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.
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 twoguys.
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....
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?
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.
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.
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:
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...
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.”
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...
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
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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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:
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...
To be a member of the irrational Left. Because if being so means I am outraged about the Gestapo tactics, (yea I did go there) of our government, then call me what ever kind of BAT you want to.
On the same day that we learn that President Bush's National Security Administration (NSA) has engaged all the major U.S. telecoms except one - Qwest - in data mining of millions of phone records for U.S. citizens, we also learn that the administration has closed down an investigation into the NSA by refusing to give investigators the required clearances:
"We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey's office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
According to what is being reported by the USA Today, the NSA has a database of phone calls made by Americans. The NSA states explicitly that they do not record the content of the calls, so what's left for the database is the "on the envelope" information. Information that has long been used by law enforcement without the need of a warrant.
Plus, whoever thought they could trust their phone company and/or their cell phone company to keep this sort of information private? They already sell this sort of information to telemarketers. Why not the nation's top anti-terror intelligence-gathering organization?
There is nothing new here, nor am I especially worried about this sort of thing. It has been going on almost since the invention of the telephone. The only thing that makes it "news" right now is the fact that it can be crafted by the left/media into a political weapon at an opportune moment.
Are there REALLY Americans so LAME or so commited to their failed political choices, that they are willing to accept ANYTHING? I mean this case is so beyond the pale, that it is ridiculous...
But it's okay, because Bush says it's okay:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional Republicans and Democrats demanded answers from the Bush administration Thursday about a government spy agency secretly collecting records of ordinary Americans' phone calls to build a database of every call made within the country.
Facing intense criticism from Congress, President Bush did not confirm the work of the National Security Agency but sought to assure Americans that their privacy is being "fiercely protected."
"We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of innocent Americans," Bush said before leaving for a commencement address at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Biloxi.
Cafferty: We all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cause he might be all that stands between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He's vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records, and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.
Shortly after 9/11, AT7T, Verizon, and BellSouth began providing the super-secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the War on Terror, President Bush says. Why don't you go find Osama bin Laden, and seal the country's borders, and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?
The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and declared the government is doing nothing wrong, and all this is just fine. Is it? Is it legal? Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation. Read that sentence again. A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says ok and drops the whole thing. We're in some serious trouble, boys and girls"
Yeah we are, and we have been for a long time. And I have to believe, if not for the rancid egg dripping off their faces, a lot of conservative commentators would be speaking up about this as well. But they banked it all on Bush, and now... No matter how incredible the story, no matter how telling the crime, they simply ignore it, justify it, or spin it. It is sickening...
Oh and I am sure it's okay for the administration to data mine our phone calling patterns now. Future Supreme Court Justice Michelle says the NSA is, "Just doing their job."
Well let me point out something to Michelle, Assrocket and all the other high priest of the Bush Cult. They may just be doing their job, as it is defined by the current group of fascist that are running our country, but the time is coming near, and barring declaring martial law and suspending the constitution, which I have no doubt you will also justify... The Republicans are about to be swept out of office, and then the real fun begins...
And for all those who just want to claim that this is about Bush Hatred...WRONG.
"Note that the calls aren't recorded. Or listened to. Rather, they are analyzed for patterns that could help identify where terrorist cells are located. Which, were Safeway to use their Super Saver's Card to track potential terror cells rather than to predict, say, the general soft drink buying habits of their customers, would be approximately the same thing."
Anyone want to tell me what the hell one of those has to do with the other. Now living outside the U.S., I dont have a Safeway Card anymore, but when I did, I signed up for it. I knew what it was being used for, and I got some benefit from it. Does the above meet ANY of that criteria?
WOW! Watch it and make up your mind what you believe. I can't believe it. I just cant... Despite everything I believe about this administration, I can not believe they would deliberately Kill Americans.
The jury's decision yesterday to give wannabe terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui life in prison instead of the death penalty was a public relations disaster for the Bush Administration who were hoping to kill Moussaoui so that he could show progress in ridding the world of evildoers. The jury heard convincing evidence that Moussaoui was shunted aside by al Qaeda big wigs well before 9/11 because he was a mentally deranged loose cannon.
Moussaoui was small fry but the administration has two of al Qaeda's top leaders in custody and while it might seem obvious that they could salvage something out of the Moussaoui disaster by trying, convicting and frying the genuine coup plotters, it ain't gonna happen.
Yesterday on CNN, terrorism expert Peter Bergen explained that the high-ranking terrorists will never be tried in a court of law because the Bush team permanently tainted any testimony they might provide by subjecting them to torture...
So let me see if I got this right... Moron AQ reject gets life in Prison and Conservative Blogsphere has baby over it. Top Dogs from AQ, the actual Masterminds of 9/11, wont even be tried because of the idiotic Pro-Torture policies of the Bush Administration.
So these dudes will end up like Sean Connery in The Rock, stashed away in some secret prison and Americans will never know the real truth... Convienent...
A central contradiction in the Bush administration's fight against terrorism is that bit players often have been put on trial, while those thought to have orchestrated the plots have been held in secret for questioning.
The difference in treatment, government officials say, stems from the view that gathering intelligence from suspected terrorists is more important than publicly punishing them.
That's why Muslim men from Portland, Ore., Lackawanna, N.Y., and Lodi, Calif., have been prosecuted and imprisoned for having attended training camps in Afghanistan or entering the country intending to do so. Facing charges such as conspiracy and providing "material support" to terrorists, they had little of substance to reveal to U.S. intelligence authorities.
Similarly, the Bush administration sought life in prison for John Walker Lindh, the California-born Muslim convert who went to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban government prior to the U.S. invasion in late 2001. He pleaded guilty in exchange for a 20-year sentence.
But it was a different matter when the FBI arrested Jose Padilla in Chicago in 2002. The Brooklyn native, a convert to Islam, was suspected of leading a plot to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.
Rather than file terrorism charges against him, the government branded him an "enemy combatant" and confined him to a military brig for three years. He was not allowed to speak to his family or to a lawyer while interrogators pumped him for information about the supposed plot.
Government lawyers said they were reluctant to charge Padilla with a crime, because that would entitle him to a lawyer. And a lawyer undoubtedly would tell him not to talk to government investigators.
Late last year, after Padilla had legal representation and as the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear his challenge to President Bush's assertion of power to detain without due process Americans deemed to be enemy combatants, the administration changed course. He was charged with several minor terrorism-related crimes, but not with plotting to set off a dirty bomb.
Enquiring minds really want to understand how the War on Terror is being fought in our names... From appearances... Not very effectively, and perhaps equally important... illegally. Torture, ignoring human rights, hell sounds to me like a flashback to the Dirty Wars in Latin America a few years back.
The jury's decision yesterday to give wannabe terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui life in prison instead of the death penalty was a public relations disaster for the Bush Administration who were hoping to kill Moussaoui so that he could show progress in ridding the world of evildoers. The jury heard convincing evidence that Moussaoui was shunted aside by al Qaeda big wigs well before 9/11 because he was a mentally deranged loose cannon.
Moussaoui was small fry but the administration has two of al Qaeda's top leaders in custody and while it might seem obvious that they could salvage something out of the Moussaoui disaster by trying, convicting and frying the genuine coup plotters, it ain’t gonna happen.
Yesterday on CNN, terrorism expert Peter Bergen explained that the high-ranking terrorists will never be tried in a court of law because the Bush team permanently tainted any testimony they might provide by subjecting them to torture...
So let me see if I got this right... Moron AQ reject gets life in Prison and Conservative Blogsphere has baby over it. Top Dogs from AQ, the actual Masterminds of 9/11, wont even be tried because of the idiotic Pro-Torture policies of the Bush Administration.
So these dudes will end up like Sean Connery in The Rock, stashed away in some secret prison and Americans will never know the real truth... Convienent...
Let's see how the Right Blogsphere spins this one...
Two years ago, Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported that a few months after 9/11 the Pentagon drafted multiple plans to hit the camp of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda terrorist who had taken up residence in Iraq's northern no-fly zone, outside Saddam Hussein's control. George Bush, however, refused to authorize a military strike.
I've written about this multiple times (I used to jokingly called it my "monthly Zarqawi post"), but Miklaszewski's story always had a big problem: it was based on anonymous sources, which made it easy for the White House to ignore. Today, however, the Australian show Four Corners has gotten confirmation of the story from Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit:
He told Four Corners that during 2002, the Bush Administration received detailed intelligence about Zarqawi's training camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.
"Almost every day we sent a package to the White House that had overhead imagery of the house he was staying in. It was a terrorist training camp...experimenting with ricin and anthrax...any collateral damage there would have been terrorists."
So why wasn't Bush willing to hit Zarqawi, a known al-Qaeda terrorist in a known location? Scheuer says he was told it was because Bush was afraid of annoying the French — a theory that seems a bit of a stretch, non? Others believe it was because Zarqawi was politically convenient: having him alive allowed Bush to pretend that Saddam was "harboring terrorists," thus providing useful ammunition for the war.
Makes you wonder, how many people died in Iraq for the convenience...
Oh... I see how the Wingnuts are countering this story... As usual, by promoting fantasy. Compare that little ditty, and all the Right Wingers linking to it, to this.
But hey.... Look at all the schools we have opened.
I mean "paint a plane and send it to be shot down to provoke a war?" What's wrong with that picture? Do Americans do shit like that? How can the people who continue to support this administration even look at themselves in the mirror any more?
Bush is well known for his soaring rhetoric, especially when it comes to Iraq. It is a conflict born out or rhetoric, and indeed sustained by it. But the rhetoric has begun to ring hollow with a majority of the American public, and statements comparing Bush's War on Terror with the greatest conflict of the last century is well.... Ridiculous!
Accept for a moment the argument that Iraq is but one theater in a global war on terrorism. Overlook that, to the degree this is true, it's because Bush's invasion of Iraq and his many miscalculations afterward helped make it so. Even so, it would be an enormous leap to claim that the war in Iraq or the broader war on terror is the political, strategic, or moral equivalent of World War II.
Al-Qaida or its sundry offshoots could crash many more airplanes, wreck many more buildings, and bomb many more subways and the magnitude of their power, and the urgency of their threat, would still fall far short of that posed by Nazi Germany. The panzers of the Wehrmacht rolled across the plains of Europe, toppling governments with ease, imposing totalitarian regimes, and killing millions in their wake. This was a war of civilization on a level that today's war however you might define it doesn't begin to approach.
But let's say that the two wars World War II and Iraq (or the broader war on terrorism) are comparable, that their stakes are even remotely as high. Then why is President Bush fighting this war so tentatively?
From December 1941 to August 1945 the attack on Pearl Harbor until the declaration of Allied victory the United States manufactured 88,430 tanks and 274,941 combat aircraft. Yet in the two years after the invasion of Iraq, much less the four years since the attack on the World Trade Center, the Bush administration has not built enough armor platings to protect our soldiers' jeeps from roadside bombs.
To fund World War II, the United States drastically expanded and raised taxes. (At the start of the war, just 4 million Americans had to pay income tax; by its end, 43 million did.) Beyond that, 85 million Americans—half the population at the time—answered the call to buy War Bonds, $185 billion worth. Food was rationed, scrap metal was donated, the entire country was on a war footing. By contrast, President Bush has asked the citizenry for no sacrifice, no campaigns of national purpose, to fight or fund the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. In fact, he has proudly cut taxes, heaving the hundreds of billions of dollars in war costs on top of the already swelling national debt.
If this war's stakes are comparable to World War II's, the entire nation should be enlisted in its cause not necessarily to fight in it, but at least to pay for it. And if President Bush is not willing to call for some sort of national sacrifice, he cannot expect anyone to believe the stakes are really high.
Bush has not asked the American public to sacrifice for the war in Iraq. If he had, I doubt it would have taken this long for the American Public to become fed up with it. This disorganized, disjointed conflict, in which our young men and women are sent to die in a meatgrinder of RPG's and Roadside Bombs, has been a disaster from it's inception.
And despite claims to the contrary, the shortage in available Guard Units due to the war, has no doubt had an impact on the ability to rapidly respond the victims of Katrina. Would anyone argue that we are one disaster away from a tragedy of ungodly proportions. This administration is an undeclared National Disaster. We put a drunken Frat Boy in the highest office in the land, fronted and propped up by an old boy network and a political hack in Karl Rove, and NOW... NOW with thousands dead in Iraq, New Orleans wiped off the map,fiscal problems that would make The Lemon Drop Kid blush, political scandals ranging from Gay Hookers in the Press Room to Outing CIA agents for revenge, only NOW do we start looking at the five year train wreck and international embarrassment that this administration is...
It is beyond belief to me, that an entire Nation, a nation with the backbone of heroes, could be so cowed by 9/11, that we allowed this man to waltz back into the White House on an Agenda of "Fear All the Time." That Bush is President for three more years, means that the opportunities to continue to squander this nations assets, destroy our international esteem, and generally continue to FUBAR everything in sight, is a reality that we all must face, and all must take responsibility for. My ONLY hope is that in the Mid Term elections, The American people wake up and realize that the only way to apply some sanity to an America on the brink, is to throw those out, Republican and Democrat, who have collaborated with this government. Then there is a long path to getting our house back in order, and I am afraid it will be a few more years yet, before we can start the real cleaning...
In the mean time, The President continues his "vacation," while 10's of thousands of Americans in Louisiana and Alabama wonder how they are going to live now that they have no job or place to live....
That headline heralds the latest bit of drivel to spill from the keyboard of Rob, "Say Anything," Port, (I think he takes his name way too literally.)
The post goes on to excerpt a bunch of polls that:
a.) Document the obvious... (I don't think anyone on the Left believes leaving Iraq will end Terrorism. HELLO, 9/11 happened BEFORE Iraq, and had NOTHING to do with Iraq.)
b.) That only about 39% of Americans believe we should immediately pull out of Iraq. (Ahem... Americans are inherently decent people, we FUBARED Iraq, we can't leave it FUBARED.)
c.) That 3% more Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Cindy Sheehan, than have a favorable one. (Is Cindy running for office and someone forgot to tell me?)
Now, I have read the post about six times now, and other than a LAME attempt to convince the already convinced (Wizbang Readers), that Americans somehow support the war and hate Cindy Sheehan, I frankly don't get it...
With nearly 60% of Americans seeing Iraq as a mistake, and 56% of Americans expressing disapproval of the President's job performance, it does not come as a surprise that Bush is doing the rah rah routine over Iraq.
Likewise it is no surprise that the Conservaphere continues to try and spin positives out of what obviously has become a disaster. The war has become a boat anchor around the President's neck, and it is only getting worse. Rather than face reality and admit that the policy is a failure, the Right Wingers are so upset that they are attacking each other... And these are people who are always talking about "hate."
It has become obvious over the last week that Cindy is having an impact. The Spin, and spin of the spin continues on the Right, trying to discredit her. Roughnecks show up in Crawford in an attempt to intimidate her, and yet her message only grows more compelling as day after day, the "Last Throes," in Iraq seem to grow longer.
Time to do a reality check guys. Cindy is not going away. Iraq is not going to suddenly get better, and the truth about what led to the war is finding resonance with more and more Americans. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
I am not real big on conspiracy theories, and my BS meter is about as fine tuned as they come. But the stuff in the above report, and this one, are enough to scare the bejeezus out of me.
We have some very interesting people running our country right now, and I have suspected for some time that Bush isn't really the one doing the running... What they are doing is not exactly new. I have pointed out in recent posts that the resentment for US foreign policy and meddling is high in some parts of Latin America, and with just cause. What is going on right now is nothing but a return to and re-emphasis on American Imperialism. What is different is that these guys are arrogant about it, while in the past we always went about it on the QT.
Islamic terrorist have walked into the cave of a sleeping bear, woke him up and pissed him off, and given him an excuse to slap the living shit out of them, while at the same time taking their honey and anyone else's honey that they covet. In the interim, these people have made living in our country infinitely more dangerous. Everyone wants to take down the bear. In the process they have also made it a more uncomfortable place for every American who steps off the shores of the U.S.. Those who have come to and will come to hate America will not distinguish between it's leaders and it's citizens, when it comes to exacting revenge.
It has been said before but merits saying again. After 9/11, America had the sympathy and support of most of the world. That we sought justice in Afghanistan was seen as an indisputable right. On that day and for sometime afterward, Almost everyone was an American. But the people behind the Neocon Agenda sought to capitalize on that tragedy to push their agenda. The war in Iraq was a turning point for us as a state and an empire. It was the moment when we went from benevolent to BULLY, and it persists...
That these plans existed previous to 9/11 are not up for debate. Some on the conservative side would argue on the relative merits or degrees of "wrong," in these plans. Most of us, at least those among us NOT drinking the Kool Aid would argue that whatever the merits, we were lied to, and that in and of itself makes them suspicious.
CINDY SHEEHAN couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing. On this Aug. 6 the president was no less determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 marine reservists had been killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio address that morning made no mention of Iraq. Once again Mr. Bush was in his bubble, ensuring that he wouldn't see Ms. Sheehan coming. So it goes with a president who hasn't foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001.
When these setbacks happen in Iraq itself, the administration punts. But when they happen at home, there's a game plan. Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam.
The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam resumes: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as "courageous" and "a true American hero" for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.
True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents, there's nothing about it that's real."
But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.
As usual Rich pulls no punches...
Read it all. It demonstrates an all to clear pattern of abuse on the part of this Administration, abuse of power, abuse of the truth, abuse of the trust of the American Public. It also demonstrates further the sense of invulnerability that this administration feels. And rightfully so. They have successfully used the same tactic again and again and again...
But as Rich says:
When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.
The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Cindy Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much of the public has not.
this time the vast majority of the American Public is NOT buying it. The very principle of repeating something often enough until it becomes truth, has backfired. The American Public has been hearing about Administration lies and manipulation for years now, and the idea is finaly starting to sink in...
The majority of Americans feel compassion for Cindy Sheehan. While her protractors are vocal, the majority see her as a Mother grieving over the loss of a son, who is entitled to her moment with the President. His fundraising, vacationing and grandstanding with Lance Armstrong have come across as callous and heartless, at the very moment when he needs to be explaining some things not only to Sheehan, but to the whole nation. Bush ran the first time as a Straight Talk candidate. Those of us who watched the campaign from the Left, never bought this in the first place, but a lot of people did. His failure to provide Americans with a straight answer on the debacle in Iraq has eroded American confidence in him, and his administration. It does not help his case when his Generals are saying one thing, His SecDef another and Vice President something entirely different altogether.
Recent poll numbers more than anything, demonstrate a lack of confidence on the part of the American Public in ANYTHING having to do with Iraq, and rightfully so...
The attacks on Sheehan have only made the matter worse. I predict that Bush will eventually meet with Sheehan, calls to do so from within his own party have made this a nearly forgone conclusion. The delays at this point are more than likely based on Karl Rove trying to determine the best way to spin a lose/lose situation for Bush.
Welcome to Daou Report readers. Please feel free to comment on the post that the Daou Report linked to, as well as anything else you find interesting on ISOU.
And if you want to read two more interesting viewpoints on the effects of the war in Iraq on Bush's legacy. Professor Bainbridge and Kevin Drum have two excellent pieces on the subject. It is heartening to see Conservatives like Bainbridge waking up to the reality of this folly.
I found these two comments, particularly compelling:
The trouble with Bush's justification for the war is that it
uses American troops as fly paper. Send US troops over to Iraq, where
they'll attract all the terrorists, who otherwise would have come here,
and whom we'll then kill. This theory has proven fallacious. The first
problem is that the American people are unwilling to let their soldiers
be used as fly paper. If Iraq has proven anything, it has confirmed for
me the validity of the Powell Doctrine.
and
The second problem is that the fly paper strategy
seems to be radicalizing our foes even more. For every fly that gets
caught, it seems as though 10 more spring up. This should hardly come
as a surprise to anybody who has watched Israel pursue military
solutions to its terrorist problems, after all. Does anybody really
think Israel's military actions have left Hezbollah or Hamas with fewer
foot soldiers? To the contrary, the London bombing suggests to me that
it is only a matter of time before the jihadists strike in the US
again, even though our troops remain hung out as fly paper in the
Augean Stables of Iraq. {Update: The news
that Scotland Yard foiled a gas attack on the House of Commons, for
which the Yard deserves mega-kudos, doesn't change my mind. As the
climax of Tom Clancy's novel Debt of Honor suggests (and I still wonder of that inspired 9/11), the terrorists only need to win once. Conversely, the latest news
about that rocket attack on a US Navy ship in Jordan seems to confirm
my concerns: "The Abdullah Azzam Brigades -- an al-Qaida-linked group
that claimed responsibility for the bombings which killed at least 64
people at Sharm el-Sheik in July and 34 people at two other Egyptian
resorts last October -- said in an Internet statement that its fighters
had fired the Katyushas, bolstering concerns that Islamic extremists
had opened a new front in the region." Indeed, the NYT reports
that: "The possible involvement of Iraqis and the military-style attack
have raised fears that militants linked to Iraq's insurgency may be
operating on Jordanian soil."}
I have to admit, I often wonder what some Conservatives out there are smoking, that they can't see the obvious. I am convinced that they do see it. If 2000 was a heady experience for Conservatives who had suffered through eight years of Bill Clinton, despite aggressive attempts to get rid of him at any cost, then 2004, after surviving numerous mini scandals and debunking Rathergate, must have been the greatest of highs.
That Republicans managed to take healthy majorities in both Houses, and seemed to dominate the U.S. political agenda, must have given Conservatives a sense of invulnerability. But the cracks have been showing in the armor for some time now, and it has taken "Rovian," measures to keep the fact of the Emperors Nakedness from the American Public. It must be painful in the extreme to see those cracks appearing, and know that not only did they make a monumental mistake, but that all they worked so hard for is based on a foundation of lies, deception and corruption.
Admittedly, the Downing Street Memos, in and of themselves might have been compelling to those who already suspected the truth, but they were not "smoking gun," enough to convince the majority of the faithful. This is especially true of those who invested so heavily in what they felt was a new Conservative Revolution. They have been rewarded by stark failures on the part of the Administration to propel that Revolution forward, and have instead seen it get bogged down in a morass of ineptitude. For a time, they were able to defend against this ineptitude by making the issue "Liberal Hate of Bush," rather than accepting the realities of consistent and repeated failure by the Administration to accomplish much of anything, except successfully defending itself against charge after charge. Now, with more and more Conservatives beginning to acknowledge the obvious, the spin begins to ring hollow, even for those who once believed it.
I honestly don't see anything "inappropriate" about it. Cindy accuses the President of "lying" about several of the reasons for war in Iraq, so maybe these television stations are worried about giving air time to somebody calling the President a liar when its clear to most of us with common sense that he didn't lie about Iraq. But that's just a guess.
Were it up to me, I'd have let the ad run. Most Americans don't agree with the idea that the President "lied" about the WMD's and know that Saddam had plenty of ties to al Qaeda, though not to the 9/11 attacks specifically. This is why Americans re-elected the President in the face of these accusations of lying. Putting Cindy Sheehan up to repeat these accusations again is only going to do more harm to her causes than it would to the cause of the President.
Rob's argument is deeply flawed... First off, recent polls indicate that as many as 51% of Americans feel the American Public was deceived about Iraq. With some polls nearing 60%. So the argument that "Most Americans believe that the President did not lie is intellectually and morally dishonest.
The Left has often made this spin easier, by failing to stay on message, and by failing to present a clear alternative. The Left has also been guilty of wimping out at key times. Those who have shown strength, have been attacked as members of the "Loony Left." Rove has been able to successfully exploit this time and time again by pointing out the inconsistency of the Left's message, while hammering away on the Administration's, even in those cases where it was obvious that the Administration message was a nefarious one. Rove and his Conservative Disciples have been Masters of hammering away on a message until it BECOMES truth, even when it is clear to any thinking person that the message lacks logic.
9/11 was a catharsis for America. Karl Rove and the Administration have shamelessly taken advantage of this to smear Liberals, out a CIA agent in an act of revenge, and execute a disastrous and unjustified war. This administration's legacy will be based on Post 9/11. With information coming to light almost daily on how badly they bungled the so called "War on Terror," and with little else to point to as accomplishments, Bush's legacy will likely suffer. More significantly, he may join Nixon as a President corrupted by his own sense of infallibility.
Further TRUTH comes to light on the road to Iraq and War!
It is going to be interesting as HELL to see how the right spins this, the latest barrage of evidence to support the idea that the American Public and possibly even Colin Powell were bullshitted into believing war in Iraq was justified.
Powell's speech, delivered on
February 5, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S.
intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell's
presentation initially came from a document he described as "sort of a
Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House.
"(Powell)
came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers,
and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations
according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'" Wilkerson
says in the program. "It was anything but an intelligence document. It
was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from
which you could pick and choose."
Wilkerson and Powell spent four
days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George
Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the
presentation, Wilkerson says.
"There was no way the Secretary of
State was going to read off a script about serious matters of
intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically
un-sourced," Wilkerson says.
In one dramatic accusation in his
speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs
mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.
"In
fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was
given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the
Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay,
who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall
of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed
by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."
After
searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began
e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one
point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about
mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.
"George actually
did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell
you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological
weapons,'" Wilkerson says in the documentary. "This was the third or
fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and
Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be
sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you're telling
the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that?
It's difficult to maintain any warm feelings."
The whole thing just reeks, stinks to high heaven, and it is beyond the pale to me that anyone can continue to justify this war. I believe very seriously, that the only way some Right Wingers will acknowledge that this war was based on unadulterated lies and deceptions, is if Bush wakes up one day and just says, "Sorry folks, the guy tried to kill my Daddy. It's a Texas thing, I had to get some payback. And we all know that Saddam was a loony so who cares why we went to war. We did, and in the end, the ends justify the means." And even if he did, I still think some people on the right would try to spin it.
You go to war when you have to. You weigh the dangers and you make a decision based on the imminent threat to the United States. It is clear to all but a rabid Bush Supporter at this point, that no such threat existed, and that the administration not only knew it, but sought to invent one.
O'DONNELL: "And, finally, the president has made the case that winning the war in Iraq is central to winning the war on terror and making sure that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda cannot take harm the United States. Is that true, if we win there, will that help?"
SCHEUER: "No, ma'am. The war in Iraq has broken the back of our counterterrorism effort. I'm not an expert on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but the invasion of Iraq has made sure this war will last decades ahead and it has transferred bin Laden and al Qaeda from being man and an organization into being a philosophy and a movement. We've really made sure that the war against us is going to be a long and very bloody one. Iraq was an absolutely disastrous decision."
Read the whole thing, and watch the video. Of course our Brothers on the Right will just say that this is Left Wing Propaganda, Treason and Harmful to the moral of our troops.
Well let me tell you something. It just might be, because my moral is harmed every time I see another body count from Iraq. My moral is harmed every time I hear about the number of dead Iraqis. My moral is harmed every time I hear about another incidence of terrorism in Iraq. Hell my moral is harmed by knowing that Iraq has become not only a rallying point for global terrorism, but also a training ground that is 100 times more effective than Afghanistan. You see in Afghanistan, the terrorist did not get a chance to practice on the best of our technology and people. In Afghanistan they did not get a laboratory on U.S. Tactics. In Afghanistan they simply LOST...
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
Amen...
Want more proof of liberal's hatred guiding their thoughts? Try and figure out how this article relates to the "lies" that OIF is based on. Personally, I'm baffled.
But he is right about one thing. Hatred pretty much describes my feelings about stupidity and political blindness. The post I made yesterday referred to a number of points. One (And I will keep this short to keep Chris' attention), is that as previously stated, the Iraq war was planned and pre-determined well before any effort was made to "justify," the war. Two, despite the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, and there appears to be significant evidence that it could have been stopped, had anyone in the administration been paying attention to the threat, Conservatives continue to blame it on Clinton, Liberals, anyone but the people most responsible for it...
I have ratcheted back my blogging lately, mainly because it is just ridiculous dealing with this crap. Disagree, hate me for being a Liberal, whatever. The chickens are coming home to roost, and history will be the judge as to who is right or wrong. Most blogs are preaching to their choirs, so I am sure Chris' audience is buying his spiel. But the Truth is out there.... I am confident that it will all come to light.
Oh, and as an asside, either Liberals are the only ones taking polls these days, or a significant numbers of Conservatives have stopped drinking the Kool Aid.
State Department experts warned CENTCOM before Iraq war about lack of plans forpost-war Iraq security
Planning for post-Saddam regime change began as early as October 2001
Washington, D.C., August 17, 2005:
Newly declassified State Department documents show that government experts warned the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in early 2003 about "serious planning gaps for post-conflict public security and humanitarian assistance," well before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.
In a February 7, 2003, memo to Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky, three senior Department officials noted CENTCOM's "focus on its primary military objectives and its reluctance to take on 'policing' roles," but warned that "a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally." The memo adds "We have raised these issues with top CENTCOM officials."
By contrast, a December 2003 report to Congress, also released by the State Department, offers a relatively rosy picture of the security situation, saying U.S. forces are "increasingly successful in preventing planned hostile attacks; and in capturing former regime loyalists, would-be terrorists and planners; and seizing weapons caches." The document acknowledges that "Challenges remain."
Since then, 1,393 U.S. military fatalities have been recorded in Iraq, including two on the day the report went to Congress.
The new documents, released this month to the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act, also provide more evidence on when the Bush administration began planning for regime change in Iraq -- as early as October 2001.
Meanwhile, in Iraq.....
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi police arrested four people in connection with a string of car bombings Wednesday morning that killed at least 43 people and wounded 88 in central Baghdad, the Transportation Ministry said.
The blasts came as transitional governmental officials worked to complete a new constitution, which lawmakers hope will help produce stability in the volatile country.
The attacks began about 7:45 a.m. (11:45 p.m. ET), when a car bomb exploded outside of the al-Nahda bus terminal, police said. A second car bomb exploded about 10 minutes later.
Casualties were rushed to the al-Kindi Hospital, where a third explosion was reported a short time later.
Video from the scene showed the smoldering wreckage of a vehicle near two buses, but black smoke obscured much of the view. Iraqi police said 22 vehicles were damaged.
While some conservative bloggers blow sunshine up our ass... which is in and of itself amazing, considering that their own heads are up their asses. You see to them, it's all about Cindy Sheehan, the outrage of it all. Too bad they dont feel the same outrage about the bullshit that lead to Cindy being in Texas huh?
Wait NO, it was Clinton's fault!!! Everything was Clinton's fault. 9/11 was Clinton's fault... Let's just ignore the fact that it happened on Bush's watch, and that evidence has now been presented that 9/11 could have been stopped.
I agree in principle that mainstream Muslims need to continue to work to eliminate extremism from their ranks, and to educate their youth on the evil of this philosophy. We need to do more to encourage them to do so. This type of push back, only serves to reinforce the arguments of those who would argue, "See, they hate you. Nothing you do is going to change their mind."
We need to start a dialogue with progressive Muslims. We need to encourage them to speak up, and support the efforts of those who do. The inflammatory rhetoric from some quarters about Islam only serves to push the young and impressionable, into the arms of the Terrorist.
When I was a young man, I remember the recruitment techniques of street gangs like the Crips and Bloods. What they offered was a rhetoric based on "Us vs. Them," and a sense of belonging. This is what we are fighting against, and until we offer young Muslims an alternative to that, a sense of belonging... Islamic Terrorism will continue to be attractive.
Think of the positive effect if more non Muslim Americans simply reached out to the Muslim Community, tried to include them, broke down some of the barriers which currently exist, and made them feel like Americans, instead of Muslim Americans.
As for the Right Wing Rhetoric, I will take it a bit more seriously when the Right spends as much energy condemning Right Wing hate groups, including those who bomb Abortion Clinics and disparage Gays and Lesbians. I will also be impressed with they tone down their rhetoric and match their rhetoric about caring for the people of Iraq, by demonstrating some compassion and soladarity with Muslims right here in the U.S., who are as much a victim of Islamic Terrorism as non Muslims are.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Two Yemeni men say they were held in solitary confinement in secret, underground U.S. detention facilities in an unknown country and interrogated by masked men for more than 18 months without being charged or allowed any contact with the outside world, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
The report appeared to confirm long-standing allegations that the United States has held "secret detainees" in its war on terror, according to Amnesty and human rights lawyers.
"We fear that what we have heard from these two men is just one small part of the much broader picture of U.S. secret detentions around the world," said Sharon Critoph, a researcher at Amnesty International who interviewed the men in Yemen.
In its report, Amnesty urged the United States to provide details about these and other prisoners.
"The U.S. authorities must disclose the identities of all people who are being held in secret, where they're being held, and open these places up to international scrutiny," Critoph said.
U.S. officials have previously denied allegations of secret detention facilities, saying they hold terror suspects only at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In June, U.S. officials denied a suggestion from the U.N.'s special expert on torture, Manfred Nowak, that some undeclared holding areas could include American ships cruising international waters. Others have suggested "high-value" detainees could be held secretly in Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean that the United States rents as a strategic military base.
Lawyers who represent detainees at Guantanamo have long believed that the CIA or other U.S. government agencies have used clandestine jails for terror suspects.
"The fact that there are underground CIA facilities somewhere where people are being tortured has been known for a while," said Michael Ratner of the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City.
Amnesty interviewed Salah Nasser Salim Ali and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah in a jail in Yemen in late June. The group also spoke to a Yemeni government official who said the men were being held in that country only because it was a condition of their release from U.S. custody.
Salah told the rights group that he was originally detained in Indonesia in August 2003 and then flown several days later to Jordan; Muhammad said he was detained in Jordan in October 2003 while on a trip to visit his mother.
Both men claimed they were tortured by Jordanian intelligence agents for four days and then flown to what they believe were underground jails in an unknown location.
But then you get that creepy feeling in your guy that American's do know. Just like the people living near the death camps in Nazi Germany knew... Just like the Serbians knew... Just like we all knew about what was happening in Rwanda.
But we don't want to know. What we want... Is to feel safe. What we want, is to believe the things our President tells us. We want to believe that we are the champions of Freedom around the globe. We want to believe that we are the guys in the white hats. We want to believe that wherever we go we will be met with flowers and candy. We want to believe that we are fighting on the side of right.
But it has been a long, long time since America has been purely on the side of right, that is unless you consider what is best for American Business and Political interest to be RIGHT.
I live in a region where for years, America propped up tin pan dictators and regularly overthrew constitutional governments, when it was in the best interest of American big business. Nothing we do today in the War on Terror is going to surprise me.
Our proud black ops warriors have been involved in torture and dirty tricks for years.
What is sad is that in the past, Americans could claim ignorance of some of these tactics and their results. Today we are more likely to turn a blind eye, despite being aware, because we have been fed four years of FEAR by our current administration. Mind Numbing, Nationalist Fear... A fear that almost any amount of evil is insignificant when compared with the possible consequences of one terrorist escaping.
Those of us on the left who question this policy, and the fallacy that created it, are often labeled terrorist supporters, traitors and worse. Our patriotism is called into question, and we are labeled. Well the greatest form of Patriotism is dissent, belief in the constitution, and the ideals of our Founding Fathers, and few would suggest that our Founding Fathers would have supported the kind of blatant disregard for our constitution as practiced under this administration, nor can I believe that they would support torture or the overthrow of sovereign governments as a preemptive measure...
How Far we have come... And yet looking back over the last 50 years, we really haven't come that far at all, have we.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Two Yemeni men say they were held in solitary confinement in secret, underground U.S. detention facilities in an unknown country and interrogated by masked men for more than 18 months without being charged or allowed any contact with the outside world, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
The report appeared to confirm long-standing allegations that the United States has held "secret detainees" in its war on terror, according to Amnesty and human rights lawyers.
"We fear that what we have heard from these two men is just one small part of the much broader picture of U.S. secret detentions around the world," said Sharon Critoph, a researcher at Amnesty International who interviewed the men in Yemen.
In its report, Amnesty urged the United States to provide details about these and other prisoners.
"The U.S. authorities must disclose the identities of all people who are being held in secret, where they're being held, and open these places up to international scrutiny," Critoph said.
U.S. officials have previously denied allegations of secret detention facilities, saying they hold terror suspects only at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In June, U.S. officials denied a suggestion from the U.N.'s special expert on torture, Manfred Nowak, that some undeclared holding areas could include American ships cruising international waters. Others have suggested "high-value" detainees could be held secretly in Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean that the United States rents as a strategic military base.
Lawyers who represent detainees at Guantanamo have long believed that the CIA or other U.S. government agencies have used clandestine jails for terror suspects.
"The fact that there are underground CIA facilities somewhere where people are being tortured has been known for a while," said Michael Ratner of the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City.
Amnesty interviewed Salah Nasser Salim Ali and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah in a jail in Yemen in late June. The group also spoke to a Yemeni government official who said the men were being held in that country only because it was a condition of their release from U.S. custody.
Salah told the rights group that he was originally detained in Indonesia in August 2003 and then flown several days later to Jordan; Muhammad said he was detained in Jordan in October 2003 while on a trip to visit his mother.
Both men claimed they were tortured by Jordanian intelligence agents for four days and then flown to what they believe were underground jails in an unknown location.
But then you get that creepy feeling in your guy that American's do know. Just like the people living near the death camps in Nazi Germany knew... Just like the Serbians knew... Just like we all knew about what was happening in Rwanda.
But we don't want to know. What we want... Is to feel safe. What we want, is to believe the things our President tells us. We want to believe that we are the champions of Freedom around the globe. We want to believe that we are the guys in the white hats. We want to believe that wherever we go we will be met with flowers and candy. We want to believe that we are fighting on the side of right.
But it has been a long, long time since America has been purely on the side of right, that is unless you consider what is best for American Business and Political interest to be RIGHT.
I live in a region where for years, America propped up tin pan dictators and regularly overthrew constitutional governments, when it was in the best interest of American big business. Nothing we do today in the War on Terror is going to surprise me.
Our proud black ops warriors have been involved in torture and dirty tricks for years.
What is sad is that in the past, Americans could claim ignorance of some of these tactics and their results. Today we are more likely to turn a blind eye, despite being aware, because we have been fed four years of FEAR by our current administration. Mind Numbing, Nationalist Fear... A fear that almost any amount of evil is insignificant when compared with the possible consequences of one terrorist escaping.
Those of us on the left who question this policy, and the fallacy that created it, are often labeled terrorist supporters, traitors and worse. Our patriotism is called into question, and we are labeled. Well the greatest form of Patriotism is dissent, belief in the constitution, and the ideals of our Founding Fathers, and few would suggest that our Founding Fathers would have supported the kind of blatant disregard for our constitution as practiced under this administration, nor can I believe that they would support torture or the overthrow of sovereign governments as a preemptive measure...
How Far we have come... And yet looking back over the last 50 years, we really haven't come that far at all, have we.
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.
Nuns pray over the bodies of four American sisters killed by the military in El Salvador in 1980