President Kerry - Deceptions

2006-02-05T00:16:00.000-08:00

England Wake Up!

2006-02-05T00:14:00.000-08:00

al Jazeera - Bush/Blair censoring news station by bombing and murdering journalists

2006-02-05T00:13:00.000-08:00

BLiar

Calling All Bloggers: These Documents need publishing

2006-01-02T00:08:00.000-08:00

Calling All Bloggers: These Documents need publishing
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/6133
Calling All Bloggers: These Documents need publishing
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2005-12-29 19:21. Activism

Background:The UK government has been quick to deny that we practice, or tolerate the practice of Torture.

So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following
documents:http://users.pandora.be/quarsan/craig/telegrams.pdf

Craig Murray was the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, untill his complaints and protest at the use of
intelligence gained by torture got too much for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, who set about
attempting to unsuccessfully smear him, and to successfully remove him from office.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3750370.stm http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2005/04/timeline...

The Foreign Office has had the draft of Craig's book for clearance for over 3 months now, and
they are doing everything they can to try and prevent him from publishing his side of the story.
Their latest attempt to cover their own backs was to inform him, the night before Christmas Eve,
that these two documents cannot be published, and that he was to return or destroy all copies
immediately.

What are these documents?

The first document is a series of Telegrams that Craig sent to the Foreign Office, outlining his
growing concern and disgust at our use of intelligence passed to the UK by the Uzbek security
services.

The second document is a copy of legal advice the Foreign Office sought, to see if they were
operating within the Law in accepting torture intelligence, and according to Michael Wood the FCO
legal adviser; it is fine, as long as it is not used as evidence.

Faced with this heavy handed censorship by the FCO, in an attempt to cover up our use of and
complicity in torture, Craig has decided to fight back, and has asked us all to publish this
information, so it cannot be suppressed.

I am in discussion with the FCO over what I am and am not allowed to publish in my book. The
FCO is seeking to gut the book of all evidence of complicity with the Uzbek regime.
With Bliar cornered on extraordinary rendition, they are particularly anxious to suppress all
evidence of our complicity in obtaining intelligence from Uzbek torture.

In particular, they have demanded I do not publish the attached documents, and that I hand over
all copies of them.

The obvious answer to this is to post these documents as widely on the web as possible. This is
also potentially very valuable in establishing that I am not attempting to make money from these
documents - you don't have to buy my book to see them, they are freely available. If you buy the
book, you are only paying for the added value of my thoughts.

This will only work if we can get the very widely posted, including on sites in the US and
elsewhere outside the UK … there is a chance that those who … post this stuff will get threatened
under the Official Secrets Act.

In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at
which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain
and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.

After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote
to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document
that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's
use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is
trying to suppress this.

Craig

Compare and Contrast the government's public position on Torture, with the information they
were recieving at the time from their own Ambassador, and the legal advice they were seeking.We have archived a selection of government spin and lies on the use of torture in these 4 pages:
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/708 http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/709 http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/710 http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/711

and you can listen to Jack Straw and Tony Blair deny what you read in these hitherto 'secret'
documents here.
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/down/strawhust.mp3 http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/down/blairrend.mp3

What you can do:We have published the documents in full here, and ask that anyone who can will do the same.
http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/715 http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/714

If you could publish, host and link to these documents on your own webspace, then it will be
harder for anybody to be prosecuted here in the UK, and ensure that they get maximum coverage.
Craig Murray stood up for what many of us believe, and it cost him his Job, his health, and his
professional reputation. The least we can do his stand by him as he defies the UK government's
attempts at censorship, and possible prosecution.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x25673

Craig's own post on the subject can be found here:

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2005/12/damning_d...
Thanks for your help.

Trackback URL for this post:http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/trackback/716
www.AfterDowningStreet.org / www.johnbonifaz.com / www.nvri.org
http://groups.myspace.com/johnbonifaz www.ConyersBlog.us / http://www.davidswanson.org /
www.progressiveindependent.com / www.left.org / www.VeteransForPeace.org /
www.whateveralready.blogspot.com / www.gsfp.org / www.scoop.co.nz / www.rawstory.com /
www.WhiteRoseSociety.org .

====
"As a nation, does the United States have a conscience?

====http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000338.htm#commentsThe report should
be made available in an online format that would allow bloggers to permalink to individual
paragraphs.

The .pdf file format is all fine and dandy for printing out and for looking all professional and stuff,
but an online format where bloggers could pull out individual paragraphs and comment on specific
individual paragraphs would be a much more powerful format to present to the blogosphere.
See Dave Winer's blog for example. Notice how at the end of every paragraph there is a # sign
where bloggers can click on the # sign and make a permalink to that paragraph.

That way if a blogger saw any particular sentence of the report that caught his eye or sounded
especially important, that blogger could link to that specific individual paragraph and explain why
he thinks it deserves special attention.

That would be a much more powerful format for presenting this report to the blogosphere than the
.pdf file format in my opinion.

That way one little paragraph could catch fire and spread accross the blogosphere in an instant.

your blog is great. Blogs are becoming more powerful it seems every day. Good work! http://www.scripting.com/

http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/911smokingguns.html

Yes I think they are. Ask your representative to follow the good lead of John Conyers and start blogging for you today.

You should link your blog with this one and vice-versa, along with other blogs such as Huffington
Post, Daily Kos, and Brad Blog, to name a few, that way you have a network of blogs to look at
and link up to for information for those who read yoru blogs everyday.
Rusty - if you were able to print a PDF copy, could you find a way to have it distributed?
DailyKos has a text copy of the contents, but since the link went down fast (bandwidth overuse
maybe, if not gov't?), other distribution points of a PDF would be helpful.

(But only if you can do it without committing any kind of felony. Otherwise, just keep any copy
you made safe.)

Hey, how about this one:

DailyKos, joining the efforts of UK Bloggers, has published a copy of the UK Torture Memo that
Downing Street is trying to keep suppressed.
Here's the link:UK Torture Memos

Anyone not at risk for prosecution - print a copy to PDF, and spread it widely. Perhaps the folks
we help in the UK will help us get the rest of the records we're seeking published in a similar way.

===
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight
when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most
aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas "Dropping bombs from a safe height on an already hard-pressed people, whose infrastructure is in chaos from years of sanctions and who live under an oppressive regime, isn't a 'war'. It's a turkey shoot. " -- Terry Jones

==Gulf War syndrome persists in US troops after 10 years CHICAGO (AFP) - Gulf War syndrome', a debilitating multi-symptom affliction identified in many soldiers after the
1991 conflict in Kuwait, is likely to strike US troops fighting in Iraq, a new study shows.
The syndrome, which proved hard to diagnose because it manifested itself in many different
afflictions, remained widespread among US troops 10 years after the Gulf War ended, according to
the study, lead-authored by Melvin Blanchard, assistant professor of medicine at Washington
University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.

Blanchard's study will be published in January in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
A comprehensive medical evaluation of some 2,189 Gulf War veterans between 1999 and 2001
found that 28.9 percent of those deployed suffered from the affliction a decade after the war.
read more here:

12/29/2005 Gulf War syndrome persists in US troops after 10 years: study-AFP - yahoo.com
====
Our Presidents New Best Friend Boils People Alive

See Also: Just Who Is Our New Best Friend This 29 minute video explores the reality of life in
Uzbekistan

06/26/03: Let me introduce you to our presidents new best friend, President Karimov of
Uzbekistan.

President Karimov government was awarded $500m in aid from the Bush administration in 2002.
The SNB (Uzbekistan's security service) received $79m of this sum.

The U.S. State Department web site states "Uzbekistan is not a democracy and does not have a
free press. Many opponents of the government have fled, and others have been arrested." and
"The police force and the intelligence service use torture as a routine investigation technique."
Now I would like to introduce you to Muzafar Avazov, a 35-year old father of four. Mr Avazov
had a visit from our presidents friends security force (SNB), the photographs below detail the
brutality and inhuman treatment our tax dollars subsidize, with the full knowledge of our president
and his administration.

Muzafar Avazov, body showed signs of burns on the legs, buttocks, lower back and arms. Sixty to
seventy percent of the body was burnt, according to official sources. Doctors who saw the body
reported that such burns could only have been caused by immersing Avazov in boiling water.
Those who saw the body also reported that there was a large, bloody wound on the back of the
head, heavy bruising on the forehead and side of the neck, and that his hands had no fingernails. WARNING

The pictures of Mr. Avazov's body are horrific and should only be viewed by a mature audience

=Leaked documents the UK Government are trying to block under Secrets Act - published
hereLeaked documents the UK Government are trying to block under Secrets Act - published here by caribmon12/29/05 It's not the al-Jazeera Memo, but these are some more documents that the UK Government are trying to suppress with the threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. They detail our use of intelligence extracted by torture, and legal advice the Foreign Office received on the subject, and we need to get them out there as soon as possible before the government act.

See also Our Presidents New Best Friend Boils People Alive

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11407.htm

===Leaked documents the UK Government are trying to block under Secrets Act Leaked documents the UK Government are trying to block under Secrets Act - published here:
A Sample:2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid.

Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least
seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without
freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom
of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the
population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central
Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and
gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay.
Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to
twenty five years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long
way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to
introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid
to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support
for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease
domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He –
and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime
that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that
Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I
was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am
saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see
these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American
urging).

More: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11407.h...

2005-12-31T22:08:00.000-08:00

Don't pray for an easy life. Pray to be a strong person- Nadia Comaneci

RAW STORY PRINTS UK TORTURE MEMOS

2005-12-31T22:01:00.000-08:00

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Papers_pick_up_UK_torture_memos_1230.html

Papers pick up UK torture memos as site goes dead
RAW STORY
UK and US bloggers continue to aid in defying the Official Secrets Act by publishing former Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray's memos alleging human rights abuses were known to--and tolerated, if not sanctioned by--the US and UK governments, which were using information gleaned from torture for intelligence purposes.

Uzbekistan has long been an ally of the United States, in spite of its well-known record of abuse. Aid to the nation was cut in 2004 over human rights concerns.

The first document released by Murray consists of three telegrams that he sent to London from Uzbekistan, warning that the information gained there was derived from torture, and perhaps not as "useful" as MI6 believed. The second document is a legal analysis which argues that the use of information extracted through torture is not itself technically a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

RAW STORY featured links to coverage of the documents by Murray and Blair Watch earlier this week. Since that time, even more bloggers have joined in re-printing the text of the documents. RAW STORY does not have original copies, and therefore cannot confirm the documents' authenticity beyond the fact that the source is a former UK ambassador.

A mainstream breakthrough comes today, as the December 30 edition of The Independent featured a story on the documents. The Register has since followed. Murray's site was offline briefly due to what was initially thought to be an overwhelmingly high volume of traffic. Some supporters have since implied that it was actually hacked. Detractors, in response, have charged that Murray hacked his own site for publicity. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote, "He's trying to sell a new book by whipping moonbat bloggers into a frenzy with claims of British-outsourced torture in Uzbekistan."

Murray was a vocal critic of what he and others have termed "torture by proxy," the practice of using foreign governments to extract information from detainees through methods that would be deemed illegal or unethical in one's own. He was disciplined in August of 2003 for, among other charges, "hiring dolly birds for above the usual rate." Murray contends that his staff was actually entirely male. He was then removed from his post entirely after quotes attributed to him, critical of MI6 on the subject of Uzbekistan torture, appeared in the press. His run for Parliament resulted in an embarrassing 5% showing.

The documents, as circulated, follow:

#Letter #1 Confidential FM Tashkent TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts 16 September 02

SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism
SUMMARY
US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and
cynical policy.
DETAIL
The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record". I agree.

2005-12-31T22:00:00.000-08:00

IMPEACH - sign Rep. Conyers' letter to begin formal Impeachment Inquiry hearings in Congress!

Most Important Impeachment Petition/Letter by Rep. Conyers EVER!!

2005-12-31T21:51:00.000-08:00

Please sign Rep. Conyers' Impeachment bill letter/petition.

Shameful that he still only has about 26,000 signatures when the Downing Street Memo Petition
garnered 500,000 signatures. Where is everyone who has been demanding impeachment when it
comes time to sign a letter/petition by a Congressperson who has stuck his neck way out to legally
begin the Impeachment Inquiry process.

Please sign and post info on other sites.
Thank you.

Congressman Conyers has used the Impeach-Word several times in his proposed Impeachment
Inquiry and has several other members of the House of Representatives as co-sponsors but needs
more and has asked for our help in signing his letter to Bush and in writing to our Congresscritters
to request they support him in investigating the Bush Regime's massive illegal activities harming the American people. Please add your signature here:

http://www.johnconyers.com/ - Conyer's Action Items
http://www.conyersblog.us/

"Join me, below, in sending the:

Letter Advising the President of Censure
and
Steps to Begin Special Committee Investigation

Dear Mr. President:

We are brave, proud, patriotic citizens of the United States. We love our country and are writing to
express our profound disappointment with you and your administration for your conduct
surrounding the Iraq War, the collection and use of intelligence, and your disrespect for the laws of
this great nation..."

2005-12-30T16:09:00.000-08:00

Soldier Baby Damirsagolij reuters

2005-12-30T16:07:00.000-08:00

Our suffering soldiers - No armor and now no long term medical care or disability - Walter Reed and other VA hospitals being shut down. Shame bush!

2005-12-30T16:06:00.000-08:00

Tony B-liar

Bombing Al Jazeera

2005-12-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk
Bombing Al Jazeera

There can be few of us who haven't heard about the Mirror exclusive back in November, when they exposed Bush's intention to bomb the Al Jazeera offices. Aside from raising questions about Bush's sanity...

This served to prove that Al Jazeera can be relied upon to bring us the news. Why else would Bush want to bomb them? It seems to me that from now on, any thinking person should sit up and pay very close attention to what Al Jazeera has to say.

Al Jazeera never expected to be a favorite with world leaders. As you can see here: Don't Bomb Us: They're no strangers to controversy and accusations from every corner.

News is something someone somewhere doesn't want published: All the rest is advertising!

Credit for this as soon as I can found out who originally said it!

Craig Murray - Hero, Whistleblower of Torture Atrocities

2005-12-30T15:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray

Craig Murray (born 17 October 1958) is a commentator on government foreign policy and was a British diplomat. He was the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Uzbekistan, until removed from his post on October 14, 2004.

While in this office he publicly criticised the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, against the wishes of the British government, an action that he alleges was the reason for his removal. He also privately criticised the UK government for committing torture by proxy, that is, sending terrorist suspects to Uzbekistan for their security services to extract intelligence of dubious value; in the phrase he is best known for, he accused his government of "selling our souls for dross".=UzbekistanIn October 2002, on becoming concerned that torture and extra-judicial killings were taking place in Uzbekistan, he made a controversial speech at a human rights conference in Tashkent, in which he claimed that "Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy" and saying of the boiling to death of two men, "all of us know that this is not an isolated incident." The speech was cleared by the Foreign Office, but not before a dispute over its content. Later, Kofi Annan confronted Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov with Murray's claims.

He was summoned to London and, on 8 March 2003, he was reprimanded for writing, in a letter to his employers, in response to a speech by George W. Bush, "when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in the international fora ... I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan."

=He stood for parliament in Blackburn, as an independent candidate, against his former boss Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the May 2005 general election. He came fifth with 5% of votes.
He is reported to have undergone emergency live-saving heart surgery at the end of May 2005. He was unable to fulfil an engagement with PEN UK, the organisation for international writers' freedom, and this was the reason given. This follows previous cardiac crises while under the strain of trying to get the UK government to oppose torture in Uzbekistan.

In December 2005, frustrated at the Foreign Office's failure to clear for publication some content of his memoirs, he published a number of confidential memos on his website outlining his condemnation of intelligence procured under torture, and the UK government's ambivalence to this.

In case of "Spycatcher"-type problems, these are reproduced below from his website http://www.craigmurray.org.uk

The Smoking Gun Archives

2005-12-30T15:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay12.html

=December 30, 2005

More old newsFrom the chatter on the web, it's clear that there are still a few diehard Bush/Blair supporters out there who believe this is about democracy and security.

I hate to disillusion such people, but everyone should be aware of this document: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay12.html

(This was released with other Enron court documents. To anyone covering the Enron story, it meant very little. Now, however....)
=
Enron letter photocopies from Ken Lay taking advange of the atrocities in Uzbekistan to make money for Enron and THE TEXANS.....

Young Soldiers Talk About War Atrocities of Use of White Phosphorus at Falluja Massacre on Italian TV

2005-11-09T05:08:00.000-08:00

The Alleged Use of White Phosphorus in Falluja
by spoon or no spoon Mon Nov 07, 2005 at 09:03:54 PM PDT

It has been alleged that white phosphorus munitions (WP) were used as anti-personnel weapons against the population of Falluja.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/7/23354/

The Alleged Use of White Phosphorus in Falluja
Nov 07, 2005 at 09:03:54 PM PDT

It has been alleged that white phosphorus munitions (WP) were used as anti-personnel weapons against the population of Falluja. If true, this is a war crime. I have a few things to say.
There are no, repeat, NO circumstances where the use of WP as an antipersonnel weapon is legitimate in warfare. It sickens me to think that U.S. troops may have systematically applied WP as an areal casualty weapon in Falluja. I assure you, as a former chemical defense advisor in the Pentagon under President Clinton, NO OFFICER IN THE MILITARY IS CONFUSED ON THIS POINT.

Chemical defense training has been in the forefront since the Gulf War. I imagine a new circle of Hell is being readied for military attorneys, battle planners, and Administration policy apparatchiks that signed off on the use of WP as a mass casualty weapon. That sort of action has a lot of logistical planning involved...a lot of paperwork, purchase orders, and a requisitions trail.
Yes, killing people is killing people. Bullets, bombs, rockets..dead is dead. But at least those weapons have the potential for targeting against militants...whereas areal weapons like WP do not allow discrimination between militants and noncombatants. WP as a mass casualty weapon is a weapon of terror. If the NATO allies have any backbone, they will withdraw from NATO if the allegations of WP use in Falluja are true. Economic sanctions against the U.S. would be in order.

Kicking the U.S. out of the Olympics is not out of the question. I desperately hope the allegations are not true. If they are, we have become worse than what we fear in the spectre of Al Qaeda, because we have the means and the latitude to exercise conventional and licit forms of warfare. If the stories are true, we became barbarians out of frustration at the recalcitrance of the Falluja stronghold. We should be held to account by our allies. We will be held to account by future generations of Iraqis.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/8/8462/21480

Graphic photos of US chemical weapon use in Iraq
Warning: Graphic photos of US chemical weapon use in Falluja

For an extensive survey of thse US war crimes follow the links at:

http://www.livejournal.com/

...We must get the word out, NOW

Thanks for your informed comment. I'm sure you've considered sharing your concern about this story with your colleagues! We've got to press for an investigation into this ASAP. Now? (3.37 / 8)
Jesus wept. It has been going on for so long and the rest of the world had known about it for so long, you actually dare to use the word NOW ?

A substantial fraction of US soldiers in Iraq should be facing a fring squad. All of them deserve censure for participating in an illegal war of agression by illegal means.

Even our "blessed" fighting Dems are criminals.

You break the law you pay the price You don't get a free ride because you carry an American passport.I agree... ..that the death penalty is immoral (but so is allowing the situation to continue, why aren't you lying down in front of a tank?).

I would think that 10 to 20 years in the peace corps would be an appropriate sentence. But I live in a civilised country that does not have the death penalty (except for treason).It will be US civilians whose lives are on the line.

The Bushes,the Cheneys,the Rumsfelds et al will all be in their undisclosed underground fortified bunkers when it comes time to pay the piper.

As has been discussed many times before,the rest of the world has seen the interviews with surviving relatives of those murdered civilians and there must be tens of thousands whose only purpose in life is to get into the USA and take revenge.

They don't care if it takes them 40 years,either.

It reminds me of that interview Vidal gave the LA Times in November 2003:

"MARC COOPER: How do you think the current war in Iraq is going to play out?

GORE VIDAL: :I think we will go down the tubes right with it. With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us.

GORE VIDAL: And it won't be pretty. "http://www.lermanet.com/...

Brains aren't done developing until well into the early 20's. We should look to our own society's practice of sending kids that don't have the neurological faculties to use real judgement to kill. Who shoulders more blame, soldiers or politicians?

While it is clear that atrocities are being carried out by soldiers, I do have some sympathy for the average grunt in Iraq. The soldiers are just the pawns; the real war criminals are the thugs in Washington.

Yes: civilians in Fallujah. There were checkpoints outside Fallujah were men suspected of being insurgents would be arrested, and other men were not allowed to leave the city.
Tell them 'Stay in your houses, stay away from windows and stay off the roof and you'll live through Fallujah,'" Formica, of the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade, told his battalion commanders in a radio conference call Wednesday night.

ABC story from a year ago.

The tactics used in Fallujah are worthy of the Einsatzkommandos during WWII. The Marines corp should be ashamed. The famed troops have turned into cowards and mass killers.

Graphic photos of US chemical weapon use in Iraq

Warning: Graphic photos of US chemical weapon use in Falluja
http://www.livejournal.com/...

The Guardian: The media are minimising US and British war crimes in Iraq November 08,2005
http://www.livejournal.com/...

The Independent: US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah08 November 2005

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

http://www.livejournal.com/...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/7/23354/3447

Close the SOA, School of America's School for Torture and Dachau/Guantanamo Bay

2005-11-09T04:51:00.000-08:00

The Sorrow and The Pity. How have we sunk so low? What are we doing to our very young soldiers just out of high school forced to become the Bush Regime and Bilderberg's Gestapo. Support our troops and Impeach the entire Nazi Bush Regime!

Sister Lil Mattingly, a Louisville native and Roman Catholic nun, says she has no regrets about taking part in a protest at a military school last year, even though it landed her in federal prison for six months.

Sister Lil Mattingly plans to return to the annual protest next month at the military school, though she doesn't plan to trespass again....

Why do you want to close the SOA?

SOA/ WHINSEC graduates have included some of the worst and most notorious human rights abusers in Latin American history, and for much of the world, the school, under any name, is synonymous with torture and impunity. SOA graduates have led military coups and are responsible for massacres of hundreds of people. Among the SOA's more than 60,000 alumni are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador and Hugo Banzar Suarez of Bolivia. SOA graduates were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre of 14-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and hundreds of other human rights abuses. Closing the school would send a strong human rights message to Latin America and the world.

http://www.blogger.com/ Isn't it unfair to blame the SOA for the actions of a few" badapples??

You can find criminals of every ilk who graduated from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, but no one advocates closing those institutions because of the crimes of some of their graduates.
If Harvard, Yale, or Princeton taught their students combat skills that to be used against non-combatant civilians, we would justifiably call for their closure. The few "bad apples" argument is not very convincing, given the weight of the evidence about the involvement of SOA graduates in human rights abuses -- two of three officers cited in the assassination of Archbishop Romero; three of five officers cited in the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen; ten of twelve cited for the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians; over 100 of 246 cited for atrocities in Colombia.

Furthermore, the full scope of atrocities committed by SOA graduates will likely never be known because members of Latin American militaries are generally above the law. It is rare that crimes by members of these militaries are investigated and rarer still when the names of those suspected are released.

But hasn't the SOA has made an important contribution to democratization of the region?
No. The SOA was founded as a combat school focused on counterinsurgency techniques. Rather than contributing to the development of democracy in the region, the SOA actually taught methods that undermined and destroyed democratic values.

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=266 Media Outreach

Important Media Work that You can do

Media coverage significantly magnifies our voice. And it’s up to all of us to generate media coverage of the SOA and efforts to close it down. Taking a little time to carry out a handful of media-related tasks can profoundly impact the number of people in your area who know about the SOA and the number of people who get involved in the work to CLOSE IT DOWN.

Dear Editor:

[Intro sentence connecting your letter to a recent article, if applicable]. This weekend (or next weekend or next month, whatever is applicable), November 18-20, I will join thousands in Columbus, Georgia to call for the closure of the controversial School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/ WHINSEC). Graduates of this U.S.-taxpayer-financed institution, a combat training school for Latin American security personnel, continue to be implicated in civilian-targeted killings throughout Latin America.

The SOA/ WHINSEC, known popularly as the “School of Assassins,” has trained more than 60,000 Latin American security personnel. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocate torture, false imprisonment, extortion and execution.
SOA graduates are cited for some of the most horrific atrocities in Latin America, including the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians in El Salvador, the assassination of six Jesuits and their co-workers in San Salvador, terror campaigns against civilians and indigenous people in Guatemala, and recent massacres in Colombia.

This school is out of line with the values of everyday Americans, and closing it for good would send a strong human rights record to Latin America and the world.

A growing movement of human rights groups, religious clergy and laypeople, students, veterans, unionists and many others will converge in Georgia this weekend, including a contingent from [your town]. We will demand that this training camp be shut down. The path to lasting peace and security can only be found if we implement foreign policy that reflects our ideals of justice and democracy.

To learn more about the SOA/WHINSEC and efforts to close it, visit http://www.soaw.org/ or call 202-234-3440.

Sincerely,

Why Torture is Wrong for Fox Dummies

2005-11-09T04:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77538,00.html
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/08/why-all-the-fuss

Remember when Fox showed footage of “shock and awe”, added classical music, and ran it over and over again as if it had mythical proportions. Recently they reported that widespread looting and violence was being commited by the victims of a terrible natural catastrophe. The list of egregiously slanted “news” items coming from these mental degenerates is long. This is just one more. What the hell will they tell their grandchildren???

~~Fox News: “Why All The Fuss About Torturing People?” Just now on Fox News:Marc Jacobson, who served on the Defense Department Prisoner Policy Team from 2002-2003, explains what all the fuss is about:

[The problem is] the perception that we tossed off [the Geneva Convention] and said, “We’re going to have nothing to do with this; we’re going to create our own set of rules,” that not only created a perception to the world that we are not going to adhere to the rule of law, but from a functional standpoint, I think it may have put our own troops in danger. You have a situation now where other nations can say: “Because of the different nature of this war, we are not going to treat U.S. troops as prisoners of war. They are enemy combatants. I’m sorry — military necessity. We’re following the precedent you’re setting.”

~~ do not have cable, so I was a little skeptical about Fox. But I watched it yesterday and this morning while house sitting for someone, and I couldn’t believe how obvious their spin had become.

Was it always this bad, or is it because 1) I haven’t seen it for awhile and had been used to it before; or 2) are they getting desperate?; or 3) both?

~Current ratings:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/
I’ve told you kids before. Fox News may be number one in cable, but compared to broadcast network news it’s a puny dribble and the left blogosphere has dwarfed cable and the right blogosphere combined for months now.

~~If someone had told me 6 years ago we would be debating torture and secret gulags in America in the near future, I would have laughed and said they were crazy.

~~Finally, a quote (Marc Jacobson’s) that shows that at least someone is thinking about things from other people’s perspective.

Also ask, “why do people we torture want us dead?”

They ALL want to kill us AFTER we torture them; not all of them wanted to kill us BEFORE they were tortured.

~Why all this fuss about whipping, mocking, and crucifying Jesus?
We Satanists are really enjoying ourselves these days.

~~Anyone who ordered this torture should be court-marshalled for conduct unbecoming an officer.
~That’s pretty straightforward — maybe even the people at Fox could understand it.What is WRONG with people that they can’t see what happens when we lose the high ground. Not only have we lost credibility in the world because of the lies about the war, we have lost integrity and respect around the world for our use of illegal means and methods of interrogation.~~BECAUSE torture doesn’t work. A prisoner, military, insurgent or otherwise, under torture will confess to anything, and, if he doesn’t in fact possess any information that would be of value to his torturers, will simply make up stuff he thinks you will want to hear, anything to make the pain stop.Who wouldn’t? This is a thoroughly well-documented phenemenon.

From a Machiavellian perspective, the real problem with torture is that it’s likely to get you saddled with a hell of a lot of worthless information that wastes valuable time and manpower. It turns possible allies into definite enemies.Torture is morally, categorically wrong, sure; but it’s also, from a realpolitik/military standpoint, stupid and wasteful and inefficient.

I mean, what are we gonna do, kill every Arab in the Middle East? Do the same thing Attorney General Gonzalez’s ancestors did here in the Southwest? It’s 600 years after the Spanish Conquest, and as a New Mexican I can tell you, it still isn’t safe for a guy named Gonzalez to walk around alone on an Indian reservation after dark. Wars get forgotten in a generation or two. Genocide does not. The losers of this war, their descendants will hate our guts for what we’re doing, six and seven generations from now, just as the descendants of France’s long-lost colonial subjects are, as I type this, burning Paris and her suburbs.

The very likely unintended consequence of V.P. Cheney’s and Att’y Gen’l Alberto Gonzalez’s “Conquistador” policy toward the Middle Eastern theater of war, will be a vicious blowback on American soil, and these damned fools in Washington will have yet more American blood on their greedy, soft, fat little hands. Plus they will have done incalculable damage to American business interests all over the world. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/08/why-all-the-fuss

People who can rationalize torture should run, not walk, to the nearest psychologist or psychiatrist. It’s not okay to hurt other living beings. I’ll say that again: It’s not okay to hurt other living beings. If an animal has rabies, or some other dysfunction which permits it to harm others, then it should be dealt with mercifully and compassionately, and if death be the sentence then that sentence should be carried out with the greatest remorse. But torture! God have mercy on us that we have seen these times. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” How conveniently that maxim is forgotten by those who so loudly trumpet their so-called Christianity.

Terrible Force Feedings of Guantanamo Bay Victims

2005-11-09T04:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77538,00.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.phpaz=view_all&address=104x5297129
http://www.CagePrisoners.com for things you can do to help.

VIDEO-Michael Ratner on Gitmo Bay Assisted Feeding tubes

This will make you sick. Damn Cheney and Bush and the whole anti-civil rights administration.
I was watching the DOD press conference a couple of weeks ago and hear Rumsfeld compare the hunger strike at Gitmo Bay to people going on DIETS. Is there any "Moral Highground" left for Bush Supporters to claim?

Lied the country into war.
Fiscal irresponsibility.
Outing CIA agents then lying about it.
Killing 100,000 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children. And statistically, some of those woment MUST have been pregnant at the time.

Using Torture just like Saddam.
and now, Using Chemical Weapons.
(I'm sure there is more).

What "Moral Highground" is left for Bush supporters to claim?

I'd say this was a parting present from the Bu$h administration to the incoming Dem administration, in a way like Waco was to Clinton and Reno. Only problem for Bu$h is that the election fraud worked keeping him in the role of responsibility for this war crime.

Though it technically isn't napalm as it's not gasoline jelly, the W77 does use kerosene jelly and polystyrene so it's effects are just as dramatic as napalm.

White Phosphorus isn't supposed to be used as a weapon either, it's legitimate legal use is to illuminate the battlefield. Using it against a civilian population is beyond the pale. These people in the leadership positions have made our soldiers accomplices in war crimes. As Americans, we also are responsible for what they have done in our name. This infuriates me. I never wanted to be part of this, but I am. Just when you think you cannot get any more angry. Bastards. will this ever break through to general consciousness?

London Bombings and NY Subway Bomb Questions

2005-11-09T04:33:00.000-08:00

Fitzgerald has his work cut out for him, esp. if he handles the House Impeachment probe which I hope he will.

The Drudge Report has linked to a new story by WNBC which seeks to shed some light on information provided to the NYPD in a recent briefing. The briefing surrounded the recent London attacks on 7/7 and 7/21. Among highlights of the briefing is the revelation that both attacks employed similar explosives but differing detonation methods. original news source:www.wnbc.com

The suicide bombers cooked up their explosives using mundane items like hydrogen peroxide. They stored them in a fancy commercial refrigerator that was out of place in their grimy flat. And cell phones likely were used to set them off. "Initially it was thought that perhaps the materials were high-end military explosives that were smuggled, but it turns out not to be the case," Kelly said. "It's more like these terrorists went to a hardware store or some beauty supply store."

The NYPD officials said investigators believe the bombers used a peroxide-based explosive called HMDT, or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine. HMDT can be made using ordinary ingredients like hydrogen peroxide (hair bleach), citric acid (a common food preservative) and heat tablets (sometimes used by the military for cooking).

~~What I'm wondering is why are New York Officials a source of information about what happend in London? Any and all information on what explosives were used, trigger mechanisms and such should be comming out of London imho.
And quotes like:
It's more like these terrorists went to a hardware store or some beauty supply store."

Are speculation, we don't care what's most likely, we care about whats actually used. London is still saying military explosives. Who are these NY officials to say otherwise? Where do they get their information? How come London or UK Officials aren't the ones to give out this information?use their mobile phones after the bombings to report their witness accounts and even to send pictures to them. In addition, so many people were calling loved ones and friends that the lines were jammed up. I just find it weird that now they are saying mobiles were used to detonate the bombs.

Tue August, 16 2005 find the whole story a bit strange..like why after the attacks police authoritys didn't shut down networks for phones.They knew that Madrid bombings were triggered by phones. If triggered by phones why the need to sacrifice themselves? Doesn't make sense. Also what the story of Visor consultancy running security exercise at the same time,media hasn't mentioned much about that. And where is all the cctv footage? smells like a 6 week old haddock.

If the tube bombs were detonated using cell phone timers, what roles did the four suspects caught on CCTV play? If they were suicide bombers, why use timers? If they were only delivery men, were they killed in the explosions? If not, where are they? If so, what kind of story do you tell four unwitting blokes to get them to assemble in one location loaded with rucksacks and take off on different tube lines? How does the behavior of the final bus bomber fit into the equation...was his last minute fiddling with the device an effort to trigger it? If so, why use timers if the bombs are triggered by the bombers? If not, did he expose his ignorance of the whole plan by panicking and searching his bag when he put two and two together and figured out that the explosions he had heard about were detonated on the tube lines his buddies just took?

Many questions..

.http://www.terroranalysis.com/story/160116.html

http://whiterose.samizdata.net/
SAMIZDATA

Tony Blair Impeachment Beginnings

2005-11-09T04:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/30/listening_post/main895456.shtmlCBS)

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer filed this report from London.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s normally smooth officials have been left gaping and groveling after one of the biggest PR fiascos of his Labour Party tenure. Two burly security officials bundled an 82-year-old man out of Labour’s annual conference this week after he heckled Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, during a speech on Iraq. Straw was telling conference delegates that Britain was in Iraq for one reason only — to help bring democracy to the country — when Walter Wolfgang shouted, “Nonsense. You know that’s a lie.”

Even though — or perhaps because — millions of Britons probably agree with Wolfgang, he was
immediately manhandled out of his seat. Unfortunately for Tony Blair and his party, the television cameras were right there, broadcasting it all live to an incredulous Britain.

Then it got worse.

It turned out that Wolfgang — since dubbed the Hero Heckler — was a Jewish refugee to Britain, and a party loyalist who had faithfully attended Labour conferences since 1955. When Wolfgang, along with another party member who had come to his rescue, tried to get back in to the
conference, they were detained under anti-terrorism laws. “Freedom of Speech in Blair’s Britain,” blazed the headline in the Daily Mail over pictures of a bouncer with muscles like watermelons lifting a frail Wolfgang by the scruff of the neck.

“Our PM is nothing but a bully — just ask old Walter,” said the Telegraph.

And borrowing an iconic line from the TV series “Fawlty Towers” (spoken by John Cleese as he
goose-stepped around some German visitors), The Independent's headline read simply “Don’t Mention the War.” In fact, until Wolfgang’s heckle, nobody was mentioning the war in Iraq much at the party conference, at least not publicly. Delegates complained the silence on the subject was deafening as party organizers and spin doctors worked to steer debate away from what many Labour supporters see as an immoral debacle.

It all underlines what a slick political machine Tony Blair has fashioned from the argumentative and rambunctious Labour Party of old, preoccupied with class warfare and workers’ rights. In those days, every party conference proudly boasted at least one rowdy dustup. But when does a slick political machine become a politically correct dictatorship?

“You cannot stifle debate by hiring heavies. A party has got to be open to the world,” said Wolfgang after he had finally been let back into the conference. “The Labour party must get back to its culture of being open to argument.” Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly apologized to Wolfgang for his treatment. “I am very sorry but I wasn’t there,” he repeated on practically every radio and television channel in Britain. But it has not deflected public outrage.

One old man’s outburst has focused the country’s attention right where Mr. Blair didn't want it: on the war in Iraq, on new draconian anti-terrorism laws and his own administration’s reputation for bullying dissenters.

Elizabeth Palmer ©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc

2005-10-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

Galloway spoke of death chamber at Gitmo Concentration and torture camp- above the law? Rumsfeld was eager to see the death chambers in Iraq prisons - soldier thought Rumsfeld's obsession with death was sick.

2005-10-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

Colin Powell's Lies to the UN which he now states was the lowest point in his life and he admits to lying to fool the UN, Congress and US Citizens and has cost the lives of more than 2,000 US soldiers, over 100,000 Iraqis and maimed an unknown but huge number of human beings.

Keep Checking Fitzgerald's Website

2005-10-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/
Patrick J. Fitzgerald Special Counsel Official DOJ (Dept. of Justice) website.

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7256
~~
http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/CourtthrowsOutBushSuit.htm~Go to Rep.

Jerrold Nadler's site, he wants Fitz to handle the Impeachment.

Also go to Rep. Hinchey's site - he sent a letter to Fitz to go where the evidence led him, giving support to Comey's mandate and 40 members of the House also signed.

There are some very brave Congresspersons and we should thank them!

http://www2.boomantribune.com/story/2005/10/26/105036/84

Prosecutor's Progress Is Rare for Leak Inquiries
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 26, 2005

Unlike any of his predecessors, Patrick Fitzgerald, has delved deeply into conversations that government
officials and reporters had every reason to believe would remain confidential.

~~~http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/~~Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Today on the Tom-Toms

Just got off the phone with a source who has appeared before Fitzgerald's grand jury who thinks that the Special Counsel is going to "go wide" with indictments -- i.e., a lot of people are going to get nailed. And from what I'm hearing, I agree. Which is why I put so little stock in anyone who's running around saying
"oooh, this just in -- Rove and Libby are going to be indicted! Announcement tomorrow!" That just lights my bullshit meter up like a pinball machine. Man, you are really out on a limb with that prediction, aren't ya?

Also, a grand juror was overheard waving to a reporter and saying "see you Friday" when they left today.

So we may not be quite there yet.

The bottom line in all this is that at this point, I think nobody knows what's going to happen, so take all predictions with a grain of salt, even this one. I hate to throw cold water on everyone's expectations for tomorrow, but even amidst the hearty speculation we like to engage in around here we also like to ground things in reality. And the reality is if Fitzgerald is still pursuing an investigation, he's probably going to want
some time to use that info in his "come to Jesus" talks with the perps.
~~
Update: Lawrence O'Donnell agrees: "Experienced federal prosecutors are saying today that they expect Fitzgerald to extend the term of the grand jury even if he obtains indictments this week."

~~Civil rights violations?

I was intrigued to read one of Fitzgerald's briefs, which makes reference to the leak being "apparent retribution" or "apparent retaliation" for Joe Wilson's public criticism of the Bush administration.

I wonder whether Fitzgerald could include a count of civil rights violations, alleging that the government attempted to silence free speech by punishing Wilson?

Dems Standing Up for US Citizens

2005-10-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

I read on AOL news, usual feed from AP that Rove had turned down a deal by Fitzgerald this morning.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler has a very strong condemnation on his official government site of Bushco corruption and he and others in Congress want Fitz to handle the Impeachment probe.

Rep. Hinchey wrote a letter signed by 40 other members of the House of Representatives confirming Comey's mandate for Fitz to go wherever the evidence takes him.

McCain is fighting against weakening the torture bill he introduced by exempting CIA from Human Rights rules.

Please go to the sites of these gentlemen to thank them for standing up for what is right.

Enjoyed your article. Would like to see Rove do jail time but more important to get bush and cheney out ASAP!!

Please mention your disapproval of the US military being ordered to shot and bomb on the borders of Syria and Iran in the past few weeks (months?) to the above Congresspersons.

Thank you

~~~~Meanwhile, a former high level Bush administration official told Political Wire that "people are turning on each other" at the White House. Lawrence Wilkerson is likely just the first of many to come out publicly against the administration.

http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/bumped-fitzmas-eve.html

~Bush will not pardon anyone. If he does, there will be further revolt by Republicans because of the impact on the 2006
elections of headline charges of cronyism and corruption. I think this is the most dangerous course that a moron like Bush may take due to his personal stubborness and loyalty. If he does pardon, I think it would bring on a constitutional crisis that could lead to his resignation.

2005-10-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

Aaron Brossard, Jefferson Parrish President, NOLA about the drowning death of an elderly woman incapacitated in nursing home due to FEMA's deliberate delays.

Some Important Live Links that didn't show in earlier posts

2005-10-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

Re: Tim Russert's treatment (Rovian smear) of Jeffereson Parrish President Aaron Broussard on the second interview. "You should watch every week. Then e-mail the network about his failures. They will respond very slowly but they will respond eventually. Maybe they will fire him if they get too many complaints."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3303518/

~Do you have a question, concern or comment for Meet the Press or Tim Russert? Fill in the form below and send us your feedback. We look forward to hearing from you

~Body Armor - Really Support the Troops

href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Really_Support_the_Troops/">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Really_Support_the_Troops/

Go to 911Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Just a Citizen site to sign petition against gag order so we can learn the truth about 911

http://www.JustACitizen.com

Activism items and history at BillyJack.com :

http://www.billyjack.com/index.php?menuID=Page&pid=60

Petition for Getting Our Troops Armor They Need

http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=us_military_s_treatment_of_us_troops

Let's REALLY Thank Our Brave Soldiers...
Restore Bush's Cuts to Veterans Benefits!

http://elandslide.org/e
landslide/petition.cfm?campaign=veterans&refer=home

2005-10-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

Rep. Conyers at Rovegate Hearing

Please Sign Rep. Conyers Letter "NO PARDONS FOR TREASONGATE"

2005-10-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

Conyer's Action Items

Conyer's Blog

Monday, October 24, 2005

Action Alert from Rep. John Conyers, Jr.

I wanted to share with you my recent blog post on the Plame leak investigations. Our action item is writing the president. Any help you can provide to encourage your readers to join on this letter would be really helpful.

Thank you for your help and your continued stand for a better democracy.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Tell the President: No Pardons for Treasongate!

In July, I wrote to the White House to ask the President to pledge that he will not pardon any Administration official indicted during the course of the Fitzgerald investigation. As some of you may recall, his father, President George H.W. Bush, pardoned officials under indictment in the Iran-Contra scandal. Many of my Republican colleagues, and some of my Democratic colleagues, raised questions about the pardons issued by President Clinton during his last days in office. It would seem to me that this Administration, which promised a higher standard of ethics could, at least, make this pledge.

Sign the Letter to the President to Demand No Pardons for Treasongate

The White House had promised its full cooperation with the investigation, but has clearly done as much as possible to cover-up their role. In fact, thus far, their strategy has been attack, attack, attack -- most significantly on Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, and as I note below, we will soon see attacks by the President's

surrogates on every part of this investigation: the prosecutor, the Central Intelligence Agency and the press. I am afraid, if push comes to shove, a pardon will be a last ditch tactic to evade accountability.

The President has not answered my letter from July (as he has ignored a letter signed by more than 120 of my colleagues about the Downing Street Minutes), but the press has the power to ask this question of the administration directly, and I hope they will.

As the day nears for Fitzgerald to issue indictments, the time is now to put pressure on the President and make him answer the question, will you pardon those indicted in Treasongate?

2005-10-15T08:31:00.000-07:00

Prayer for Peace in Iraq

2005-10-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Go to 911Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Just a Citizen site and sign her petition to remove the DOJ gag order so we can learn the truth about 911

Activism items and history at BillyJack.com

2005-10-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.billyjack.com/index.php?menuID=Page&pid=60~~~Chapter 7

The Real Reason President Bush lied about the real cost of the war and continues to lie about the cost of occupation and reconstruction

· How 1 day of the true cost of this war and the elimination of Bush’ s $500 billion tax cut would provide Headstart Programs for every eligible child in America.

· How 3 days would provide healthcare for all uninsured US children

· How 4.5 days would create energy independence with clean technology

· How 1 week’s cost of the war would provide basic health and nutrition for all of the world’s poor

Why multi-billion dollar, behind-closed-doors, secret no bid contracts are given to Bush and Cheney’s corporate friends to rebuild Iraq and nothing is being spent on America’s collapsing infrastructure and economy

Look at the devastation and the brutal suffering of tens of millions of Americans because of Bush’s Imperialist obsession with the war. (Remember Bush’s campaign promise he would never get into nation building? I guess he meant America.)

If you think you’re hurting now – Wait until you see how the real cost of the War and Reconstruction will continue to devastate our Economy far beyond anything you’re experiencing now

While television focuses on the unbelievable skill of the troops and high tech weapons of the United States as the greatest power has ever seen, unnoticed by anyone are the negative implications for our future US living standards and influence that are certain to occur.

Not only is the United States the world’s greatest superpower, it is also the world’ s greatest debtor, living way beyond its means, and heavily dependent upon foreign lenders, and all of this at a time the economy is collapsing despite what the spin doctors tell us, and tens of millions of Americans are severely hurting financially.

To the 2.5 million who have lost their job since Bush took office, and are now among the 8 million already unemployed, to those who have seen their 401(K)s and retirement funds wiped out like the couple who had to sell their once $450,000 retirement for $7,000 in order to save their house, to those who are watching their communities close schools and slash desperately needed emergency services (New York City alone had to fire 3,100 cops, and lay off over 10,000 more city workers, close over a dozen fire houses, schools, medical services and sanitation workers at this time of heightened terrorist possibility), to almost all the airlines on the verge of bankruptcy, to the Veterans who are watching the Administration already cut back $24 billion of funding for Veterans (in affluent Santa Barbara alone, over 3,000 veterans were cut off from care) – when you see the real costs of the War, the Occupation and Reconstruction, you will be even further appalled. Cost estimates made by non-partisan, objective, highly reputable economists are that the costs will be $200 billion/year for the War and Occupation, and over a ten-year period will range from $755 billion to over $3 trillion.

Why did the White House adamantly refuse to give any estimate of what the war and occupation would cost to either the American people or the US Senate until March 17 when they “guesstimated” it would cost $90-110 billion, finally asking for $75 billion for six months? Because they knew that if the American people knew the true cost of the war they would be furious, and because they knew that the $75 billion for six months was a joke – it was just for starters, and they’d manipulate the American people to the true cost of the war just ask slickly as they did in manipulating Americans to want to go to war.

2005-10-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

Village Voice article Feb 2004 about Kerry's staff shredding information that over 1,000 POWs were seen in eyewitness accounts but Bush Senior wanted to spend the money on major drug trafficking from Vietnam. from Kiss The Boys Good-bye

2005-10-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

Kerry Cares?

Petition for Getting Our Troops Armor They Need

2005-10-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

To save money, US Army officials order just 50 percent of the ALQ-156 flare-launching systems needed for the Illinois-Iowa National Guard fleet of Chinook helicopters. The flare-launching systems allow helicopters to evade heat-seeking missiles. “A conscious
decision was made not to buy as many as we need,” Lt. Gen. Roger C. Schultz, director of the Army National Guard, later explains
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It's a decision that has some level of risk with it.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12/27/2003]
People and organizations involved: Roger C. Schultz
1997

Major Clifford E. Day at the Air Command and Staff College in Alabama concludes in a paper that the US military's reliance on soft-skinned Humvees during the operation in Mogadishu, Somalia “needlessly put ... troops in harms way without the proper equipment to successfully complete the mission.” [MSNBC, 4/15/2003 Sources: Critical Analysis on the Defeat of Task Force Ranger]

(January 2003)

The Bush administration's proposed 2004 defense budget would cap raises for E-1s, E-2s and O-1s at 2 percent, which is
significantly below the average raise for military personnel of 4.1 percent. [The Army Times, 6/30/2003]
People and organizations involved: Bush administration

(2003)

The Illinois-Iowa National Guard is deployed to Iraq. The unit is sent with 14 of its Chinook helicopters. However only two of them are outfitted with aircraft survivability equipment. The remaining helicopters will operate in Iraq unprotected. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12/27/2003]

(Summer 2003-March 2004)

The US Army?s official guidance on the issue of “hardening” soft-skinned Humvees and other lightly-armored vehicles includes a recommendation for soldiers to put sandbags on the floorboards to reduce the impact of explosions. Since the summer, the soldiers' preferred solution to the problem of unprotected vehicles has been to hire local contractors to add steel to the bodies of their vehicles

(see March 2003 and later). [MSNBC, 4/15/2003]

http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=us_military_s_treatment_of_us_troops

Congressman John B. Larson Tuesday called for an immediate Congressional investigation into the Pentagon’s procurement system that has led to more than a year’s delay in supplying improved body armor to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of that investigation, Larson (CT-1) said that Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should be held liable for any findings of dereliction or wrongdoing.

“These delays are a disgrace,” Larson said. “The administration has repeatedly lapsed in its duty to provide the men and women it sends into war the best equipment possible. After two years and with all the appropriate funding levels, an investigation needs to be done into why this hasn’t been done. Our troops should not have to wait a day, let alone a year. Our men and women need all the protection we can offer them, and their families and the American people need to know that we’re doing everything we can to protect them. If we can spend billions of dollars on the national missile defense program and the nuclear bunker buster program and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, there’s no reason for this to be happening.”

Larson said that action should be taken against Pentagon officials if the investigations yield evidence of willful neglect or incompetence.

If so, those officials should resign or be dismissed, he said.

That wait for upgraded armor is symptomatic of the Pentagon’s failure since the war began to adequately outfit troops with body
protection¸ Larson said. Despite complaints from troops, their family and Congress, the Administration has dragged in acquiring and distributing the armor, he added.

“The Administration has wanted to avoid talking about timetables, but giving our troops safer body armor is one timetable that cannot be put off. It is a top priority that needs to be acted on now. If those in charge aren’t standing up to that responsibility, then we need
leaders who will. ”

A poorly-run procurement system has stalled the replacement of existing armor with thicker ceramic plates that could better protect military personnel from insurgent gunfire. Reports cited that gunfire has killed at least 325 troops, about half the number killed by bombs.

Larson has longstanding concerns about Pentagon’s record of supplying body armor throughout the Iraq war. He introduced an
amendment, passed in the 2004 defense spending bill, requiring the Pentagon to reimburse military personnel and family members who spent their own money for protective gear that the Pentagon had failed to supply.

From the outset, troops were sent to Iraq with a shortage of armor. Larson pushed for the reimbursement measure following a 2003 forum on Iraq in East Hartford. At the forum, an East Hartford mother Pene Palifka said that her son, Bill Palifka of the CT National Guard’s 248th Engineer Co., had been sent to Iraq without the “Interceptor” body armor that American troops were supposed to have been issued. Worried for her son’s safety, she spent about $1,100 to buy it for him.

The measure covered purchases through the end of 2003, since the military assured Congress that in 2004 it would supply upgraded
armor to all troops – the same thicker-plated armor hanging in procurement limbo.

“So far the Pentagon’s assurances have been empty,” Larson said. “Our civilian leaders need to be held to their word.”

Investigate Body Armor Delays for Troops

No matter what side of the aisle you plant your butt on, we can all agree our troops deserve the best equipment in a timely matter.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=1905

"Congressman John B. Larson Tuesday called for an immediate Congressional investigation into the Pentagon's procurement system that has led to more than a year's delay in supplying improved body armor to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. As part of that investigation, Larson (CT-1) said that Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should be held liable for any findings of dereliction or wrongdoing. "

I prefer hanging to liable, but I am from Texas.

"From the outset, troops were sent to Iraq with a shortage of armor. Larson pushed for the reimbursement measure following a 2003 forum on Iraq in East Hartford. At the forum, an East Hartford mother Pene Palifka said that her son, Bill Palifka of the CT National Guard's 248th Engineer Co., had been sent to Iraq without the "Interceptor" body armor that American troops were supposed to have been issued. Worried for her son's safety, she spent about $1,100 to buy it for him. "

Our war families should not be doling out money for this. If we got money to build pointless bridges, we should have enough to outfit our men and women with the best we got.

Here's a good exercise in American absurditiy. Since I am in central Mexico, I can't pull this off, but... Can someone call UPS or DHL and see how long it would take to send a package to Baghdad? Then you could easily ask why it only took two days to send your package to the troops, but the Pentagon has dragged their feet on this for over 2 years. Destroy the perfume warrior princes with wit, not anger. Works every time.

"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government." -- Thomas Paine

http://elandslide.org/elandslide/petition.cfm?campaign=veterans&refer=home

Let's REALLY Thank Our Brave Soldiers...
Restore Bush's Cuts to Veterans Benefits!

Body Armor - Really Support the Troops

2005-10-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Really_Support_the_Troops/~~~~Description

#1 - Point Blank Body Armor - Chief Operations Officer Sandra Hatfieldmaker of - Interceptor - outer tactical vest ( body armor )
*it failed protection and safety issues, yet was issued to Marines
**let it go through anyway to production and payment
[Program Manager - Lt. Col Gabriel Patricio]
***exposed the shody equipment
[ James MacKiewicz ]

#2 - HumVee Armor Plating protection. O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt in West Chester, Ohio. aka - Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla.
*** exposed the shody equipment

#3 - Armor kits. Stewart & Stevenson of Sealy, Texas
*** exposed the shody equipment

#4 - HumVee vehicles
*** exposed the shody equipment
[ Gary Motsek, director of support operations for Army Materiel Command and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki]

ANALYSTS
Defense analyst Bill Arkin

A - No Yellow Ribbon passiveness on the car, the home window, or around neighborhood trees.
B - No Flag waving excuses, with easy placed flags on car windows, that say nothing.
C - No Opinions without action.
D - Send real support ( the cost taxpayer money, yours and mine ) not just applause.

This is an informational, research, debate, group on what really supporting the troops...IS? This group goes beyond non active yellow ribbons, and lapel pins. It is the intention of this group to expose military equipment makers that endanger our troops. And it ask members to be active and write to their Congressmen and to the shody equipment makers, as well as expose any profiteering and cronyims.

The inquiry has ensnared President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove,

2005-10-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Published on Thursday, October 6, 2005 by Reuters

US Officials Brace for Decisions in CIA Leak Case

The federal prosecutor investigating who leaked the identity of a CIA operative is expected to signal within days whether he intends to bring indictments in the case, legal sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday.

(If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration. US President George W. Bush)

As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets, said the lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Fitzgerald could announce plea agreements, bring indictments, or conclude that no crime was committed. By the end of this month he is expected to wrap up his nearly two-year-old investigation into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

The inquiry has ensnared President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The White House had long maintained that Rove and Libby had nothing to do with the leak but reporters have since named them as sources.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target. Libby's lawyer was not immediately available to comment.

"It's an ongoing investigation and we're fully cooperating," said Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride.The outcome of the investigation could shake up an administration already reeling from criticism over its response to Hurricane Katrina and the indictment of House Republican leader Tom DeLay on a conspiracy charge related to campaign financing.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified to the grand jury on Friday about the conversations she had with Libby. Plame's diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, has accused the administration of leaking her name, damaging her ability to work undercover, to get back at him for criticizing Bush's Iraq policy.

Fitzgerald's agreement to limit the scope of Miller's testimony to her conversations with Libby -- a proposal he rejected a year earlier -- suggested that Libby had become "the focus of interest," said one of the lawyers involved in the case. After initially promising to fire anyone found to have leaked information in the case, Bush in July offered a more qualified pledge: "If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration."

Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1006-03.htm
~~For Immediate Release October 6, 2005 Contact: Naomi Seligman, 202-588-5565

NEW COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST KARL ROVE WITH KERR COUNTY, TX DISTRICT ATTORNEY TO INVESTIGATE ILLEGAL VOTER REGISTRATION

After delving into Fleitz, I can safely report that he is, at a minimum, a very interesting character.

2005-10-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

Arianna -- Any chance you'll investigate the links between PlameGate and the AIPAC spy scandal? From this post at http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=2270_0_1_0_C

"Both Fitzgerald and Paul McNulty, the prosecutor in the AIPAC spy case, are targeting the same group of committed neoconservative ideologues. The neocons tried to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson and "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame because Wilson was an obstacle on the road to war with Iraq. And now they are trying replicate the same scenario in support a military strike at Iran -- the issue at the root of the AIPAC spy scandal. In both instances, their ruthlessness and lawlessness was their ultimate undoing.

Plame-gate + AIPAC-gate = Neocon-gate."

~question: Since Bolton is currently U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., can he be prosecuted if it turns out that he was responsible? Or does he enjoy a level of Diplomatic Immunity? September 21, 2005

I'm not sure which will give me more joy: seeing Rove and Bolton go to jail, or Tom Delay! Neither can happen soon enough. September 21, 2005

I have thought that he probably was the informant for Judith Miller since the confirmation hearings. Who is surprised? ~~Part of this story needs to be made more explicit.Arianna is trying, but just missing. While this is about the cover-up of "lying us into war," the real bottom line is much simpler.

They said (falsely) that we could have mushroom clouds coming in 45 minutes. (Read it again.)Now, who really terrorized the American People? What are you more frightened of? 20 guys with boxcutters or mushroom clouds over our cities with no warning? This is the underlying reality. And the real crime of treason.

~Just maybe, with a little luck and a little skillful politics, The Dems can take back one of the houses next year. Right about that time Plame-gate will be in full throttle. In fact, desire to get at the truth of Katrina failure and Plame-gate might drive the public into Democrats arms. Then the impeachments and indictments will begin in earnest and the cover that the legislature has given the adminisitration will be gone.

God I only hope this comes to pass. It is sad to say, but the loss and sacrifice of New Orleans may be what saves this republic. Without it, what chance would we have?

~~Bolton also appears to be involved in the forgery of the yellow cake memo as an accompolice of
Michael Ledeen both belong to the Jewish Institute for National Security affairs. Seems there are other forces involved in the Bush administration that are engaging in treasoneous acts affecting the USA.

~Will we have a conclusion to this saga in this decade? September 21, 2005

I've suspected it might be Bolton for months. What other explanation could there be for Dubya wanting so badly to have him at the UN? If he has diplomatic status, he could evade prosecution. Of course, that also presumes that Bush knows something about this that he hasn't been telling us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/plamegate-the-john-bolto_b_7648.html

I'm now hearing that the investigation may be inching closer to never-confirmed UN Ambassador John Bolton.

According to two sources, Bolton's former chief of staff, Fred Fleitz, was at least one of the sources of the classified information about Valerie Plame that flowed through the Bush administration and eventually made its way into Bob Novak's now infamous column.

After delving into Fleitz, I can safely report that he is, at a minimum, a very interesting character. He is a career CIA agent who Bolton handpicked to join him at Foggy Bottom, having gotten to know him during the administration of the first President Bush. While working as Bolton's top aide, Fleitz also continued his work in the CIA's WINPAC division, the group responsible for some of the
worst prewar intelligence on Iraq (they were, among other things, big fans of Curveball and had "high confidence" in the presence of WMD in Iraq).

"I perform liaison function for the [CIA] and Mr. Bolton," Fleitz told the Senate ~~So what does this all mean to the ongoing Plamegate investigation? Well, another source close to Bolton recently described his management style to me as "Very hands on. Nothing goes by him. His staff does what he wants. He's not the kind of guy to have his staffers freelancing." So, if Fleitz was a key source of the Plame info and Bolton is not the kind of guy to have his staffers freelancing… does this mean Bolton was being less than forthcoming when he told people around him that the first time he ever heard Valerie Plame's name was when he read it in the newspaper? Or was he merely sharing talking points with Tim Russert?

So could Ambassador Bolton actually be a target of Pat Fitzgerald's investigation? When considering this question, it's important to keep in mind that he's never been subpoenaed or questioned by the Plamegate grand jury -- and, as a lawyer who does work for the New York Times put it: "The target of a grand jury investigation would not ordinarily be subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury."

So here is what we know: We know that Fleitz was the connection to the CIA, and that Bolton was close to Scooter Libby (and the rest of the neocons, of course) and Judy Miller (for whom he was an important source, although the last time she quoted him by name was in 1999 when he was at the American Enterprise Institute). And here is what we don't know: we don't know the pathway through which Plame's identity got into Novak's column. Did Miller learn about Plame from her old chum Bolton? Did she pass that info on to Libby? Or had Bolton already told Libby? And Rove? Or was it all just passed around and around in a cozy game of neocon phone tag?

span >It makes one wonder more than ever before what Bolton and Miller talked about when he visited her in jail.

More on Fitzgerald Investigation Oct. 6, 2005

2005-10-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

When the people clamor to be shielded from reality, when they praise their government for keeping things from them, when they choose to conduct their lives within the limits of whatever fantasy the government supplies, then they are no longer consenting to be governed, they are begging to be ruled.

~Shrubya has said resignation only if they were guilty after saying resignation if involved.

Are the Dems willing to howl now for an independent prosecutor to investigate the use of intelligence in policy making leading to the Iraq debacle?

~Legal sources close to the investigation" may well be leaking to pressure some witnesses for deals, but the higher targets may well have received letters - thus the recent flurry of White House events may be foreshadowing.

~You see, Raw Story also claims to have confirmed a report from AmericaBlog that Rove has been "missing" from recent public events as an apparent step to distance him from Dubya.

Sort of like the old joke about breaking bad news gently, the statement that Fitzgerald is "expected" to send target letters could be a preliminary way of leaking word that Rove has in fact received a target letter.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Rove_missing_from_events_Word_on_1005.html

~The Plame/AIPAC-gate Connection Swopa (http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1736So it turns out that the Espionage Act (Death Penalty according to http://www.CitizenSpook.com isn't a dead letter after all, and that it can be used to prosecute non-commercial, non-hostile revelations of sensitive information to the press, as opposed to giving secrets to hostile foreign powers.) cites Mark Kleimen on the AIPAC spy scandal -- who points out that Larry Franklin and his cohorts are "simply charged with giving classified information to those without security clearances, in pursuit of a political agenda" -- and makes the Plame-AIPAC-gate connection:

There is team of judges that have decided that they are no longer going to tolerate

2005-10-04T10:29:00.000-07:00

JUDGE MARK FILIP TRYING TO KILL BUSH-CHENEY INDICTMENTS
19 September 2005, 9:27 a.m.

Tom Heneghen reports that a Judge Magistrate named Mark R. Filip is trying to suppress the indictments against Bush-Cheney and other high officials by the Fitzgerald Grand Juries.
==================================================
http://www.sunriseofthesolardisk.com/heneghen.html

Tom Heneghen Reports Movement Within Chicago Federal Court In Upcoming

Indictments Of Bush Administration
by Scott Mowry

Last evening on the "US Intel News" show on the Turner Radio Network, Tom Heneghen gave an update on the progress of the grand juries in Chicago concerning their impending indictments of various members of the Bush administration, both past and present.

Apparently, there is brisk movement within the US Federal Court of Chicago to get these indictments out despite intense pressure from within by a Judge Magistrate named Mark R. Filip, who has thus far suppressed them from being released to the public, according to Heneghen.

"We are heading toward a real showdown in United states of America, and we are heading toward what we might be looking at is a constitutional crisis," stated Heneghen emphatically about the Chicago court situation.

"There is team of judges that have decided that they are no longer going to tolerate this type activity and I believe they are well on their way to try TO FORCE THESE INDICTMENTS OUT rather than keep them sealed. And as I said, a showdown is emerging where Bush and his gang and Clinton and their gang, which are tied together in all of this, are about to be brought to justice."

Heneghen further claimed the newly named "Katrina Fund" disaster relief for the citizens of New Orleans that has been recently sponsored by former Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton "is nothing more than a slush fund through Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates and what it is going to be used to do, once again, is pay off people who need to be shut up."

The impending indictments reportedly name George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ted Olson, John Ashcroft, Scooter Libby, Condeleezza Rice, among many others, for crimes which include perjury, obstruction of justice and treason for the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, in addition to other charges, all of which have been sitting idle with Judge Filip for several weeks now.

"What is important to note, is that indictments are handed down, vis a vis, what we call the foremen of the grand jury and despite the fact that (Special Prosecutor) Mr. (Patrick) Fitzgerald is in charge of the grand jury, the indictments concerning some of the major players are being held by what they call a "Judge Magistrate." And tonight what we want to do is identify the Judge Magistrate who is currently holding on to these indictments and that gentleman is by the name of Mark Filip. His actual name is ’Fickelstein,’ but he has changed it to Filiip, so that he is disguised, I guess, as something he is not supposed to be," Heneghen added.

Filip is also directly connected to a law firm by the name of Skadden/Arps out of Chicago that also employed the son of Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, who additionally may be indicted as a co-conspirator along with the late Chief Justice William Renquist. Their charges may entail their connection to the fraudulent 2000 Presidential election decision given to Bush which also has links to bribery payoffs from major corporations such as Coca-Cola and the Walt Disney Company, all again according to Heneghen.

From previous reports, Patrick Fitzgerald is overseeing six grand juries while still more grand juries have been convened in Washington, D.C. with testimony supplied by Sibel Edmonds and in New Jersey, which has particularly been investigating the apparent murder of John F. Kennedy, Jr., also linked to the Bush crime family. All of these additional grand juries became necessary to the broadening scope of the investigation which now includes 9/11,the Iraq war, Arab terrorist cells, a large cache of bribery money out of the Philippines, as well as other more extensive criminal
activities.

Tom Heneghen was joined on the show by journalist Tom Flocoo, however Stew Webb did not appear on last night’s broadcast as scheduled. A posting on the the Hal Turner web site prior to last night’s broadcast stated that "Stew Webb is fine and as such Stew and Tom are scheduled to do their show from 8-9 PM EDT." More than likely Stew Webb should appear on next Thursday evening’s show which airs over the Turner Network at 8PM EST, 7PM CST, 6PM MST and 5PM PST.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bi

September Tuesday 20th 2005
~Rep. Hinchey, NY, a few days ago sent a letter to Fitzgerald with 40 Congressional signatures, asking Fitzgerald to expand the scope of his investigations into the Bush Regime's crimes. This was on Democratic Underground.com front page, now archived, go to bottom of page and click for previous pages. Posters speculated that this was a counter move to the Republican Pat Roberts attempt to get Fitzgerald to appear before Congress to justify Fitz's going beyond the original CIA request that he investigate the outing of Valerie Plame.

Since Fitzgerald now has the request to expand his investigation from Congress members that covers his extensive investigaation of bushco crimes beginning with the theft of the 2000 election and bribery of Supreme Court justices.

google Hinchey plus Fitzgerald. I hope Fitzgerald sends the Federal Marshalls to arrest the entire Bush Regime. Rep. Barbara Lee's Resolution of Inquirey based on Downing Street Minutes failed by one vote last week. The Resolution of Inquiry is the first step towards Impeachment and I do not know why the left blogosphere has ignored the importance of a constant pressure of Congress leading up to this vote.

The Resolution can be requested again but I don't know the time frame for it to be introduced again.

There is quite a bit of very practicial informaiton on this close vote for Congress to begin to investigate bush' treason in taking the US to war on a pack of lies. Go to http://www.AfterDowningStreet.org often and help them if you really want this criminal Regime out of office.

Bush Declared All Out War on Fallujah just before 2004 Election

2005-10-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

Mass slaughter using napalm, bombs, clusterbombs, house to house executions of whole families using the excuse of the people of Fallujah in a fury at the Blackwater mercenary hit squads and torture killed 4 BLACKWATER MERCENARIES which the media whores repeated were "innocent contractors". The timing was such that if Kerry objected to the massive election fraud by the Bush mafia, that Kerry and the "liberals" would be endangering national security. So Bush went on a murderous rampage against whole families and children. Like New Orleans, these people were not allowed to leave by armed checkpoints though the whore press said that the people of Fallujah were warned to leave the city - where could they go but the open desert but even that was blocked to them. Kerry knew the name of the game and let his Skull and Bones BLOOD BROTHERS BUSH JUNIOR AND SENIOR commit this atrocity by disappearing for months after conceding BEFORE the votes of the American people were counted.

Features > November 12, 2004
Fallujah 101
A history lesson about the town we are currently destroying.
By Rashid Khalidi

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities.”

T.E. Lawrence, The Sunday Times, August 1920

There is a small City on one of the bends of the Euphrates that sticks out into the great Syrian Desert. It’s on an ancient trade route linking the oasis towns of the Nejd province of what is today Saudi Arabia with the great cities of Aleppo and Mosul to the north. It also is on the desert highway between Baghdad and Amman. This city is a crossroads.

For millennia people have been going up and down that north-south desert highway. The city is like a seaport on that great desert, a place that binds together people in what are today Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. People in the city are linked by tribe, family or marriage to people in all these places.

The ideas that came out of the eastern part of Saudi Arabia in the late 18th Century, which today we call Wahhabi ideas—those of a man named Muhammad Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab—took root in this city more than 200 years ago. In other words, it is a place where what we would call fundamentalist salafi, or Wahhabi ideas, have been well implanted for 10 generations.
This town also is the place where in the spring of 1920, before T. E. Lawrence wrote the above passage, the British discerned civil unrest.

The British sent a renowned explorer and a senior colonial officer who had quelled unrest in the corners of their empire, Lt. Col. Gerald Leachman, to master this unruly corner of Iraq. Leachman was killed in an altercation with a local leader named Shaykh Dhari. His death sparked a war that ended up costing the lives of 10,000 Iraqis and more than 1,000 British and Indian troops. To restore Iraq to their control, the British used massive air power, bombing indiscriminately. That city is now called Fallujah.

Shaykh Dhari’s grandson, today a prominent Iraqi cleric, helped to broker the end of the U.S. Marine siege of Fallujah in April of this year. Fallujah thus embodies the interrelated tribal, religious and national aspects of Iraq’s history.

The Bush administration is not creating the world anew in the Middle East. It is waging a war in a place where history really matters.

A change for the worse

The United States has been a major Middle Eastern power since 1933, when a group of U.S. oil companies signed an exploration deal with Saudi Arabia. The United States has been dominant in the Middle East since 1942, when American troops first landed in North Africa and Iran. American troops have not left the region since. In other words, they have been in different parts of the Middle East for 62 years.

The United States was once celebrated as a non-colonial, sometimes anti-colonial, power in the Middle East, renowned for more than a century for its educational, medical and charity efforts. Since the Cold War, however, the United States has intervened increasingly in the region’s internal affairs and conflicts. Things have changed fundamentally for the worse with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, particularly with the revelation that the core pretexts offered by the administration for the invasion were false. And particularly with growing Iraqi dissatisfaction with the occupation and with the images of the hellish chaos broadcast regularly everywhere in the world except in the United States—thanks to the excellent job done by the media in keeping the real human costs of Iraq off our television screens.

The United States is perceived as stepping into the boots of Western colonial occupiers, still bitterly remembered from Morocco to Iran. The Bush administration marched into Iraq proclaiming the very best of intentions while stubbornly refusing to understand that in the eyes of most Iraqis and most others in the Middle East it is actions, not proclaimed intentions, that count. It does not matter what you say you are doing in Fallujah, where U.S. troops just launched an attack after weeks of bombing. What matters is what you are doing in Fallujah—and what people see that you are doing.

Fact-free and faith-basedMost Middle East experts in the United States, both inside and outside the government, have drawn on their knowledge of the cultures, languages, history, politics of the Middle East—and on their experience—to conclude that most Bush administration Middle East policies, whether in Iraq or Palestine, are harmful to the interests of the United States and the peoples of this region. A few of these experts have had the temerity to say so, to the outrage of the Bush administration and its supporters, who are committed to what I would call a fact-free, faith-based approach to Middle East policymaking.

These experts predicted that it would be difficult to occupy a vast, complex country like Iraq, that serious resistance from a major part of the population was likely, and that the invasion and occupation would complicate U.S. relations with other countries in the region. It is clear today that all of these fears were well founded.

After 20 months of occupation, the United States continues to make the important decisions in Iraq. Instead of control being exercised through the Coalition Provisional Authority, it takes place through the largest U.S. embassy in the world and its staff of more than 3,000. You can be sure that should the Iraqis try to end the basing of U.S. troops, or try to tear up the contracts with Halliburton and other U.S. companies, or take any other steps that displease the Bush administration, they would be brought up short by the U.S. viceroy, a.k.a. Ambassador John Negroponte.

We, and even more so the Iraqi government and its people, are trapped in a nightmare with no apparent end, in part because those experts who challenged neoconservative fantasies about U.S. troops being received with rice and flowers simply were not heeded. They warned that it is impossible to impose democracy through force in Iraq. Mao Tse Tung said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun; he did not say democracy does. And it doesn’t.

The stench of hypocrisy rises when the United States, a nation supposedly com-mit-ted to democratization and reform, does not hesitate to embrace dictatorial, autocratic and undemocratic regimes like those of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia and now even Libya, simply because they act in line with U.S. security concerns or give lucrative contracts to U.S. businesses. The United States claims to be acting in favor of democracy, yet embraces Qaddhafi! People in the Middle East notice this gap between word and deed—even if Americans don’t notice the things being done in our name.

The United States, in fact, has a far from sterling record in promoting democracy in the Middle East. Initially it started off on a better footing. It opposed colonial rule and -promoted self-determination, as in President Wilson’s Fourteen Points after World War I. But when the United States returned to the Middle East after World War II, it soon supported anti-democratic regimes simply because they provided access to oil and military bases.

If you look carefully, what the Bush administration seems to mean by democracy in the Middle East is governments that do what the United States wants.

Conquer and plunderMiddle Eastern economics is another area about which we hear very little in our media. Americans may not be aware of it, but the wholesale theft of the property of the Iraqi people through privatization was prominently reported all over the Middle East. A recent case involved the handover of Iraqi Airways to an investor group headed by a family with close ties to the Saddam Hussein regime. The airline is worth $3 billion, because in addition to valuable landing slots all over Europe and a few tattered airplanes, Iraqi Airways owns the land on which most of the airports are built.

Such cases, and there are many, cause deep anger against the United States, and evoke bitter resistance to pressures for economic liberalization that people in the region interpret as the looting of their country’s assets.

These privatization measures arouse deep suspicion in the Middle East, because of fears that the region’s primary asset, oil, may be next.

Here, too, history is all-important. Since commercial quantities of oil were discovered in the Middle East at the turn of the 20th century, decisions over pricing, control and ownership of these valuable resources were largely in the hands of giant Western oil companies. They decided prices. They decided how much in taxes they would pay. They decided who controlled the local governments. They decided how much oil would be produced. And they decided everything else about oil, including conditions of exploration, production and labor.

In those seven decades the people of the countries where this wealth was located obtained few benefits from it. Only with the rise of OPEC and the nationalization of the Middle East oil industries and the oil price rises in the ’70s did the situation change. Sadly, it was the oligarchs, the kleptocrats and Western companies that benefited most from the increased prices.

Fears that they will lose their resources shape much of the nationalism of the peoples of the Middle East. And events in Iraq only enhance these fears.

By invading, occupying and imposing a new regime on Iraq, the United States may be following, intentionally or not, in the footsteps of the old Western colonial powers—and doing so in a region that within living memory ended a lengthy struggle to expel colonial occupations. They fought from 1830 to 1962 to kick out the French from Algeria. From 1882 to 1956 they fought to get the British out of Egypt. That’s within the lifetime of every person over 45 in the Middle East. Foreign troops on their soil against their will is deeply familiar.

2005-10-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

War Crimes

Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies

2005-10-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

The complete article is posted here:

http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2172/The_Silent_Scream_of_Numbers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x356725

Background info on the National Election Reform Conference here:http://www.freepress.org/conf.php
-----------------------------------------------------------
April 1st - Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies
The report concludes: “ We believe that the absence of any statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally is an unanswered question of vital national importance that needs thorough investigation.”
Complete report:
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitofsky.pdf
An executive summary of the report by is available at:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_summary.pdf

Press release:Scientific Analysis Suggests Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered
“Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% [1]. According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.

In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But it did.”

http://www.uscountvotes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=41

Related stories:Group says chance of exit polls being so wrong in '04 vote is one-in-959,000By Stephen Dyer - Beacon Journal staff writer

“There's a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been so wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, according to a statistical analysis released Thursday.”
“The explanation for the discrepancy that was offered by the exit polling firm -- that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polling -- is an ``implausible theory,'' according to the report issued Thursday by US Count Votes, a group that claims it's made up of about two dozen statisticians.”
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/11284237.htm

Analysis - Vote Counts May Have Been Altered

“The consortium that conducted the presidential exit polls, Edison/Mitofsky, issued a report in January suggesting that the discrepancy between election results and exit polls occurred because Bush voters were more reticent than Kerry voters in response to pollsters.

The authors of this newly released scientific study "Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Poll Discrepancies" considers this "reluctant Bush responder" hypothesis to be highly implausible, based on extensive analysis of Edison/Mitofsky's exit poll data. They conclude, /“The required pattern of exit poll participation by Kerry and Bush voters to satisfy the exit poll data defies empirical experience and common sense under any assumed scenario.”

A state-by-state analysis of the discrepancy between exit polls and official election results shows highly improbable skewing of the election results, overwhelmingly biased towards the President.”
“Ph.D. statisticians in America who have seen this group's preliminary exit poll study have not refuted it. This new study is a much more comprehensive an analysis of the exit poll discrepancies.”

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0504/S00001.htm

2005-09-30T05:07:00.000-07:00

WE NEED A PAPER TRAIL FOR VOTES!!! See Rep. Conyers' site

2005-09-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald - Will bring this illegal Regime down!

2005-09-30T04:46:00.000-07:00

Civilian Labor Camps

Tim Russert's Black Heart

2005-09-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

The powers-that-be won't let this go. They are going to go after Broussard with everything they can, including the Swift-Boat liars because he called a spade a spade.

"Murder" is exactly what it was.

A Proud "lefty" Liberal. Aaron Broussard has worked long and hard to save his community Check out this site: He is president of this association. He doesn't just talk, he walks the walk...

Press Releases Parishes Against Coastal Erosion (PACE) Response to the Bush Administration's
June 14, 2005 Policy Statement on the Proposed Energy Act of 2005 By Parishes Against Coastal Erosion
http://www.americaswetland.com/article.cfm?id=241&catei...

Sorry I don't know html stuff.Byrnt Russert thought... ...he'd have an easy time carving up Broussard and maybe force some kind of "I stand corrected" defensive posture. Instead Broussard ripped out the corporate media whore's black heart.

Buzzflash had a link to a Blog http://karenas.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/09/disgusting...

"However, the most telling part of the interview was what Tim Russert DID NOT do. He did not replay the portion of Aaron Broussard's statement from Katrina here Aaron said that FEMA came in and cut off his emergency communication lines. He did not replay the part of the tape where Aaron Broussard said Sheriff Harry Lee restored the communications lines and posted armed guards on them to prevent FEMA from cutting the lines again.

Russert did not replay the portion of Broussard's previous interview where Broussard tells the nation that FEMA turned away three Wal-Mart trucks full of water en route to Jefferson Parish. He also does not replay Broussard telling the story of the Coast Guard offering fuel, but when people from Jefferson Parrish showed up to get the fuel the Coast Guard told them that FEMA had instructed them not to give them the fuel. You can read the transcript from the September 4th
interview here by scrolling down.

Why did Tim Russert leave out the most damning part of Broussard's case against the Federal government, and focus on how Broussard got the date of the death of his employee's mother wrong? This was a blatant attempt by Russert, who appeared to be nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Federal government, to discredit their biggest detractor, Aaron Broussard. Tim Russert should wallow in shame and admit his entire story was designed to prop up Bush at the expense of Aaron Broussard and a dead woman."

A Must Read Blog Tim!

You're right. The only part of the previous interview that was played was the part where he got his facts skewed. I think that this attempt to discredit him was to somehow show that everything he had said during the first
interview was false. I think their tactics backfired on them. My reply to MTP/Russert My letter to MTP...

"Meet The Press: 9/25/05 Aaron Broussard
To the Producers of Meet The Press and Mr. Tim Russert:

Today was the last time I will watch Meet The Press as long as Mr. Tim Russert hosts.
I am utterly disgusted.

Mr. Russert's 'interview' of Mr. Broussard was nothing but an attempt to ambush him on national TV. Unfortunately for Mr. Russert, it backfired in his face. Mr. Russert, do you have a heart? Or did you sell that along with your soul when you decided to become FEMA's apologist mouthpiece?

The entire guts of Russert's 'interview' was to try to discredit Mr. Broussard because he got the date wrong on the death of the poor woman that drowned in the nursing home.

This is what Meet The Press decided to concentrate on after the first interview with Mr. Broussard? That a woman died, but it wasn't on the exact day that Mr. Broussard described as he broke down in tears? And then Mr. Russert had the nerve to try to use this discrepancy to attack Mr. Broussard about his criticism of FEMA!

Gee, I wonder, Mr. Russert, why you didn't ask about the other outrages Mr. Broussard mentioned in his first interview, such as:

*When FEMA came in and cut off Mr. Broussard's emergency communication lines.

*When FEMA turned away three Wal-Mart trucks full of water en route to Jefferson Parish.

*How the Coast Guard offered Jefferson Parish fuel, but when people from the parish showed up to get the fuel, the Coast Guard told them that FEMA had instructed them not to give the parish the fuel.

Those nasty questions about FEMA don't help this administration, so I guess Mr. Russert didn't think they were newsworthy. Mr. Broussard was absolutely right when he said FEMA is guilt of murder. And as Mr. Broussard also said, there will be plenty of blame to go around to all levels of
the govt. However, Mr. Russert, your attempt to discredit a true hero of the aftermath of Katrina may indeed be the biggest blunder in your career.

Mr. Russert, if you smell something burning, it is the last tattered shreds of your journalist integrity. They just went up in smoke...

You, and Meet The Press, should be ashamed of yourselves."

Thanks for the link. and that site is a treasure trove.
ATTN KATRINA RESEARCHERS -- http://katrinatimeline.org/research/index.php

B*sh Speech - POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY

2005-09-30T03:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4790112 Fri Sep-16-05 01:09 AM

Missing A KEY POINT in b*sh's speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY Bush made it clear in his speech that the Administration is STILL going to try to use the Katrina disaster to grab more power. It would be another big step in their ongoing push toward suspension of the Constitution and Pentagon-directed military police and gutted civilian and states' rights. This has been a major goal of theirs for years - it can be documented step by step, for example the Patriot Act. (Of course this demand for ultimate Fed power centralization is also part of the strategy to blame the local and state authorities for the mass negligent homicide - it is saying in effect, "Just give us feds all the power and then you will all be safe!!!")

We cannot let this happen and must be very alert to prevent it.

In Bush's speech, along with the prospect of the vast reconstruction funds to be gobbled up by GOP crony deals; the plan to permanently disperse, displace and impoverish the people from New Orleans and the other devastated areas of the South; the prospect of federal money for religious schools to "educate" the displaced children; and many more neocon dreams, don't miss THIS:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9360206 (snip)

"...It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment’s notice.

"Four years after the frightening experience of September 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and for the solution. So I have ordered every Cabinet secretary to participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. We are going to review every action and make necessary changes, so that we are better prepared for any challenge of nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our people."
(snip)
You know the kind of people he has for Cabinet secretaries, so you know whatever "recommendations" they come up with will be for the purpose of furthering neocon goals. His assertion that the federal government and the military need more power to act effectively during a crisis is a lie. EXISTING laws already give him that power, but he is trying to push the limits. For example, read the relevant sections of the DHS National Response Plan, an EXISTING document:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... thread title: The Buck Stops Here: NATIONAL RESPONSE PLANThe lines of authority are very clear; Bush does NOT need more power or more excuses to call for martial law and was TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAILURES IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA. Count on it, the detailed language in any change would include extension of the military policing to "civil disturbances" or just about any other damn thing.

And we're supposed to be encouraged that the disastrous federal non-response to the catastrophe will result in even TIGHTER exclusion of state and civilian efforts?!?! FEMA/DHS should have even GREATER power to block aid and disrupt search/rescue efforts and essential communication?!? Look at horrors FEMA/DHS are ALREADY responsible for in the Katrina disaster and their efforts to prevent anyone else from helping the victims that they have abandoned to die. The answer is supposed to be to INCREASE the power of these people?!?!

Oh yes. Using Katrina to grab more power for the POTUS is a theme. For example:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Thread title: Bush says he may need more power in disasters

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... Thread title: NPR Reports: GW to Blanco"I'll send in the troops if you answer to the WH"

Make no mistake, there are years of step-by-step plans and moves leading up to this crisis and the intended political manipulation of it. I've been researching this and it isn't tinfoilhattery at all. The WH/Pentagon knew the disaster would come in some form, natural or man-made, sooner or later. In fact, in early 2001 there was the official report that the three top, most likely catastrophes to hit the US would be an earthquake in San Francisco, a terrorist attack in New York, or a hurricane in New Orleans. Bush knew, and he cut funding to maintain levees and improve hurricane

preparedness:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... thread title: FACTS: Bush was told about NO , he funded a study to confirm & then CUT $$(New Orleans hurricane and New York terrorist attack! Hey, two out of three!!! Though I do believe the New York attacks on 9/11 happened because of planning by Pentagon/WH insiders.)

For more of the back story on the step by step move to dictatorship and martial law, see this post and the follow the links back. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Let's not let the neocons use this great disaster as the "one more hit" that General Tommy Franks was referring to in his Cigar Aficionado interview that would could result in the suspension of the Constitution for our "protection." http://www.cigaraficionado.com/Cigar/CA_Profiles/People...
I recommend this excellent article, a column written in response to Tommy Franks' surprisingly frank prediction.

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/12/07/Columns/From_Tommy_Fr...

From Tommy Franks, a doomsday scenario
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective ColumnistPublished December 7, 2003
The doomsday scenario was laid out by Gen. Tommy Franks, the recently retired head of CentCom, in of all places the December edition of Cigar Aficionado magazine.

"What is the worst thing that can happen in our country?" Franks asked rhetorically. "Two steps. The first step would be a nexus between weapons of mass destruction . . . and terrorism." The second step would be "the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."

Franks suggested that a "massive casualty-producing event" might cause "our population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country."

(snip)
It was the Nine Years' War in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that facilitated the seizure of power by the world reformers who then took control of nearly all human and social development. In 1984, George Orwell described Oceania as in a constant state of war with a changeable enemy who "always represented absolute evil." These inventors of the great dystopias understood the way governments use war and its associative fear and instability to consolidate power. Despotism thrives on insecurity. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts safety right behind food, water and sleep. Humans naturally crave stability and are willing to sacrifice values such as liberty in its pursuit.
(snip)

Foolish tinfoilhattery, you say? John Dean, one of our country's most respected legal authorites, disagrees with you. In 2002 he considered the probable consequences of the "one more hit," which he thought of as another domestic terrorist attack - though the hurricane can work even better for this purpose, especially with what certainly looks like deliberate worsening of the aftermath. Mr. Dean thought it quite possible that a great disaster like another terrorist attack could be successfully manipulated by the Administration into a functonal suspension of the Constitution that he called "constitutional dictatorship."http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/columns/fl.dean.pow...

With the Bush Administration, always watch for the hand behind the back - the one holding the secret stiletto. They are STILL going to try to use this ongoing national tragedy to grab more civil and state power and consolidate under Pentagon-directed military police. If they give it a name at all, I promise you they won't call it what it is: martial law and military dictatorship. No, I'm betting on something Orwellian like "Operation Safe America." You can bet that it will NOT involve OUR National Guard back at home defending their states under their governors' authority.

We MUST MUST MUST stay alert and STOP the power grab that the Bush Administration will try to make based on their own murderously negligent and incompetent response to the hurricane.
Not only would this dismantle many more of the essential Constitutional protections from dictatorship and further increase Bush's unbalanced power, it would make us all LESS safe from natural and man-made disasters, not more. We MUST make both of these points clear to the American public. This is a turning point, one way or the other.

We honor Andy, ourselves, and our children by continuing his fight for clean, fair elections with VOTER-VERIFIED PAPER BALLOTS. We are ALL Andy's brothers and sisters and are strongest when we act TOGETHER. May we never forget this, for it's the key to everything we are striving for.

2005-09-27T04:03:00.000-07:00

VIDEO- Aaron Broussard on MTP Edited on Sun Sep-25-05 11:01 AM
Takes on Timmy http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4879548

MTP is broadcasting now and Broussard is fantastic! Must see this incredible man.

~done Re: Meet the PressTim Russert literally had his ass handed to him by Mr. Broussard--as well he should have. Russert, do you have no shame for the amount of water- bearing you do for your beloved Bush administration, who keeps you and GE so well funded in arms contracts for their imperial wars? Oh, I guess I just answered that question.

Others developed some conscience during this Katrina Disaster--the Anderson Coopers, Brian Williams, even Faux New's Shepherd Smith. Yet, you go on oblivious to the debaucle and suffering your Bush Cronies have heaped on these people, through their negligence, felonious cronyism, and apathy towards the poor.

Well, you are certainly a well paid mouthpiece. I can't quite recall how that meshes with the word of Christ, that you, as a "proud Catholic" proclaim at every convenient juncture.

If you truly have a conscience, may the dead of NOLA-- who will never be accurately counted nor even recovered-- haunt you for abandoning the TRUTH.

~You should watch every week. Then e-mail the network about his failures. They will respond very slowly but they will respond eventually. Maybe they will fire him if they get too many complaints.

~http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3303518/

~Do you have a question, concern or comment for Meet the Press or Tim Russert? Fill in the form below and send us your feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.

Fire the Bush Regime Propagandist, Tim Russert and stop smearing Aaron Broussard and Cindy Sheehan!

That guy's pretty well spoken - good for him Timmy tried to sucker punch him. No such luck Timmy - Broussard hits back

~Are you kidding? What do you think the corporate media is all about? Their whole mission is to prop up bushco, and Russert is one of their best-rewarded propagandists.

~Can anyone find out is Pig Man is a paid shill? Hes a piece of garbage. Aaron should ask him that
"Mr. Pig Man are you a Guckert Armstrong?"

~That was INCREDIBLE. Thank you! Tim Russert and MTP should be ashamed of themselves.

~~The Pig Man of NBC thought he had Broussard set up for the slaughter, only to be minced into pork barbeque himself.

How nice it was to see the tables turned on the evil little mediawhore ~~~Thank you I don't get MSNBC and NBC doesn't come in too well here so I've never really had a chance to see what a scum Tim Russert is.

Black Heart indeed

~ WOW wow-chills up and down my arms and shoulders
Local and State officials were made impotent by the federal gov't... ....the resources needed for any substantial preparations to deal with this situation or any other emergency have been taken away by the tax cuts for the rich...PERIOD...the local and state levels of gov't haven't had the funds that are necessary for a state of emergency....and obviously the inept leadership of FEMA as well was pertinent in the travesty that's befallen my state

~Exactly. The meme floating around was "There is PLENTY of blame to go around" The WH apparently faxed that talking point to pols and paid yakkers on an hourly basis in the early days of Katrina.

The reality is that there wasn't "plenty" to go around.

There will almost always be errors made in such large operations, but it appears that the overwhelming amount of responsibility for the failures falls to the feds with the Bush administration leading.

And some of what occurred looks to be negligence. Criminal negligence.

~What you say is true And the response of the locals should be examined. But it is also about proporationality. As you point out, the locals can do only so much. That's why Jimmy Carter created FEMA. That's why he created FEMA as a cabinet level position. That's why he codified the fact that FEMA should be headed by **professionals**.

That's why he stipulated that FEMA should never be politicized.

When one weighs culpability, one needs to recognize the inherent limitations of the locals from **any** city or local jurisdiction. They *need* the help of the feds. And that's what was lacking.

Broussard is spot on in his take on things.
Proportionality.

That's the operative word.

~Broussard gave Russert an opening. I know you don't want to hear it. Broussard was 99.9% on target as this thread indicates, however, he conceded one thing to Russert at the end. That there was blame to go around at the local, state and federal level.

The glaring comeback that would have stopped Russert completely was to remind him that local response in an emergency would have been exhausted after the second day. By that time, the local emergency response would have been exhausted and it would have been enough time for the federal government to have stepped in and taken over.

For example, NOLA showed that even local police have families to take care of. They can stock their families up with goods, but after two days, they need to get back to take care of their own families. So someone needs to step in to take over. Tearing Russert to shreads I missed the end because I had to take a call, but I thought Broussard, after having been ambushed, kicked Timmy's butt Sun Sep-25-05 11:12 AM

he not only kicked Timmy's butt he chewed him up and spit him out!!

Rove's Smear Machine Fails to Discredit Aaron Broussard

2005-09-27T04:01:00.000-07:00

September 20, 2005 -- Vicious and putrid right-wing blogs and their corporate news apologists and supporters now go after Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard.

Its Karl Rove's Goebbelsian propaganda machine at its most effective. After Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard recounted on Meet the Press a tearful account of how his emergency services director's mother was left to die in a St. Bernard Parish nursing home as flood waters rose, the vicious GOP blogs have gone on the attack. They are accusing Broussard of getting his dates wrong about the flooding and nursing home mass deaths as if that means it's okay for a 92-year old woman and over 30 other seniors to have been allowed by an unresponsive and incompetent FEMA to perish. The woman's son, Thomas Rodrigue, said that Broussard was confused in the midst of the hurricane's devastation.

This is the same crap the GOP blogs poured out when Rove's operatives passed scanned pages from George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard records to 60 Minutes. The documents contained correct information but the bloggers were tipped off by Rove's machine to jump on them as "forgeries" immediately after 60 Minutes and Dan Rather aired the piece about Bush's AWOL status. Dan Rather became the focus of the news instead of GOP dirty tricksters that include Rove and another bottom-feeding operative from past GOP campaigns.

GOP Scandal Scorecard

2005-09-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

September 20, 2005 -- The GOP Scandal Scorecard add another member of the Bush White House.

Latest crook: David Hossein Safavian, a top official of White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was arrested yesterday by the FBI for helping GOP huckster and Indian gambling casino lobbyist Jack Abramoff buy the Old Post Office Building in Washington and 40 acres of the Naval Surface Weapons Center in White Oak, Maryland for a Jewish school founded by Abramoff. While serving as the General Services Administration's (GSA) Chief of Staff between 2002 and 2004, Safavian accepted a Scotland golf trip from Abramoff in return for helping him acquire the prime real estate properties. Abramoff and his business colleague Adam Kidan were indicted by Federal authorities last month on other charges.

This scam should serve as a stark and ominous signal for the displaced people of Louisiana and Mississippi as Abramoff's friends descend on the area to obtain condemned property at cut-rate prices for their plan to turn the Gulf Coast into a "Dixieland Las Vegas."

See Scorecard. This list is getting so large, perhaps the new Sh'ia-led government of Iraq (or western Iran) will permit us to house these criminals at Abu Ghraib, complete with hoods, electric nodes, sodomite guards, and vicious dogs.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

2005-09-27T03:54:00.000-07:00

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
(Lyrics transcribed from the studio recording by) Joan Baez
Virgil Caine is my name and I drove on the Danville train
'til so much cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive
I took the train to Richmond that fell
It was a time I remember, oh, so well

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringin'
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singin'
They went, "Na, na, na, na, na, na, .... "

Back with my wife in Tennessee
And one day she said to me,
"Virgil, Quick! Come see! There goes Robert E. Lee."

Now I don't mind, I'm chopping wood
And I don't care if the money's no good
Just take what you need and leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringin'
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singin'
They went, "Na, na, na, na, na, na, ..... "

Like my father before me, I'm a working man
And like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand
Oh, he was just 18, proud and brave
But a yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the blood below my feet
You can't raise a Cane back up when he's in defeat

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringin'
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singin'
They went, "Na, na, na, na, na, na, ..... "

Original Lyrics written by J. Robbie Robertson

Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train
'Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell,
it's a time I remember oh so well

The night they drove Old Dixie down and the bells were ringing
The night they drove Old Dixie down and the people were singin',
they went La-la-la la-la-la, la-la-la la-la-la, la-la-la-la

Back with my wife in Tennessee, when one day she called to me
"Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E. Lee!"
Now I don't mind choppin' wood, and I don't care if the money's no good
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down and the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down and all the people were singin', t
hey went Na-na-na na-na-na, na-na-na na-na-na, na-na-na-na

Like my father before me, I will work the land
And like my brother before me, who took a rebel stand
He was just eighteen, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can't raise a Caine back up when he's in defeat

The night they drove old Dixie down and the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down and all the people were singin',
they went Na-na-na na-na-na, na-na-na na-na-na, na-na-na-na

The night they drove old Dixie down and all the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down and the people were singin',
they went Na-na-na na-na-na, na-na-na na-na-na, na-na-na-na

J. Robie Robertson - The Band, 1970 Canaan Music / Joan Baez - Hits/Greatest & Others, 1973 Vanguard / Bob Dylan - Before The Flood, 1974 & 1990 Sony

Aaron Broussard's First Interview with Tim Russert

2005-09-27T03:50:00.000-07:00

FROM A LAWYER WHO WAS THERE

2005-09-27T02:01:00.000-07:00

November 4, 2004 Ohio WhitewashBasic report from Columbus

Also see: Public Hearing on Election Irregularities and Voter Suppression, Columbus, OH:

Saturday, November 13, 20041-4pm

From a lawyer who was in there in Ohio. A database of voter irregularities is reportedly being assembled, and hopefully there will be web sites devoted to documenting what really happened.I worked for 3 days, including Election Day, on the statewide voter protection hotline run by the Ohio Democratic Party in Columbus, Ohio. I am writing this because the media is inexplicably whitewashing what happened in Ohio, and Kerry's concession was likewise inexplicable. Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio.

People waited on line for as long as 10 hours. It appears to have only happened in Democratic-leaning precincts, principally (a) precincts where many African Americans lived, and (b) precincts near colleges. I spoke to a young man who got on line at 11:30 am and voted at 7 pm. When he left at 7 pm, the line was about 150 voters longer than when he'd arrived, which meant those people were going to wait even longer. In fact they waited for as much as 10 hours, and their voting was concluded at about 3 am. The reason this occurred was that they had 1 voting station per 1000 voters, while the adjacent precinct had 1 voting station per 184. Both precincts were within the same county, and managed by the same county board of elections. The difference between them is that the privileged polling place was in a rural, solidly Republican, area, while the one with long lines was in the college town of Gambier, OH.

Lines of 4 and 5 hours were the order of the day in many African-American neighborhoods.
Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown OH were registering "George W. Bush" when people pressed "John F. Kerry" ALL DAY LONG. This was reported immediately after the polls opened, and reported over and over again throughout the day, and yet the bogus machines were inexplicably kept in use THROUGHOUT THE DAY.

Countless other frauds occurred, such as postcards advising people of incorrect polling places, registered Democrats not receiving absentee ballots, duly registered young voters being forced to file provisional ballots even though their names and signatures appeared in the voting rolls, longtime active voting registered voters being told they weren't registered, bad faith challenges by Republican "challengers" in Democratic precincts, and on and on and on.

I was very proud of the way so many Ohioans fought so valiantly for their right to vote, and would not be turned away. Many, however, could not spend the entire day and were afraid of losing their jobs, due to the severe economic depression hitting Ohio.

I do not understand why Kerry conceded and did not fight to ensure that all Ohioans would have a chance to vote, and for their vote to be counted.

2005-09-21T03:03:00.000-07:00

Shame on bush

2005-09-21T02:48:00.000-07:00

Duplicate Soldiers - Bush Deceptions

Mr. Kerry -- it’s still possible for you to be a war hero

2005-09-21T02:36:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to Senator John Kerry on Irregularities, Fraud, and Conspiracies
31st December 2004 - 06h15 -

This commentary was inspired partly by the open letter to Senator Kerry. It’s addressed in part to Mr. Kerry, but is also for those of us who are suffering from the entrenched corruption and apathy that is killing our Democracy.

It’s time for Senator Kerry to step forward and publicly do something about our eroded Democracy -- now.

There’s ample evidence of systematic corruption of the voting process. Thousands of reports document suspected fraud. Reported problems have a disturbing pattern --virtually all of them stacked the vote in favor of George W. Bush. Thousands of such incidents are documented and easy to find via web links such as those found on page one at http://www.verifiedvoting.org -- an excellent, non-partisan website originated by computer science professor David Dill of Stanford University.

Mr. Kerry -- it’s still possible for you to be a war hero... because this is a war to save our Democracy. Very few people could successfully spearhead a movement to do this. Maybe you could start the process by calling a press conference and challenging the accuracy of this presidential election, based not only on reported incidents, but also on the blatant sleazy practices used to control the voting process in Ohio.

The only way anything will change towards making our Democracy work in our lifetime, is to do something now. If the exit polls have been used for decades to successfully verify voting outcomes -- why ignore it now? According to exit polls, George W. Bush lost Ohio.

We have to ask you Mr. Kerry -- what took the Democratic Party so long to recognize the serious problems taking root in our voting system? Many of us did our best to warn you. We told you that beginning in 1996 there began the use of unverifiable computer technology and software to cast the vote. We hoped you would see something wrong with the fact that right wing Republicans, defense
industry interests, and even the Saudis, were investing in voting technology that incrementally created the perfect way to steal the elections without leaving a trace!

First there was Nebraska, then Georgia and then Florida. Georgians were stunned by the difference between the exit polls and the actual outcome. Didn’t you hear about that? And it’s not just computers that are suspect -- it’s the tabulation software --nearly 80% of which is made and controlled by two companies, Diebold and Election Systems and Software. These two companies control software that counts every type of vote cast -- including optical scan and even absentee ballots. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Urosevich and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

Now we see that the SCALE of possible vote theft is huge compared to when it was years ago when fraud was committed in little patches here and there -- that amateur old timey stuff is kid’s play by today’s standards. Now it’s possible to rip off millions of votes without leaving fingerprints.

But thank God we have the Ohio elections which are still pretty messy. The ability to steal the vote without fingerprints is not perfected. This despite almost complete control of the voting process by entrenched Republican political hacks. But they’re out there in the light-- at least part of the time... unlike those mysterious and unverifiable voting machines.

You can’t sit back any longer and wait for other shoes to drop -- you have to do something now while some of the fingerprints in Ohio are still fresh. It might be a good idea to start with a news conference that says that you have completely lost faith in the way our voting is done in this country and that the election system is broken. You will have to it now because if you don’t -- this
moment will be lost and we will never, ever in our lifetimes -- get those who were elected by this corrupt system to change it to one that is accountable. You can only move forward if you stand up tall now and show a willingness to fight. You won’t have to wait for long as we line up behind you.

Real election reform won’t easily come through the Congress of the United States -- not currently, at least not through normal means. This lesson was learned most recently by the resistance of Republicans who for the past year and a half refused to sign onto bills which would have gone go a long way towards creating a verifiable Democracy.

Democratic Congressman Rush Holt tried unsuccessfully to pass a a bill calling for a mandatory paper trail to be kept by elections officials as hard evidence -- a way to verify the vote. Then -- when that bill didn’t go anywhere it was copied and pasted by Democratic Senator Bob Graham who tried to get it voted on in the Senate. Both bills were crushed by Republicans that wouldn’t allow the bills to even get to the floor for a vote!

Even some Republicans know in their hearts that systematically creating a voting system that makes stealing the vote easy -- means that our Democracy is based on a lie. Surely that must be spiritually sickening to even the most hardened person! It’s not possible that all Republicans are "ends justifies the means" Bushites. We need to all ask ourselves, ALL of ourselves -- Republicans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents whether we’re going to sit back and let neocon, fanatic Republicans steal the foundation upon what we would live and die for!

This may be the last time that we ask you and our Democratic representatives to fight for what is right. We need to ask you once more -- where is your outrage and passion as our Democracy slips away? The evidence is all around you that clearly show a pattern that amounts to fraud. Please fight!And if we don’t see you out there in the front of the lines fighting during the next few days -- then We, the People, need to admit that we can no longer trust the Democratic Party to fight for the main principles upon which this country was founded.

In that case we need to consider this apathy -- this corrupted spirit -- to be both final evidence of a dying spirit -- and also an opportunity for rebirth and change. We the People would then need to make up our collective minds to move completely away from dependence on this party -- or any other, and direct our energy for real change by creating a new party that stands firmly and unequivocally on Democratic principles.

If that ends up being our choice -- then may I please suggest to my friends that the new party be created from existing coalitions of energetic groups such as MoveOn and others that have proven themselves trustworthy by working tirelessly to preserve our Democracy? They have also proven that they have the leadership skills to motivate millions of people. They (we) have proven that it is possible to raise millions of dollars with small donations from individuals.

May I suggest that if this movement comes to pass that we never again give one thin dime to the Democratic or Republican parties? Because so many of us found real conservatives who joined us in our fight -- don’t you think we can find each other again?

The next step might be to call for a convention of representatives from these disparate groups such as MoveOn, for the purpose of linking together to form a whole... perhaps it can be called the Coalition Network Party -- or similar idea. (Keep it to two words to make the name legal in all states).We need a party with energy, moral courage and guts, that absolutely refuses under any circumstances to take any money whatsoever from corporate interests. Period.

To create the new party as coalition would mean it could tap the energy from all these groups who truly represent the United States in all of its diversity. But in line with the original principles that this country was founded on -- a country dedicated to the creation of policy intended for the public good, and not for the wealthy few. We need leaders that inspire us to become the best we can become -- not an entrenched group that is corrupted by special interests and lies. And as a coalition -- instead of a single organization -- it has a better chance of staying fresh, with young, honest and energetic ideas --and not be continually in danger of becoming monolithic, and corruptible from within.

Even before a new party is formed we need to push hard for all paper, hand counted ballots --just like is currently done in the regional elections in Canada (unfortunately Canada’s cities are corrupted by computerized voting machines). In their regional elections however, paper ballots are hand counted by citizens from all parties, not political hacks!

Wisely, hand counting of ballots is limited to no more than between 500 and 600 of the votes -- thus limiting the potential for corruption. Despite Canada’s size, the votes are most often counted by midnight! No computers and no software! Paper ballots are possible here too in the U.S., even with multiple issues and many candidates. Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s too complicated here in the U.S. for paper ballots. It’s not.

It’s not only doable but it’s cheap. No need for expensive computers, technicians -- and no need to worry about how proprietary software is secretly written --protected from public scrutiny by trade secret laws! No modems to worry about, no hacking, and no breakdowns in the voting process because a bunch of machines don’t work. No long lines where people have to wait up to ten hours. Imagine long rows of voting cubicles ----very cheap to make. It’s even possible to make privacy dividers from heavy cardboard for heaven’s sake!

It’s also possible to have access for the disabled using a verifiable paper voting system. The disabled vote done on a computer on secret software -- is just as vulnerable to corruption as it is for an fully abled person.I must warn you all to not listen to lawsuit threats from disability organizations such
as the National Federation for the Blind. NFB has long failed to disclose that it received a million dollar "donation" from Diebold. Then, its members and sister organization, the American Association for People with Disabilities, which also received money, traveled around the country threatening to sue supervisors-of-elections officials unless they used "approved" computer voting
technology -- such as Diebold’s!

Shame on AAPD and NFB for NEVER disclosing their financial relationship with Diebold. It took an angry blind woman with eight children from Virginia who got mad and pointed it out. The NFB and AAPD should have been royally sued under RICO for what they did. Now is the time to remember the beautifully crafted words of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and others who struggled with all their might to create and protect something precious. They warned us many times that Democracy is a fragile concept that would be hard to protect. We need to define for ourselves how it can be protected at this time in our history.

If we start a new party it will be important to become far more organized than the Democratic Party could ever hope to be. Its reputation as being disorganized slackers is somewhat deserved. A new party should use powerful Organization Development tools for strategic planning, such as those developed by Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Analysis -- a terrific tool for planning a real future for any movement and any organization that really wants to succeed. A description of Lewin’s "values based management system" can be found at:
http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_lewin_force_field_analysis.html

Another wise move would be to call up Richard Winger -- editor for over twenty years of Ballot Access News. He would be the perfect consultant on how to set up a new party so its legal in every state. He is the single most knowledgeable person in the U.S. on how to do this and he doesn’t charge for his services. He only needs to know that we’re really serious about really doing it right.
Let’s get started now!

The Bush family and friends stole both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections

2005-09-21T02:25:00.000-07:00

Posted: 2005-03-08 19:50
The sun revolves around the Earth and George W. Bush won the election in Ohio March 8, 2005

The Bush family and friends stole both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. The covert operations long associated with George Herbert Walker Bush, former President and CIA director, are now overtly practiced in key battleground states. The mainstream media is much like medieval theologians, who refused to accept the obvious, that the Earth revolved around the sun. Instead, they plotted bizarre planet rotations to prove the Earth was the center of the universe.

In order to believe that Bush won in Ohio, you have to ignore deadly accurate exit polls and all observable data to avoid the Bush family theft. By refusing to consider this CIA-connected family’s history, one must accept the following ridiculous political conclusions: that Bush supporters were shy in Ohio and Florida and reluctant to answer exit poll questions, but not shy in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana; that pollster Zogby’s Election Day calls for Kerry in Ohio and Florida were wrong, as well as the Harris poll; that Mitofsky’s exit polling is flawed in the U.S. but an accurate predictor in the Ukraine for fraud; that Kerry easily carried the metropolitan areas of Cleveland and Columbus but lost due to an unobserved Bush surge in rural Appalachia; that Bush won despite an incumbent approval rating under 50%; that Bush got 80% or so of the undecided vote although all professional pollsters agree that undecideds generally vote for the challenger; and private partisan companies that secretly count the vote without paper trails are fair and honestly doing their job.

Equally important as the implausible scenarios one must accept, is the real life Bush family history one must ignore. One must turn away from three generations of Bush ties to the security intelligence complex and the CIA. When George H.W. Bush took over the CIA in the mid-1970s, critics across the political spectrum warned that Bush would politicize the agency for his own political aspirations. Roland Evans and Robert Novak, writing in the Washington Post, reported that some in the CIA were objecting “against any presidential scenario that looks to the CIA as a possible stepping-stone to the Vice Presidential nomination.”

Kevin Phillips, in American Dynasty, details how covert CIA operatives fired by Jimmy Carter’s CIA director Stansfield Turner, “joined the 1980 Bush campaign.” The Washington Post noted, “Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory – perhaps ever, has attracted so much support from the intelligence as the campaign of former CIA director George Bush.” Bush and his ex-CIA buddies secured the Vice Presidency in 1980, the Presidency in 1988 and have now rigged the 2000 and 2004 elections for Bush the Lesser.

To believe in W’s victory in 2004, you also have to forget the following historical facts: that in 1942, Prescott Bush, the current President’s grandfather, was called Hitler’s Angel by the New York Tribune; that in 1946, the OSS/CIA overthrew the Metakas government in Greece; that the U.S. gave at least $60 million to bring to power the former Nazi intelligence network of General Reinhard Gehlen in the first decade following World War II to control the intelligence apparatus in West Germany; that in 1953, the U.S. overthrew the popular Mossadegh in Iran and installed the brutal Shah; that in 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected Arbenz government in Guatemala; that in 1957, the CIA financed the election of pro-American candidates to the Lebanese Parliament; that in 1964, the CIA gave $20 million in assistance for Eduardo Frei to defeat Salvador Allende in Chile; that in 1967, the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of George Papandreou and installed a military dictatorship; that in 1973, the CIA overthrew the
second oldest democracy in the western hemisphere in Chile; that in 1975, the CIA destabilized and forced the dissolution of the Labor government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in Australia; that in 1976, the CIA attempted to overthrow Michael Manley’s government in Jamaica.

The veterans of these covert operations established the first Bush Presidency. They also brought us Iran-Contra. Under the Reagan-Bush administraton, mainframe computers were used to rig the
election for Noriega supporters to be elected to the Panama Parliament and pre-programmed computer tapes were brought in to the government’s central tabulating center in a last ditch effort to prop up Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in a “demonstration election.”

Even in the last election in the Ukraine, the Associated Press reports “the Bush administration has spent more than $65 million the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine….” And the Bush family’s candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who won on a re-vote because the Mitofsky exit polls detected fraud, is married to Kateryna Chumachanko, a former Reagan White House official and daughter of right-wing Ukrainian exiles. Chumachanko was accused of being a CIA operative by
her husband’s political opponents, according to the Washington Post.

Do we simply ignore all the signs of election theft in the U.S. and accept the bizarre axiom that the universal laws of statistics that reveal fraud in the Ukraine somehow stop at the United States border?

Emerging Scandal on MD Voting Machine Performance

2005-09-21T02:18:00.000-07:00

TrueVoteMD.org March 8, 2005
CONTACT: Linda Schade 301-270-6665

Emerging Scandal on MD Voting Machine Performance
All MD Diebold Machines on Lockdown Under Investigation for Widespread Statewide Election Day 2004 Failures
MD Election Group Calls for Independent Investigation and De-Certification of
Machines

Montgomery County, Maryland. According to county election officials and other sources, all Maryland voting machines have been on "lockdown" since November 2, 2004 due to statewide machine failures including 12% of machines in Montgomery County, some of which appear to have lost votes in significant numbers. The State Board of Elections convinced the media that Election Day went smoothly, when in fact there were serious statewide, systemic problems with the Diebold electronic voting machines -- so serious that the SBE and Diebold still have not figured out how
to prevent the loss of votes in the future.

"Election Day was anything but smooth. Votes were lost, computer cards storing votes were unreadable, thousands of error messages were reported, machines froze in mid-voting and machines refused to boot up. The problems with the machines were so widespread and serious that efforts to hide the problems have failed," said Linda Schade, director of TrueVoteMD.org. "It is not sufficient for Diebold and the SBE to investigate themselves. They have misled the public about this problem and an independent investigation is needed.

Further, these problems indicate that the Diebold machines should be decertified as required by Maryland law and as provided for in the Diebold contract. This is an opportunity to correct the mistaken purchase of paperless electronic voting machines. Diebold should refund Maryland tax dollars and we should start anew with a system that voters trust because it can be independently audited and recounts can be meaningful."

VOTES LOST According to the IT Report to the Montgomery County Election Board, dated December 13, 2004 there were two broad levels of problems. Seven percent of units (189) failed. This included failure to boot up, screen freezes and a variety of other problems. Screen freezes, which occurred on 106 voting units were "the most serious of errors" because many "froze when the voter pressed the Cast Ballot button." As a result "election judges are unable to provide substantial confirmation that the vote was in fact counted." In addition there were "122 suspect
units (5%) were identified because the unit had few votes captured compared to other voting units in the polling place. A unit was considered suspect if it had 25-50 votes captured when all other units in the polling place had over 150 votes," the report stated. The IT report includes other details of Diebold machine failures including smart card and encoder problems as well as thousands of yet unexplained error messages, now called 'ballot exception errors."

UNREADABLE PC MEMORY CARDS Multiple sources also have revealed that the computer memory cards where vote totals are stored inside each voting machine were unreadable in multiple counties.

DIEBOLD UNABLE TO RESOLVE TECHNICAL FAILURE FOUR MONTHS AFTER ELECTION After IT examinations within Maryland failed to decipher the root of these problems, the State Board and Diebold sent voting machines to several out-of-state locations in Texas and Ohio for further testing, according to a Diebold memo dated February 16, 2005. As of the March 3, Montgomery County Election Board meeting, the PC memory card problems as well as those listed above cannot be explained by Diebold, according the IT report.

MACHINE FAILURES STATEWIDE Montgomery County Elections official Sam Statland has acknowledged that local boards around the state are gravely concerned about the Diebold system's performance and are pressuring the State Board of Elections for answers. In testimony before the State House Ways and Means on February 24, 2005, Mr. Statland cited the facts above and asserted that "Since the 2000 election cycle, the State of Maryland has become and still is a 'test site' for
electronic voting." In the January State Board of Elections meeting, Linda Lamone discussed the "performance problems" and confirmed that "once [Montgomery County was] finished they will start the same process in the other counties, beginning with Baltimore County."

TRUEVOTEMD CALLS FOR INDEPENDENT REVIEW AND DECERTIFICATION OF MACHINES AS REQUIRED BY LAW TrueVoteMD.org, an election integrity organization, is now calling for an independent investigation and for de-certification of the machines as required by
Maryland election law (MD Code, Election Law § 9-102(c)(1)).* TrueVoteMD.org is a founding organization for VoteTrustUSA a national network of state election integrity groups and has been raising the alarm that the electronic Diebold voting system has serious vulnerabilities to computer malfunction and fraud for nearly two years. This information is confirmed by TrueVoteMD's Election Day report "When the Right to Vote Goes Wrong: Md Voters Tell The Story of Election Day 2004"

http://www.truevotemd.org/Resources/MDproblems04map.pdf.

"If the gubernatorial race in 2006 is as close as 2002 it would only take four errors per precinct to change the outcome of the election. Maryland cannot risk the election disaster that is impending. Maryland was lucky the presidential election in Maryland was not close; otherwise we would be embroiled in scandal to this day. It is time to put in place a system that is reliable and that voters can trust," concluded Schade. "Three independent reports have raised serious concerns with the security of Diebold machines, now we have seen the worst come to pass. These machines are unreliable and insecure. How many more warnings to Maryland officials need in order to take
action to protect the vote?"

*MD Code, Election Law § 9-102(c)(1) (emphasis added). The SBE “shall decertify a previously certified voting system if” that system “[does not] protect the security of the voting process,” and “[does not] count and record all votes accurately.” Id. § 9-103(a)(2) (emphasis added). Copies of the source documents mentioned in this release are available upon request by contacting TrueVoteMD.org.
###
TrueVoteMD is a non-partisan election integrity organization made up of candidates, elected officials, election judges, pollwatchers, and voters from all walks of life who support a voter-verified paper audit trail to ensure the accuracy, transparency and security of elections.

Maryland's absentee ballots don't seem to have been counted

2005-09-21T02:14:00.000-07:00

It's worth checking out all of Citizen Spooks articles here (past and present):
http://www.citizenspook.blogspot.com/

Not sure what to think of Plame and Wilson possibly being involved, but it seems to
fill in some blanks for me (if it's true).

~~~~AAAAHOOOGAAAA!!!

NOW HEAR THIS, NOW HEAR THIS!!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For Andy Stephenson
- THIS HAPPENED IN BLUE STATE MARYLAND,
WHAT WAS IT AND WILL IT BE LIKE IF WE DON'T HAVE PAPER
INSTEAD OF VAPOR BALLADS IN 2006?

Linda Lamone was responsible for going ahead with the purchase of Diebold machines though the contract was halted after the Diebold scandal broke with the author from Stanford going on NPR. Linda Lamone had to answer questions at a hearing after the 2004 "Election" but nothing came of it. I got a excuse ridden three page letter from her office that Diebold CEO stating that they were going to make sure Bush got the Ohio votes in a fund-raising letter that just because the manufacturers were partisen didn't mean they couldn't produce an "honest" election.

Maryland's absentee ballots don't seem to have been counted to make it look like bush lost by less than he did in blue states.

2005-09-21T02:12:00.000-07:00

Pretend Democratic Candidate with Pretend President at Pretend Debates

2005-09-21T02:09:00.000-07:00

Katrina Evacuees sent to Colorado against their will and behind fences and heavy armed guards. These are not criminals, Why aren't they allowed to talk to the mainstream press. Denver Post

another Kent State where American children

2005-09-21T01:58:00.000-07:00

http://whatreallyhappened.com/ Is this enough? Need we wait to have another Kent State where American children are gunned down by other Americans in uniforms? Or can we finally see what this government has become? Take a good look at this video. This is the image of the USA the rest of the world sees. This is the Neocon dream for America.

This file is a 15 megabyte file. http://cutup.org.nyud.net:8090/dir/fascism.mov

~~Ben - My hope is that these "undecideds" are the people who currently support Bush who are just about to suck it up and go with their gut that says "THIS SILVER SPOON CHILD WITH THE FAKE TEXAS ACCENT HAS BEEN LYIN' HIS ASS OFF TO YOU AND ITS ABOUT TIME YOU WOKE UP!!!" Its hard to face your freinds I guess, and it feels so self-rightous to listen to your talking points spouted at you every day by the right wing radio robots. As I posted elsewhere, the
sign I made for my car says "ARE YOU STILL BELIEVING BUSH?" As a gentle reminder that they are welcome to come on over to the side of reason any ol' time.

FATS DOMINO lyrics - "Wait And See"
www.OldieLyrics.com

(Dave Bartholomew, Antoine "Fats" Domino)

The sun's gonna shine in my back door someday
Just you wait and see, just you wait and see
One day you'll cry, I won't come back to you
Just you wait and see, just you wait and see
You've got such a great, big beautiful smile
I wanna hug and kiss you for a while
The sun's gonna shine in my back door someday
Just you wait and see, just you wait and see
[Instrumental Interlude]

You've got such a great, big beautiful smile
You're so doggone mean I wonder why
One day you'll cry, I won't come back to you
Just you wait and see, just you wait and see
The sun's gonna shine in my back door someday
Just you wait and see, just you wait and see
Wait and see, wait and see
Wait and see, wait and see

2005-09-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

ACLU/FOIA: New Documents Contradict Army Report Denying Systemic... New Documents Contradict Army Report Denying Systemic Failures in Treatment of Detainees September 15, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASETroops Say They Used Techniques "Remembered From the Movies"; Deaths Could Have Been Avoided with Better Training

2005-09-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

http://katrinablog.msnbc.com/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9379133/ ~Lack of cohesion bedevils Katrina recovery
Red tape, lapses in planning delay assistance for displaced evacuees
Guvaka Reid, of New Orleans, feeds her ill six-week-old son Edmonte Percy at a shelter for Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the Reliant Center in Houston, Texas, on Wednesday. Lm Otero

Katrina multimedia

Blogging from Gulf CoastFollow two MSNBC.com journalists as they blog from the less publicized areas of Katrina's wrath.

Updated: 12:42 a.m. ET Sept. 18, 2005 Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, red tape and poor planning have left thousands of evacuees without basic services, according to local and state officials, public policy experts and survivors themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of people from New Orleans and Gulf Coast communities have fled, sometimes to neighboring states and beyond, moving in with friends and family or into shelters, public housing and hotels funded by the Red Cross. With little guidance from federal and state governments -- and no single person or entity in charge of the overall operation -- cities and counties have been left on their own to find survivors homes, schools, jobs and health care. A patchwork of policies has resulted, causing relief agencies to sometimes work at cross-purposes.
President Bush has promised a range of new initiatives to help the evacuees, including $5,000 grants to help the unemployed find jobs, a voucher program for students and more money for state Medicaid programs. But while Bush's promises of additional help have been welcomed, the initial efforts to provide for the evacuees has sometimes been disjointed, confusing and ineffective, local officials said.

Confusion across the U.S.

In Houston, some housing shelters have been located so far from the center of town that it has become difficult for evacuees to find jobs.In Mississippi, people waiting for promised housing in the form of mobile homes or trailers found themselves in a Catch-22 situation: Even as local officials said they were waiting for FEMA to provide the shelters, officials at the federal agency said they were waiting for local officials to provide the right locations.In Mobile, Ala., careful plans by school administrators to cope with a certain number of evacuee children from Mississippi and Louisiana were disrupted when a fax last week gave officials 48 hours' notice that hundreds of additional evacuees were on the way.

Some services have not reached their targets: At the Dallas convention center free legal resources for evacuees were hardly being used, partly because no one had told survivors how to think through what their legal needs might be. Public assistance programs for evacuees are going to vary widely, depending on welfare policies in individual states, meaning that evacuees who happened to be
transported to one state are likely to receive very different benefits than those in others.

‘A helluva mess’"I don't see much evidence of overall planning and guidance," said Richard Murray, a public policy expert in Houston, which is hosting thousands of evacuees. • Special report: In Katrina’s wake In an e-mail, Murray, who is director of the University of Houston's Center for
Public Policy, wrote: "Couple a multi-state disaster of Katrina's magnitude, (including some of the poorer and less well-governed states in the union), add on a dysfunctional federal bureaucracy that had deteriorated in recent years, and a chief executive whose motto seemed to be, until yesterday, the buck stops there, and we get a helluva mess."

2005-09-19T22:32:00.000-07:00

If you support the "values" of the rich people, you will eventually become one of them, right? That is the American dream paradox. Don't blame the rich because any day now I'll be one of them. There is no need for stinking socialism because I'll not be one of those "losers".

Even if those rich people screw you everytime, cut off your health care benefits, raise your taxes and send your boys and girls to fight their wars, you still believe in them and serve their drinks at those delightful cocktail parties. How dumb is THAT!?

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/~~~~September 16, 2005 -- Bush announces plan to help big business to "recover" from Hurricane Katrina. Speaking in a Karl Rove-staged photo op from New Orleans last night, President Bush announced a series of measures that will ensure tax breaks for big business, a permanent Diaspora for the city's poor, and the future gentrification of poor and middle class sections of the flooded city. The Bush speech was full of corporate contrivances that dodge the type of assistance that is actually needed for the displaced population of the New Orleans metropolitan region.

Bush recently named CIA Leakgate suspect Karl Rove as his point man for the rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast. The Bush speech reflected both Rove's emphasis on spin and a lack of interest in the plight of the poor. Although Bush accepted responsibility for the "problem" of his administration's poor response effort, he quickly diverted his priorities to workers' recovery accounts (something that sounds suspiciously like medical savings accounts); a "Gulf Opportunity Zone" offering big tax breaks to corporations in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama; and a homestead lottery scheme to build homes on federal lands.

Bush did not address the immediate and long-term focused concerns for the people of the Gulf Coast. For example, FEMA continues to block needed assistance to the homeless residents of the region.

Bush failed to provide incentives for people to return to their homes. He also failed to insist on incentives for minority-owned businesses to participate in rebuilding efforts. Yesterday, Rev. Jesse Jackson told a Washington, DC press conference that there are 300 trucks in Memphis loaded with ice, water, and food with an additional 1000 trucks standing by at warehouses across the country. These trucks have not been granted permission by FEMA to move out to the Gulf Coast, where some poor towns, particularly in Mississippi, have not yet seen either FEMA or the Red Cross. 1800 children are still separated from their parents and Bush said nothing to assure parents and their children that they will soon be reunited.

What many members of the Congressional Black Caucus and African American national leadership have called for in relief and reconstruction efforts were not addressed by Bush. There were no proposals by Bush for an "adopt-a-family" tax credit, a one-time FEMA help grant for orphaned and homeless children, a bankruptcy relief provision, provide temporary housing at all available federal government assets (including many closed military bases in the Gulf Coast region), the setting of a 50 percent residency target for all contracts, setting a 40 percent minority vendor target for all reconstruction, a moratorium on all contracts until civil rights provisions are restored (Davis Bacon minimum wage requirements, minority contract set asides), permit the admittance of minority community-based counselors in evacuation facilities nationwide, Justice Department assistance in individual cases of arrested and detained individuals, ensure evacuees can vote in state and local elections (including February 2006 election), ensure home owners have the right of first refusal to reclaim property, freeze all foreclosures against property in affected area for a minimum of 12 months, legal protections against predatory lenders, prohibition of collections and deficiency judgments on real and personal property, prohibition on negative credit reporting or omission of negative events from credit scores, voluntary waiver of late fees or interest on loans for a period of at least three months, establish a diverse commission to monitor the equitable distribution of relief resources by FEMA, the Red Cross, and Salvation Army, develop an action plan to secure wetlands in coastal areas of the U.S., stop the rollback and waivers of environmental laws, and develop a comprehensive strategy to address the poverty crisis in America.

Many Gulf Coast residents see a lot of promises from Bush's plan with no guarantees he will follow through. Already, House and Senate conservative Republicans are carping about the Federal price tag for the reconstruction. These include Sen. John McCain, who is already politicking for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination on the backs of the people of the Gulf Coast who lost everything. McCain has no problem spending billions of dollars on a failed war in Iraq -- a ploy by McCain to further ingratiate himself to the neo-cons in the Republican Party.

http://katrinablog.msnbc.com/

2005-09-17T03:45:00.000-07:00

Heartbreaking Story By Aaron Broussard, Jefferson Parish President Talking About One of Bush's Murders of An Elderly Woman, the Mother of Mr. Broussard's Friend.

Aaron Broussard - Jefferson Parish President - Caring Human Being

2005-09-17T03:32:00.000-07:00

MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

Video at Michael Moore.com front page and Infowars.com

Just as Cindy Sheehan is every soldier's mother, the mother who drowned in thatnursing home is America's conscience finally waking up. As Malcolm X said when JFK was assassinated, the chickens have come home to roost. The neocons won't give up easily, but they're finished. American society is far morethan the sum total of individual wants and assets; it is a dense network of commitments that people have to one another and among generations and classes too. To those who wave flags and say These Colors Don't Run, I say These Ties Don't Break. Nice try, though, you selfish, meanspirited, arrogant lowlifes. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790

Promises, promises, promises ... then death Sun Sep 4, 2:45 PM ET NEW ORLEANS, United States (AFP) - Day after day, the aged woman clung tolife in her submerged nursing home. Day after day, her son called to say help was onThe way. But rescue never came. Only a watery death.

Aaron Broussard, president of the Jefferson Parish section of New Orleans, could not stop bawling Sunday, as he told NBC television of the agonizing death of a colleague's elderly mother in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called himand said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?'"

"He said, 'Yeah, mama, somebody is coming to get you. Somebody is coming to getyou."'Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday.

"'Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday.

"'Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday.

"'Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.'"

"And she drowned Friday night!" Broussard wailed. "She drowned Friday night!"Broussard quivered with rage as he gave voice to the frustration felt by much of thebattered southern city at the slow pace of rescue operations after the hurricane strucka week ago.

"Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody is coming to get her," he said.

"Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the pressconferences.

"For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody."

FIVE DAYS THIS WOMAN AND HER SON WAITED AND SHE DROWNED FIVE DAYS LATER, THIS IS MURDER, BUSH REFUSED TO PREAUTHORIZE AID TO JEFFERSON PARRISH THOUGH IT WAS ONE THAT WAS PREDICTED TO HAVE THE WORST TIME AND BUSH DID PREAUTHORIZE HELP TO ALL OF THE REPUBLICAN DISTRICTS EVEN IF THEY WERE NOT IN AS MUCH DANGER.

Saw that, just heartwrenching! - For once Russert did an adequate job.

The video of Aaron Broussard is on Crooks and Liars. Many good videos of reporters breaking down at the inhumanity of Bush's mass murder and refusal to send even water to these dying people in NOLA.

Whatever you did to these, the least of my brethren (the Poor) YOU DID IT TO ME - Jesus about Judgment Day

2005-09-17T03:17:00.000-07:00

Fema Camp photos from Above Top Secrets

FEMA Concentration Camps

2005-09-17T02:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/fema.html/
I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp
I’m extremely depressed to report that things seem to only be getting sadder concerning the people so devastatingly affected by Katrina last week.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/25229/
FEMA is giving proof that the have the "Final Solution" in their concentration camps.

http://www.globalnewsmatrix.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2449
Refugees from New Orleans behind barbed wire in UtahPosted on Wednesday, September 07
Utah's Governor Jon Huntsman has taken in some of the New Orleans refugees, at Camp Williams. Replete with barbed wire, armed soldiers with weapons at ready, police and sheriff with weapons at ready, and hell, they must surely feel right at home. In America yet. What bulls**t! I’m not done with this outrage, not by a long shot. I’m actually just getting started.

Denver Post even used this phrase about what is happening to the NOLA Detainees:Evacuees’ stories are moving, but fence isn'tArticle Last Updated: 09/07/2005 03:37:49 AMBy Diane Carman http://www.denverpost.com/carman/ci_3006502
If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I was peering through the fence at a concentration camp. (more)

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/005403.php#
Thursday :: Sep 8, 2005Welcome To George's Holiday CampHere we go again.

The other day, I wrote about Katrina evacuees being taken to Utah with no prior knowledge of their destination, and that they were reportedly being kept behind barbed wire.......

And then there is that report I have noted in recent days of the 1,000 evacuees flown to Roosevelt Roads naval base on Puerto Rico's eastern tip. What of them?

Please send questions to http://www.Congress.org/ and media: Why are Evacuees Being Sent to Puerto Rico Against Their Will? The Katrina Evacuees are being treated like POWs behind fences, not allowed to leave with heavy military guard. Please investigate and help these survivors of Katrina who are being treated like Gitmo detainees. They haven't committed any crime! The following article has a photograph of two very unhappy, oppressed and worn looking women behind orange fence.

.....FEMA is refusing to reveal to aid groups the locations of thousands of citizens forced out of their homes by "Hurricane Charley," citing "privacy restrictions."

Original news source: FEMA Rule Blocking Aid to Seniors - www.heraldtribune.com
Some elderly citizens forced out of their homes by Hurricane Charley are missing out on vital help, including meals, transportation and in-home care, because federal officials won't tell government aid groups where they are.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has temporarily relocated thousands of Charlotte County residents -- many of them senior citizens -- whose homes were destroyed or seriously damaged by the Aug. 13 storm. But, citing federal privacy protection rules, the agency has refused to say who has been relocated, or where they've been sent.

Travis and other officials said their complaints to FEMA officials have gone nowhere. But in response to an inquiry about the problem Tuesday, FEMA deputy federal coordinating officer Brad Gair vowed to find a way to ensure hurricane victims' privacy while getting them access to services.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

Where have these people gone??

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread167902/pg9

Thank you for any light you can shed on these very dark stories esp. considering the Bush CIA's involvement in MK-ULTRA programs and The Finders.

2005-09-17T02:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=78384
Tom Flocco: Update on Grand Juries
Here is an update from Tom Flocco on the Grand Juries investigating crimes at the highest level of government.
================================================
To: Wolfram From: Tom Flocco ( Tom Flocco .com <http://www.tomflocco.com/> ) Re: Grand jury investigations of White House crime familes

1. Good to hear from you. Yes, I have been offline for 10 days. As a matter of fact, I will pass this reply to you on to a few others to keep everyone up to date, since I have been out of circulation for a fair length of time. My computer crashed just minutes after I started to send email regarding the JFK Jr. story; and I had to get the hard drive repaired, etc.....quite a mess.....phones tapped, phones turned off for 36 hours on four separate occasions in last three weeks....the Department of Defense
continuously port-scanning and trying to break into my computer 24/7....still have not sent out any emails on new stories for the last two weeks. The violations of personal rights are a lesson for all to observe--and for what is coming IF criminal administrations are not prosecuted. . The JFK Jr. story received at least 20 million hits and counting at my site, so people somehow found and read it around the world. Jeff Rense and David Icke played a major roll in promoting that story around the web since my computer had problems. Those two are great patriots and took on some personal risk like some of us. I was told the CIA in Langley, VA is VERY appreciative of their help in promoting the JFK Jr story. I am still shocked by Delbert's interviews for that piece and the gravity of it all. It caused a second grand jury to investigate the evidence.

Most don't know the story was finished long before it was released to the public. I had to wait about two weeks to get the approval of some nine witness families who are in physical jeopardy for what they saw and heard regarding the murder plot involving the Bushes and Clintons. But the witnesses know probes are ongoing in multiple states; so "Delbert" gave the final approval as the key source for the story and we went with it. U.S. Intelligence told me Bushes 41, 43, Bill 42, and Sen. Clinton met together in the White House and discussed the story on the evening of the day it was released.

3. The Chicago grand JURY the mainstream sometimes writes about is really at EAST six or seven grand juries. I know they exist in several states; and I am personally aware of a couple people who have already testified and others who have presented evidence and/or additional grand jury demands to Mr. Fitzgerald. All those grand juries are probing White House(s) past and present--regarding murder, 9/11 and related financial issues at the minimum. The most important story I have ever written is the recent Cash payoffs, bonds and murder linked to White House 911 finance . The financial issues in that 9-11 related story have the juice to place congressmen and senators in prison. Don't miss the evidence document links either, as the documents have already been presented and evaluated by one of the grand juries.

3. The Chicago grand JURY the mainstream sometimes writes about is really at LEAST six or seven grand juries. I know they exist in several states; and I am personally aware of a couple people who have already testified and others who have presented evidence and/or additional grand jury demands to Mr. Fitzgerald. All those grand juries are probing White House(s) past and present--regarding murder, 9/11 and related financial issues at the minimum. The most important story I have ever written is the recent Cash payoffs, bonds and murder linked to White House 911 finance . The financial issues in that 9-11 related story have the juice to place congressmen and senators in prison. Don't miss the evidence document links either, as the documents have already been presented and evaluated by one of the grand juries.

4. One caveat. Just as in the past, a few things could stop the wheels of justice from completely turning this time around: little things like bribery, murder, bombings and/or marshal law--all of which are quite possible, given this coterie of criminals. But even then, I have been told that U.S. intelligence is closely monitoring the probes and will go after Fitzgerald if he and the other prosecutors fail to do their job. I have heard that elements of the military and intelligence have refused to obey presidential orders over the past couple weeks. That is astonishing in and of itself.

5. This could be a very interesting fall; and I will be shocked if the President, members of his cabinet, agency officials and some members of Congress have not already inquired about seeking asylum in Australia or another similar English-speaking country to flee potential charges of treason, murder, obstruction of justice and other crimes. I have also been told there is evidence proving the Supreme Court is dirty and their law clerks and one Justice on the Court have already testified against other Justices regarding 2000 election fraud after an attempt to bribe the Justice testifying against other members. Quite incredible stuff. And can you imagine the implications: a five-year fraudulent presidency which sent troops to die and be maimed for life based on lies!

6. The crimes are so great that executions are a distinct possiblity, IF the officials involved are successfully brought to trial. The stakes are high and powerful officials will attempt anything to avoid justice--even destroying U.S. cities. In the wake of my JFK Jr. story, there are now grand juries in separate states probing information and evaluating evidence. I have sat with my mouth wide open while listening to other stories which are widespread among the intelligence community. I have been told that 60% of the intelligence community is ready to see the administration removed
from office and fully prosecuted, 10% are too timid to take sides and the other 30% are loyal to the administration.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=783847. So, it's a very difficult situation for the country. But think of the example which could be set for the rest of the world if three presidents and a senator were severely punished for their crimes against America. The cleansing would be dramatic; and it would open the way for prosecution against the media and Congress for ongoing obstruction of justice with accompanying prison terms.

There you have it: my current--albeit short--take on the grand juries no one wants to talk about, and with the fall just about upon us. But God is in control of what happens to America. This all goes back to events surrounding our forefathers at the outset of U.S. independence. And remember, French sons who helped America in the past are buried on U.S. soil from 1776, 1812 and very recently--in 2005. The crime has to stop. Period. Thanks to all for your support and to those who bought "Loose Change" 9/11 DVDs to help keep the site up online and pay band-width/website expenses.

For honest government--in our lifetime,
Tom Flocco
Tom Flocco .com
White House 911 finance
Got some ideas you'd like to add to this line of thinking? If so... Register to post at Bring 'em On! - then Log in and Bring 'em On!!!

2005-09-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

Conyer's" Blog
bellaciao

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/14/175347/01
http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/2005/09/house-republicans-beat-back-plame.html http://tinyurl.com/cavhx

Wednesday, September 14, 2005House Republicans beat back Plame resolution of inquiry Not too surprisingly, Republicans today beat back formal "resolutions of inquiry" by Democrats on the House Judiciary and House International Relations Committees that would have required the Bush administration to turn over to Congress information and records relating to the outing of CIA Officer Valerie Plame.

Rep. John Conyers, of Michigan, the ranking Democrat, and former chairman, of the Judiciary committee made just that point during the debate today, telling his colleagues: "Let us not forget the endless hearings in this Committee and others on alleged Clinton-Gore campaign finance violations, the Whitewater claims, and Clinton White House Travel Office firings. These were matters all under Justice Department review at the time of our hearings.

Interestingly, the House Intelligence Committee is going to meet in closed session tomorrow for its consideration of the resolution of inquiry, as well as for the vote itself. Since there is no classified information to consider (the committee has received no classified briefings from the Bush administration or Fitzgerald regarding Plame), Democrats are privately charging that Republicans are conducting the session in secret to diminish press attention. With Katrina, the Roberts confirmation hearings (and the hearings' jaw dropping disclosures-- Roberts has told the Senators which are his favorite movies, and that he favors the Windsor knot while tying his tie!), and Brittany Spears having given birth, the closing of the session appears to be overkill.

A senior Democratic aide told me tonight, regarding the closing of the House Intelligence Committee hearing: "That they [the Republicans] are going to do the mark up in a closed session just reflects that this is another effort to bury this thing."

A spokesman for the Republican majority did not return a phone call tonight, but if he does, I will update my post with his comments at that time. (Additionally, if any committee Republican comments for the record anywhere, I will update this post with their comments as well.)

2005-09-17T02:02:00.000-07:00

www.thehungersite.com

ABOUT THE HUNGER SITE
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HUNGER: DO YOU KNOW THE FACTS?
It is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. That's roughly 100 times as many as those who actually die from these causes each year. Today, you and others have generated the value of - cups of food. Thank you! (Please note that the click value updates every two minutes.)So far this month you have helped fund 69 mammograms. Thank you! Your click, along with others' today, provides basic but critical health services to more than 1,000 children. Each click helps prevent life-threatening diseases, restore vision to blind children, and enable child amputees to walk.

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YOUR DAILY CLICK HELPS ANIMALS SURVIVE! Millions of animals are rescued by shelters every year. Your daily click provides food for an animal in a shelter or sanctuary.

2005-08-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

Kerry at Democratic Convention

Ask Sen. John Kerry to sign to continue the lawsuit to make sure future elections are clean. Deadline August 30, 2005

2005-08-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

Rep. Conyers helped introduce Cindy and the vital work she is doing to save lives by inviting her to testify in his Downing Street Minutes adhoc Hearing that was covered by C-Span and there were other Gold Star Famlies for Peace who had lost loved ones to Bushco' Pack of Lies who gave heartbreaking testimony and in the questions and answers, Conyers was surprised by all the other family members who wanted to talk about and show photos of their loved ones and Conyers took the time to allow them to do it though the scheduled time for his hearing in the basement which was the only room Sensenbrenner couldn't forbid him to use was up. Conyers was also expected at the demonstration that was to march to the White House with the signatures of 130 members of Congress and over a half million American citizens.

Conyers and the 5 other Congresspersons with him were stopped outside the barred gates of our White House and Conyers had to pass the petitions through the bars to a young guard since Bush would not meet with Congresspersons on the People's business.

Indymedia had pictures of one of the most honorable members of Congress being stopped at the barred gates.

Please write, or email or call Senator John Kerry and request that he NOT withdraw from the lawsuit against the obstruction of the recount in Ohio. This is very important to Rep. Conyers and I think we should try to help him when he asks.

You can access Sen. Kerry at his website by typing his name into Search Engine. Congress.org will publish your Letters to Leaders on the screen almost immediately so you don't feel that they disappear down a rabbit hole.

PLEASE go to ConyersBlog.com to read about the ACTION ITEMS he provides and requests about Cindy in Crawford, writing letters, signing his letter and VERY IMPORTANT - THAT RAT JOHN KERRY IS ABOUT TO WITHDRAW FROM THE SUIT AGAINST OHIO'S OBSTRUCTION OF THE VOTERS IN THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL "ELECTION" AND THIS SUIT IS AGAINST THE OBSTRUCTION OF A FAIR RECOUNT.

Anyone who kept up with the daily reports on The Green Party Recount site and Rep. Conyers' brave informal hearings since as a member of the minority party does not have subpeona power and the Republican Chairman Sensenbrenner would not let him hold formal Hearings on Ohio and made him use a basement for the Downing Street Memos hearings also covered by C-SPAN and which featured Cindy Sheehan's testimony about her son's death and introduced Cindy's activism to a wider audience.

People worked their hearts out for Kerry and to have a real President both before the "election" and after in the months long investigation into the Election Fraud in Ohio and Ken Blackwell and others are now in big trouble for suppressing the vote in Ohio for a very long time.