when are they going to call it?

the start of the iraqi civil war? the hate has turned religious. that's usually how civil wars start.

SAMARRA, Iraq - A large explosion heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq’s most revered Shiite shrines Wednesday, spawning mass protests and sparking reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets this week and threatened to stoke sectarian tensions.

Shiite leaders called for calm, but militants attacked Sunni mosques and a gunfight broke out between Shiite militiamen and guards at the offices of a Sunni political party in Basra. About 500 soldiers were sent to Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad to prevent clashes between Shiites and Sunnis, army Capt. Jassim al-Wahash said.

A leading Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, said 29 Sunni mosques had been attacked nationwide. He urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation “before it spins out of control.”

A government statement said several suspects had been detained in the early-morning attack on the Askariya shrine in this city about 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, and some of them “might have had been involved in carrying out the crime.”

--source

and this:

BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr blamed the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the Iraqi town of Samarra on Wednesday on Sunni Arab militants and vowed to take revenge, a spokesman for Sadr said.

"We will not only condemn and protest but we will act against those militants. If the Iraqi government does not do its job to defend the Iraqi people we are ready to do so," said Abdel Hadi al-Darajee of Sadr's position.

--source

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED MR PRESIDENT

Quote of the Day

"The bathhhouses became victims of the crisis they were so much a part of creating."
--Justin Ringold

attribution

working on my book "the.HITCHHIKER"

found this gem about south of market in the 70's. a project no longer maintained, but worthy of menion in my book because of all the memories it generated.

and lastly, a tidbit from yesterday i forgot to post

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky., Feb. 18 -- Wearing leather chaps and vests covered in military patches, a band of motorcyclists rolls from one service member's funeral to another in hopes their respectful cheers and revving engines will drown out the insults of protesters.

Calling themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, they are made up of motorcycle club members who could no longer tolerate a Kansas-based fundamentalist church demonstrating at military funerals with signs reading, "Thank God for IEDs ." The bikers shield the families from the protesters and overshadow the jeers with patriotic chants and a display of red-white-and-blue flags.

"The most important thing we can do is let families know that the nation cares," said Don Woodrick, the group's Kentucky captain. "When a total stranger gets on a motorcycle in the middle of winter and drives 300 miles to hold a flag, that makes a powerful statement."

Across the nation, Patriot Guard riders number more than 5,000, and at least 14 states are considering laws aimed specifically at the funeral protest group led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, who believes U.S. deaths in Iraq are divine punishment for a country that, he says, harbors homosexuals.

--source
i remember being in florida for bike week in daytona beach back in the 70's, and i can tell you personally, bikers and gays mix rather nicely.

HYPOCRISY ALERT

The Bush administration said that journalists can be prosecuted under current espionage laws for receiving and publishing classified information but that such a step "would raise legitimate and serious issues and would not be undertaken lightly," according to a court filing made public this week.
...
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, who first disclosed the government filing on his Web site, http://www.fas.org/sgp , said yesterday, "The idea that the government can penalize the receipt of proscribed information, and not just its unauthorized disclosure, is one that characterizes authoritarian societies, not mature democracies."

--SOURCE

ahhhhh, i KNEW there had to be a connection

The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.

--source

Letter Of The Day

this really could be a finalist for our annual award.

Have you heard they are doing a sequel to the movie “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”?

The cast is President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush will play the part of “Little Smirky Cowboy” and Cheney will play the part of “Shotgun Shaney,” the fastest shotgun in Texas (maybe not the most accurate).

First scene: They are driving a stagecoach to Baddog, Texas. The dialogue goes like this:

Little Smirky Cowboy: Git up thar on the stagecoach, Shotgun Shaney, and be durn careful of the shotgun, it goes off too easy.

Shotgun Shaney: That’s what you get once you buy one of them unreliable $1,000,000 shotguns from the Haliburton Company.

Little Smirky Cowboy: I know what you mean, I sat on one of their $15,000 toilet seats at the hotel last night and got a big splinter in my you know what. The pain was so bad, it durn near wiped the smirk off my face.

This is a sample of what will be a big hit movie. Haliburton is the producer, tickets are $2,000 each, popcorn, $500 a bag, and pop, $300.

-- KENT TAYLOR, Mason City

attribution

talk about the need to go

it took a while, but i finally came. one year old it is and only now got born. i wonder how long the siblings will be.

HYPOCRISTY ALERT

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - President Bush says he wants to diversify the nation's energy mix to end America's dependence on foreign oil, yet some critics are wary of his commitment and point to cutbacks at a government energy laboratory here.

Two weeks ago, 32 workers, including eight researchers, were laid off at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. The lab helps develop the very renewable energy technologies the president is promoting.

Then, over the weekend, just before Bush's planned visit to the lab on Tuesday, the government restored the jobs. His trip to the renewable energy laboratory is part of a two-day, three-state trip to promote the energy proposals he outlined in his State of the Union address.

At the direction of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, $5 million was transferred to the Midwest Research Institute, the operating contractor for the lab, to get the workers back on the job, the Energy Department announced Monday.

--source

OH AND YOU JUST HAVE TO CATCH HIM KNOCKING OVER LAB SAMPLES

something to be afraid of

In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.

Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."

"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."

--source

beware of a government that acts in secret.

israel is stealing millions from the palestinans

all because they didn't like who was elected.

this is wrong. way wrong.

"These are monies that belong to the Palestinians and should not be withheld," (u.n. envoy to the middle ease) de Soto told Reuters one day after Israel's cabinet announced a permanent halt to the monthly transfer of about $50 million in tax revenues Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
--source

is mistaken a new way of getting out of saying you lied?

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was mistaken when he said last week that the U.S. military had stopped the controversial practice of paying to plant stories in the Iraqi news media, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

Bryan Whitman, a senior spokesman, said Rumsfeld had been incorrect in saying during an TV interview Friday that the practice had been halted in the wake of negative publicity in the United States. Rumsfeld made a similar assertion during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations that same day.

--source

in other words HE LIED. once a liar, ALWAYS a liar, never forget that.

monkey see, monkey do

The U.S. commander in charge of the new U.S. training schools, who's celebrated in the Post's article and in the NYT, is quoted in the LAT praising and defending Iraq's interior minister, Bayan Jabr. That the same minister who's long been linked to Shiite militia and made excuses for his forces torturing suspects. One U.S. commander said members of a captured death squad were asked who they report to, "And they're telling us, 'Jabr.' "

that came from today's papers over at slate.

it's called mismanagement and utter incompetence

... the U.S.'s top commander in Iraq now requires all American officers in the country to go through. The five-day class pushes officers to look for noncombat solutions and was heavily praised by the men who attended. The only problem, they said, is that they're just now learning about the new techniques, often halfway through their Iraq deployment. So, why is it being taught in Iraq and not the U.S. in before they ship out? The commander of the school explained the "Pentagon didn't do it for three years"; in other words, since the invasion. "That's why the boss said, 'Screw it, I'm doing it here.' "
--source

the bush coup

from today's WaPo:

A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect.

Senior State Department officials deny that and say an investigation has found that the proper personnel practices were followed. But three officials involved in the reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, acknowledge that a merger of two bureaus reduced the influence of employees who were viewed by some political appointees as disloyal to the administration's policies.

"There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."

(they didn't want to play the games the administration was hell-bent on playing.)

About a dozen top experts on nonproliferation have left the department in recent months, with many citing the reorganization as a reason.

saddam would be proud

from the des moines register:

The initial impression given to the public was that the detainees were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan and hence were prisoners of war. Now it turns out that most detainees were not captured in battle, but rather were turned over to U.S. authorities by Afghan warlords in exchange for cash bounties.

to hold people indefinitely without charges is what dictators do. it's not what civilized nations do.

kimberly dozer just announced on cbsnews

that the u.s. forces would not be going home should iraq descend into civil war.

that's a first.

at least they're not the occupiers

since iran isn't receiving any of the insurgent activity.... what does that say.

The U.S. ambassador accused Iran on Monday of providing training and weapons to Iraqi militias and extremist groups and criticized Tehran's demand that British forces immediately withdraw from the southern city of Basra.
--source

this is what freedom is really all about

The governing council of Karbala province said Monday it was suspending contact with U.S. forces over the behavior of soldiers during a visit to the governor's office two days ago. The decision followed similar moves by leaders of Maysan and Basra provinces, which have frozen ties with British forces in southern Iraq.

source

Quote of the Day

"It's all of a piece with the man's record. He's afraid of accountability. That's why he's such a fan of self-protecting secrecy. That's why he's big on smearing government whistle-blowers. It's really just two sides of the same coin. He's afraid of accountability. It's the same reason why he's such a notorious prevaricator -- lies to avoid accountability."

--josh marshall, on cheney's class act of shooting a friend in the face with a shotgun at short range.

attribution

the boogie man made another appearance

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden vowed never to be captured alive and said the U.S. military had become as "barbaric" as Saddam Hussein in an audiotape reposted on a militant Islamic Web site after first being broadcast last month.

just when bush needs a distraction, here comes his hero.

the boogie man made another appearance

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden vowed never to be captured alive and said the U.S. military had become as "barbaric" as Saddam Hussein in an audiotape reposted on a militant Islamic Web site after first being broadcast last month.

just when bush needs a distraction, here comes his hero.

Letter of the WeeQ

I love this newspaper. I had a good cry reading John Carlson’s “AIDS Stole Her Sons; Now 'Mom’s Home,’ Too,” and a big laugh at Rob Borsellino’s “Despite Sickness, Life Seems Worth Staying Around For.”

All in one edition, Feb. 15. Thanks, John and Rob, for starting my day right.
— Barbara Clark, Roland.

attribution

Letter Of The Day

On Jan. 15 the Des Moines Register estimated that the cost of the George Bush War is now estimated at $2 trillion. A number so large it’s difficult to understand what that cost really means.

We are now starting to see the real cost .

A few days later, the front page had a number I could understand — 523. That’s the number of homeless children in the Des Moines school district, and it is what I believe to be a sign of the real cost of this administration.

Recently we saw the proposed Bush budget that basically increases everything for the military and cuts most domestic programs. The claim is that this is needed for my security. The reality is our current political path is creating more enemies and insecurity than resolving the issues.

We cannot afford this political direction any longer and deserve better.
— Tim Andersen, Polk City.

attribution

selling America

the bush administration has already sold us to the chinese, and now the arabs want our ports, and he's all fine with that.

where will it end?

The White House is embarking on a vigorous defence of its decision to approve Dubai Ports World's Ј3.9bn (Ђ5.7bn) takeover of P&O, the UK ports operator, in the face of mounting congressional opposition to the deal.

--source

Quote of the WeeQ

“Don’t mess with me Condoleezza. Don’t mess with me, girl,”
--Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

--source

do the republicans never learn lessons from the past?

The North Carolina Republican Party asked its members this week to send their church directories to the party, drawing furious protests from local and national religious leaders.

"Such a request is completely beyond the pale of what is acceptable," said the Rev. Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

During the 2004 presidential race, the Bush-Cheney campaign sent a similar request to Republican activists across the country. It asked churchgoers not only to furnish church directories to the campaign, but also to use their churches as a base for political organizing.

The tactic was roundly condemned by religious leaders across the political spectrum, including conservative evangelical Christians. Ten professors of ethics at major seminaries and universities wrote a letter to President Bush in August 2004 asking him to "repudiate the actions of your re-election campaign," and calling on both parties to "respect the integrity of all houses of worship."

Yesterday, the Greensboro News & Record reported that the North Carolina Republican Party was collecting church directories, and it quoted two local pastors as objecting to the practice. The Rev. Richard Byrd Jr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro said anyone who sent in a directory "would be betraying the trust of the membership," and the Rev. Ken Massey of the city's First Baptist Church said the request was "encroaching on sacred territory."

--source

that swiftboat vets ad that slams iraqi terrorsts

as al-qaeda, need to know, they are insurgents, nothing more. in fact, they are becoming political groups.

The LAT fronts word that the Iraqi insurgents are operating more like coordinated political groups and are attempting to separate themselves from the foreign fighters who more indiscriminately attack civilians. The number of attacks has decreased, which could be a strategy to permit the political process to work. A terrorism expert describes it as a "process of the institutionalization of the insurgency".

Quote of the Day

"There are just certain rules in hunting you abide by, and when you do something like he did, that's a total disregard of rules for hunting."

"But I guess it doesn't surprise me Vice President Cheney would disregard the rules. He has disregarded the laws, the rules, all of his adult life . . . if he wants to swivel and shoot at a bird flying back toward another person, he can control it because rules don't apply to him."
--Senator Tom Harkin

attribution

Letter Of The Day

I’m writing in response to Ed Buchanan’s letter in the Sunday edition regarding “Bush Speak.”

First of all, I believe that we should all accept the fact that Iraq had no WMDs. For heavens sake, it’s been (three) very long, very tragic years since the war began and to date, nothing.

As for Iran, I completely disagree with your assertion that both parties are discussing the use of military action. To begin with, our military is stretched so thin between Iraq and Afghanistan that we literally do not have the troop strength to invade, let alone conquer. (I suppose the next best option for the Neo Conservatives would be the use of nukes. I shudder to think how that option might be legitimized to the American people.)

As for the rest of the world, surely you don’t believe they would follow us blindly as they did with Iraq? Lord, we have wasted so much of our country’s integrity and goodwill that it will take decades to earn back the trust of many in this world.

Instead of Iraqi’s welcoming us with open arms, I believe the United States has become the catalyst in bringing together many disparate groups throughout the Middle East bent on destruction.

I remember a time, not that long ago, when the United States was viewed as a giving, caring, peaceful and tolerant nation. However, under the Bush regime we’re now viewed by many nations, friends and foes alike, as thugs and warmongers. But only when it serves our purpose, as Iraq does with its oil fields.

I take no pleasure in seeing where we’ve come as a nation — frankly I find it quite sad.

As for “hindsight is not wisdom” Mr. Buchanan, wisdom only comes when one is able to honestly look at their mistakes, learn from them and chart a different path. However, with one as obstinate as Mr. Bush, that different path may be as elusive as those weapons of mass destruction that were never in Iraq.

--Lori Johnson, Mason City

attribution

from the "well DUH" file

Older voters, a critical component of Republican Congressional victories for more than a decade, could end up being a major vulnerability for the party in this year's midterm elections, according to strategists in both parties. Paradoxically, one reason is the new Medicare drug benefit, which was intended to cement their loyalty.

--source

fighting democracy again

from the sunday times in england:

Senior figures linked to the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government took part in two days of talks in Texas. The meeting was chaired by Edward Djerejian, 65, a former US ambassador to Israel and Syria, who was briefed by the US State Department before it began.

Quote of the Minute

i fuckn lost that. dammit. one this, and two if you don't. oh yea. to and from and inbetween.

the triad.

heh.

it's what i've been trying to say for years

"Only when liberals in Congress begin acting as Democrats will voters realize that the Democratic Party is one which is coordinated and courageous enough to stand up for their interests. When voters know that if they vote for a candidate with a "D" by their name, that candidate will have the strength of the entire Democratic caucus behind her, only then will we gain enough public confidence to once again see majority status within our grasp."
--dailykos

i always knew there was a dick behind georgie

no pun intended of course, but here's where there was real meat:

In the last several years, there has been much talk about the powerful role Dick Cheney plays in the Bush White House. Some of that talk has been based on anecdotal evidence, and some on entirely fanciful speculation. But Executive Order 13292 is real evidence of real power in the vice president's office. Since the beginning of the administration, Dick Cheney has favored measures allowing the executive branch to keep more things secret. And in March of 2003, the president gave him the authority to do it.

Quote of the Day

"We have found one of the death squads. They are a part of the police force of Iraq."
--a U.S. general told the Chicago Tribune

attribution

it'd be comical if it weren't so tragic

http://www.ericumansky.com/2006/02/a_transcript_of.html

for those who think the new york times is a liberal rag

i got news for ya... is this liberal:

The NYT declares, "ACCORD IN HOUSE TO HOLD INQUIRY ON SURVEILLANCE." That's probably news to the intel committee chair, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who makes such decisions. "This is not an inquiry into the program," said Hoekstra's spokesman. Though a Republican maverick on the committee said she's hoping for a real probe, the spokesman explained there will be a "comprehensive review" not of the snooping but of the FISA law that the snooping sidestepped: Hoekstra "wants to set up a process to move forward and look at the entire statute and ways to modernize it." No other paper sniffs the glue too and gives significant space to the "inquiry," "review," whatever.

if bush was right in his actions to snoop on Americans

then why in God's name were they sooo afraid of congressional hearings?

Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.

--source

i can tell you how

The Washington Post's top story of national significance is a NASA-supported study showing Greenland's glaciers melting at twice the rate previously believed, which suggests the world's oceans might rise a whole lot faster than currently projected. "We are witnessing enormous changes," said one NASA scientist, "and it will take some time before we understand how it happened."

now, i'm no rocket scientist (no pun intended), but could it be called, GLOBAL WARMING?

hey, and here i thought i had the lock on "of the day" stats

from my friend tim noah over at slate:

You may have noticed that "Chatterbox," the column I've been writing since 1998, has tapered off. That's because I've been preparing to launch a new Slate feature called "Document of the Day." The column will be a sort of cross between The Smoking Gun, the Harper's "Annotation" feature, and the Washington Monthly's late, lamented "Memo of the Month," combined with certain elements all our own that company scientists are still developing at our state-of-the-art laboratory facility in Huntsville, Ala. Barring a severe industrial accident, "Document of the Day" will debut in early March.

What I need from you, dear reader, is documents. White House memos, wiretap transcripts, financial disclosure forms, college transcripts, wills, e-mails, police reports, pending regulations, expense account filings—anything sufficiently piquant to interest the lay public. I'm especially interested in documents that have not previously been made public, but I won't exclude from consideration interesting documents that the public has overlooked. I'm just as interested in government documents as I am in documents from the private sector. I intend to define "documents" as broadly as possible, so that it would include, say, a particularly asinine instruction manual or a particularly cowardly liability waiver for some consumer product, or an especially interesting billboard, or something telling that's been scribbled in the margin of a book.

Letter of the WeeQ

The Feb. 6 headline regarding Iowa state taxes on retirement income was disingenuous at best ("Seniors Uncertain They Want Tax Break").

The Register quoted one woman in Urbandale who opposed exemption and commented "her peers feel the same way."

I am a senior citizen and want my retirement income exempt from state taxes. All of my peers with whom I have discussed this issue agree with me. We worked all our lives and paid taxes on all our income. Now is not the time to tax it a second time.

The article also tried to make this a class issue, pitting the "needy" elderly against the "well-to-do" elderly. Financial status has nothing to do with this legislation. It is one of fairness and self-reliance.

It is insulting that the Register thinks we need AARP to tell us what our stance should be on this or any other issue. Senior citizens are a powerful force in the economic engine, and it will bode well for state government to treat us as competent, independent individuals who resent double taxation.

- Carole Ann Fournier, Polk City.

source

Letter Of The Day

When President Bush says America is addicted to oil from unstable regions, does anyone else hear it as, "I want to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge"?

— Jeni Nosbisch, Des Moines.

source

if the law needed fixing

wouldn't that mean bush was outside the law when he spied on Americans?

WASHINGTON - Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts said he has worked out an agreement with the White House to change U.S. law regarding the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program and provide more information about it to Congress.

--source

corruption defined

USA Today fronts records showing that Republican Sen. Arlen Specter channeled $50 million in defense-related earmarks to clients of a lobbyist who's married to one of Specter's top aides. The aide happens to deal with Specter's work on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where, as it turns out, the earmarks were inserted.

does this sound like America to you?

it sounds more like a third world dictatorship to me.

The NYT stuffs NASA staffers complaining that political appointees pressured them to, in the Times' words, "cut the flow of news releases" on global warming and other touchy topics prior to the 2004 presidential elections. Bureaucrats also complained about one order this summer to do a search-and-replace from "global warming" to the fuzzier "climate change."

new abu ghraib photos

here
here
and here

that Americans would be capable of such brutality is beyond comprehension. only under bush could such a cavalier attitude towards human life be so prevalent in our government. and they said saddam was bad.

cheney & chertoff, sitting in a tree

As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank notes, Chertoff and Cheney each "accepted responsibility" for their actions while neither could not "come up with much in the way of what he had done wrong."

Letter Of The Day

"Corruption Is Threatening Iraq Progress, Rumsfeld Says" (Feb. 8 headline). Now there's a success story the Bush administration can be proud of: Just like home.
- L.F. Menter, Marshalltown.

attribution

oh and dont EVEN get me started

on abu ghraib