-shaped charms with Reebok's name on them, were offered as gifts with the purchase of some children's footwear for nearly two years, said Canton-based Reebok.

According to the Minnesota Department of Health, a child died last month from lead-induced brain swelling after swallowing a piece of the bracelet.

Read Whole Story

Washington Post's Conservative Blogger Resigns Amid Plagiarism Allegations...

Washington Post Jim Brady March 24, 2006 at 02:16 PM
READ MORE: Washington Post

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

READ WHOLE STORY


POST BLOGGER RESIGNS AMID PLAGIARISM
Admits past work was 'sloppier;' Calls Post editors 'fools'

A message to commenter Jason Ward

Hey Dude, what you doing sitting there with your goodies, why the hell arnt you over there with your military, trying to stay alive and protect your Country, in this misbegotten and illegal war that your Georgie sent his nation of young to fight and die for, without any kind of protection.

As usual we have another big mouth republican that just sits on his butt, playing with his toys, while the real men are over in Iraq dying, for lie after lie from your so call Commander and Chief, you know the one that was AWOL. and didn't think it was his place to serve his country, in another time of war, in which the real men died and were mutilated by the Government of you Country. Bye for now. Peace

Santorum Funneled Charity Money To Faith-Based Group Accused Of Political Activity

Attytood Will Bunch March 24, 2006 at 02:32 PM
READ MORE: Rick Santorum

A faith-based Philadelphia group at the center of a flap over whether tax-exempt religious groups are aiding the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen Rick Santorum has won more than $250,000 in federal grant money pushed for by Santorum over the last three years.

The group, the Urban Family Council -- founded by well-known local conservative religious activist William Devlin -- also has reaped a $10,000 grant from a controversial charity founded by Santorum, the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation.

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Glaciers Drastically Melting... See Before And After Pics...


Live Science Bjorn Carey March 24, 2006 at 02:49 PM

Glacier National Park might soon need a new name.

The Montana park has 26 named glaciers today, down from 150 in 1850. Those that remain are typically mere remnants of their former frozen selves, a new gallery of before and after images reveals.

GALLERY: Before and After Photos of Montana's Disappearing Glaciers

READ WHOLE STORY

CRONKITE CRITICIZES NETWORK NEWSCASTS


Walter Cronkite has castigated producers of the network nightly newscasts for including stories about "your health and mine and your backyard and mine and all that kind of thing" at the expense of more substantive reports. "It doesn't belong in the evening news," Cronkite said during an interview on Texas Monthly Talks, which airs on Texas public broadcasting stations. "We're the most important nation in the world ... and there are these other very important stories in a very complicated world that we need to cover. We can't do that in 15 or 16 minutes." Apparently suggesting that the television networks ought to dispense with commercials during their nightly newscasts, Cronkite remarked, "The networks should be giving us the full half hour. ... It's ridiculous to have as little time as we have."
23/03/2006

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9/11 families: 'They all let us down'


Testimony about missed clues tough for families to hear
Friday, March 24, 2006; Posted: 4:26 p.m. EST (21:26 GMT)

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (AP) -- Geraldine Davie fought back tears as she talked of her deep frustration about the U.S. government's failure to act on repeated warnings before the September 11 terrorist attack that killed her 22-year-old daughter at the World Trade Center.

"They all let us down," Davie said last week, voicing a sentiment shared by many of the victims' family members who are monitoring the sentencing trial of admitted al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui.

Davie and other family members of September 11 victims heard the FBI agent who arrested the 37-year-old Frenchman testify that he spent four weeks trying to warn his bosses in Washington about the radical Islamic student pilot.

FBI agent Harry Samit said resistance to his efforts to thoroughly investigate Moussaoui blocked "a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks."

The court proceedings have been painful for victims' family members.

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No one’s laughing at this deja vu all over again

By Joan Chittister, OSB

I think it was Yogi Bera, the New York Yankees own “Mrs. Malaprop,” who made famous the line, “Here we go, it’s deja vu all over again.” Everybody laughed then.

President George Bush looks as if he’s about to make the line common parlance again. Only this time people aren’t laughing.

What may be the buildup to an attack on Iran, the new breeding ground of terrorists according to the U.S. lexicon of evil nations, appears to be in high gear. It’s a ritual now of recognizable parts:

First we have a nuclear standoff -- which this time may be real for a change -- given the fear generated in the Middle East as well as in the States as a result of our last unsubstantiated “preemptive strike.”

Then, we have the declaration of the new, but now theologized and therefore holy, “doctrine of pre-emptive war.” Meaning that if we decide that another country has something that is dangerous to us, they have it and we will respond accordingly.

Then we have the parade of sabers and spears, of bombs and bombers. This, of course, is designed to intimidate the rest of the world and embolden the United States itself. I mean, if nobody can beat us, what difference does it make whether we’re right or wrong again. We’ll win anyway.

Then we have the swashbuckling speeches of a president already defeated in one war and attempting, perhaps, to distract from that debacle by creating another one.

The only question now is whether or not the public, the Congress, the world will risk another frightening U.S. fiasco in the name of freedom. Whose freedom, we’re never told. To what end, no one knows. With what success, given our present record, is anyone’s guess.

The problem is that this time we are being asked not only to be afraid but also to be nonsensical, absurd, fatuous, inane.

We are being asked to forget the blunders in Iraq:

Forget the embarrassment of the “intelligence” that wasn’t.

Have you missed a column?
Click on the archive link at the top of this page to read past columns by Sr. Joan Chittister.

Forget the old reservists who did double duty for the troops who could never be convinced of the valor of the war and so never enlisted.

Forget the number of U.S. soldiers who fell in the sand and never rose again.

Forget the pictures of Iraqi families streaming out of broken homes and pockmarked cities, saved by us, we say, only to be abandoned by us, they say.

Forget the blood spattered children in whom the seeds of another war have already been planted.

Forget the burst water systems, the streets running with sewage, the downed electric grids, the sabotaged oil fields.

Forget the wounded in body and the shattered of soul.

Forget the fact that we made things worse rather than better for a country that was bad enough off to begin with.

Forget the evolving anti-Americanism that now festers even among our most traditional allies. “Americans are very shocked,” the young Irish woman said to me, “when they come to Europe and find out we don’t like them. Why are they shocked?” she asked. And she meant it.

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Somewhere in the gospels the line echoes over and over again ominously and unendingly, “And the last state shall be worse than the first.”

Why have we suddenly abandoned the decades of deterrence and containment that guided U.S. foreign policy and out-waited the cold war for over 50 years? The U.S. prospered under it; the world balanced on an unsteady peace for years because of it; talks went on unceasingly during it until understanding increased and alliances formed and bonds developed and old enemies outgrew their enmity as a result of it.

If there is such a thing as national neurosis, are we in it? Will public paranoia be the disease that defeats us in the end?

While we frisked little old ladies in wheelchairs in our airports on the grounds that they might be foreign agents, we would have allowed our commercial seaports to be serviced under the auspices of the very people we said we were trying to keep out of the country.

While we preached the fear of foreigners, we spied on our own.

While we assumed the right to invade the borders of every nation on earth, we tightened ours against the poor whose poverty came as a result of our wealth.

While we preached life, we practiced death in its name.

Has our hysteria reached the point where, like a blind giant, we are raging around the world swatting flies with a pile driver?

Is this the United States that won the respect and admiration of the world as recently as 50 years ago and lost it more recently because of torture chambers and kennels full of uncharged prisoners in leg irons?

Who are we now? Who do we want to be? Who will our leaders insist that we be? Or shall they be the very ones who lead us into more ignorant ignominy?

Have we, in all our power, forgotten all of our ideals? Are ideals only for the poor and the powerless? Is power the only foreign policy the powerful need to apply? And is it really working in Iraq -- a country on the verge of civil war, crippled physically, full of anger, and unsafe -- both for us and for them?

From where I stand, these are the questions real patriots ask. But are we?

According to The Irish Times, (Denis Staunton, March 17, p. 10) a poll by the Pew Research Center asked U.S. respondents to suggest one word that described the president. Up to this time, the word most commonly chosen has been “honest.” In this poll, “the single characteristic most closely associated with Mr. Bush in the current poll is ‘incompetent.’”

But I don’t know. When it takes six years of international bungling to change people’s perceptions of current policies, you have to wonder, don’t you, who’s really been incompetent and who’s really been clever?

Our one best hope may lie in soon being able to answer that question.
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Embedded With U.S. Troops in Ramadi


Friday March 24, 2006 9:01 PM
By The Associated Press

AP West Africa Bureau Chief Todd Pitman is in Iraq to embed with U.S. troops in Ramadi.

FRIDAY, March 24, 2 p.m. local

We were picked up Thursday at Baghdad International Airport by our security guards, who inform us there have been a couple ``incidents'' - brief gunfights - that afternoon on the main road we were to travel on to town. Snipers have been firing on the convoys of private security contractors, they say.

It's nothing new. One guy was shot in the neck recently but it's unclear how. Was his window open? Was he standing out of the vehicle in some kind of turret? You try not to envisage these things, but they stick in your mind as you pass all the two and three story villas set a small ways from the roadsides and wonder if somebody is in one of them looking for targets.

We are given flak jackets, and I put on one, then cover it with my black jacket because I don't want to stand out any more than I already do.

We get in our bulletproof vehicle and head onto the highway into the city. As always, it looks absolutely normal, almost. There are thousands of Iraqi civilian vehicles on the streets. Coming the other direction is a line of U.S. military Humvees. U.S. Bradley fighting vehicles are pulling guard duty in a median in the road. It's a quiet drive, and I'm grateful.

I haven't been to the Palestine Hotel, where AP's Baghdad offices are located, in a year. After a suicide bomber rammed through the high blast walls surrounding the hotel complex a few months ago, the place is still a wreck. The hotel itself is completely intact, but wires hang down from the broken walls overhead in the lobby. Plastic sheets hang over shattered windows. Twisted metal and rubble are piled up outside. A lightpost is bent over an angle, probably damaged by the blast.

Journalists and translators already here tell me there are a couple running gunbattles going on in Baghdad. From where we sit though, it's quiet, except for the noise of traffic outside. Soon that will stop, too: there is an 8 p.m. curfew these days.

I go to the window in my hotel room to look out at the beautiful blue-domed mosque on the other side of a roundabout. A couple gunshots ring out in the distance and police in four-wheel drives speed by.

In 2004, the U.S. army cleared a swathe of the bank along the Tigris River which we can see from the hotel balcony. Technically, it was a good idea, but it seemed odd at the time - mortar rounds were landing daily in the park and across the river in the Green Zone. Who would want to picnic there? They cleared it flat, though it is still interspersed with trees, and built curving sidewalks. Today, it appears to be abandoned, desolate. There is a lot of very tall grass you could get lost in.

I see one of the Iraqi reporters here, a good friend, and ask him how things are going. ``It's getting worse not by the day, but by the hour,'' he says, laughing a little bit. The head of AP television here starts ticking off several neighborhoods he says are too dangerous these days even for his brave Iraqi cameramen to go. More than 50 Iraqis have been killed in scattered violence yesterday, the day I arrived.

Today in Baghdad alone, nearly 20 are dead in drive-by shootings, roadside bombings and sectarian violence. Nearly everybody here has a tragic story to tell, of friends and family being killed or kidnapped, of staying in the hotel with us for fear of their own lives. Many have fled to nearby countries.

The reporter - I don't want to name him - hides what he does from people in his neighborhood, who think he is a businessman. He cannot say he's working with Americans - even if it is a news agency.

I've come to Iraq to embed with U.S. troops stationed in Ramadi, and Baghdad is a stopover. I'm hoping to get on a military helicopter flight there tonight.

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Witness tells of beer poison threat

From correspondents in LondonMarch 25, 2006

A US informant testifying at the trial of seven Britons accused of planning bombings in the UK, told a London court overnight one of the suspects had discussed poisoning beer for sale at British soccer matches.Mohammed Babar, 31, a Pakistan-born American who has admitted terrorism-related offences in New York, said Waheed Mahmood also suggested setting up mobile hamburger vans and poisoning the food before handing it over.

Babar is the key prosecution witness against the British suspects, accused of planning to use ammonium nitrate fertiliser to make bombs for use against targets such as pubs and clubs.
He has admitted in closed US hearings to being an accomplice and trying to acquire the ingredients for what US authorities call "the British Bomb plot", the court was told.

Babar said Mahmood had raised the poison plots during discussions in Pakistan with himself and two other defendants, Anthony Garcia and Salahuddin Amin>>>cont

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Schools Also on the Front Lines in Iraq


Friday March 24, 2006 7:01 PM
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS and BUSHRA JUHI
Associated Press Writers

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The day began like any other at Dijla Primary School in Baghdad's posh Mansour district. Rows of students in neat gray and white uniforms gathered in the courtyard to raise the Iraqi flag and sing the national anthem. They read passages from religious texts, then cheerfully went to their classrooms.

Headmistress Wajida Sharhan was working in her office when a mortar shell slammed into a second-floor fifth grade classroom.

``The sound of the explosion was so powerful, as if heaven and earth collided,'' she said. ``I couldn't open my eyes because of the dust. I heard loud screams from the children, and a girl came into my office with her arm nearly cut off.''

The torrent of violence that has swept Baghdad and surrounding provinces since U.S. forces invaded three years ago has left little unscathed - even schools. What were once sanctuaries of learning have become places of fear, undercutting efforts to rebuild the dilapidated education system left by Saddam Hussein.

Bombs, rockets, mortar and machine-gun fire killed 64 school children in the four months ending Feb. 28 alone, according to a report by the Education Ministry. At least 169 teachers and 84 other employees died in the same period.

``We are in a society of insecurity,'' said Education Minister Abdul Fallah al-Sudani. ``Schools are not excluded from the suffering of our society.''

It's unclear why the Dijla school was struck last October.

But dozens of other schools were targeted in the weeks before December parliamentary elections, when their use as polling stations put them on the front line of insurgents' efforts to derail the vote. More recently, schools have been caught in the surge of sectarian killing unleashed by last month's bombing of a Shiite shrine.

In one case, gunmen pulled over a school bus carrying about 25 high school girls in a mostly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad, shooting and killing the driver in front of his terrified passengers. In another, a security guard caught a would-be suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his waste as he mingled with children entering a primary school in a mostly Shiite neighborhood.

Iraq once had one of the best education systems in the Middle East, but its schools and universities crumbled under two decades of war and neglect. Teaching methods became outdated, enrollment dropped, and adult literacy fell to less than 60 percent - one of the lowest rates in the Arab world.

The system has been a focus of U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq. Nearly 3,000 schools have been refurbished, more than 8 million textbooks distributed and 30,000 teachers received training since 2003, according to U.S. government figures.

Al-Sudani, the education minister, has ambitious plans to modernize the curriculum, restock libraries and put computers in every school. But the unrelenting bloodshed hampers progress.

After Saddam's fall, Dijla Primary School received a thorough spruce-up. Walls were painted, air conditioners and water coolers installed, and students got new paper and pencils.

But when Sharham, 61, ran upstairs after the shell landed, what she saw was bedlam. Desks and chairs were torn to pieces. Shoes, clothes, books and sandwiches were scattered everywhere. And pools of blood stained the floor.

Panicked children streamed downstairs, dust and blood covering their faces. The surrounding streets filled with desperate parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles calling children's names.

The blast wounded 10 students, and 11-year-old Hassan Esam was killed. His photograph hangs in Sharhan's office - a poignant reminder of that October day.

Dijla closed for a few weeks, but staff and parents rallied to get children back in class. Every day mothers accompany their children to school and wait in the dining room until it is time to take them home. On a blackboard in the hallway is written: ``Forgive your enemy, nothing torments him more.''

Shahad Haidr, the shy 11-year-old in a bright red head scarf whose arm was nearly sliced off, is back and studying hard to become a pediatrician. But classmate Saad Hassanein, who lost a leg in the blast, refuses to enter the building.

Saad did her midyear exams in a car parked behind the school and is now in Jordan, learning to use a prosthetic leg.

``Those who did this are merciless people,'' said Saad's mother, who refuses to give her name for fear the family will be targeted. ``I don't know what will happen, or where she will continue her studies, because things are unstable in Iraq.''

Attacks and threats shut 417 schools between Oct. 27 and Feb. 28 - most only for a few weeks, but some longer - disrupting the education of thousands of children. The violence was concentrated in the capital and the volatile provinces of Anbar, Diyala and Babil, according to the Education Ministry report.

In the most dangerous areas, some parents prefer to keep their children home. Nawal, a first grade teacher in the tough Abu Ghraib neighborhood, said parents have pulled 12 children from her class since September.

The Education Ministry can arrange transfers, but there is still the trip to and from school to negotiate - a gauntlet of bombs, gunfire and kidnappers. At least 47 children were abducted for ransom in the period covered by the report.

It takes Nawal, 42, two hours to get to work. A few weeks ago, a roadside bomb narrowly missed the minibus she shares with other teachers. Days later, bullets whizzed by them as gunmen fired on an American patrol.

``My colleagues weren't as brave as me,'' she said. ``They started crying.''

Many of her students have seen loved ones hurt and killed and struggle to concentrate on their school work, she said. One bright 7-year-old is the daughter of a feared insurgent and is isolated by students and staff alike.

Nawal, a Shiite Muslim, gave only one name for fear of reprisal in the mostly Sunni neighborhood where she works.

Some schools have resorted to armed guards for protection, and the Education Ministry has also appealed for help from the police and the army.

``Personally,'' said ministry spokesman Mohammed Hanoun, ``I am worried about my children, my friend's children and all Iraqi children.''

Schools Also on the Front Lines in Iraq!!!!!Violence Doesn't Spare Schools in Iraq, Hampering Efforts to Rebuild Country's Education System

Link Here

Baghdad, Mar 22 (Prensa Latina) A suicide bomber in a car with explosives hit Wednesday in this capital a military convoy of the US occupation forces


Baghdad, Mar 22 (Prensa Latina) A suicide bomber in a car with explosives hit Wednesday in this capital a military convoy of the US occupation forces in Iraq, sources from the Interior Ministry reported.

After the blast, US soldiers and police cordoned off the area and gave no details on possible casualties among members of the convoy.

The Iraqi resistance also killed today four policemen and wounded another three during a bombing in the City Hall of Madaen, south of Baghdad.

A rebel command lobbed at daybreak 14 bombs against that building and opened fire with automatic rifles.

Among casualties are Colonel Ahmed Yabar, brigadier commander at Salam police.

US and Iraqi forces continued for a seventh consecutive day an operation code-named Swarm in the city of Samarra, west of Baghdad.

mh/iff/joe/mf

Link Here

Yeah. You heard the man.

Ok Rossi. I take it back. Not EVERYTHING I have wrote lately is crap.

.

For My Beloved Louisiana


Katrina, Katrina, wash me away.
Cry me a river and flood the bay.
Float me the hope of rescue one day.
As you drown my love and send me astray.

Bring history to bear on open shores.
Bring back thy fathers from distant wars.
Bring back to me The Empire I love.
Katrina, Katrina. What have you done?

On waves of memory comes back the child.
Left to die, alone in the wild.
The old are gone, all washed away.
The day Katrina had her say.

North winds blow and south winds blew.
The bayous weep, they still do.
They lie in wait for better days.
Where better dreams once were slaves.

Katrina, Katrina. Wash us away.
Kill our tommorrows and savage our way.
Change the heart of a nation in less than a day.
Katrina. Katrina. Wash me away.


By Christy Cole



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Insurgent doctor killed dozens of wounded soldiers (by lethal injection)

By Patrick Cockburn in Kirkuk

When policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as doctors tended their wounds.

In fact, many of the wounded were almost certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed 43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has revealed.

"He was called Dr Louay and when the terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief, told The Independent. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."

Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.

He was particularly willing to assist in the emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and 1,220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic young colleague.

Dr Louay was finally arrested only after the leader of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was captured and confessed. "I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated men should do such a thing," said Col Jaff.

Link Here

Study: New York, London, Tokyo To Be 20 Ft. Underwater by 2100...


e Times Of London Mark Henderson March 23, 2006 at 11:06 PM
READ MORE: Global Warming

Dozens of the world's cities, including London and New York, could be flooded by the end of the century, according to research which suggests that global warming will increase sea levels more rapidly than was previously thought.

The first study to combine computer models of rising temperatures with records of the ancient climate has indicated that sea levels could rise by up to 20ft (6m) by 2100, placing millions of people at risk.

The threat comes from melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, which scientists behind the research now believe are on track to release vast volumes of water significantly more quickly than older models have predicted. Their analysis of events between 129,000 and 116,000 years ago, when the Arctic last warmed to temperatures forecast for 2100, shows that there could be large rises in sea level.

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