WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Qaeda will try to tap its allies and resources in Iraq in its efforts to exact another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, according to a top government intelligence report released Tuesday.

Officials have expressed concern in the past that the Iraq war is providing a theater for al Qaeda to train insurgents and test the terror network's capabilities.

"In addition, we assess that its association with [al Qaeda in Iraq] helps al Qaeda to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for homeland attacks," said the declassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate.

But the radicalization process doesn't stop there, according to the report. Islamist Web sites, aggressive anti-American rhetoric and an increasing number of self-generating terror cells in Western countries indicate that violent factions of Islam are spreading.

Though the problem is more dire in Europe than the United States, the report said, there is evidence that extremists in the U.S. are "becoming more connected ideologically, virtually and/or in a physical sense to the global extremist movement."

Declassified portions of the completed NIE -- which represents the combined analyses of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- was released Tuesday after the classified version was presented to Congress.

Lets see....

*We failed to finish things in Afghanistan, and as a result, the Al Qaeda Broadcasting Network, has been on the air for years, not to mention the fact that it has been rebuilding.

*We depose Saddam Hussien and create Chaos in Iraq.... You got it, resulting in a new Afghanistan. Someone want to explain to me again WHY we reelected Bush?

Pat Tillman's brother's testimony was devastating...

Pat Tillman's brother accused the military Tuesday of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying the football star's death in Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.

"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," Kevin Tillman told a hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide," he said.

"Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed," said Tillman, who was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened three years ago but didn't see it.

He said the Tillman family has sought for years to get at the truth about Pat Tillman's death.

"We have now concluded that our efforts are being actively thwarted by powers that are more interested in protecting a narrative than getting at the truth and seeing justice is served," he said.

Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, after his Army Ranger comrades were ambushed in eastern Afghanistan. Rangers in a convoy trailing Tillman's group had just emerged from a canyon where they had been fired upon. They saw Tillman and mistakenly fired on him.

Committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., contended that the federal government invented "sensational details and stories" about the death of Pat Tillman and the rescue of Jessica Lynch from Iraq.

"The government violated its most basic responsibility," said Waxman.

Jessica Lynch is up now... And the Hollywood storty is being ripped apart... You know, Jessica deserves a medal, for being brave enough to cut through the propaganda and bullshit and to acknowledge the real heroes.

In the meantime, our young people continue to die in Iraq, and there is no end in sight.

Funny how this is the biggest story of the day, and the Right's biggest blog is ignoring it.

Here we go with the "we thought oceans would protect us," bullshit. Eh, the scare tactics do not work anymore George... And now after you have explained for the umpteenth time of how we are using Iraq to occupy terrorist, I am sure you have just thrilled the Iraqis....

Oh, and just in case you dont realize it. You DID NOT end the Talibans santuary, you just moved it a few klicks south...

You can always tell when Jay gets pissed off over the Chickenhawk meme. He will go on a tirade. I cant say as I blame him much. Jay is a big supporter of the "War on Terror." And I dont doubt that if his health permitted it, and he saw where he could contribute, that he would be in Iraq or Afghanistan. So I understand his frustration. In fact, I happen to agree with some of his arguments here. But I still believe in principle, that a lot fewer of the Conservative Pundits, who ARE of soldiering age, and fit of body... though not necessarily mind.... would be pushing war so much if they HAD to go fight in it. I saw Michelle Malkin's Propaganda piece on Hot Air this morning, and had to muse... "It has to be a lot more fun PLAYING war corresspondent, protected by an Army of our soldiers, and visiting carefully choreographed photo op locations, than actually having to go out and cover the REAL WAR. I mean where was DEAR Michelle yesterday when all those poor kids were murdered at the University... Oh no, Michelle is too busy doing a PR piece to actually report the horrifying realities of Baghdad.

It is people like Michelle Malkin that are the Chickenhawks. People who PREACH war, who seek to paint this disaster as anything but a disaster, and who have no problem running around "Playing" war, instead of signing up. Then there are the college Republicans, etc. etc.

I have been against this war from day one. I think it was a big ole' ego trip on the part of Bush. But we have FUBARED that country, and we cant just leave it that way. Does that make me a war supporter? No not really, and I despite my own age and health issues, would sign up if I did support the war. Of course, they would probably get laughed out of the recruitment office too.

via his brother...

Editor's note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice ... until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

And I can promise you, the conservatives who drapped Pat in the flag and made him a hero of the conservative movement are NOT going to pick up on this story. Pat Tillman was a Hero, just like all the other soldiers who signed up for this dangerous mission, believing they were doing so to protect our country. It is a shame that they were decieved, and even more of a shame that the American people have become such cowards that they are willing to follow sheepishly an administration that has laid waste to our American ideals about Freedom, Liberty and "doing the right thing!"

To say I told you so. The current mia culpas coming from the right almost cry out for it. I could point out that all of us who criticized this war were called traitors, Bush Haters and worse. But not by these two guys.

So I am going to resist the temptation to do what many on the Right have done... I am not going to push anyone's nose into the pooh. It's pretty clear that they are already beating themselves up enough. For Allahpundit, I have no such inclination. He has been one of the biggest cheerleaders of this inept administration from day one, and he, and Dean Esmay and Michelle Malkin and all the rest of the Booster Squad, will have to live with their own concience, if they have one.

The administration has been in denial since September 12, 2001. It is clear that they not only bungled 9/11, but Iraq as well, is clear... The fact that:

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 2 --Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Sunday vehemently denied that she ever received a special CIA warning about an imminent terrorist attack on the United States, angrily rebutting new allegations about her culpability in U.S. policy failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by al Qaeda.

She said it was "incomprehensible" that she would have ignored such explicit intelligence or appeals by senior CIA officials.

Rice, talking to reporters aboard her plane shortly after leaving Washington Sunday night en route to the Middle East, also dismissed as "simply ludicrous" other reports in a new book by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward that she supported replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld and that the president had to intervene to get the secretary of defense to return some of her telephone calls.

Rice was responding to reports in Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," that detail disarray within the Bush administration over its troubled foreign policy. The book describes a special meeting requested on July 10, 2001, by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black to get Rice to focus on increasing intelligence pointing to an impending attack on U.S. soil. The book describes both men as frustrated by Rice's polite but inattentive response, allegedly brushing them off.

Rice acknowledged Sunday that the White House was receiving a "steady stream of quite alarmist reports of potential attacks" during daily meetings from Tenet during that period. But she said the targets were assumed to be in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel and Jordan. She said no reports mentioned the United States.

"What I am quite certain of, however, is that I would remember if I was told -- as this account apparently says -- that there was about to be an attack in the United States. The idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible," she told reporters.

Rice said her staff is now going back to check if there even was a meeting on July 10, 2001. Philip Zelikow, who was executive director of the 9/11 Commission and is now one of Rice's top advisers, stayed behind in Washington to try to reconstruct the sequence of events, she said. Rebuffing descriptions in the book that she was inattentive, Rice said she was concerned enough about a potential attack in the United States -- even without specific intelligence warnings -- that she had a meeting on July 5, 2001, with White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. to urge him to hold a terrorism intelligence briefing for the Federal Aviation Administration and other domestic agencies.

National Security Council counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke also attended the July 5 meeting, she said. In addition, she asked that then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft be shown the terrorism threat reporting, since the Justice Department oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI then held several briefings with their special agents, she said.

They continue to deny how badly they bungled 9/11, is no surprise. The surprise is that some on the Right are finaly starting to acknowledge that possibility... Well some anyway....

Get any more STUPID?

QALAT, Afghanistan U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished we'll be successful."

Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida accompanying Frist, said negotiating with the Taliban was not "out of the question" but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.

"A political solution is how it's all going to be solved," he said.

DUH! Maybe if we had sent the army to Afghanistan, that we sent to Iraq, we would have Bin Laden by now, and put these guys out of business... Maybe we should invite Ossama to the political table as well?

Kind of makes you wonder why it was not included in ABC's drama?

Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away. There was no practical way she could refuse such a request from the CIA director.

For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an "out of cycle" session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention.

Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he'd seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the National Security Agency intercepts and other intelligence. Could all this be a grand deception? Rumsfeld had asked. Perhaps it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses.

Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."

Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden.

The United States had human and technical sources, and all the intelligence was consistent, the two men told Rice. Black acknowledged that some of it was uncertain "voodoo" but said it was often this voodoo that was the best indicator.

Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.

As they all knew, a coherent plan for covert action against bin Laden was in the pipeline, but it would take some time. In recent closed-door meetings the entire National Security Council apparatus had been considering action against bin Laden, including using a new secret weapon: the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, that could fire Hellfire missiles to kill him or his lieutenants. It looked like a possible solution, but there was a raging debate between the CIA and the Pentagon about who would pay for it and who would have authority to shoot.

Besides, Rice seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place.

Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. "Adults should not have a system like this," he said later.

Ah, but 9/11 was all Clinton's fault...

Proof the Rumsfeld and the Administration are incompetent

Oct. 2, 2006 issue - You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban. In Ghazni province's Andar district, just over a two-hour trip from the capital on the main southern highway, a thin young man, dressed in brown and wearing a white prayer cap, stands by the roadside waiting for two NEWSWEEK correspondents. It is midday on the central Afghan plains, far from the jihadist-infested mountains to the east and west. Without speaking, the sentinel guides his visitors along a sandy horse trail toward a mud-brick village within sight of the highway. As they get closer a young Taliban fighter carrying a walkie-talkie and an AK-47 rifle pops out from behind a tree. He is manning an improvised explosive device, he explains, in case Afghan or U.S. troops try to enter the village.

In a parched clearing a few hundred yards on, more than 100 Taliban fighters ranging in age from teenagers to a grandfatherly 55-year-old have assembled to meet their provincial commander, Muhammad Sabir. An imposing man with a long, bushy beard, wearing a brown and green turban and a beige shawl over his shoulders, Sabir inspects his troops, all of them armed with AKs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. He claims to have some 900 fighters, and says the military and psychological tide is turning in their favor. "One year ago we couldn't have had such a meeting at midnight," says Sabir, who is in his mid-40s and looks forward to living out his life as an anti-American jihadist. "Now we gather in broad daylight. The people know we are returning to power."

Not long after NEWSWEEK's visit, U.S. and Afghan National Army forces launched a major attack to dislodge the Taliban from Ghazni and four neighboring provinces. But when NEWSWEEK returned in mid-September, Sabir's fighters were back, performing their afternoon prayers. It is an all too familiar story. Ridge by ridge and valley by valley, the religious zealots who harbored Osama bin Laden before 9/11—and who suffered devastating losses in the U.S. invasion that began five years ago next week—are surging back into the country's center. In the countryside over the past year Taliban guerrillas have filled a power vacuum that had been created by the relatively light NATO and U.S. military footprint of some 40,000 soldiers, and by the weakness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration.

In Ghazni and in six provinces to the south, and in other hot spots to the east, Karzai's government barely exists outside district towns. Hard-core Taliban forces have filled the void by infiltrating from the relatively lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where they had fled at the end of 2001. Once back inside Afghanistan these committed jihadist commanders and fighters, aided by key sympathizers who had remained behind, have raised hundreds, if not thousands, of new, local recruits, many for pay. They feed on the people's disillusion with the lack of economic progress, equity and stability that Karzai's government, NATO, Washington and the international community had promised.

The Generals have been saying it for a while, but of course my friends on the Right (Watch the comments on this one), will say that this is nothing but democratic propaganda!

Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq," retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste told a forum conducted by Senate Democrats.

A second military leader, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically."

"Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making," Eaton added at the forum, held six weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, in which the war is a central issue.

Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, a member of the Armed Services Committee, dismissed the Democratic-sponsored event as "an election-year smoke screen aimed at obscuring the Democrats' dismal record on national security."

"Today's stunt may rile up the liberal base, but it won't kill a single terrorist or prevent a single attack," Sen. Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky., said in a statement. He called Rumsfeld an "excellent secretary of defense."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, speaking Monday at the National Press Club, said election-season politics may be what's standing in the way of finding a solution to the insurgency in Iraq.

"My instinct is, once the election is over, there will be a lot more hard thinking about what to do about Iraq and a lot more candid observations about it," said Specter, R-Pa.

The conflict, now in its fourth year, has claimed the lives of more than 2,600 American troops and cost more than $300 billion.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), D-N.D., the committee chairman, told reporters last week that he hoped the hearing would shed light on the planning and conduct of the war. He said majority Republicans had failed to conduct hearings on the issue, adding, "if they won't ... we will."

Since he spoke, a government-produced National Intelligence Estimate became public that concluded the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Along with several members of the Senate Democratic leadership, one Republican, Rep. Walter Jones (news, bio, voting record) of North Carolina, participated. "The American people have a right to know any time that we make a decision to send Americans to die for this country," said Jones, a conservative whose district includes Camp Lejeune Marine base.

It is unusual for retired military officers to criticize the Pentagon while military operations are under way, particularly at a public event likely to draw widespread media attention.

And Senate Republicans circulated a statement by four retired generals that said, "(W)e do not believe that it is appropriate for active duty, or retired, senior military officers to publicly criticize U.S. civilian leadership during war." The group included two three-star generals, John Crosby and Thomas McInerny, and a pair of two-star generals, Burton Moore and Paul Vallely.

But Batiste, Eaton and retired Col. Paul X. Hammes were unsparing in remarks that suggested deep anger at the way the military had been treated. All three served in Iraq, and Batiste also was senior military assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Batiste, who commanded the Army's 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, also blamed Congress for failing to ask "the tough questions."

He said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

Batiste said if full consideration had been given to the requirements for war, it's likely the U.S. would have kept its focus on Afghanistan, "not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents."

Just as they attempted to dismiss the National Intelligence reports as nothing more than political propaganda. Of course we know that Republican and Conservative Bloggers, are far more qualified to address intelligence information than the experts who get paid to do so.

And showed them for what they are, a propaganda machine for a failed administration.

Funny how others see it differently...

Sister Toldjah, Ace of Spades HQ, Webloggin, NewsBusters.org, Wizbang, Flopping Aces, TVNewser, The Political Pit Bull, PoliPundit.com and The Strata-Sphere

The failed policy, the failed War....

We are NOT safer today

Not surprisingly, the recent Intelligence estimate which says that the war in Iraq has made global terrorism worse, is viewed differently by the the Right and Left:

Firedoglake, Power Line, Macsmind, Right Wing Nut House, The Glittering Eye, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Thought Theater, Editor and Publisher, The Strata-Sphere, Blue Crab Boulevard, Middle Earth Journal, Redstate, ParaPundit, The Next Hurrah, The Heretik, BTC News, The Democratic Daily, Liberty and Justice, Gun Toting Liberal, Gateway Pundit, AMERICAblog, NewsHog, Liberal Values, Raising Kaine and Booman Tribune

But can the idea really be challenged? I don't have many answers. I can only say that all objective indicators point to failure... There has not been another spectacular attack in the U.S. since 9/11, and it is certain that the administration will point to that as an indicator of success, but there is no doubt that the world has beome a more dangerous place. One needs only to read the headlines to know this...

Funny, but I'll bet his campaign is based on a strong military....

From Think Progress:

A Pentagon report last month found that as many one in five U.S. service members “are being preyed on by loan centers set up near military bases” that can charge interest of 400 percent or more. Increasingly, soldiers have debt levels so high they are barred from serving overseas; others suffer from “bankruptcies, divorces and ruined careers.” (More facts HERE.)

The Pentagon has joined consumer, military, and veterans groups in backing a bipartisan amendment from Sens. Jim Talent (R-MO) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) that places a cap of 36 percent on high interest rates for short-term payday loans to military members.

But one conservative congressman, Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY), is trying to gut the amendment. Davis has proposed his own language — praised by the payday lending industry — that sets no real limits on predatory lenders. One of Davis’s aides admitted last week that he consulted on the legislation with “CNG Financial of Mason, Ohio, one of his top campaign donors and owner of national payday lender Check ‘n Go.”

Another example of Right Wing hypocrisy!

To use the NAZI analogy yet?

By Steve Holland and Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush acknowledged on Wednesday the CIA had interrogated dozens of terrorism suspects at secret overseas locations and said 14 of those held had been sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Bush made the surprise admission as he prodded the U.S. Congress to approve rules for military commissions to try such detainees and with national security a key issue for Republicans who face the possibility of losses in the November congressional elections.

"The need for this legislation is urgent," Bush said. "We need to ensure that those questioning terrorists can continue to do everything within the limit of the law to get information that can save American lives."

Bush was forced to come up with a new method to try foreign terrorist suspects after the U.S. Supreme Court in June rejected the military tribunal system his administration set up to try Guantanamo prisoners, most captured in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon said the 14 detainees arrived at Guantanamo, where they could face prosecution, on Monday from undisclosed locations. Among them were the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two other al Qaeda leaders, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah.

Bush strongly defended the secret detention and questioning of terrorism suspects and said the CIA treated them humanely and did not torture. His announcement was greeted with some skepticism by human rights activists. The detention program, disclosed last year by The Washington Post, provoked an international outcry.

If I had a dime for every conservative blogger who called this, "bullshit," a few months back. There is no question that this adminstration is an affront to every thing they claim to stand for!

And before some of my buddies on the Conservative side start jumping up and down over, "by any means necessary," to protect the U.S., read this...

Then go read the spin...

Are people like this allowed to roam free?

Shiekh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the exiled British Muslim cleric, was detained by Lebanese police last week and then released after passing a bribe. He was questioned about his possible involvement with the foiled sky terror plot. Bakri denied any involvement.

In a conversation last night between al-Muhajiroun followers in Britain and Bakri in Lebanon, Omar Barki Muhammed related details of his detainment in Lebanon. Bakri claimed that the Lebanese authorities detained him at the request of the British or Americans.

The conversation was one of many secretly recorded by Glen Jenvey.

Bakri Mohammed claims that he was shown pictures of suspects in the plot to blow up American bound airplanes by the Lebanese authorities questioning him. He admitted to them that he had met some of the alleged plotters, but claims he did not know them by name.

Pakistan has arrested what it calls the leader of the sky-terror plot, a 25 year old Birmingham man named Rashid Rauf. Rauf is a member of Omar Bakri Mohammed's now banned al-Muhajiroun group.

Bakri was also asked by his al-Muhajiroun followers about jihad training and recruitment at the Jameah Islameah School. Bakri indicated that he knew the school's owner, Balil Patel. Bakri seemed to be pleased that the Patel was not among those arrested.

The conversation also turned to Abu Abdullah. Abu Abdullah, an assistant to jailed cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri at the Finsbury Park mosque, is now among the 14 men arrested in London on suspicion of involvement in terrorist recruiting and training centered around the school.

I mean it's pretty obvious that this guy is an Ossama wannabe...

Jack Cafferty ripped into the Republican leadership today over the recent ruling that the NSA warrantless program is illegal. For all the wingers that say the NSA helped in the UK terror plot, they should turn to their good pal O’Reilly, who said that they got FISA warrants in that case which proves the point. Right wing blogger Ace asks where is the Congress? That's a fair question, but it's a Republican Congress and that's been the problem. I'm not picking on Ace, but he says that

Video-WMP Video-QT

Jack does it again, and Crooks and Liars covers it, DELIGHTFUL!

Good thing the Constitution and Bill of Rights are under glass, with all the pissing on them that this administration has done, they would have dissolved by now from the uric acid.

Brij has it about right...

While the jury is out on whether Israel or Hezbollah attained their war objectives, a quick anecdotal poll of Russian, Chinese and Indian analysts suggests that in the eyes of the wider world the real loser is the United States.

Together with the bloody mess in Iraq, the mess in Lebanon is a set back for American prestige and influence. In India, where President George Bush is more liked than in almost any other Asian country, there is concern that Hezbollah has outwitted him on all counts.

President Bush says Hezbollah has been defeated as it will no longer be a state within a state because south Lebanon will be occupied by non-Hezbollah troops.

In contrast, although Chinese, Russian and Indian analysts hail from very dissimilar countries they are reaching similar conclusions that Hezbollah’s position has been strengthened.

Within Lebanese politics, Hezbollah’s prestige will be so unassailable that its Christian, Sunni and Amal Shiite rivals will not be able to criticize it openly for some time to come. Nor will any Arab government be able to castigate it for fear of angering the street.

Therefore, the most likely prospect is that Hezbollah’s fighters will be integrated into the Lebanese army instead of being asked to disarm. That will make them very influential because of their experience in fighting Israel. Their addition might also make Shiites the overall majority in the army. As such, a mere militia will have access to all the modern panoply, including command and control skills, of a national army.

Like I said... What alternate Universe does Bush live in?
Bottom line... Hezbollah did not blink...

Billmon strikes again!

This is like a scene from a bar fight, where one of the pugalists makes sure his friends have a good strong hold of him, and then starts yelling "let me at him!"

Ehud Olmert's office said late Friday that the expanded incursion into Lebanon would continue "for the time being," despite agreeing to a cease-fire resolution drafted by the United Nations Security Council.

Senior Israel Defense Forces officers said that the IDF is "continuing forward at full power,"

This, of course, is 100% kosher bullshit - nobody in their right mind would start a major offensive at "full power" knowing full well that it wil all have to be shut down within 48 or at most 72 hours. The whole thing was a fraud to begin with -- just a desperate attempt by Olmert and his bedraggled colleagues to try to kick a little dust in the eyes of their domestic constituents. The message -- "yeah, boy, if they had'na stopped me I would have kicked his ass but good -- isn't very original or at this point even slightly believable.

But what are they going to do? They've blown it, right down the line, from the opening bid for an aerial knockout, through the defeats and retreats, the incredible shrinking war aims, the daily humiliation of seeing a third of Israel bombarded with rockets. And now this -- a ceasefire that appears to give Hizbullah all or nearly all of what it demanded (although not the Laker tickets), all of it to be supervised by a "reinforced" version of UNIFIL (most of the reinforcements will probably never arrive) working under a limited one-year mandate, and with no more legal authority to use force than the current bunch of blue helmets.

I haven't even had time to check in on the Israeli target practice in Lebanon... So they are as we used to say in the "hood," getting their ass handed to them huh?
Well Billmon has put up one of his classics... My favorite quote:

All the bellicose rhetoric in the world -- like Schiff's threat to respond with "cruel craziness" if and when other red lines are crossed in the future -- can't conceal the failures: of a miltary aristocracy's arrogant faith in technology, of an Army that's grown accustomed to waging war against Palestinian teenagers, of a political establishment that believes with zombie-like intensity that the cure for incompetence is ever greater applications of military force. (Italics mine)

Interesting. I wonder what "Kimmy," is thinking now... Funny how after all the cheerleading from the right, the justification on civilian deaths, and all the rest, it appears that Israel is being bested by a rag tag group of terrorist. And yea they are terrorist, and yea I believe Israel has the right to fight terrorist who are killing their citizens, but this particular implementation of the so called "Bush Doctrine," is as bankrupt and and morally questionable as what we have done to Iraq... The neocons who created and supported these wars, always from a safe distance of course, will go down in history as the cowards who thrived on conflict, but lost... Yeah LOST. Because no matter how you size it up, other than a full scale invasion of Lebanon, followed by a nuking of Iran and possibly Syria, is the only way the Israelis can win this conflict, and in winning, they will lose any hope for future peace.

Read this post from WAPO:

In Iraq, lives differ in value -- and so do deaths. In this disparity lies an important reason why the United States has botched this war.

Last November in Haditha , a squad of Marines, outraged at the loss of a comrade, is said to have run amok, avenging his death by killing two dozen innocent bystanders. And in March, U.S. soldiers in Mahmudiyah allegedly raped a young Iraqi woman and killed her along with three of her relatives -- an apparently premeditated crime for which one former U.S. soldier has been charged . These incidents are among at least five recent cases of Iraqi civilian deaths that have triggered investigations of U.S. military personnel. If the allegations prove true, Haditha and Mahmudiyah will deservedly take their place alongside Sand Creek, Samar and My Lai in the unhappy catalogue of atrocities committed by American troops.

"You have to understand the Arab mind," one company commander told the New York Times, displaying all the self-assurance of Douglas MacArthur discoursing on Orientals in 1945. "The only thing they understand is force -- force, pride and saving face." Far from representing the views of a few underlings, such notions penetrated into the upper echelons of the American command. In their book "Cobra II," Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor offer this ugly comment from a senior officer: "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I'm about to introduce them to it."

But recall a more recent incident, in Samarra . On May 30, U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint there opened fire on a speeding vehicle that either did not see or failed to heed their command to stop. Two women in the vehicle were shot dead. One of them, Nahiba Husayif Jassim, 35, was pregnant. The baby was also killed. The driver, Jassim's brother, had been rushing her to a hospital to give birth. No one tried to cover up the incident: U.S. military representatives issued expressions of regret.

In all likelihood, we will be learning more about Haditha and Mahmudiyah for months to come, whereas the Samarra story has already been filed away and largely forgotten. And that's the problem.

The killing at the Samarra checkpoint was not an atrocity; most likely it was an accident, a mistake. Yet plenty of evidence suggests that in Iraq such mistakes have occurred routinely, with moral and political consequences that have been too long ignored. Indeed, conscious motivation is beside the point: Any action resulting in Iraqi civilian deaths, however inadvertent, undermines the Bush administration's narrative of liberation, and swells the ranks of those resisting the U.S. presence.

Read the whole thing. It goes a long way towards putting into context some of the problems with alleged abuses of civilians in Iraq. Now I am going to reserve judgement on the active cases going on in Iraq, the Haditha incident and the alleged rape and murder, are open cases... The AG Prison scandal is not.

The apparent attitude of commanders on the ground towards the people of Iraq could go a long way towards explaining why such incidents have occured. This is pretty uncomfortable stuff we are talking about. The image of Americans as Liberators, and the whole Rah Rah, we are here to save the Iraqi people from tyranny thing, is going to ring pretty damned hollow if the latest accussations prove true...

A Secret the Terrorists Already Knew

Privacy rights advocates, with whom we generally agree, have lumped this bank-monitoring program with the alleged National Security Agency wiretapping of calls in which at least one party is within the United States as examples of our government violating civil liberties in the name of counterterrorism. The two programs are actually very different.

Any domestic electronic surveillance without a court order, no matter how useful, is clearly illegal. Monitoring international bank transfers, especially with the knowledge of the bank consortium that owns the network, is legal and unobjectionable.

The International Economic Emergency Powers Act, passed in 1977, provides the president with enormous authority over financial transactions by America's enemies. International initiatives against money laundering have been under way for a decade, and have been aimed not only at terrorists but also at drug cartels, corrupt foreign officials and a host of criminal organizations.

These initiatives, combined with treaties and international agreements, should leave no one with any presumption of privacy when moving money electronically between countries. Indeed, since 2001, banks have been obliged to report even transactions entirely within the United States if there is reason to believe illegal activity is involved. Thus we find the privacy and illegality arguments wildly overblown.

So, too, however, are the Bush administration's protests that the press revelations about the financial monitoring program may tip off the terrorists. Administration officials made the same kinds of complaints about news media accounts of electronic surveillance. They want the public to believe that it had not already occurred to every terrorist on the planet that his telephone was probably monitored and his international bank transfers subject to scrutiny. How gullible does the administration take the American citizenry to be?

Terrorists have for many years employed nontraditional communications and money transfers — including the ancient Middle Eastern hawala system, involving couriers and a loosely linked network of money brokers — precisely because they assume that international calls, e-mail and banking are monitored not only by the United States but by Britain, France, Israel, Russia and even many third-world countries.

While this was not news to terrorists, it may, it appears, have been news to some Americans, including some in Congress. But should the press really be called unpatriotic by the administration, and even threatened with prosecution by politicians, for disclosing things the terrorists already assumed?

In the end, all the administration denunciations do is give the press accounts an even higher profile. If administration officials were truly concerned that terrorists might learn something from these reports, they would be wise not to give them further attention by repeatedly fulminating about them.

There is, of course, another possible explanation for all the outraged bloviating. It is an election year. Karl Rove has already said that if it were up to the Democrats, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would still be alive. The attacks on the press are part of a political effort by administration officials to use terrorism to divide America, and to scare their supporters to the polls again this year.

The administration and its Congressional backers want to give the impression that they are fighting a courageous battle against those who would wittingly or unknowingly help the terrorists. And with four months left before Election Day, we can expect to hear many more outrageous claims about terrorism — from partisans on both sides. By now, sadly, Americans have come to expect it.

That is really what it all comes down to... An administration that believes it is above the law and completely unaccountable. The Supreme Court smackdown, demonstrates this very clearly. All the hell raising over the NYT revealations is more about raising the fear factor of Americans before the next election. Eh... I don't think it will work this time.

Others discussing:

Liberty Street, Democrat Taylor Marsh …, AMERICAblog and WTF Is It Now??

Excellent response from the Editorial department of the NYT:

Over the last year, The New York Times has twice published reports about secret antiterrorism programs being run by the Bush administration. Both times, critics have claimed that the paper was being unpatriotic or even aiding the terrorists. Some have even suggested that it should be indicted under the Espionage Act. There have been a handful of times in American history when the government has indeed tried to prosecute journalists for publishing things it preferred to keep quiet. None of them turned out well — from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the time when the government tried to enjoin The Times and The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

As most of our readers know, there is a large wall between the news and opinion operations of this paper, and we were not part of the news side's debates about whether to publish the latest story under contention — a report about how the government tracks international financial transfers through a banking consortium known as Swift in an effort to pinpoint terrorists. Bill Keller, the executive editor, spoke for the newsroom very clearly. Our own judgments about the uproar that has ensued would be no different if the other papers that published the story, including The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, had acted alone.

The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals. Terrorist groups would have had to be fairly credulous not to suspect that they would be subject to scrutiny if they moved money around through international wire transfers. In fact, a United Nations group set up to monitor Al Qaeda and the Taliban after Sept. 11 recommended in 2002 that other countries should follow the United States' lead in monitoring suspicious transactions handled by Swift. The report is public and available on the United Nations Web site.

But any argument by the government that a story is too dangerous to publish has to be taken seriously. There have been times in this paper's history when editors have decided not to print something they knew. In some cases, like the Kennedy administration's plans for the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, it seems in hindsight that the editors were over-cautious. (Certainly President Kennedy thought so.) Most recently, The Times held its reporting about the government's secret antiterror wiretapping program for more than a year while it weighed administration objections.

Our news colleagues work under the assumption that they should let the people know anything important that the reporters learn, unless there is some grave and overriding reason for withholding the information. They try hard not to base those decisions on political calculations, like whether a story would help or hurt the administration. It is certainly unlikely that anyone who wanted to hurt the Bush administration politically would try to do so by writing about the government's extensive efforts to make it difficult for terrorists to wire large sums of money.

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

I find it simply INCREDIBLE that a sitting President, no matter how bad, could attack the press the way Bush has in this case. It is clear that the Times was doing it's job of informing the American public. It is also clear that any terrorist of note, has got to know about the U.S. governments' banking probes. Hell I did and I am not a terrorist, nor am I as smart as most of them seem to be. What is VERY clear, are the continuing attempts by the administration and Right Wing fanatics to hide questionable tactics and attacks on the constitution. Bush's attacks on the NYT are just another shamefull attempt to bully the press...

This is simply an imperial presidency with no self restraint and no desire for oversight of any type.

Others discussing:
Real Clear Politics, The Glittering Eye, Hot Air, Sweetness & Light, Liberty and Justice, Thoughts of an Average Woman, The Hill Blog, The American Thinker, Preemptive Karma, The Heretik, QandO, Macsmind, ProfessorBainbridge.com, Tammy Bruce, Blue Crab Boulevard and Bark Bark Woof Woof

The following is a letter Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, has sent to readers who have written him about The Times's publication of information about the government's examination of international banking records:

I don't always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government's surveillance of international banking records has generated some questions and concerns that I take very seriously. As the editor responsible for the difficult decision to publish that story, I'd like to offer a personal response.

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combating the threat of terror.

It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly. The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us when an issue involves national security, and especially national security in times of war. I've only participated in a few such cases, but they are among the most agonizing decisions I've faced as an editor.

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements.

Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight. We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them.

Make sure to read the whole thing. I have to wonder sometimes if the Wingnuts who jump up and down every time a new case of urinating on The Constitution is revealed, actually believe the crap they print themselves? Anyone who questions the action of the government is a Bush Hater, and that is their sole motivation for doing so... OH PLEASE! Or worse, a card carrying supporter of Al Qaeda.

I haven't even commented on the whole banking thing, and I wont. Anyone who thinks that the people who carried out 9/11 don't know that we are tapping their phones, reading their emails and checking into their financing, is an idiot.

"A secondary argument against publishing the banking story was that publication would lead terrorists to change tactics. But that argument was made in a half-hearted way. It has been widely reported — indeed, trumpeted by the Treasury Department — that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash."

No, the NYT and other papers who reported this little end run on our civil liberties did not perform a traitorous act. They actually did what they are supposed to do, which is INFORM the PEOPLE! Whether this program is legal or not is not my call to make. I am not a constitutional scholar. I have to Wonder sometimes... If Conservative Bloggers had been around at the time, would Nixon have been forced to resign?

Nuns pray over the bodies of four American sisters killed by the military in El Salvador in 1980


I just finished reading Empire's Workshop, a book written by Greg Grandin, author of The Last Colonial Massacre.

If you are still naive enough to have a puritan view of American global politics, you need to read this book.

Considering the times we live in, it seems very appropriate to look back on our History as an imperial power, and how our immoral past continues to guide U.S. foreign policy.

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency - as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time - than in spreading it out.

What was the Salvador option? It was our clandestine support of ARENA, a Facist organization in El Salvador responsible for thousands of murders and rapes in the name of anti communism. But our support of murderous thugs in El Salvador was the tip of the iceberg. Our support of a murderous regime in Guatemala and of the Contras in Nicaragua. In fact, our hands are so bloody in Central America, that it is amazing to me as someone who lives here that Americans are not outright hated.

Empire's Workshop is an incredible piece of historical reporting and analysis, tying together the players and philosophies that have driven America's political ambitions for the last 50 years or more. It makes an incredibly compelling read.

Disclosure: I was given a complimentary copy of the book by the publisher.

AP is reporting Zarqawi dead!

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose bloody campaign of beheadings and suicide bombings made him the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq, was killed when U.S. warplanes dropped 500-pound bombs on his isolated safe house, officials said Thursday. His death was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq.

The targeted airstrike Wednesday evening was the culmination of a two-week-long hunt for al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Tips from senior militants led U.S. forces to follow al-Zarqawi's spiritual adviser to the safe house, 30 miles outside Baghdad, for a meeting with the terror leader. The adviser, Sheik Abdul Rahman, was among seven aides also killed.

Fingerprints, tattoos and scars helped U.S. troops identify al-Zarqawi's body, White House spokesman Tony Snow said. The U.S. military released a picture of al-Zarqawi's face after the airstrike, with his eyes closed and spots of blood behind him, an image reminiscent of photos of Saddam Hussein's slain sons from the early days of the war.

"Al-Zarqawi was eliminated," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.

President Bush, who learned of the deadly airstrike Wednesday afternoon, hailed the killing as "a severe blow to al-Qaida and it is a significant victory in the war on terror."

But he cautioned: "We have tough days ahead of us in Iraq that will require the continuing patience of the American people."

Around the time news reports announced al-Zarqawi's death, two bombs hit a market and a police patrol in Baghdad, killing at least 19 people and wounding more than 40. Police differed on whether the bombs struck shortly before or after the 10:30 a.m. news. Later, a parked car bomb exploded in north Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 15.

Al-Qaida in Iraq vowed to continue its "holy war," according to a statement posted on a Web site.

"We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme."

My first thought... "Good riddance for bad rubbish."

My next thought... "It aint over."

From the same piece:

Al-Qaida in Iraq vowed to continue its "holy war," according to a statement posted on a Web site.

"We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme."

There is a certainty that Zarqawi's death will not result in the crumbling of the terror networks in Iraq... However, there are many things to be excited about.

This murderous thug got his just deserts. For that, I am immeasurably happy. One of the benefits I am sure we will see from this success is an uptick in troop morale, which has to have been suffering as a result of the Haditha incident and various setbacks in Iraq. Likewise, I am sure the Iraqi people are breathing a sigh of relief at the news. See Malkin's blog for a roundup of some of the Iraqi blogger reactions, and some great photos and videos.

The news of Zarqawi's death will likely result in an increased sense of resolve for all those responsible for returning stability to the country, and may even result in the accelerated capture or death of others involved, as intelligence is gathered from the wreckage of Zarqawis safe house... We can at least hope.

UPDATE: Looks like I was right:

Shortly after the strikes, 17 more raids were conducted on other suspected hideouts for Zarqawi associates in Baghdad. They produced a "treasure trove" of information, according to the Americans.

As expected, there are tons of others blogging on the news:

Counterterrorism Blog, mnf-iraq.com, blogenlust, Gateway Pundit, Mark in Mexico, The Glittering Eye, Outside The Beltway, A Blog For All, Blinq, Media Blog on National …, PunditGuy, AMERICAblog, Left I on the News, the talking dog, Security Watchtower, Democrats.com, Blue Crab Boulevard, QandO, PoliBlog, AMERICAN FUTURE and Bark Bark Woof Woof

Democrat Taylor Marsh …, MSNBC, Right Wing Nut House, Global Guerrillas, All Things Beautiful, Counterterrorism Blog, Hammorabi, Obsidian Wings, The Wide Awake Cafe, The Washington Monthly, Villainous Company, The Sundries Shack, The Carpetbagger Report, Mark in Mexico, TAPPED, The American Thinker, The RCP Blog and The Strata-Sphere

Read them all for a good cross section of news and opinion... Another great round up here.

Amen!

Bushco has enslaved Americans into a psychological reign of "War on Terror" that amounts to a criminal protection racket. We are told we must be afraid. That is, we are told we must live in terror. This is to protect us from. . . terror. Then, because we feel terrified, we must give up our freedom - freedom to write what we believe without fear of reprisal, freedom of due process and habeas corpus protection, freedom from secret intrusion into our private lives by government.

Today is Memorial Day. Today we remember countless patriots who died and fought for those freedoms our president tells us we must abandon. . . in the name of "freedom."

If there were really a "War on Terror," an emotion, Wes Craven would be hiring a lawyer: he scares people. The "War on Terror" is a sham. You know what changed after September 11th? We, the people of the United States, forgot how strong we are. We gave in to fear, when the only thing we should have feared was fear itself. Osama bin Laden wants you to be afraid. So does George Bush.

I know I’m not alone when I say, I’m an American and I’m not afraid. I know I’m going to die. I accept that I’m going to die, no problem. What I do not accept and will not accept is the notion that I must live as a slave to fear for the purposes of craven, cowardly men who, in their time, pissed the bed rather than fight an actual war, later to become powerful and use that power to line their pockets with my tax dollars. Give me liberty or give me death. Take your "terror" and shove it.

We went after the criminals who attacked us when we invaded Afghanistan, then quickly abandoned any pretense of being concerned with actual terrorists by fighting a ginned-up war of aggression against a tin-pot dictator for whom our chickenshit president and his buddies have always had a hard-on. If the U. S. were serious about thwarting terrorism or about minimizing our exposure to acts of violence designed to make us afraid, we would have rigorous port security and massive international goodwill and cooperation in the lawful identification of anarchic, violent networks. But we don’t have that. We have our sons and daughters fighting to maintain bases in the sand near oil fields, sacrificing their lives, bodies and minds for a pack of lies

.

I get the feeling that many American's perhaps even some former Bush supporters, are starting to feel the same way.

I just finished reading a story in todays Washington Post, that truly moved me.

Carrie and Adam Kisielewski decided that marriage couldn't wait until he returned from Iraq.

What if he was killed in battle?

"I wanted to have the chance to say we were married," she said. "I didn't want to go through my life thinking I never had a chance to marry him."

So they married last June. In August, the Marine lance corporal and an officer were searching an empty school near Fallujah when they triggered an explosive device. The officer died, and Adam lost his left arm at the shoulder and right leg below the knee.

Thinking he was dying, Adam asked his buddies to tell his wife he was sorry he wouldn't be able to buy her a house. "They pretty much told me to go to hell, that I'd have to tell her myself," he recalled in an interview. "They gave me a reason to stay alive."

That last line reminds me so much of what our service men and women are all about. Loyalty, duty, honor. And the great sacrifices they make, including profoundly personal ones. I cant even begin to imagine what these young men and women are going through, and what their families go through. This is a must read article, if for nothing else, to get away from Hadith for a couple days, and understand the real sacrifice that our men and women in uniform go through in order to serve. I did not post anything on Memorial Day. Let this serve as my personal salute to all of them, and a thank you for serving.

But this video leaves me with more questions than it answers.

Perhaps Kevin is hoping to get us with the power of suggestion here:

"Pentagon release of two videos of American Flight 77 striking the Pentagon on September 11, 2001"

Eh, I read the Emperors new clothes. All I saw was a naked dude. And All I see here is something that has to be smaller than an airliner, hitting the Pentagon. And apparently I am not the only one. Despite the suave attempts by one of their commentators to convince them differently... Sounds to me like the FOX on the air people aren't buying it either...