caught over on today's papers:
Also, the papers play up the U.S. embassy saying, "We have made clear to the Iraqi government there must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of Iraqi Security Forces, facilities or ministries." Which is very nice and very misleading. The reality seems to be that the U.S. long ago acceded to such control.
"We face a demographic tsunami" that "will never recede," David Walker tells a group of reporters. He runs through a long list of fiscal challenges, led by the imminent retirement of the baby boomers, whose promised Medicare and Social Security benefits will swamp the federal budget in coming decades.
The breakfast conversation remains somber for most of an hour. Then one reporter smiles and asks, "Aren't you depressed in the morning?"
Sadly, it's no laughing matter. To hear Walker, the nation's top auditor, tell it, the United States can be likened to Rome before the fall of the empire. Its financial condition is "worse than advertised," he says. It has a "broken business model." It faces deficits in its budget, its balance of payments, its savings — and its leadership.
Walker's not the only one saying it. As Congress and the White House struggle to trim up to $50 billion from the federal budget over five years — just 3% of the $1.6 trillion in deficits projected for that period — budget experts say the nation soon could face its worst fiscal crisis since at least 1983, when Social Security bordered on bankruptcy.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-11-14-fiscal-hurricane-cover_x.htm#
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Is President Bush out of his cotton-picking mind? Samuel Alito supported a strip-search of a 10-year-old girl. He opposed the family medical leave act. He supported requiring a husband be informed before a women may get an abortion. He allowed discrimination based on race and disabilities. This man cannot possibly be the best possible candidate for the Supreme Court.
(written by Alice Haugen, Iowa City.)
The Rev. Pat Robertson warned the residents of Dover, Pa., that they have angered God by voting intelligent-design proponents off the local school board. Since intelligent design does not claim God as the designer, why would God be angered? Robertson has confirmed what many suspected. Intelligent design is simply creationism in disguise.
-Laurie Howland, West Des Moines.
attribution
US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon in last year's offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the US has said.--source"It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants," spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC - though not against civilians, he said.
The US had earlier said the substance - which can cause burning of the flesh - had been used only for illumination.
The R's will now say DUers don't support our troops and applaud when Blackwater contractors are Bar-B-Que'd . Then the Rush Limballs of the world will chime in saying same.yup. back when the italians were pissed off about it, good ol' rummy was washing it as white as possible. no pun intended. but this thing needs to be exposed and stopped.
The atrocities of the Blackwater guys and the use of WP in Fallujah go hand in hand with guerilla war just as in Vietnam. Occupation spawns this.
With "Hama Rules", which means no rules at all as Thomas Friedman has shown us in From Beirut to Jerusalem, playing to the Arab world media, which showed the Blackwater atrocity, is now forcing them to show the Fallujah pictures. This is what happens when the US military 'takes the gloves off'.
Bush's role in creating this war in Iraq with phoney pretexts and no end in sight, the current Republican hijacking of the Democratic Levin amendment today as proof of that -- it still leaves no exit strategy or timetable-- means that the R's will claim to be supporting the troops while keeping them in place for more losses in a war whose purpose is STILL ill-defined.
Are they there to secure the oilfields ? There to 'promote democracy', whatever that means in a region content to vote in Islamic theocracies ? There on a military holiday so to speak in order to test new weapons and strategies ? WTF are they there for ? Bush's annual press conferences never seem to get this answered.
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.surprise surprise
There are "allegedly" bad headlines in the torture stories. For example, the Post: "TORTURE ALLEGED AFTER U.S.-LED RAID UNCOVERS IRAQI-RUN PRISON." As NYT notes, "An Interior Ministry statement said flatly that torture had occurred." So, what's it take to move something from an allegation to an apparent fact?
One final point on the torture coverage: The papers mention that there have long been "rumors" about torture by the new Iraqi government. What there has also been is scant coverage of the torture that's been documented. Human Rights Watch released a report early this year titled "Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody." Judging from a quickie Nexis search, of the majors only the WP gave it more than wire copy. And then there was the time six months before that when GIs witnessed and photographed Iraqi police torturing prisoners. The Oregonian reported the story, and the national papers let it fly by. The guy the Oregonian suggested was behind the abuse: the then-head of the Interior Ministry.
Sen. Chuck Grassley voted last week against a proposal to boost the fiscal 2006 budget for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program from $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion. Iowa currently has 180,426 households with unpaid energy bills, an average of 1,822 households per county.
MidAmerican Energy currently charges almost double the rate for natural gas from a year ago.
Grassley's attempt to balance the federal budget on the backs of the poor, disabled and geriatric is pathetic. He supports pouring $2 billion a week into the rat hole called Iraq, while low-income Iowans freeze in their homes. Grassley probably keeps his sows warmer than some of these people will be this winter.
-David Brewbaker, Indianola.
David Yepsen ("Gingrich Preaches Radical Reconstruction of GOP," Nov. 3) stated Newt Gingrich was the architect of the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994.attribution
Yepsen failed to mention that Gingrich used family values and how the Republicans were morally superior to the Democrats.
Gingrich is a hypocrite. Gingrich served his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital with ovarian cancer.
His second wife of 19 years was informed over the telephone that Newt wanted a divorce. Newt then married a young staffer 23 years his junior.
I ask, are these family values, compassionate conservatism or just plain hypocrisy?
-Steve Stanley, Earlham.
"It is virtually certain that on Jan. 1, 2006, some dual eligibles will not be receiving prescription drug coverage under [Medicare]," the lawsuit said. "There is no way to know with certainty how many will fall through the cracks this way. However, even if the [current] enrollment process captures 97% of all dual eligibles, more than 180,000 will not be enrolled."
--source
“We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since (Operation) Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs,” Tenet said in an agency report to Congress Feb. 7, 2001. “Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating… Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the U.S. to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.”
so much for that lie. what's your next lie gonna be georgie? that white is black again?
"The country can't get past what has happened or move forward until we can get the truth on the table, deal with it and move on."
--Josh Marshall, attribution
One was that the Senate intel report exonerated the administration of any effort to mislead the American people over Iraq. Wrong. They specifically did not look at that question.
He also said the Silbermann/Robb Commission concluded the same thing. Wrong. They too were specifically not authorized to examine that question.
He said the British Butler Report said the same thing. First of all, who cares what a Report written to cover Tony Blair said? Second of all, it said no such thing.
He said the Duelfer Report said Saddam "was trying to reconstitute his weapons programs." That is at best a highly, highly misleading description of the report.
He said that Saddam "had supported terrrorists, had terrorists operating out of his country." There are so many different lies and canards potentially underlying this claim it's hard to know where to start. But again, wrong. None of the purported evidence for this claim has ever stood up.
Bully for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid ("Democrats Force Senate Into Rare Closed Session," Nov. 2). It is high time the minority party exercised some intestinal fortitude with regard to our adventure in Iraq. Forcing the Senate into closed session was an excellent first salvo.
Now the focus ought to be on what convinced the Bush administration to go to war that the previous administration and our allies did not see when looking at the same flawed intelligence. Inquiring minds still want to know, and Senator Reid has artfully posed the question.
-Jeff Clothier, Colfax.
"This Drug Benefit Brought to You By…": Before TP went to www.medicare.gov he accidentally typed in www.medicare.org. This took him to a site purporting to be "A Resource for Medicare Information," with an official-looking seal—featuring a bald eagle—at the top. He clicked on the "Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit" link and was taken to … www.gop.com. Needless to say, TP found no information about the drug benefit. Instead, he was invited to sign a petition in favor of Judge Alito and to read about the strong and valuable leadership of Sen. Rick Santorum.
my my my, those republicons never tire do they.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-conserve13nov13,0,4940740,full.storyThe LAT's investigation, the first of four parts, shows how conservatorship is virtually unregulated in California. Most conservators are friends or family members of the elderly charge, but the 15 percent who are professionals typically take control with startling swiftness. About half the time, an elderly person loses control of his life and assets in emergency court hearings lasting just a few hours. In 90 percent of these hearings, the court never bothers to interview the elderly person. The professionals who become conservators have the power of attorneys and accountants, yet never have to pass licensing exams. Anyone with a college degree and $385 for a state registration fee can get in the business. When the elderly charge fights his conservator in court, he must pay both his own legal fees and those of his conservator.
It is the big daddy who makes the rules and doesn't tell you what they are and requires that you live your life by them and as means to his end, and judges you by them and bestows rewards or imposes punishment on you when you die, except you really don't die, according to whether he likes you or not content.
shit, you cant unquote out of this damn GUI on blogger. i hate their shit. but if that's what narnia is really all about, i think i wanna take a gander at it.
Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, in a Page One WP fact-check, note that the administration's defense—that Congress saw the same intelligence as the White House before the war and that independent commissions have determined the intelligence to have been represented accurately—is not quite true.(thanks to today's papers for their patriotic service to America)
After the last election I made the statement that mass education was not working in America. Well I was wrong. President Bush's approval rating is down to 34 percent, Vice President Dick Cheney's is down to 19 percent. The public can be educated — it just takes time.attribution
—William Tempelmeyer, retired special education teacher, Marshalltown.
Why do President Bush and Vice President Cheney continue to fight Sen. John McCain's amendment to codify what is the armed forces' official stance on torture?attribution
This is from the White House's official statement on the matter: "The administration strongly opposes such amendments, which would interfere with the protection of Americans from terrorism by diverting resources from the war to answer unnecessary or duplicative inquiry or by restricting the president's ability to conduct the war effectively under existing law."
Set aside the fact that torture has been shown to be ineffective. Ignore the fact that we condemn such behavior in other countries (such as Saddam's Iraq), or that the Army's own guide to conduct explicitly forbids such behavior.
Ask yourself this question: Why is President Bush willing to exercise the first veto of his two terms in office to allow torture? And then ask yourself this: If the president is successful, are you still proud to be an American citizen?
—-Jeff Dickey-Chasins, Grinnell.
Regarding the recent Nov. 5 article, "Cheney Says Exempt CIA From Suspect Torture Ban": The truly interesting, below-the-surface part of this article is not that Vice President Cheney wants to continue ignoring the Geneva Convention rules on the treatment of prisoners of war. That is to be expected from this crowd.
The interesting part is that someone "leaked" what Cheney said at a weekly private meeting of Republican senators.
This has been the most secretive and behind-the-scenes administration for many years. The fact that the dike is cracking and that the veil of secrecy and the "house of cards" is coming down is the real headline.
It's due time.
—Rodger Routh, Ankeny.
A former top official in the Bush administration is suggesting that a White House memo outlining the need for hundreds of thousands of troops for the Iraq invasion was kept from the president. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell during President Bush's first term, said in a November 7 speech that the National Security Council had prepared a pre-war memo recommending that hundreds of thousands of troops and other security personnel were needed. “I don't know if the president saw it,” Wilkerson told the audience of military officers and international lawyers, who had gathered at the military for a conference on on international humanitarian law. In response to a follow-up question after his speech, Wilkerson, a retired U.S. army colonel, said he believed that then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice or her deputy, Stephen Hadley, had blocked the memo, but he acknowledged that he had no clear evidence.--source
A proposal to end the long-standing practice of veterans groups addressing a joint session of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees is an insult to all who have fought, sacrificed and died to defend the Constitution, according to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV). And in a strongly worded letter to House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), the DAV has urged him to continue the joint hearings as an invaluable tool in formulating public policy toward America's veterans.
Chairman Buyer recently announced that veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees.
"The tradition of legislative presentations by veterans service organizations dates back to at least the 1950s. And the timing of this announcement---just before Veterans Day---could not have been worse," said DAV National Commander Paul W. Jackson.
"You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium and I say, 'Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds,' " O'Reilly said Tuesday on his radio show as San Franciscans were approving the two measures. Perhaps, he didn't realize that he'd be speaking mostly to foreign tourists and suburbanites if he were standing in Union Square.
"Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead," O'Reilly went on. "And if al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - Faced with a bleak public mood about Iraq and stung by Democratic accusations that he led the nation into war on false pretenses, President Bush is beginning a new effort to shore up his credibility and cast his critics as hypocrites.
"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."
"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said.
Today, 36 percent of Americans approve and 53 percent disapprove of the job Bush is doing as president. For comparison, two weeks ago 41 percent said they approved and 51 percent disapproved, and at the beginning of his second term 50 percent approved and 40 percent disapproved (January 25-26).
The White House went on the offensive in the debate over the Iraq war yesterday, insisting that U.S. intelligence had compiled a "very strong case" that Saddam Hussein harbored banned weapons and accusing congressional critics of hypocrisy because many of them voted for force three years ago.--WaPo
The NYT says that in Jordan, "the nation grew defiant Thursday." Along with other papers, the Times describes protesters in the streets of Amman vowing to stand by their government and the fight against terrorism. And exactly how many people were engaged in this mass show of defiance? "About 300 residents."from today's papers.
The government is looking to save money for hurricane relief, among other things. Apparently it has settled on upping charges on student loans along with other fees.
If a Democrat were president with a Democratic Congress, this would be called a tax increase for out-of-control government spending. But since both are Republican-controlled, it is called "fiscal responsibility."
-Eric McLuen, Des Moines.
attribution
The Marines said that, according to a witness, rebels broke into a family's home, killed two of the occupants and locked the rest in a room. The insurgents then used the house as a base to launch attacks on American and Iraqi troops, the Marines said. Unaware that civilians were in the house, Marine aircraft bombed it on Monday, reducing it to rubble.
...
"It is unknown why insurgents used this particular house, which was occupied, when there were so many homes in the area that were abandoned," Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine Division, said in a statement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/international/10iraq.html?pagewanted=all
gee, do you REALLY believe that line?
i just had the thought and it escaped me as soon as i pulled out the pen (if you will). dammit all.
i'd sure like to know why my text paragraphs are double. i like it, but still, i don't remember turning that on.
shit, i wish i could remember what the hell it was i was rememberin'. it had to do with something from years and years ago. back when i didn't have a care in the world, made a ton of money, and spent it like no tomorrow. dammit all anyway.
if it comes back, i'll update this post.
ya out there babe? here's a whisper for your ear:
come up with an agenda. a rock solid one that can even attract the centrists out there. but one that is sure to energize your base. an agenda that sets not only the goals but the time in which they are to be met. an agenda that is bold, and enough out there that some will question the feasibility of the idea. which is where you'll shine even brighter if you have the answer.
but having an agenda when the republicans don't will not only give you that edge but provide you with a foot inside that winner's circle we so desperately want. making your agenda a reality will put your other foot inside the winner's circle.
so go get 'em howard. give 'em hell!
zoundry, which is how i publish most of my posts, has a new version of their software out, and it takes a bit getting used to. more features always get me confused.
"If someone lies to me, and I believe them, then afterwards I realized they lied to me, am I not entitled to say "If I knew you'd been lying to me - or even not giving me the full story - my decision would've been different"?
--Brooklyn Michael
attribution
A leading campaign group has demanded an urgent inquiry into a report that US troops indiscriminately used a controversial incendiary weapon during the battle for Fallujah. Photographic evidence gathered from the aftermath of the battle suggests that women and children were killed by horrific burns caused by the white phosphorus shells dropped by US forces.
The Pentagon has always admitted it used phosphorus during last year's assault on the city, which US commanders said was an insurgent stronghold. But they claimed they used the brightly burning shells "very sparingly" and only to illuminate combat areas.
But the documentary Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, broadcast yesterday by the Italian state broadcaster, RAI, suggested the shells were commonly used and killed an unspecified number of civilians. Photographs obtained by RAI from the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, show the bodies of dozens of Fallujah residents whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised by the effects of the phosphorus shells. The use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets is banned by treaty.
Last night Robert Musil, director of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility, called for an investigation. He told The Independent: "When there is clear testimony that use of such weapons has done this, it demands a full investigation. From Vietnam onwards there has been a general condemnation of [the use of white phosphorus] and concern about the injuries and consequences."
--source
USA TODAY analysis of MZM-related campaign contributions shows how the company's growth and its political activities became intertwined at key moments. In more than 30 instances, donations from MZM's political action committee or company employees went to two members of the House Appropriations Committee — Cunningham and Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va. — in the days surrounding key votes or contract awards that helped MZM grow.For example, MZM's political action committee gave Cunningham $5,000 in 2003 the day before his appointment to a congressional panel negotiating the final version of the defense budget. Ten days later, the day after the House passed the final Pentagon spending bill, Wade gave Cunningham $2,000.
Both lawmakers sit on the subcommittee overseeing the Pentagon's spending and have acknowledged putting language in bills that created or expanded contracts that went to MZM.
--source
ROME (Reuters) - The U.S. military in Iraq denied a report shown on Italian state television on Tuesday saying U.S. forces used incendiary white phosphorus against civilians in a November 2004 offensive on the Iraqi town of Falluja.
It confirmed, however, that U.S. forces had dropped MK 77 firebombs -- which a documentary on Italian state-run broadcaster RAI compared to napalm -- against military targets in Iraq in March and April 2003.
--source
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. Republican lawmakers are seeking a congressional investigation into leaks of information used by The Washington Post in an article on the CIA's secret global prison system, congressional aides said on Tuesday.
--source
By BRAD PAULSEN, Mason City
The No Child Left Behind Act, Social Security, Medicare, enough nursing homes for the Americans in their golden years, homelessness, hunger, poverty, environmental concerns, decaying infrastructure, heating our homes, fuel for our cars, trucks, trains, planes, lawn mowers, snowblowers, wars on drugs, illegal immigration, hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma, homeland security, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the trade deficit, the national debt, which, is only $4.50 over $7 trillion.
The issues facing America, mentioned above, are not at all troublesome, worrisome or perplexing whatsoever.
Why? Because we Americans are very fortunate that we have in place a government in absolute complete control of the “compassionate conservatives.” The late Lawrence Welk would say, “A wonderful! A wonderful!”
Dissent of government policy is of no use; ask anyone who knew of the late Rosa Parks. Rosa was arrested and had to pay a fine for practicing the undefined art of dissent.
So stop complaining, Americans. But just as a precaution, open a Swiss bank account and learn to speak Chinese.attribution
(from kos)Italian media going full-bore on the Bush Administration. After its revelations on the subterfuge behind the Nigergate forgeries, documentary evidence of the use by US troops of phosphorus and a new formulaton of napalm [MK77] on the Sunni civilian population will be broadcast tomorrow on international satellite TV. Global coverage of the atrocity, folks.
The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."
The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl M. Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi's statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration's misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.
A White House spokeswoman said she had no immediate comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi. But Senate Republicans, put on the defensive when Democrats forced a closed session of the Senate this week to discuss the issue, have been arguing that Republicans were not alone in making prewar assertions about Iraq, illicit weapons and terrorism that have since been discredited.
--nytimes
so that's their defense? "they did it tooo"?? how infantile.
The LAT fronts an investigation of the extreme mismanagement of equipment procurement in Iraq's military. The U.S. appointed a Polish Iraqi with no weapons-buying experience who proceeded to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on no-bid contracts for shoddy materiel. The Iraqi Justice Ministry is now charging him with corruption, but his case is far from isolated: "The portrait that emerges from interviews and documents," the paper informs, "is a Defense Ministry whose members were picked [by the U.S.] with the care of choosing a pickup basketball team."
again the source for this is today's papers
"National security letters" have been around for decades, the Post reports, but since the Patriot Act became law in October 2001 their use has expanded from 300 to 30,000 per year. Such a letter can compel an institution to hand over "transaction records" on a suspect—who he called, what Web sites he visited, where he traveled, what he bought, etc. Unlike issuing a regular subpoena, issuing an NSL requires no grand jury investigation or judicial oversight, allows for the dissemination of compelled information among multiple government agencies, and prohibits the suspect from even knowing he is being investigated. Since the Patriot Act, an FBI agent need merely request authorization—with little-to-no justification—from one of five-dozen bureau supervisors. NSL-obtained information used to be destroyed when a suspect was cleared; now information on cleared suspects is permanently stored in a database.
--source
that there is no judicial oversight regarding these 'letters' goes against everything this country stands for.
