Chertoff Concealed Role in Tape Destruction

Jason Leopold

Truthout's Jason Leopold reports: "Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff advised the CIA between 2002 and 2003 that its agents had the legal authority to use techniques that included waterboarding on one of the agency's so-called 'high level detainees,' according to a little-known report published in January 2005. That interrogation was videotaped and the tape later was destroyed."

Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of CIA Tapes

Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane report for The New York Times, "At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials."

Speaking of Soltice

Should This Video Be Banned? YOU DECIDE!

FBI Investigates Ex-CIA Officer Over Torture Interviews

Jonathan S. Landay, writing for McClatchy Newspapers, reports, "The Department of Justice is investigating whether a former intelligence officer illegally disclosed classified information in interviews he gave on how the CIA interrogated a suspected senior al Qaida member."
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Disaffected Iraqis Spurn Dominant Shiite Clerics

Sudarsan Raghavan, of The Washington Post, reports from Najaf, Iraq: "Two years after helping to bring to power a government led by Shiite religious parties, Iraq's paramount Shiite clerics find their influence diminished as their followers criticize them for backing a political alliance that has failed to pass crucial legislation, improve basic services or boost the economy."
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VIDEO:

Project Censored: Truthout Interview With Peter Phillips
Truthout's Geoffery Millard talks with Peter Phillips, leader of Project Censored, a national research effort that tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters, and compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media.

Children pay the high price of Iraq violence: UNICEF

AFP

The lives of millions of Iraqi children are still blighted by violence, poor nutrition and disrupted education more than four years after the US-led invasion, UNICEF said on Friday. The United Nations Children's Fund said in a report that few teenagers took their final exams last summer, safe drinking water remained scarce and about 1,350 children were detained by the authorities in 2007. It also said that on average 25,000 children and their families were forced out of their homes each month to seek shelter in other parts of the country...

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Xmas Greetings... From Iraq

Happy, happy, Xmas to the "civilized" world.

December 21, 2007
I have it fresh for you guys...
While you are doing your Xmas decoration and writing good wishes cards...While you are on your usual bulimia of shopping and stuffing your frigdes and cupboards with more...While you are arranging your, oh so sweet green Xmas tree and arranging for your Santa to stuff socks for your kids with all kind of goodies... How nice, how generous!Stuff the socks and stuff the turkey, eat, drink and be merry...
Why not indeed. You deserve it. You are such a good people, with such a great conscience. Who could really say otherwise?
Well got news for you fellow "humans", I can say otherwise...
The latest figures from UNICEF on the children of Iraq reads as follows:
- 2 Million Iraqi kids this month are DIRECTLY threatened by disease, illiteracy, violence and famine.
- 25'000 kids are displaced each month and are susceptible to getting killed .
and do not forget the Bingo, Jackpot, Luck charm number for your holiday seasons,
-5 Million Iraqi kids are orphaned . OK Let me spell it for you again. ORPHANED. That means, they lost BOTH parents.
So when you are busy stuffing yourselves with more and more, remember those figures, for they are of YOUR doing. Yes, you read me right- Your own doing.
And since you are such forward planners and visionaries with agendas full with your 5 and 10 year plans and you can supposedly think and see beyond your navel and nose, do take 5 minutes of your precious time and envisage what the future of Iraq will look like with these numbers...
And do say hello to your lovely little ones will you ?!
And oops, I nearly forgot to wish it - Happy, happy, Xmas to the "civilized" world.
LinkHere

Bitterness apparent as U.S. releases Iraqi prisoners

AP

Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers

..."He never prayed in a Husseiniyah," she said, referring to Shiite places of worship, "or in a mosque, and he doesn't get involved in anyone's business." The tears began to flow. The Americans divided Iraqis, she said, by accusing all Sunnis of being insurgents and all Shiites of being aligned with militias. "I swear to God I didn't recognize people as Sunni or Shiite until after the collapse," she said, referring to the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. "Our lives are full of injustice. ...God willing all the detainees will be released," she said. "We tasted bitterness, no salaries— we have nothing. We suffered so much." As his wife wept outside, Amin was inside, preparing to be released. U.S. soldiers cut the plastic cuffs from his wrists. He and the other detainees were asked to sign a "reconciliation oath...

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Iraq's Present ... Our Future?

balconesfault, Daily Kos

...You get near the bottom of the piece, and it tells you that to be released, each detainee ... remember, these are detainees who apparently have never faced any charges ... must recite the following reconciliation oath: "I, Mohammed Amin , acknowledge the recent signing of the reconciliation agreement, have ushered in an era of peace and partnership between Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish, Christian, Jaysh al Mahdi (the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr ), Iraqi security forces and American forces," he said. "Based on a review of my arrest record, Iraqi government and coalition force leaders have agreed that my immediate release would be beneficial to the reconciliation process. I pledge not to commit any violation of the reconciliation agreement's 12 points, violate Iraqi law or attack coalition forces." And I think to myself - that's the next step in holding power. Detain people without charge. Force them to make a legally binding oath, committing themselves to refrain from opposing the government, in order to be released. If any of them actually do participate in rallies, etc in the future, you arrest them on the basis of violating their oath....

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Congressman: ‘We’ve Ethnically Cleansed Most of Baghdad’

Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) on the decrease in violence in Iraq: "Sure, there's less violence, but that's because we've ethnically cleansed most of Baghdad."

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Life 'better' under Saddam says vicar of Baghdad

He has the ear of Georgie,

That says it all, it will get better, ask the 1 million plus dead and 4 million plus refugees if they feel Liberated.

Ask your christians, now dead,.

Life was “better” for Christians in Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein than it is today, according to the only Anglican vicar working in Baghdad.
Canon Andrew White, vicar of St George’s Church in the capital of Iraq told Times Online that day-to-day life was ‘a lot easier’ for Christians when the vicious dictator Saddam Hussein was President of the country. But he said he still believed removing him was the right thing to do, for the sake of the long-term future of the country and its inhabitants.
“It is still very difficult ," he said . " Not like it was under Saddam, it was a lot easier just day - to - day living. There are threats to these our people all the time. They know who the Christians are."
But the cleric, who is flown regularly to the US to advise President George Bush in person on what is happening in the country said he still thinks removing the dictator was the right thing to do. “For a while I didn’t, for a while I thought, things are so terrible but the reality was that there was no way the Iraqis could remove the regime themselves,” he said.
“It was better for Christians under Saddam. Now life is bad for everybody but it will change. Our hope has to be in God more than politics. I believe that’s the answer.”
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Woman Can't Sue Halliburton Over Rape Because Of Cheney Policy

Cheney Justice?

Why can't Jamie Leigh Jones, who says she was raped in Iraq by her coworkers at Haliburton's KBR, sue her former employer for damages? Ask Dick Cheney.

On Wednesday, Jamie Leigh Jones told a House Judiciary Committee her now-famous story about having been allegedly drugged and gang-raped two years ago by several coworkers shortly after arriving in Iraq as a contractor for KBR, an engineering and construction firm contracted with the military to provide logistical support to the troops. Jones' story has prompted widespread outrage, partly because the Justice Department and the military failed to prosecute her attackers, but also because it appears that Jones can't sue...

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The Butcher's Apron

By Mike Whitney
Why do we keep throwing billions of dollars down a black hole just to maintain this pathetic charade that fools no one? Why not just load up the boxcars with pallets of crisp-new hundred dollar bills and ship them off to Crawford where they end up anyway. Let Bush worry about how to distribute the loot.

LinkHere

Fatwa Against The Dollar?

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard12/19/07 "The Telegraph" -- -- To all intents and purposes, the Wahabi religious establishment of Saudi Arabia has just issued a fatwa against the US dollar. This bears watching.
A message issued by 26 leading clerics warns that inflation has reached intolerable levels in the Gulf kingdom.
While it does not vilify the dollar explicitly, the apparent political aim is to undermine the country’s dollar peg.
“The rulers should seek to try to remedy this crisis in a way that would ease people’s suffering.”
“We direct this message to the rulers and officials: we remind you of Prophet Mohammad’s words that you are shepherds who are responsible for your flock,” it said.
The statement was posted across the Islamic world. The background to this has been a raging debate in Gulf religious and economic circles about the destructive effects of the sliding dollar.
Among the lead-authors is Sheikh Nasser al-Omar, known for his fatwa against US-led forces in Iraq.
He has long preached the collapse of American-led capitalism, and now sees a perfect moment to plunge the knife. We can guess that al-Qaeda Inc is thinking along the same lines.
My own hunch is that the next al-Qaeda strike will not be a symbolic blow to a great building or city, but rather a carefully-timed economic blow: either by cutting – or trying to cut - the oil jugular, or by trying to precipitate a run on the dollar.
The Gulf pegs are preventing the region from taking action to stop the oil boom spiralling out of control.

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Your Future As A Sharecropper
Death Of The US Dollar
This is a must watch Aljazeera Video

Paul Craig Roberts and others talks about the ill health and possible demise of the dollar.

People & Power - Death of the dollar 2 - 19 Dec 07 - Part 1

People & Power - Death of the dollar 2 - 19 Dec 07 - Part 2

Condi: 2007 A "Positive" Year For US Foreign Policy

She is most assuredly on sick Puppy looks as if the Whole White House is infected by the same malady

U.S. doesn't have 'permanent enemies,' Rice says

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that 2007 was a "busy and challenging year, but also a positive one" for U.S. foreign policy.
In a year-end news conference at the State Department, Rice said challenges remained in Iraq but noted they were ones of how to build on gains made in the past year.

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Good One Monkey

New Orleans OKs Demolishing Public Housing Despite Intense Protests

AP CAIN BURDEAU December 20, 2007 06:14 PM
Despite protests that at times erupted in violence, the City Council voted unanimously Thursday in favor of demolishing some 4,500 public housing units as the city rebuilds from Hurricane Katrina.
The vote to permit the federal government to tear down four public housing developments -- a critical moment in a protracted fight between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and residents, activists and preservationists -- followed hours of debate and clashes in the street outside.
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Testimony of Jamie Lee Jones about her rape in Iraq by KBR employees before the House Judiciary Committee:

More women reporter KBR/Halliburton assaults in Iraq

SUZANNE GAMBOA Associated Press Writers

Several women have joined a Texas woman in coming forward with reports of sexual harassment and assault while working in Iraq for Halliburton's former subsidiary, KBR, a Texas congressman told a House subcommittee Wednesday. The women have given lawyers and a congressman accounts similar to the allegations of Jamie Leigh Jones of Conroe, Texas, whose allegations of rape have gained national media attention. "This problem goes way beyond just me," Jones told the House Judiciary subcommittee Wednesday. Jones she was raped in July 2005 by a co-worker who drugged her. She said she awoke groggy and confused the next morning, bleeding and bruised. She said a KBR representative kept her in a shipping container so she wouldn't report the assault, she said...LinkHere

Bush, Maliki Break Iraqi Law to Renew U.N. Mandate for Occupation

A majority of Iraqi lawmakers say renewal requests not ratified by the parliament are illegal.

"We reject in the strongest possible terms the unconditional renewal of the mandate and ask for clear mechanisms to obligate all foreign troops to completely withdrawal from Iraq according to an announced timetable."

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New Orleans police, protesters clash

Public housing controversy pits blacks, whites and now political parties

BREAKING NEWS
updated 21 minutes ago
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Police used chemical spray and stun devices as dozens of protesters seeking to halt the demolition of public housing in New Orleans tried to force their way through an iron gate at City Hall.
Some people were arrested as officers tried to establish order and an ambulance arrived on the scene. It was unclear whether there were injuries or the ambulance was a precautionary measure.
The council chambers seat fewer than 300. Once capacity was reached, people who were not permitted into chambers marched and chanted outside and eventually violence broke out.
The clash happened at an iron gate that separates the council chambers from City Hall grounds. On the grounds, more than 50 had been chanting, calling for the council to reject plans by the Department of Housing and Urban development to demolish the housing projects.
Then, protesters tried to storm the gate with a few able to squeeze through a narrow opening before police began using the spray and stun devices.
A woman identified by bystanders as Jamie Bork Laughner, was sprayed and dragged away from the gates.
She was taken away on a stretcher by emergency officials on the scene. Before that, she was seen pouring water from a bottle into her eyes and weeping.
"I was just standing, trying to get into my City Council meeting," said Kim Ellis, a woman who said she was stunned by officers and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging on her shirt.

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The Lakota Nation has Suceeded from the USA.

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US
The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.
"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.
A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.
If they try force to once again subdue the Lakotas.... Let's just say it will not end this time the way it ended before.

LinkHere

Justice Dept Refuses To Attend Congressional Hearing On Halliburton Rape Cases

By MADDY SAUER
Dec. 19, 2007
The Department of Justice refused to send a representative to answer questions from Congress today on the investigations into allegations of rape and sexual assault on female American contractors.
"I'm embarrassed that the Department of Justice can't even come forward," said the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers, D-Mich.
"This is an absolute disgrace," said Conyers. "The least we could do is have people from the Department of Justice and the Defense over here talking about how we're going to straighten out the system right away."
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Dennis Kucinich's 52-year-old brother found dead

Perry Kucinich, 52, was found dead in his home in the 4100 block of East 71st Street.
His brother Larry found him about 9 a.m. There were no signs of violence, officials said. The Cuyahoga County Coroner is performing an autopsy this hour.
Their brother, Dennis Kucinich, is a U.S. Representative from Ohio's 10th District. He is running for president.
LinkHere

Well, Well, Well, What do you know?

Kristol, Krauthammer Are Out of Time

Two conservative Time magazine columnists are on their way out the door:

Neither William Kristol nor longtime contributor Charles Krauthammer will be on contract with the magazine starting next month. Mr. Krauthammer confirmed the news to Off the Record, and a spokeswoman for Time said Mr. Kristol’s contract would not be renewed.
And according to two sources familiar with the discussions, Time is in negotiations with National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru to sign him to a contributor contract. Mr. Ponnuru, who in 2006 published The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, has written twice for the magazine over the past month.
The exact reasons for the departures of Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Kristol, both high-profile backers of the Iraq war, are not entirely clear.
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Firefighters Who Lost Sons In 9/11 To Campaign Against Giuliani »

In an effort reminiscent of the bitter "Swift Boat" campaign during the 2004 presidential race, a group of New York firefighters who lost sons in the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks is organizing a political committee to take on former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in Republican primary states.
A leader of the 9/11 Firefighters and Families group met Tuesday with union leaders and political consultants, readying plans to set up a tax-exempt committee that would fund appearances and a media...

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Gonzales, Cheney's Lawyer Plotted Over

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.
The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.
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Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes

Bush's Exhibit A for Torture

By Dan FroomkinSpecial to washingtonpost.comTuesday, December 18, 2007; 1:04 PM
At the heart of President Bush's defense of torture lies Abu Zubaida.
Bush has described Zubaida (alternately spelled Zubaydah) as a major al Qaeda figure who resisted questioning until the CIA applied its "alternative set" of interrogation procedures -- and who then provided crucial, life-saving intelligence.
Indeed, Bush has been personally invested, for more than five years, in the notion that Zubaida's capture and interrogation were momentous achievements.
As early as April 9, 2002, Bush bragged to fellow Republicans at a political fundraiser: "The other day we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah. He's one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States. He's not plotting and planning anymore. He's where he belongs."
In a June 6, 2002, address, Bush called Zubaida al Qaeda's "chief of operations" and said that "[f]rom him and from hundreds of others, we are learning more about how the terrorists plan and operate, information crucial in anticipating and preventing future attacks."
At a Republican fundraiser on October 14, 2002, Bush called Zubaida "one of the top three leaders in the organization."
But investigative journalist Ron Suskind wrote in his 2006 book " The One Percent Doctrine" that even as Bush was publicly proclaiming Zubaida's malevolence, he was privately being briefed about doubts within the intelligence community regarding Zubaida's significance and mental stability. Suskind quotes the following exchange between Bush and then-CIA director George Tenet:
"'I said he was important," Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily meetings. 'You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?'
"'No Sir, Mr. President.'"
When Bush for the first time publicly acknowledged the existence of a secret CIA detention and interrogation program, in a September 2006 speech, Zubaida was front and center. Bush proudly described how Zubaida -- "a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden" -- was questioned using the CIA's new "alternative set of procedures" and then "began to provide information on key al Qaeda operatives."
But Bush's Exhibit A in defense of torture may in fact be an exhibit for the prosecution.
As I wrote in my Dec. 7 column, evidence uncovered by Suskind suggests Zubaida was a mentally ill minor functionary, who under brutal questioning sent investigators chasing after false leads about al-Qaeda plots on American nuclear plants, water systems, shopping malls, banks and supermarkets.
As I wrote for NiemanWatchdog.org in October, the White House has failed to document a single plot that was disrupted based on information gleaned from torture.
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Perhaps It Is Time For The U.S. To Reconsider Its Partnership With Israel.

By Scott Ritter
The insidious manner in which the current Israeli government has manipulated the domestic political machinery of the United States to produce support for its policies constitutes nothing less than direct interference in the governance of a sovereign state.

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American Jews on War and Peace:

By James Petras
With the American Pro-Israel Power Configuration leading the way to savaging the Naitonal Intelligence Estimate study, released in December 2007, on the absence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, progressive Jewish opinion is silent or complicit. Worse still, progressive liberal and radical Jewish peace activists have acted as gate-keepers in the anti-war movement - prohibiting any criticism of Israel and labeling individuals or citizen activists critical of the pro-war Zionist lobby as 'anti-Semites'

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Iraq Does Exist

By Ghali Hassan
Iraq remains a nation of proud people struggling to liberate themselves from a murderous colonial Occupation.
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FOCUS Justice Department's Voting Rights Chief Resigns

Greg Gordon reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "The Justice Department's voting rights chief stepped down Friday amid allegations that he'd used the position to aid a Republican strategy to suppress African-American votes."

Maybe We Just Can't Handle the Truth ...

Even when the truth is this in-your-face obvious:

The invasion of Iraq was justified, because Saddam Hussein had WMDs. They were never found because when he heard he was about to be attacked by US forces, Saddam decided to get rid of the very weapons he could have used to defend himself and retain control of his wealth and power.
Since landing in Baghdad, our troops have continually been hailed as liberators and barraged with sweets and flowers. The liberal media has just steadfastly refused to report it.
No one from this administration ever attempted to make a connection between 9-11 and Iraq, or Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The millions of people who heard such statements are all delusional, and the videotapes of those words being spoken were all tampered with after-the-fact.
On-the-ground success in Iraq is directly proportionate to the number of magnetic yellow ribbons displayed on US trucks and cars.
“Support the Troops” is a snappy slogan, and was never proffered as administration policy.
Every prediction made by PNACers like Bill Kristol came to pass exactly as foreseen. Any statements proving the contrary were simply taken out of context by the left-leaning mainstream media.
The use of torture has resulted in the thwarting of thousands of plots against our country. The fact that the administration has never released details of same is in keeping with their usual stance of downplaying their many successes in the War on Terror.
Increased prices at the pump are necessary to offset the massive losses in oil company profits that have occurred since Bush took office.
We are currently experiencing a booming economy thanks to tax-cuts for the wealthy, who have invested their money in American businesses, thereby creating the new jobs and increased wealth all Americans now enjoy.
The sub-prime mortgage crisis is a direct result of experienced, well-established financial institutions being completely duped by a scam perpetrated by naïve, inexperienced home buyers.
American children rank poorly in education as compared to children in other nations because all of the other countries’ kids are cheating on the tests.
The theory of global warming has been completely debunked by the fact that it still snows in the wintertime.
All fossils alleged to be more than 6,000 years old have been found to bear a Made by Satan to Fool You! label upon closer scrutiny – a fact which has been covered-up by scientists for the past 6,000 years.
Larry Craig and Bob Allen are not gay. They were part of a special GOP sting operation set up to snare gay cops who hide out in public bathrooms hoping to force straight Republican men to convert to the gay lifestyle.
Flooding the US market with cheap, made-in-sweatshop products is a humane way of providing employment for tens of thousands of Chinese children who would otherwise be wasting their childhood by being unemployed.
All administration staffers should be protected from having to testify under oath on the basis of executive privilege in matters where the executive branch has denied any involvement whatsoever.
There is no correlation between investigations into GOP wrongdoing and sudden resignations. Family-values Republicans only give up their positions when overwhelmed by a desire to spend more time with their loved ones.
Despite the most frequent reasons cited for the breakdown of marriages being abuse, adultery, alcohol/drug addiction, etc., most marriages actually fail because a gay couple moved into the neighborhood.
There is nothing untoward about the awarding of no-bid government contracts to companies owned by administration family members and friends. The names of those companies were randomly picked out of a hat, and any association with Bush or Cheney is merely coincidental.
Despite the very lengthy list of Republicans who have been found guilty of corruption – e.g. Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, Dusty Foggo, et al – they are all innocent. They were railroaded by mean-spirited Democrats, and were forced to perjure themselves and/or admit to crimes they did not commit.
Alberto Gonzales cannot remember attending a number of meetings he was noted as being present for. But he can remember, with complete clarity, what wasn’t discussed at those same meetings.
Valerie Plame was a lowly desk-jockey at the CIA. Ironically, due to a rotating secretarial assignment pool, it was her turn to choose who to send on an all-important mission to investigate alleged purchases of yellow-cake in Niger.
George W. Bush is an intelligent, well-read, well-informed man. He only acts the buffoon to keep our nation’s enemies off-balance.
Dick Cheney hides himself in undisclosed locations in order to escape the constant intrusion of well-wishers, adoring fans, and autograph-seekers.
Jeff Gannon’s many visits to the White House were not of a personal nature. He just needed his WH press pass revalidated, which, due to the president’s busy schedule, often required waiting in line overnight.
Dana Perrino is not as dumb as she seems. If she was as dumb as she seems, a teleprompter flashing the words inhale/exhale would be clearly visible during televised briefing sessions.
Billions of dollars, millions of electronic records and communications, and countless hours of video and audio tapes have not gone missing during this administration. They are merely hiding in a corner of a dryer somewhere in a DC laundromat, under a pile of hundreds of thousands of long-lost socks.
The fact that federal spending on paper shredding has increased more than 600 percent since George W. Bush took office is merely reflective of the fact that he has received 600 percent more fan mail during his years in office than Clinton did.
Everything wrong with the country today can be directly linked to the actions of Bill Clinton, even the things that happened before he was born.
Everything right with the country today can be directly linked to the actions of Ronald Reagan, even the things that happened after he became a drooling, senile old man.
Any link between the current unprecedented national debt and control of government by the fiscally responsible Republicans has never been proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
All Gitmo detainees are guilty of all of the crimes they have never been charged with. Republicans who have been caught red-handed with their hands in the till are innocent victims of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
God always intended that American corporations have unfettered access to oil – he was just so busy inventing the universe in six days, he totally forgot to put it underneath the most deserving country.
George W. Bush has staunchly adhered to the Constitution, if you include the recently-discovered footnotes that were written in crayon by an anonymous original-signer’s hand.
Laura Bush is not living in a prescription drug-induced dreamlike state – she is just permanently bedazzled by her husband’s wit, style, wisdom, and compassion for all of the people he has killed, maimed, orphaned or tortured.
Karl Rove is not attempting to rewrite history. He is simply offering an alternate theory to the concept that history should be based on things that actually happened.
Face it, we can’t handle the truth.
What is wrong with US?

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Top Iraqi Kurd refuses to meet Rice

Source: AFP
ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) - The president of Iraq's Kurdish region is refusing to meet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was in Iraq Tuesday, because of the US position over Turkey sending soldiers into northern Iraq, a top Kurdish official said.
President Massud Barzani, who had been due to fly to Baghdad to meet Rice, will not do so in protest, Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said.
"It was decided that Massud Barzani would go to Baghdad to take part in a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and other officials, but he will not go now as a sign of protest against the American position on the bombings by Turkey."
"It is unacceptable that the United States, in charge of monitoring our airspace, authorised Turkey to bomb our villages," he told reporters.
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Bush Wants Control Over Military Lawyers

Charlie Savage, reporting for The Boston Globe, says, "the Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House's policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism."

Bush Administration Ordered To Court Over CIA Tapes

A federal judge has ordered a hearing on whether the Bush administration violated a court order by destroying CIA interrogation videos of two al-Qaida suspects.
U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy rejected calls from the Justice Department to stay out of the matter. He ordered lawyers to appear before him Friday morning.
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What does he think if McCain is nominated, he will nominate the WANKER to be his Vice President?

Lieberman Jumps On Board McCain's Sinking Ship

Now is that sick or what? another bush in the White House?

Bill go wank yourself jerkoff

1980=BUSH VP

1984=BUSH VP

1988=BUSH

1992=CLINTON

1996=CLINTON

2000=BUSH

2004=BUSH

2008=CLINTON

2012=CLINTON

Bill Clinton: Bush Sr Will Help President Hillary
Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the current president -- Bush's son, George W. Bush.
"Well, the first thing she intends to do, because you can do this without passing a bill, the first thing she intends to do is to send me...LinkHere

Rep. Wexler Wants Cheney Impeachment Hearings

UPDATE

84,234signed up

and counting...

BTW: Wexler sent op-ed pieces on impeachment hearings to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Miami Herald, all of which were rejected.....

SIGN THE PETITION

Congressman Wexler’s website:

Iraq - Grandeur & Destruction. Part I

Iraq - Grandeur & Destruction. Part I

Breakthrough & Nostalgia

Iraq - Grandeur & Destruction. Part II

Planting the seeds of Division.

Allies losing Afghanistan war, Australian minister warns: report

AFP
December 16, 2007SYDNEY (AFP) — Australia's new government has warned NATO and its allies they will lose the war against hardline Taliban forces in Afghanistan unless they urgently change tactics, a report said Monday.The country's new Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon issued the stark warning at a meeting in Edinburgh last week of eight nations engaged in the conflict, including the United States, The Australian newspaper said.The coalition of NATO and allied forces engaged in the conflict since 2001 must overhaul military and civil programmes aimed at fostering stability in the troubled country if they are to win the conflict, he cautioned.The minister's comments to the closed-door gathering were based on classified intelligence assessments prepared for the previous Australian government of John Howard which painted a bleak picture of the Afghan conflict."The previous government would have us believe that good progress is being made in Afghanistan. The reality is quite a different one," Fitzgibbon told The Australian after returning from the meeting in Britain."We are winning the battles and not the war, in my view. We have been very successful in clearing areas of the Taliban but it's having no real strategic effect," he said.Fitzgibbon also told the meeting in Edinburgh, attended by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, that while NATO and its allies had been successfully "stomping on lots of ants, we have not been dealing with the ants' nest".
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Did Bush Eat Popcorn While Watching the Torture Tapes?

Larry C. Johnson, Atlantic Free Press

December 16, 2007Have you watched the videotape of the torture of Abu Zubaydah? No. See how easy that is? The vast majority of folks reading this blog can answer that questionsuccinctly. You do not have to parse. When presidents parse, they are hiding something.So let me explain why I am certain that George W. Bush, and probably Dick Cheney, watched the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and maybe that of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Let’s begin with the White House smoke screen on this issue. When spokeswoman Dana Perino was asked the other day:

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Bush supports Russia sending enriched uranium to Iran

Reuters
U.S. President George W. Bush said on Monday he supports Russia sending enriched uranium to Iran for civilian power use because it meant that Tehran did not need to pursue their own enrichment capabilities. "If the Russians are willing to do that, which I support, then the Iranians do not need to learn how to enrich," Bush said. "If the Iranians accept that uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant, then there's no need for them to learn how to enrich." Russia has delivered the first shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr atomic power station, which Moscow and Washington say should convince Tehran to shut down its disputed uranium enrichment program....
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Russia starts delivering nuclear fuel to Iran - 2

RIA Novosti

The first shipment of nuclear fuel has been delivered to Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, Russia's state nuclear agency said on Monday. The $1 billion plant in southern Iran is being built by Russia under a contract signed in 1995. "Containers with fuel sealed by IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspectors have been delivered to the site and placed in a special storage facility subject to international safety monitoring," Rosatom said. A spokesperson for Russia's nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, Atomstroyexport, said the first stage of deliveries had started on Sunday and would see 163 main and 17 reserve arrays of uranium, enriched to 3.62% of U-235, delivered to the plant....

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Iraqi Children - Fuck Freedom!

Iraqi Democrat

On Saturday, it was announced by the anti-corruption committee in Iraq, that there is an estimated 5 million orphaned children in Iraq, a number which has been ignored by do-gooding anti-war campaigners in the West, whose idea for a "free" Iraq, is abstract concepts such as Freedom and Democracy. How abstract Freedom and Democracy seems, when you compare the facts of five million orphaned children, whose lives are being blighted with malnutrition, illiteracy, poverty, homelessness and the sight of family and friends being killed before your very eyes....

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The Shocking Stories of the Aid Workers Just Released From Gitmo

The tribunals, which duly found that all but 38 of the 558 detainees at the time had indeed been correctly designated as "enemy combatants," came under fire this June from Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of military intelligence who had taken part in compiling the "evidence" for the tribunals, and who condemned them as a sham, reliant upon vague, unsubstantiated, and generic evidence, and designed merely to approve the detainees' prior designation as "enemy combatants."

Two years after being cleared for release from Guantánamo by a military review board, Adel Hassan Hamad, a hospital administrator who worked for a Saudi charity, and Salim Muhood Adem, who worked with orphans for a Kuwaiti NGO, have been repatriated to the country of their birth, where, as lawyer Clive Stafford Smith explained, they are both "safe with their families."

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The 'Body Contractors'

Death squads are killing fewer people, but they're also taking more care to hide their grisly handiwork.

Jabber Sowadi's job says something about the depths to which Iraq has sunk. He's a mutahid al juthath—a "body contractor." A 38-year-old Shiite who sports a thin beard and a checkered black-and-white kaffiyeh, Sowadi charges clients $300 to $500 to track down missing relatives, or more often their corpses. For the past two years he's been nurturing contacts in prisons, hospitals, morgues and cemeteries. He doles out bribes for tidbits of information or favors. He even volunteers to bury unidentified bodies at the morgue, carefully noting what they look like and where they were found—details that may help him with cases later. He says business is slower now that security has tentatively begun to return to Baghdad. But the job has also gotten tougher: death squads, he says, have taken to hiding their victims' corpses rather than dumping them openly in the street. "The kidnapping and killing of people … is in a more secret way than before," he says.
There's no question that violence across Iraq has declined: in December 2006, approximately 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed across the country; this November about 600 were. But the problem—and the reason no one from U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus on down is declaring victory yet—is that those statistics do not tell the whole story. Body hunters like Sowadi, Baghdad residents and local gunmen all say that militias are making more of an effort to disguise their grisly handiwork—burying bodies in shallow graves, dumping them in city sewers. Robert Lamburne, director of forensic services at the British Embassy, has spoken to dozens of Iraqi policemen and examined bodies—relatively fresh—from one of several graves uncovered recently. His judgment: "There's less killing, but there's more concealment."
In the past two months, more than half a dozen mass graves have been found in Iraq, at least half of them in Baghdad. At one site discovered in late November, in a yard in Baghdad's Saydiya neighborhood, bodies and their severed heads were buried in two separate holes, according to a source at the Ministry of Interior who isn't authorized to speak on the record. An additional 16 bodies were found buried in a ditch north of Baghdad last Thursday. Dumping bodies is nothing new in Iraq: Saddam Hussein filled mass graves with tens of thousands of Iraqis. But in the heat of the civil war, militias boldly advertised their slaughter. Bodies—headless, burned, slashed open and perforated with drill holes—were left in plain sight as a message to others. Now, with most Baghdad neighborhoods dominated by one sect or the other, the death squads can afford to be more subtle in their killing. "Many militia groups just make people disappear," says Hicham Hassan, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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Army Times Describes U.S. Troop "Mutiny" in Iraq

"Not us. We're not going:"
Soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Charlie 1-26 stage a 'mutiny' that pulls the unit apart."

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White House visitor logs are public documents

A federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws.
The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which is fighting the release of records showing visits by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and prominent religious conservatives.
The records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the Bush administration has ordered the data turned over to the White House, where they are treated as presidential records outside the scope of the public records law.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said logs from the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence are subject to public records request.
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"It smells like the coverup of the coverup."

Bush Moves To Block Congress Probe Of CIA Torture Tapes... GOP Rep: "I Think We Will Issue Subpoenas"

By Paul Kiel - December 17, 2007, 8:36AM
That's Rep. Jane Harman's (D-CA) take. And Rep. Pete Hoekstra's (R-MI) wasn't any different.
In case you were already out the door late Friday afternoon when the news broke, the Justice Department, along with the CIA's inspector general, informed the House intelligence committee that they'd told the CIA not to cooperate with the committee's investigation into the CIA's torture tapes. Congress would just have to wait until the joint Justice Department-CIA probe was done (when? who knows) before they got any answers. The reason given was that it would "jeopardize" the Justice Department's investigation if the CIA gave the committee all the information it wanted while at the same time cooperating with the DoJ inquiry.
Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) and Hoekstra pronounced themselves "stunned." There's "no basis" for the DoJ to do that, they said. Harman, the former ranking member on the committee, said the same yesterday.
The ground is being laid for an ol' fashioned separation-of-powers showdown. Hoekstra went further, saying "I think we will issue subpoenas." With Republican backup, it should prove pretty easy for Reyes to pull the trigger. Hoekstra even singled out CIA Director Mike Hayden, promising to hold him "accountable."
And remember, Hoekstra and Reyes weren't the only lawmakers Michael Mukasey's Justice Department upset on Friday. Mukasey sent a friendly none-of-your-business letter in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questions about the CIA tapes. Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was "disappointed" and promised to make that clear when Mukasey appeared before his committee in the new year.

At this point, it's worth observing that Michael Mukasey has been on the job as attorney general barely a month and has already united both parties in Congress against him. That's some quick work.
But wait! The Department also argued Friday that a federal judge should not hold a hearing on the tapes, saying that a hearing would be "both unnecessary and potentially disruptive.” Lawyers representing 12 detainees at Guantanamo had asked for one. Is a three branches free-for-all in the works?

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Back from Guantanamo

"Adil and Salim were two of 15 people, the rest Afghan, recently released by the US. Neither have ever been told why they were imprisoned." One was a hospital administrator, the other a journalist, both in Afghanistan. I wonder what useful information the CIA and Guantanamo torturers got from the torture of these men. How many American lives did the torture of these two men save?

By Mohamed Vall in Khartoum,

SudanRahma is now six but was only a few months old when her father was taken to Guantanamo Bay Adil Hassan Hamad can scarcely believe he is back with his family in Sudan, because only days ago he was still in the US's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
"I am very, very happy and not believing this," Adil tells Al Jazeera, "That I am here with my family - even now I feel this could all be taken away at any moment."

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Lieberman's New Kiss of Death

SCUMBAG, ALWAYS HAS BEEN, ALWAYS WILL BE

Senator Joe Lieberman will finally come clean on Monday, unleashing his inner-Republican to endorse the struggling campaign of Senator John McCain, according to several news reports. It is a bittersweet alliance for both men. Lieberman's move confirms his critics' longtime argument that he is a "Democrat in Name Only," while McCain looks desperate by leaning on backers beyond the G.O.P. base in the homestretch of a partisan primary.
The Politico first reported that Lieberman will "cross the aisle" to back McCain on Monday's edition of the "Today" show. As an independent, however, Lieberman was already standing in the aisle. The article says the joint appearance is "an effort to draw attention to the McCain campaign, which needs a splash. Otherwise, it does not make sense for McCain because it will only remind core Republicans why they distrust him." The pair also have a long history together, having cosponsored the Iraq War resolution, Climate Change legislation, and lobbying disclosure reforms.
During his 2006 reelection campaign, Lieberman emphasized that he would support Democratic candidates in 2008. "I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008," he said during a televised debate in July. Lieberman promptly backtracked after his reelection, announcing this January that he was "open" to supporting a Republican or Democrat for president, depending "on a whole range of issues." By not even waiting to see who the Democrats nominate, now Lieberman is revealing that the issues aren't important to him, either.
But the Democrats' battles over Joe Lieberman are important because they have always been about more than a single politician. Last election, Democratic voters in Connecticut -- along with activists and bloggers across the country -- did something unusual in today's politics. They put issues above incumbency and prioritized leadership over the "strategic" imperative of holding a "safe seat." This activism was derided by many pundits and the Democratic establishment, including Senators Obama and Clinton, who backed the primary campaign of a man who literally cannot wait for the presidential race to start before he endorses one of their Republican opponents. But Lieberman's detractors were right about his loyalties. They were also right about Iraq policy -- and the political imperative of running on an alternative foreign policy in 2006. And as I've argued many times, the activists were right to reject the entire Washington discourse that asks us to think as tacticians instead of citizens.
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NEWS EUROPE

Turkey says US backed raids on PKK

The US gave the go-ahead for cross-border attacks on Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, according to Turkey's military chief.
General Yasar Buyukanit reportedly made the claims on Turkish television late on Sunday as the Iraqi government summoned Ankara's ambassador in Baghdad and demanded an end to the air raids."America last night opened Iraqi airspace to us. By opening Iraqi airspace to us last night, America gave its approval to the operation," the Anatolian state news agency quoted Buyukanit as saying."The United States gave intelligence."

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UK has left behind murder and chaos, says Basra police chief

Blunt assessment delivered as British hand over security to Iraqis

The full scale of the chaos left behind by British forces in Basra was revealed yesterday as the city's police chief described a province in the grip of well-armed militias strong enough to overpower security forces and brutal enough to behead women considered not sufficiently Islamic.

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DejaVu Hahahahahaha God I love it, reminds me of me

sparrow at DCP said:
This is us dealing with the corporate Democrats and Republicans on torture, spying, illegal crimes, impeachment and so on...

Sheehan: Impeach Pelosi over torture

Activist, running for Pelosi's seat, accuses Speaker of collaborating with Bush.

Lieberman To Endorse McCain

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), who was on the national Democratic ticket in 2000, will cross the aisle to endorse Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) tomorrow, Republican sources said.
The two will appear together on NBC's "Today" show tomorrow, then at an 8 a.m. town hall meeting in Hillsborough, N.H. They will talk with reporters after the meeting.

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In the past seven months, at least 11 soldiers and three Marines have committed suicide in Iraq,

USATODAY.com - Army probes soldier suicidesIn the past seven months, at least 11 soldiers and three Marines have committed suicide in Iraq, military officials say. That is an annual rate of 17 per ...
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‘Sleeping with the boss’ common at KBR in Iraq

Working in Iraq wasn't always an adventure for Linda Lindsey. "If you wanted to get a promotion you didn't necessarily have to have the qualifications,” remembered Lindsey, a former KBR contractor. “You just needed to be sleeping with the person who was doing the hiring.”
. . .
In a sworn affidavit for the Jones case, Lindsey said: “I saw rampant sexual harassment and discrimination."
“Well, first of all, a boss saying that he hired a woman because she told him that she puts out," she added.
Her affidavit also said: "When anyone would report an incident of abuse or harassment, they would be threatened with a transfer to a more dangerous location."
Lindsey said complaints made it back to KBR's Houston headquarters, but the people causing problems in Iraq were never removed. That left many women workers, Lindsey said, feeling helpless.
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Handover in Basra as killings go on

Today the British army formally transfers command in the province to the Iraqis, but the toll of factional warfare is still growing

Peter Beaumont, The Observer
After four years, eight months and 11 days, after the deaths of unknown thousands of Iraqis, after 174 British fallen, and billions expended on reconstruction and the cost of a military mission, today the British mission in Iraq takes a large step towards being wound up (...) The retreats and drawdowns of the past few months have been hailed by senior British officers as a symbol of their success in establishing a more secure Basra for Iraqi security forces to take over - a line being bought by almost no Iraqis in the province. Instead the city and province that the British occupied when paratroopers and marines marched into the city centre of Basra on 6 April, 2003, have traced a slow, bloody and fractious decline. The struggles between the different political factions within the city for control of hospital wards and university campuses, for the police and for local government, led to kidnapping, intimidation and assassination, and turned at the end into Shia-on-Shia factional warfare in which ordinary Iraqis were caught in the middle. Yesterday British officers stuck to their line. Major Mike Shearer said attacks had dropped dramatically since September as a result of the move. Attacks on British troops, he largely meant. No one denies that the city and the province that the British are handing over is plagued by violence between militias and criminal gangs. Or that women are murdered with impunity for not wearing the hijab...
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British Formally Hand Over Control Of Basra To Iraq Government

Surprise! Mukasey Covers Up Torture

Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com
Last month, Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California joined Republicans to ensure Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, even though he refused to acknowledge that the simulated drowning of waterboarding was torture. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada helped the Bush administration, too, by rushing a floor vote on Mukasey before rank-and-file Democrats could get organized and push for a filibuster. To show thanks, Mukasey now is slapping the Democratic-controlled Congress in the face by demanding it back off any oversight investigations into how and why the CIA in late 2005 destroyed videotapes of the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects.
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5 million Iraqi orphans, anti-corruption board reveals

Georgies Liberation of Iraq
Voices of Iraq

Iraq's anti-corruption board revealed on Saturday that there were five million Iraqi orphans as reported by official government statistics, urging the government, parliament, and NGOs to be in constant contact with Iraq's parentless children. "The government should set up an institutional or legislative program to help the Iraqi orphans. Iraqi is an oil-rich country and it is not acceptable that its orphans remain groaning in this tragedy," the anti-corruption board chief, Moussa Faraj, said during a conference in Baghdad dedicated to orphans in Iraq. "The board on its own cannot meet the Iraqi orphans' needs, but there should be an organization or even a ministry to provide care for orphans," he said. The Iraqi parliament's women & family committee had proposed a draft law to set up a fund for the orphans....

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'This village will be erased'

Gideon Levy, Haaretz
The shattered marble panels of the Hashalom factory, some of which were designated for the kitchens of settlers, testify like a thousand witnesses to the events of the night of revenge. The weeping of Naama Masalha, who had to hide with her young children in the bathroom while the settlers smashed the windows of their house, also tells the story of that night of horror. In the small village of Al Funduq on the Qalqilyah-Nablus road, where Israelis, mainly settlers living in the area, still repair their cars and go shopping, they are now licking their wounds and assessing the damage...
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Beware The Democratic Party watch your back, Don't ignore the wishes of the People

NOW takes a closer look at the Ron Paul Revolution.
The following video is from PBS’s NOW, broadcast on November 14, 2007

Watch Video Here

His Power is growing,

Land Of The Free

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Keith Olbermann | Excerpt | PBS Part 1

Keith Olbermann on Bill Moyers Journal Part 2

Keith Olbermann on Bill Moyers Journal Part 3