DIGITAL DUBYA

Digital Dubya


CUTTING-EDGE DIGITAL ANIMATION MOVES EDITORIAL CARTOONING INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY


New developments are a collaboration between of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Imaging Research Center, political cartoonist Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher and the Walters Art Museum

A dramatic new development in the art of editorial cartooning was unveiled today at The Walters Art Museum in conjunction with Mightier Than the Sword: The Satirical Pen of KAL on view June 18–Sept. 3. The debut showcased a three-dimensional virtual caricature bust of George W. Bush. The digital bust was the brain child of Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher—the international award winning editorial cartoonist for The Economist of London and former editorial cartoonist for The Baltimore Sun .

Rev. Falwell: "Global Warming Creation Of Satan"

LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) - The Reverend Jerry Falwell says global warming is "Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus" from evangelism to environmentalism.

Falwell told his Baptist congregation in Lynchburg yesterday that "the jury is still out" on whether humans are causing - or could stop - global warming.

But he said some "naive Christian leaders" are being "duped" by arguments like those presented in former Vice President Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth. Falwell says the documentary should have been titled "A Convenient Untruth."

Falwell said the Bible teaches that God will maintain the Earth until Jesus returns, so Christians should be responsible environmentalists, but not what he calls "first-class nuts."

This is the 2nd. hit on Google for global warming...You won't get to Al Gore's inconvenient truth or anything but right wing propogannda untill you get to #11

http://www.willyoujoinus.com/

Chevron Human Energy

Here Chevron asks for you to join there discussion, but when you sign up, they ask for complete registration. Not only that but they referee all comments before posting them. Sound familiar...Free speech allowed here if you write what we want to hear...ROTFLOL

If you keep going down the list far enough on google you will come to this site, but only after going through many Corporate government sites that give no perspective on the seriousness of this problem.

http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/



Global warming at the extremes of the earth: Habitats and cultures everywhere react to climate's rapid changes

Paris, 2 Feb 2007 -- The world's climate scientists today reported unequivocally that the Earth's climate system is increasingly heating up and that it likely has not been this warm for at least 1300 years. The fourth report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that evidence for this includes more than increases in global average air and ocean temperatures.

As has been reported on this site, heating effects are strong in melting of snow and ice, rising global mean sea level, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.

With much stronger language and more assurance than in previous reports, the IPCC members said there was less than 10 percent chance that this global warming was natural -- they pinned it directly on human greenhouse gas emissions. The amount of CO2 spewed out per year from fossil fuel burning is 12 percent greater now than in the 1990s, their report indicated, and the amount of the greenhouse effect is the greatest in 10,000 years.

The forecast range of possible temperatures by the end of the century reaches higher in this report than did the previous one in 2001 --11.5 degrees F -- but the more probable range is between 3.2 and 7 degrees F. The rate of rise depends on if and how fast emissions are reduced and on possible adverse feedbacks in the climate system.

All probable temperatures are far beyond the increase in the 20th C and will take modern civilization into uncharted territory. Temperatures are sure to rise faster in the next decades, the IPCC said, than they did during the same time span in the last half of the 20th century.

Even now, the scientists reported, the last time the Arctic was significantly warmer was about 125,000 years ago, before the last ice age. At that time, sea level rose 4 to 6 meters as polar ice melted. For this coming century the IPCC is forecasting sea level to rise from 7 inches to about half a meter, depending on emissions and warming. The scientists expressed uncertainty about rapid melting of the Greenland ice cap, citing a lack of enough research so far; this is sure to be one of the more controversial parts of the report since some glaciologists think Greenland will add considerably more to sea level.

Scientists said "it is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent," that it was very certain that the ocean would become more acid from taking up more CO2 and that the great currents in the North Atlantic were likely to slow but not stop.

Kurt Vonegutt on the troops: They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas

Cold Turkey

May 10, 2004

By Kurt Vonnegut

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas




"Bush is so ignorant. And I don't like idiotic, impulsive people."

Rolling Stone
August 24th, 2006.

Vonnegut's Apocalypse

He survived being captured by the Nazis and the suicide of his mother to write some of the funniest, darkest novels of our time, but it took George W. Bush to break him.

~LINK~
.
.

Lurita Doan Has A Horrible Memory...Who doesn't in the Bush administration?

VIDEO MONTAGE: Lurita Doan Has A Horrible Memory (Except About Cookies)
Today, GSA administrator Lurita Doan testified in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee about her potentially illegal activities, such as encouraging agency employees to help Republican candidates in elections and granting a no-bid contract to a personal friend.

Coincidentally enough, she couldn’t remember anything (except that “there were cookies on the table” at one of her meetings). We put together a montage of her pitiful testimony. Watch it:

~LINK~
.
.

Gonzales aide Monica Goodling takes the 5th.

Monica Goodling at Regent University in 1999, one of many graduates that now work in the Bush administration. Regent was founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach. There are about 150 Regent graduates now in the Bush administration.

Bush Loyalist Rose Quickly at Justice

To her detractors, Goodling was an enforcer of political loyalty who was not squeamish about firings, of interns or of senior officials.

"She forced many very talented, career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points," said a former career Justice official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

Goodling enrolled in law school at American University but transferred to Regent, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach.
Goodling and her lawyer declined to comment for this article, and classmates said they did not recall the reasons for her transfer. But "the curriculum at Regent is different from other law schools. There is an attempt by professors to integrate biblical principles into areas of the law," said Dugan Kelley, who worked with Goodling on Regent's moot court.
After earning a joint degree in law and public policy in 1999, she worked as a researcher for the Republican National Committee on the Bush campaign, then moved to the Justice Department's press office. She spent six months with the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Virginia. A friend and former department co-worker, Susan Richmond Johnson, said Goodling was also an amateur photographer and world-class baker of desserts, but had little time for a social life because she was "the first to arrive at the Justice Department in the morning and the last to leave at night."

Steve Jobs introduces the iRack

Steve Jobs. who recently introduced the iPhone now proudly presents the iRack

Added March 12, 2007
From ORLY0wl
Steve Jobs introduces the iRack. The ... Steve Jobs introduces the iRack. The skit is a hilarious and clever political commentary on the Iraq war.

Video

Pelosi tells Dubya to "Chill Out"

Pelosi warns Bush: ‘Calm down with the threats.’President Bush today renewed his threat to veto legislation that sets a time line for withdrawal from Iraq. In a press conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded:

~VIDEO~

Sayings of Chairman Dick

America’s most confident seer is the Vice President of the United States. Big-time

~LINK~
.
.

New book: Second Chance by Zbigniew Brzezinski

Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Professor of American Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies, the Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.

From 1977 to 1981, National Security Advisor to the President of the United States. In 1981 awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in the normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations and for his contributions to the human rights and national security policies of the United States.

More

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski talks about the situation in Iraq and his new book. Here he is interviewed on the PBS News Hour on his eightieth birthday.

Source NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
Copyright March 28, 2007

Length 8:08
Format RealAudio
Quality 16Kbps

AUDIO

He also did an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewert


A policy report card on the last three presidents and hope for the future

March 14, 2007

VIDEO






Happy Birthday Zbigniew

New York Times

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: March 6, 2007

Second Chance

Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

When a Leader Missteps, A
World Can Go Astray


By Zbigniew Brzezinski


In the months before the American invasion of Iraq, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, was one of the few members of the foreign policy establishment (along with Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to President George H. W. Bush) to speak out strongly about the dangers of going to war unilaterally against Saddam Hussein, and to warn, presciently it turns out, of the possibly dire consequences of doing so without a larger strategic plan.

In August 2002, as the current Bush administration was already hurrying toward an invasion, Mr. Brzezinski cautioned that war ''is too serious a business and too unpredictable in its dynamic consequences -- especially in a highly flammable region -- to be undertaken because of a personal peeve, demagogically articulated fears or vague factual assertions.'' In February 2003, just weeks before the invasion, he added that ''an America that decides to act essentially on its own regarding Iraq'' could ''find itself quite alone in having to cope with the costs and burdens of the war's aftermath, not to mention widespread and rising hostility abroad.''

In his compelling new book, ''Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower,'' Mr. Brzezinski not only assesses the short- and long-term fallout of the Iraq war, but also puts that grim situation in perspective with the tumultuous global changes that have taken place in the last two decades. He dispassionately analyzes American foreign policy as conducted by the last three presidents -- George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H. W. Bush -- and he gives the reader a sobering analysis of where these leaders' cumulative decisions have left the United States as it now searches for an exit strategy from Iraq, faces potentially explosive situations in Iran and North Korea and copes with an increasingly alienated Europe and an increasingly assertive China.

Mr. Brzezinski's verdict on the current president's record -- ''catastrophic,'' he calls it -- is nothing short of devastating. And his overall assessment of America's current plight is worrying as well: ''Though in some dimensions, such as the military, American power may be greater in 2006 than in 1991, the country's capacity to mobilize, inspire, point in a shared direction and thus shape global realities has significantly declined. Fifteen years after its coronation as global leader, America is becoming a fearful and lonely democracy in a politically antagonistic world.''

Blackwater The Corporate Army

Blackwater USA is the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.

Blackwater USA comprises nine separate business units to offer the most comprehensive professional security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.


VISION
To support security, peace, freedom, and democracy everywhere.

MISSION
To support national and international security policies that protect those who are defenseless and provide a free voice for all with a dedication to providing ethical, efficient, and effective turnkey solutions that positively impact the lives of those still caught in desperate times.

Blackwater is committed to the foot soldiers -- the men and women who stand on the frontlines of the global war on terror and who believe in a peaceful future for their communities and nations. Whether serving in or out of uniform, Blackwater is committed to providing these men and women with the very best in training and tactical support to ensure they are fully prepared to meet current and future global security challenges.


Blood Is Thicker Than Blackwater

posted April 19, 2006 (May 8, 2006 issue)

Jeremy Scahil

It is one of the most infamous incidents of the war in Iraq: On March 31, 2004, four private American security contractors get lost and end up driving through the center of Falluja, a hotbed of Sunni resistance to the US occupation. Shortly after entering the city, they get stuck in traffic, and their small convoy is ambushed. Several armed men approach the two vehicles and open fire from behind, repeatedly shooting the men at point-blank range. Within moments, their bodies are dragged from the vehicles and a crowd descends on them, tearing them to pieces. Eventually, their corpses are chopped and burned. The remains of two of the men are strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River and left to dangle. The gruesome image is soon beamed





Waxman on warpath over Blackwater payments


Modified: Dec 08, 2006 05:40 AM

Joseph Neff and Jay Price, Staff Writers

The Democrat slated to be the U.S. House's lead watchdog next year demanded answers Thursday about why Blackwater USA was paid so much for security work in Iraq -- and why, in fact, the North Carolina company was paid at all.
Taxpayers paid exorbitant prices for Blackwater's services, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman wrote in a letter to outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Waxman said it wasn't clear precisely how much taxpayers overpaid because the Army hasn't provided answers to questions first raised two years ago,

The California congressman said that Blackwater's services were not just pricey, but prohibited, because the Army never authorized Blackwater or any other Halliburton subcontractors to guard convoys or carry weapons. Houston-based Halliburton has been paid at least $16 billion to provide food, lodging and other support for troops in Iraq, and $2.4 billion to work on Iraqi oil infrastructure.

Waxman demanded "whether and how the Army intends to recover taxpayer funds paid to Halliburton and Blackwater for services prohibited under [Halliburton's] contract."

The high cost of private military contractors and the use of multiple layers of subcontractors surfaced after four Blackwater men were massacred in Fallujah in March 2004. Wesley Batalona, Scott Helvenston, Michael Teague and Jerry Zovko were guarding a convoy for ESS, a food supplier to the military, when they were ambushed. A mob dragged their charred corpses through the streets and hung the remains of two from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The grotesque images were broadcast around the world and triggered a deadlier phase of the war.

Waxman, the next chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, has tried to get answers about the Blackwater and Halliburton contracts for two years, since The News & Observer detailed how multiple layers of contracts inflated war costs.

At the lowest level, Blackwater security guards were paid $600 a day. Blackwater added a 36 percent markup, plus overhead costs, and sent the bill to a Kuwaiti company that ordinarily runs hotels, according to the contract.

Tacked on costs, profit

That company, Regency Hotel, tacked on costs and profit and sent an invoice to ESS. The food company added its costs and profit and sent its bill to Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton, which added overhead and profit and presented the final bill to the Pentagon.

In his letter Thursday, Waxman said he had not received accurate answers from the Army and Blackwater when their officials testified under oath before his committee.

Tina Ballard, an undersecretary of the Army, testified in September that the Army had never authorized Halliburton or its subcontractors to carry weapons or guard convoys. Ballard testified that Blackwater provided no services for Halliburton or its subcontractors.

Waxman said ESS had sent him a memo saying the food company had hired Blackwater to provide security services under the Halliburton contract.

"If the ESS memo is accurate, it appears that Halliburton entered into a subcontracting arrangement that is expressly prohibited by the contract itself," Waxman wrote. "After more than two years, we still do not know how much ESS and Halliburton charged for these security services."

At a hearing in June, Blackwater vice president Chris Taylor testified that Blackwater's 36 percent markup included all the company's costs. Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, interrupted, reminded Taylor he was under oath and ordered Blackwater to provide the documents to back up his testimony. Blackwater has not provided any of the contracts and other documents requested by the committee.

In Thursday's letter, Waxman said Taylor's testimony was wrong: Blackwater's contracts posted on The N&O's Web site showed that Blackwater billed separately for insurance, room and board, travel, weapons, ammunition, vehicles and office space, as The N&O article reported.

A spokeswoman for Ballard did not immediately return a call Thursday. Joseph C. Schmitz, chief operating officer and general counsel for Blackwater's parent company, The Prince Group, said he would have to defer comment until he could obtain and read the documents referred to in Waxman's letter.

Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, released a statement: "All information available to KBR confirms that Blackwater's work for ESS was not in support of KBR and not under a KBR subcontract."

King Abdullah calls Iraq an illegal occupation

Looks like the romance is over. Long time US allay Crown Prince Abdullah Changed tack at the Arab Summit meeting today as he criticised the US presence in Iraq.

King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia

"In beloved Iraq, blood flows between brothers in the shadow of illegitimate foreign occupation and hateful sectarianism, threatening a civil war," he said, in unusually strong criticism of the US presence in Iraq from a strong ally.

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, and one of several world figures invited to the summit's opening session, went further by warning that rising tensions in the Gulf region risked a confrontation that could affect the entire world.

"Tensions in the Gulf region are shaping an ominous confrontation that could have incalculable consequences globally, regionally and among the Muslim umma [faithful].

Saudi king calls for unity

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called for an end to the international blockade on the Palestinian people and told Arab leaders that sectarian violence was driving Iraq towards civil war.

At the Arab League summit in Riyadh, he urged Arabs to overcome their disputes and unify to face threats in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

"It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force," he said on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia last month brokered a unity government between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas, hoping it would help end a Western financial blockade imposed after the Islamist group took office over a year ago.

The summit drew a number of world and Muslim leaders who backed the Arab plan for renewed Arab-Israeli peace efforts.

Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary-general said in an address: "This initiative sends a signal that the Arabs are serious about achieving peace."

Riyadh, pressed by its ally Washington to show more leadership in the region, has called on Muslim states to overcome divisions, arguing a united front will help persuade Israel to address Palestinian grievances.

Palestinian focus

King Abdullah stressed that Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq threatened the stability of the entire oil-producing Gulf region.

"It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force"

There's no denying it, we progressives are angry

All the Rage

Published on Wednesday, March 14, 2007

by TomPaine.com
Published on Wednesday, March 14, 2007
by Paul Waldman

We can’t deny it any longer. There’s no point in hiding it, no point in trying to explain it away. Yes, it’s true: We progressives are angry. And we no longer care if the centrist, moderate guardians of the establishment scold us for it.

Our anger is not just some vague feeling whose source we can’t put our finger on. It isn’t based on absurd conspiracy theories and it isn’t illogical.

We’re angry because of what has happened to our country, because of how we’ve been treated, and because of the innumerable crimes the conservatives have committed. We’re angry at the president, we’re angry at the Congress, we’re angry at the news media. And we have every right to be.

Yes, we’re angry at George W. Bush. We’re not angry at him because of who he sleeps with, and we’re not angry at him because we think he represents some socio-cultural movement we didn’t like 40 years ago, or because he hung out with a different crowd than we did in high school. We’re angry at him because of what he’s done.

It’s true, we don’t like the fact that the most powerful human being on the planet is such a ridiculous buffoon that he can’t put two coherent sentences together without beginning to giggle and shimmy his shoulders. But we’re not angry because we think he’s stupid, we’re angry because he treats us as though we’re stupid. We’re angry that he lied to us, and lied to us and lied to us again. We’re angry that when he lies to us it isn’t because he’s caught up in scandal or got caught doing something he shouldn’t have, it’s part of a carefully constructed plan to fool the public.

Former Arizona governor saw Phoenix Lights UFO's

Yeh...I know you all will think Geezer has went wacko...tinfoil hat time, but I have a story about ufo's too. Seen something I can't explain on two occasions. First in Santa Cruz CA around 1975 was laying on my back out in the country looking at the sky, when five disks at high altitude streaked across the sky toward the coast, then made a 90 degree turn to the left, then another 90 degree turn to the right, then sped out of sight. I said to my girl friend...did you see that? And she said yeh there were five of them. So we were talking about it for a while when we seen the same five disks speeding back to the East and quickly out of sight.

The other time was a couple of years ago in Silverton Oregon in an RV park. My wife was inside and I was outside enjoying the warm evening, when I seen a cloud that was glowing with light. It was at least a couple of miles away. After watching for several minutes and wondering what could cause that, a large orb moved out of the cloud and set for a while, then moved rapidly moved to the left, then down toward the ground and out of sight. A minute or so later it went back up, then toward the cloud again, where it sat momentarily then went into the cloud again. I was trying to get my wife to come out and see it, so went in and told her that she should see this glowing cloud. She was wondering at the beautiful glow of the cloud when the orb came out and set in front of the cloud again. It was way larger than Venus but not quite as large as the moon. Needless to mention she was pretty amazed, and then it got brighter, then sped off to the left again and to the ground like before. Pretty soon it rose and returned to the cloud where it set like before and returned to the cloud. The cloud continued to glow for a while then went dim.
I was sure glad that she witnessed it or I would have had to put on my tinfoil hat again. We told our story together, but I doubt that many of our friends really believed us. My mom told me once to never believe what you hear and only half of what you see, but I still more than half believe that we seen something that was not from this planet, and half way believe the same about the Phoenix Lights event.

Former Arizona governor says he saw
'Phoenix Lights' UFO

by Steve Hammons

Posted: 18:05 March 18, 2007


Former Arizona Governor Fife Symington now states that he witnessed the huge "Phoenix Lights" UFO ten years ago, according to a published report by respected investigative journalist Leslie Kean.

In an article published Sunday, March 18, 2007, Kean reports that Symington claims that he saw a large triangular "craft of unknown origin" with lights.

"It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical. It had a geometric outline, a constant shape," Symington is quoted as saying.

Kean obtained the statements from Symington in an exclusive interview from Phoenix. The former governor also said, "It was enormous and inexplicable. Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too."

Symington also told Kean that he called the commander at nearby Luke Air Force Base on the far west side of metropolitan Phoenix as well as the top general of the Arizona National Guard. Symington also checked with the head of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the state police agency about the huge mysterious object.

The former governor says they were "perplexed" and offered no explanation.

Arizona was on the brink of hysteria, Symington told Kean. So, six days later, on March 19, he and his staff staged a phony press conference in which an aide dressed up like an alien and was escorted before reporters in handcuffs.

"I never felt that the overall situation was a matter of ridicule," Symington now says. "I wanted them to lighten up and calm down, so I introduced a little levity."

~VIDEO~


New Video of Phoenix Lights shows triangular craft

Ten years ago, what some call one of the most significant UFO sightings in North America took place right here in Phoenix. Back in 1997, nearly everyone with video, photos or a story to tell about “The Phoenix Lights” turned to Jim Dilettoso and Michael Tanner at Village Labs in Tempe. After all that time, Dilettoso at last released video of “The Intruder”, as shown in our special, The Phoenix Lights: X.

But there’s more.

At least one more video exists, showing what appear to be mystery lights moving over Phoenix. The difference in this tape: Dilettoso says a pilot from Luke Air Force Base captured the images with a camera in his cockpit, as he pursued the lights over Maricopa County. While the video is not yet released to the public, Dilettoso does describe it exclusively for us.”

~VIDEO~

Bill Maher: New Rules For Bush and Cheney

~VIDEO~

More confessions from Mohammed Khalid

Complements of Proffessor Smartass

This terrorist Mohammed Khalid is a bigger fish than we thought. He has confessed to mysterious crimes from recent times to ancient history.

It’s STILL The Oil:

Secret Condi Meeting on Oil Before Invasion


Published March 18th, 2007 in Articles
by Greg Palast

Four years ago this week, the tanks rolled for what President Bush originally called, "Operation Iraqi Liberation" ... O.I.L.
I kid you not.

And it was four years ago that, from the White House, George Bush, declaring war, said, "I want to talk to the Iraqi people." That Dick Cheney didn’t tell Bush that Iraqis speak Arabic...well, never mind. I expected the President to say something like, "Our troops are coming to liberate you, so don’t shoot them." Instead, Mr. Bush told, the Iraqis, "Do not destroy oil wells.?"

Harriet Miers involved in Attorney firings

Bush Hit-Woman Behind Prosecutor Firings Has Long History of Purges to Protect Bush

Published March 19th, 2007 in Articles
Harriet Miers fired investigator in 1997 to cover Bush draft-dodge

by Greg Palast
from the original reports for BBC Television and the Guardian (UK)

The Mister Big behind the scandal of George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys is not a ‘mister’ at all. The House Judiciary Committee has released White House emails indicating that the political operative who ordered the hit on prosecutors too honest for their own good was Harriet Miers, one-time legal counsel to the President.

Henry Waxman squelches Victorea Toensing

Rep. Waxman Grills Victoria Toensing on Plame Leak


Open Letter To Victoria Toensing


By: SilentPatriot on Saturday, March 17th, 2007 at 7:07 PM
Over the past few years, you have repeatedly stated that Valerie Plame was "not covert" at the time of her outing because she "had not been stationed abroad within five years" of Robert Novak's article. In explaining this charge, you insist that Ms. Plame did not fall under the statutory definition of "covert" as defined in the 1982 Intelligence Indentities Protection Act; an act that you helped negotiate the terms of as Chief Counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In her opening statement yesterday, Ms. Plame testified under oath that in addition to working in Washington, she "also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence."

The Sheeple say...Impeach Cheney and Bush for Treason

We the sheeple are pissed and some of us are developing an attitude, especially when we see that our so called leaders have commited treason. Yes...we have been mislead, and seen every dirty trick in the book plus a few that are unique only to the Neoconservative cabal that has decieved us since Dubya was installed into presidency of our country. I for one have done a complete turnaround and at the next available moment i'll bite these #*%&$@*'s in the arse. I have only a few political heros at the moment. One is Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for turning over the rock these slimy #*%@$@*'s were hiding under and another is Henry Waxman for examinaning the accountability of the ones responsible for the cover-up of the outing of Valerie Plame. As we all know now, a lot of the Bush administration is involved in it, and Dick Cheney was calling the shots...So...It's time for all of your ilk to go packing, and the sooner the better, because The Sheeple are coming back to bite you all in the arse!

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Here Rep. Elijah Cummings and Chairman Henry Waxman question Dr. James Knodell, Director of the Office of Security in the White House, on whether there was ever a White House investigation into the leak.

VIDEO

2 million Iraqi refugees include doctors and proffesional people

Dr. Nafie Abtan reads from the letter that threatened to kill him if he didn't leave Iraq. He fled to Jordan three days later.

Iraq refugee: 'I feel disaster' as crisis grows

POSTED: 2:18 p.m. EST, March 7, 2007
From Nic Robertson
CNN
Story Highlights

• Nearly 2 million Iraqis have fled violence to other nations

• One U.N. official calls situation a "simmering crisis"

• Syria, Jordan recently tightened borders

• Jordan says it can't sustain refugee flow for long haul





Children stand outside their tent in a refugee camp for displaced Sunnis in Baghdad July 22, 2006. Some 80,000 Iraqis have fled their homes and registered with the government as refugees over the past two months, data showed on Thursday, taking the total in seven months of sectarian violence to a quarter of a million. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

Quarter million Iraqis fled homes

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Some 80,000 Iraqis have fled their homes and registered with the government as refugees over the past two months, data showed on Thursday, taking the total in seven months of sectarian violence to a quarter of a million.

A spokesman for the Migration Ministry, Sattar Nowruz, told Reuters that figures for the end of September showed that more than 40,000 families were claiming aid after leaving homes since February 22, when the destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine at Samarra sparked heavy and continuing sectarian bloodshed.

The ministry estimates the average Iraqi family at six people, giving a current total of more than 240,000 people compared to 27,000 families and 162,000 people at the end of July. Nowruz acknowledged that many more people do not register with the ministry or have fled abroad, and so are not counted

~MOHAMMED CONFESSES HE TRIED TO KILL POPE JOHN II~

Well folks...Todays news looks like the end of journalism as we know it, as the MSM (main stream media) runs with this story based on an edited transcript of a meeting held behind closed doors. This dude Mohammed Khalid, who was arrested as a terrorist in March 2003 has confessed to everything except for the Tsunami in Indonesia and the handling of hurricane Katrina.

The Pentagon released the transcript last night along with similar records from two other hearings for alleged terrorists. They were among a group of 14 high-value detainees transferred to Guantanamo Bay from CIA custody last September on orders from President Bush. Each detainee is entitled to such a review to determine whether he is an enemy combatant and whether he should remain in U.S. custody. The hearings may be a prelude to possible charges and, ultimately, military trials.

Mohammed presented evidence, in the form of a written statement, in which he appears to allege abuse. The tribunal president told Mohammed he had received the statement "regarding certain treatment that you claim to have received" before arriving at Guantanamo Bay.

The tribunal president also asked whether any statements he made under interrogation were "as the result of any of the treatment." Mohammed answered: "CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning when they transferred me . . ." The rest of the sentence is redacted from the transcript.

If you are getting tired of seeing the same old picture that you have been seeing for years, this is what he looked like before his capture.

Mohammed confesses too many terror plots

March 15, 2007, 3:24AM


By MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — From Australia to Azerbaijan, Panama to the Philippines, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks has claimed responsibility for plotting a series of mass casualty terrorist attacks and assassinations of world leaders for al-Qaida that were either thwarted or never came to pass.

In confessing to more than 30 actual or alleged al-Qaida strikes, including 9/11 and the earlier truck bombing of the World Trade Center, between 1993 and his capture in 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confirmed long-held suspicions of his involvement.

He also revealed al-Qaida plans to hit western targets around the globe that have not been earlier discussed by intelligence officials or contained in terror alerts.

Details of the confession, released Wednesday by the Pentagon, were not immediately able to be confirmed, but many refer to locations for which the United States and other nations have issued terrorism warnings based on what they have deemed credible threats from 1993 to the present.

Among them, according to the extraordinary confession:

_ In the United States, Mohammed said he had planned or helped plan a second wave of attacks after 9/11 on nuclear power plants, Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank building in Seattle, and the Empire State Building, stock exchange and other financial institutions and bridges in New York. Most of these facilities had been the subject of earlier warnings.

He also said he had coordinated shoe bomber Richard Reid's December 2001 attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner en route to the United States and that a second plane also had been targeted for similar destruction at the same time.

Overseas, Mohammed mentioned:

_ Britain, where he said he planned attacks on London's Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben, most of which have been previously mentioned as terror targets by British authorities. Mohammed did not speak of the London transport attacks of 2005, which occurred after his detention.

_ The Philippines, home to the al-Qaida affiliated Abu Sayyaf Group, from where Mohammed said he had surveyed and financed plots to kill the late Pope John Paul II in 1994, then-President Clinton in 1995 and former President Carter, as well as blow up the Israeli Embassy in Manila. The capital was also the center of a thwarted plan to blow up a dozen U.S. passenger jets over the Pacific in the mid-1990s, for which Mohammed admitted responsibility, saying he had personally monitored a round-trip Pan Am flight from Manila to Seoul that could have been a target.

_ Indonesia, home to the al-Qaida affiliated Jemaah Islamiyah, where Mohammed said he was directly behind the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings in Indonesia that killed 202 people, many of them Australian tourists. He said he had also planned apparently unsuccessful or unexecuted attacks on the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Jakarta and an oil facility in Sumatra he said was owned by the "Jewish former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger."

_ Thailand, which has been hit by a spate of Muslim-Buddhist violence in recent months, where Mohammed said planned attacks on nightclubs frequented by American and British citizens and was responsible for "surveying and financing" a plot to destroy an Israeli El Al airliner taking off from the Bangkok airport. These have not taken place.

_ Kenya, where Mohammed claimed responsibility for the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned Indian Ocean resort that killed 18 and the near simultaneous attempted shoot-down of an Israeli passenger jet there the same day. Mohammed did not mention the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

_ Israel, where Mohammed said he had dispatched holy warriors to conduct surveillance on "several strategic targets" and planned to crash planes into buildings in the tourist resort of Eilat using aircraft departing Saudi Arabia that has not yet happened.

_ Panama, where Mohammed claimed to have been behind a plot to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal that has not occurred.

_ Turkey, where Mohammed said he had financed operations to hit U.S., British and Israeli targets. Several attacks have taken place in Turkey since Mohammed's arrest but none have been publicly linked to him.

_ South Korea, where Mohammed claimed to have planned to attack U.S. military bases and nightclubs frequented by Americans. None have been hit.

_ Australia, Azerbaijan, India and Japan, where Mohammed said he planned to blow up either the U.S. and Israeli embassies or both. None of those facilities have been attacked.

Other alleged intended targets mentioned by Mohammed on which there have been no attacks are NATO headquarters in Brussels and U.S. military vessels and oil tankers plying the Straits of Hormuz and Gibraltar and the Port of Singapore, one of the world's largest.

And now....for the report by the MSM.

Faux News
.
.

It's time to turn in our credit cards

IN DEBT WE TRUST AS THE ECONOMY GOES BUST:

A Return To Serfdom?

Carolyn Baker

This week the Senate Banking Committee has begun an investigation of credit card companies and that industry’s lending practices of which Chairman, Carl Levin of Michigan said, “Millions of families…are kept in debt and are in over their heads not just because of their own purchases…but because of the abusive practices and excesses of the credit card companies.”




















Our ever present Corporate Government is operating on credit and has put this country in debt. A national debt that is beyond my comprehension. Billions of dollars are hard to swallow, but when it comes to trillions I kind of go into a mind lock. What is our money really worth today, as we ignorantly carry worthless change in our pockets. Coinage that was once spending money is merely extra baggage to us, as a dollar is worth less than a dime of 1960's money, and we haven't seen nothing yet, as we descend into the depths of further inflation, and wonder what we will have to cut from our personal budget, as we continue to make payments on our house, car, and credit cards.

~VIDEO~
.
.

Lets take a worldwide vote on the Libby pardon.

The bull***t is so deep in the MSM (main stream media) that anyone without scuba gear is in trouble, but I jumping in anyway. AAaargh!

The most important charge in this trial was obstructing justice. A charge not to be taken lightly, because that justice could not be done with Libby lieing about his involvemnt with the Plame affair. While it's true that Libby is the fall guy, he was a high ranking player in the Bush administration and also an attorney, and accountable for his actions. As far as his memory goes....give me a break...If it were that bad he wouldn't be fit to be a clerk let alone the right hand man of the vice president of the US. Lets put it this way...If he was working at a gas station, and lit up a smoke while pumping gas, thus causing an explosion, he would be responsible for what happened. It doesn't take a very high IQ to pump gas, but I doubt that telling the courts that he forgot not to smoke by the gas pump would get him off the hook, so I guess at that point he would start thinking about a pardon...LOLMAO

Poor little Scooter should be pardoned? Do you think that he didn't know the lie that he was telling obstructed the truth about weapons of mass destruction, and that Bush & Co. couldn't go to war without that lame excuse. Yeh! He took the fall, just like the Mafia. Meanwhile
Cheney lied, Bush lied. Rummy lied, Condi lied, Wolfowitz lied, even Richard Perle lied, and they made Colin Powell lie. We went to war on a lie and the main stream media is now talking about poor little Scooter, a new trial and a possible pardon. A pardon by the perpetraitor himself that calls himself "The War President".

The libby trial exposed the truth about how things have been done in the whitehouse, and they are trying everything they can to hide the obvious. What I mean, is that even OPB was spinning the news to divert our attention from what was really revealed. Howabout we call for a retrial with Cheney or Bush as the defendent...That would be the fair trade off.

This is a trial that brought to light grave deceptions by our current administration that enabled them to bring our country to war to promote their own Neoconservative ambitions, and they are to this day pursuing the same ideology. Scooter Libby should serve the maximum sentence for now, with possible adjustments after the primary perpetrators of the crime are prosecuted.

THE NEOCONSERVATIVE REVUE~AN IDEOLOGUES DELIGHT

ON May 5th. 2006 I did a post about the PNAC letter to President clinton, warning of a threat in the Middle East and calling for a strategy to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Three things they mentioned were weapoNs of mass destruction, the safety of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and that a
significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard.

My blog had a visit by the government this morning viewing that very artical. If it is of interest to them, then I believe that it should be reposted so we can all revue the information.

Here is a copy of the Government visit...

Domain Name icz.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address 169.253.4.# (U.S. Department of State)
ISP U.S. Department of State
Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : Virginia
City : Alexandria
Lat/Long : 38.7909, -77.0947 (Map)

Language English (United States)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution : 1280 x 1024
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Mar 10 2007 7:53:10 am
Last Page View Mar 10 2007 7:58:26 am
Visit Length 5 minutes 16 seconds
Page Views 3
Referring URL http://www.google.co...almay Khalilzad.born
Search Engine google.com
Search Words zalmay khalilzad.born
Visit Entry Page http://mosnas2.blogs...6_05_01_archive.html
Visit Exit Page http://mosnas2.blogs...6_05_01_archive.html
Out Click http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4609/2004/400/bush_eliteactionfigure.0.jpg
http://photos1.blogg...teactionfigure.0.jpg
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Mar 10 2007 10:53:10 am
Visit Number 1,266




THE NEOCONSERVATIVE REVIEW

Libby Trial & PBS = Pretty Bogus Service

There was truth in the air, but I was disappointed to see PBS News Hour featuring Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post and Victoria Toensing, an attorney with connections to Bush & Co. as Ray Suarez cowtowed like a real pussy to their spin on the trial...so if you're thinking about donating any money to PBS, maybe you should think of Air America.

The main count that Libby was convicted on was obstruction of justice, and what he was covering for was the outing of Valery plame, a CIA operative. A serious charge that endangered her life and well being, and obstructed an investigation that involved Joe Wilson and weapons of mass destruction. Bush and Co. (aka Dick Cheney) told Scooter Libby to spread the word about Plame.

The result of this is that all of the Neocons that now run our country lied and did everything they could to sell this country a war on false premises, and wrote a speech for Colin Powell for his speech before the UN. This is now a known fact, and everyone of them should be impeached from office. But the reality is that there is talk of Bush giving Libby a pardon. A pardon given by somebody that is guiltier than Libby himself. A pardon given by an ideologue who calls himself The War President, The Decider, and The Educator...A man that believes he can decieve "We The People", by merely being in a position of authority and teaching us through repetition and outright lying. A commander in chief who doesn't have to be accountable for anything he says or does.

Why didn't Public Broadcasting bring out a few points on what this trial was about, instead of some moot points about poor Scooter? From my point of view the millions of people who knew what was up, and demonstrated against this war in the times leading up to the invasion if Iraq have been cheated. We knew it at the time because their was not adequate main stream media coverage of these events.

We should all get together and file a private suite on George W Bush and all of the Neoconservatiives that make up his cabinet.

PBS News Hour



Libby Convicted of Perjury, Obstruction of Justice


Jurors in the trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby delivered guilty verdicts on four of five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice Tuesday, following a four-year investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity.


RAY SUAREZ: It took the jury 10 days to reach guilty verdicts in the perjury trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff.

Libby was convicted on four of five counts resulting from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

As she had been throughout the trial, Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post was in the courtroom when the verdicts were announced, and she joins us once again.

And after the jury being out for a long time, Carol, there must have been some anticipation and reaction when the verdicts were read.

CAROL LEONNIG, The Washington Post: There was. You know, there was a lot of feeling on the part of reporters that, you know, what's going on with the jury? Why is it taking so long? Ten days of deliberations after a 14-day trial, it seemed a little out of whack.

And when the verdict was read, actually what was striking was there was almost no emotion, no visible sign of any reaction on the part of the defendant, Scooter Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff.

RAY SUAREZ: There were five counts in all. Could you quickly walk us through how they broke down?

CAROL LEONNIG: I sure can. There were five counts. Two counts were felony charges of lying to the FBI; two counts of lying to the grand jury, perjury counts; and one count, the most serious of all, which was obstruction of justice.

The jury found Mr. Libby guilty on all but one of those counts. On the one that he was found innocent of was one that the jury had struggled with for the last five days, lots of questions back and forth. It was the charge suggesting that Mr. Libby had lied to the FBI about conversations he had about Valerie Plame, the CIA officer, who's at the center of this leak probe, conversations he had with Time magazine's Matt Cooper about her.

And the concern the jury had at the time was that, in notes they sent to the judge, that they weren't sure that the FBI had gotten these statements Mr. Libby had made exactly right. So there are a lot of experts today we've spoken to already this afternoon who feel that the jury was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

On another related count, in which Mr. Libby described that same conversation with Mr. Cooper to the grand jury, the jury in this case found him guilty of lying about that conversation with Mr. Cooper.

RAY SUAREZ: And we know that was the hold-up with the jury how? Were the jurors open about that after they were dismissed today?

CAROL LEONNIG: Well, we know it two ways. One is that the notes. They were over and over again asking in different incarnations how exactly, your honor -- and all these notes were addressed to the judge -- how shall we deal with this issue in count three? Can we use the information from the grand jury to make a decision about Libby's statements to the FBI?

Keep in mind, if you can't remember this, keep in mind that the defense had very effectively during trial raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI's report or its own notes about Libby's statements to them about the conversation with Matt Cooper. There was a suggestion the FBI didn't accurately describe that conversation.

Now, the grand jury testimony that Libby gave, in which he described this conversation, was tape-recorded and transcribed.



~VIDEO~

Here's an article that is a little more like what public broadcast should be presenting. It is obvious that Bush and Co. has a lot of influence about what is said and done on this part of the media that should be influenced only by the people who support it

Liar in the White House


By Rupert Cornwell
The Independent UK

Wednesday 07 March 2007

Cheney aide found guilty in CIA leak case.
Saga of Washington's discredited WMD claims leads to the conviction for perjury of Dick Cheney's key aide.

In a massive new blow to the credibility of the White House, Vice-President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis Libby has been convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to the FBI, during the investigation into the leaking of the identity of a CIA agent.

After a seven-week trial, the jury found Libby guilty yesterday on four of the five counts against him. Ever calm in court, Libby merely blinked as the verdict was read out. Defence lawyers immediately said they would seek a fresh trial, and if that failed, lodge an appeal. In theory Libby faces up to 25 years in jail, though federal sentencing guidelines mean he is likely to receive a far shorter term.

The case arose from the investigation into the leak in July 2003 of the name of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose husband, the former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been a virulent critic of the Iraq war. Ms Plame's identity was revealed a few days after Mr Wilson had written a New York Times column debunking White House claims that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium in Africa, and accusing the Bush administration of deliberately manipulating pre-war intelligence. Libby was not accused of leaking the name deliberately, which is a criminal offence. His crime was to lie to the FBI and the grand jury investigating the case, by maintaining he only learnt who Ms Plame was from a reporter, two days before her name appeared in print.

But some of the most celebrated journalists in Washington went into the witness box to testify they had been told by Libby in person that Mr Wilson's wife worked for the CIA - in one case three weeks before Libby said he became aware of the fact.

Defence lawyers contended that if he made a mistake, it was simply because of a faulty memory caused by pressure of work. But the jury decided that Libby had directly lied. The motive, one juror explained to reporters afterwards, was to cover up the involvement of the Vice-President himself in the campaign to discredit the former ambassador.

In a statement, Mr Cheney said he was "very disappointed with the verdict". At the White House the mood was equally grim. George Bush respected the result of the trial, but was "saddened for Scooter Libby and his family", a spokesman said.

But there is no concealing the extent of the damage. Libby is not only the most senior Bush administration official to face - and now be convicted of - criminal charges. As chief of staff to arguably the most powerful vice-president in US history, he was one of the two or three most important policy-makers at the White House after the President and Vice-President.

The trial, in which neither Libby nor his former boss testified, threw no new light on the handling of the WMD intelligence used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But it revealed the obsessive sensitivity of the Vice-President's office to any attack on its pre-war use of intelligence, and its determination to discredit critics.

LIBBY GUILTY ON FOUR COUNTS

TRUTH JUSTICE & THE AMERICAN WAY HAVE PREVAILED

~LINK~

~VIDEO~
.
.
.

General Michael P. Delong, Katrina, and Iraq Reconstruction

Lieutenant General Michael P. DeLong
United States Marine Corps (Ret.)
Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command

At the time of his retirement, Lieutenant General Michael P. DeLong served as Deputy Commander, United States Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida

This authorative character was on Air America talk radio with the story that he knew that weapons of mass destruction were removed from Iraq,
just prior to the invasion on march 20, 2003. Looks like he's working for Bush and Co. to me, so checked out some of his history and I don't believe his stories anymore than any of the Neocons that he is tied in with.


The Shaw Group Names Lieutenant General Michael P. DeLong Corporate Vice President of Global Planning and Operations
BATON ROUGE, La., Sep 29, 2003


The Shaw
group Inc. opens office in Baghdad


BATON ROUGE, La.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 2004--The Shaw Group Inc. (NYSE: SGR) today announced that it has opened an office in Baghdad to support its increasing activity in Iraq including anticipated U.S. government projects under the $1.5 billion U.S. Central Command award announced in January 2004. The facility will also support projects for the Iraqi ministries and other clients located throughout the Middle East.



Bush Cronies to Mop Up Katrina

Bush Cronies to Mop Up Katrina

By Reuters null Also by this reporter
11:40 AM Sep, 10, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group and the other is Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.



Shaw Group Inc. which, in early 2004, opened a Baghdad office to support "an approximately $47 million task order in Iraq for facility upgrades, installation of utilities and other infrastructure improvements" and was also awarded a separate $88.7 million construction deal, among other contracts.


PBS Frontline: Interview with General Michael Delong


Sitting here at CENTCOM, you and Gen. (Tommy) Franks and others, pre-9/11, were you aware of the terrorist threat?

Pre-9/11, the area that we worked was the 25 countries in the Middle East, Egypt, Jordan, the "Stans" (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan), Pakistan. That area of the world is probably the most dangerous area of the world when it comes to Islamic extremists, so we always were concerned about the terrorists. As you know, the (USS) Cole, we lost that ship in Yemen before 9/11, and we thought we were prepared, but they came up with a different tactic in order to try to sink the Cole.

Everything we did was terrorism and, of course, trying to enforce the U.S. sanctions in Iraq. ...

WMD & Medias of mass deception

In these times of medias of mass deception, it is time to revisit the times just before and during the Iraq War (March 20, 2003). Bush & Co. claimed that they believed there were weapons of mass destruction, and with persistant lying and deception convinced congress to vote for the war.

Now Bush & Co. claims that everybody including the people of America are responsible for this horrible mistake. Afterall...it was voted in by congress.

Millions of people demonstrated all over the planet, to prevent this war from occuring, and now we are supposed to be eating humble pie and enjoying the koolaide? I don't think so... I believe that we must now demonstrate in larger and louder numbers, or see these evil ideologs pursue their pre-emptive goals to gain control of the entire Middle East.


key word: PNAC

View Point From Germany

March 4, 2003


This War Came from a Think Tank

By Jochen Boelsche*
Der Spiegel

It was in no way a conspiracy. As far back as 1998, ultra right US think tanks had developed and published plans for an era of US world domination, sidelining the UN and attacking Iraq. These people were not taken seriously. But now they are calling the tune.

German commentators and correspondents have been confused. Washington has tossed around so many types of reasons for war on Baghdad "that it could make the rest of the world dizzy", said the South German Times.

And the Nuremburg News reported on public statements last week by Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer to an inner circle in the US that war can only be avoided if Saddam not only disarms, but also leaves office. Regime change is a condition that is in none of the barely remembered 18 UN resolutions. The Nuremburg News asked in astonishment whether Fleischer had made the biggest Freudian slip of his career or whether he spoke with the President's authority.

It's not about Saddam's weapons

So it goes. Across the world critics of President Bush are convinced that a second Gulf War is actually about replacing Saddam, whether the dictator is involved with WMD or not. "It's not about his WMD," writes the German born Israeli peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, "its purely a war about world domination, in business, politics, defence and culture".

There are real models for this. They were already under development by far right think tanks in the 1990s, organisations in which cold-war warriors from the inner circle of the secret services, from evangelical churches, from weapons corporations and oil companies forged shocking plans for a new world order. In the plans of these hawks a doctrine of "might is right" would operate, and the mightiest of course would be the last superpower, America.

Visions of world power on the Web

To this end the USA would need to use all means - diplomatic, economic and military, even wars of aggression - to have long term control of the resources of the planet and the ability to keep any possible rival weak. These 1990's schemes of the think tanks - from sidelining the UN to a series of wars to establish dominance - were in no way secret. Nearly all these scenarios have been published; some are accessible on the Web.

For a long time these schemes were shrugged off as fantasy produced by intellectual mavericks - arch-conservative relics of the Reagan era, the coldest of cold-war warriors, hibernating in backwaters of academia and lobby groups. At the White House an internationalist spirit was in the air. There was talk of partnerships for universal human rights, of multi-lateralism in relations with allies. Treaties on climate-change, weapons control, on landmines and international justice were on the agenda.

Saddam's fall was planned in 1998

In this liberal climate there came, nearly unnoticed, a 1997 proposal of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that forcefully mapped out "America's global leadership". On 28 Jan 1998 the PNAC project team wrote to President Clinton demanding a radical change in dealings with the UN and the end of Saddam. While it was not clear whether Saddam was developing WMD, he was, they said, a threat to the US, Israel, the Arab States and "a meaningful part of the world's oil reserves". They put their case as follows:

"In the short term this means being ready to lead military action, without regard for diplomacy. In the long term it means disarming Saddam and his regime. We believe that the US has the right under existing Security Council resolutions to take the necessary steps, including war, to secure our vital interests in the Gulf. In no circumstances should America's politics be crippled by the misguided insistence of the Security Council on unanimity."

Blueprint for an offensive

This letter might have remained yellowing in the White House archives if it did not read like a blue-print for a long-desired war, and still might have been forgotten if ten PNAC members had not signed it. These signatories are today all part of the Bush Administration. They are Dick Cheney - Vice President, Lewis Libby - Cheney's Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld - Defence Minister, Paul Wolfowitz - Rumsfeld's deputy, Peter Rodman - in charge of 'Matters of Global Security', John Bolton - State Secretary for Arms Control, Richard Armitage - Deputy Foreign Minister, Richard Perle - former Deputy Defence Minister under Reagan, now head of the Defense Policy Board, William Kristol - head of the PNAC and adviser to Bush, known as the brains of the President, Zalmay Khalilzad - fresh from being special ambassador and kingmaker in Afghanistan, now Bush's special ambassador to the Iraqi opposition.

See rest of artical...


~The Iraq War (March 20, 2003~

The Masters of the World:

The World Order of the Superpower

DER SPIEGEL (Germany) 19apr03

Following the overthrow of the despot, Saddam Hussein, the Americans are claiming the right to reorder the world according to their beliefs. In the future, dictators will be challenged and rivals will be prevented from coming to power in the first place.


It was intended as a celebration of Europe. Last week on the Agora in Athens, the marketplace of the ancient world, at the base of the magnificent marble staircase leading up to the Acropolis, 25 heads of state signed a treaty to expand the European Union. Ten states, most of them former communist countries between the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, were entering into an alliance with their Western European partners. Most of these states had been separated from one another for decades by the Cold War. In Athens, however, there was little evidence of the giddiness of reunification so evident after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the only sign of godly participation was a pompous fireworks display in the sky above the Parthenon.

The speakers, in their 25 brief addresses, certainly highlighted the fact that they were creating a colossus: 450 million Europeans with a combined gross domestic product of 11.1 billion Euros, the world's second-largest domestic market after the United States, a community without precedent in the history of mankind.

Even more significantly, all of this was taking place on a continent whose states had spent the bulk of the past few centuries at war with one another. Now they had bonded together by treaty, and had sealed their alliance on the anniversary of a revolutionary national constitution called democracy. Even those at the US Pentagon who view themselves as the world's saviors could only dream of achieving such a domino effect of infectious liberalism: "We are no longer prepared to accept," mumbled German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, "that policy is made over our heads." On the high road to Washington? Moscow? Delhi? Beijing?

In fact, his apologists see the reunified, peaceful European empire as a model. "We have been able to overcome wars and rivalries," said German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, adding that it is Europe's obligation "to use precisely this experience to develop a long-term outlook for a world characterized by security and cooperation."

The fact that the prevailing mood on this brilliant spring day in Athens was celebratory but not exactly jubilant was due to someone who was not even present: American President George W. Bush.

That's because this is the man, the leader of a superpower that is preparing to restructure the world according to its own taste, who had just demonstrated to the Europeans how painfully incomplete and lacking in influence their highly-acclaimed political alliance still is. The dispute over America's war in Iraq had split Europe's governments into two camps that, notwithstanding their newfound proclamations of harmony, had until recently viewed each other with some mistrust.

Great Britain's Tony Blair and Spain's José María Aznar, leaders of the more bellicose European contingent, which, incidentally, also includes most of the Eastern European countries now entering the European Union, were cursed by angry demonstrators in Athens. France' Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder who, together with Russia's Vladimir Putin, are disdainfully referred to in Washington as the "Axis of the Defeated," must have realized that their grand objective of a common European foreign and security policy remains an elusive goal. Fischer predicted that without radical reform within the EU and closer collaboration in matters of foreign policy, the Europeans will be forced, in future, to accept what others dictate, "just as Switzerland is now forced to accept the decisions we make within the EU."

The contrast could not be more striking. On one side, there is Europe. Although it views itself as a model, the image it projects to the remainder of the world is unconvincing. On the other side, there is the superpower USA, which, its ego once again boosted by a triumph of its weapons, wishes to impose a new order on the world.

In their armed conflict against Saddam Hussein, America's optimists, who had demanded this war ever since the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, have seen their initial predictions confirmed, at least for now: Baghdad was captured quickly and the enemy's forces simply evaporated under a hail of American artillery.

The popularity of the American president, who had placed his prestige and authority on the line, has risen to new heights on the home front. And America does not seem to be tired of war just yet. A sense of rage and a tremendous thirst for revenge gripped the country on September 11, 2001, and these feelings do not appear to have abated.

So who's next? Would the United States, emboldened by its speedy victory in Iraq, march on to Damascus, if only to prevent America's conservatives from accusing Bush Junior of making the same mistake his father once made, of having stopped a Gulf war too soon? The country the Assads have claimed as their family property fulfills the two key criteria that, according to the Bush doctrine, can lead to regime change through war: Syria is a sponsor of terrorist organizations and - presumably - has weapons of mass destruction.

See the rest of the artical
.
.
.