Military Injustice

The story of Lt. Jullian Goodrum, a 35-year-old Army reservist and Iraq vet, is, as The Light of Reason puts it

an enormously depressing but instructive tale—about how ill-equipped our military is despite the billions of dollars it has at its disposal, about how military structure and organization is geared to demand obedience above all, about how the military will, when challenged, circle the wagons and protect superior officers while letting low-level "grunts" take all responsibility and all blame, and about what happens to a man with 16 years of "spotless service" when he dares to question authority.

Snip:

After he returned from Iraq, Goodrum complained to his superior officers that his unit had been sent to war with an appalling lack of equipment, including broken, unarmored vehicles. When his complaints were ignored, he went to his Congress member and to the press. He also complained about the poor medical care he received when he came back. Now, he is convinced the charge of being absent without leave for getting medical care from a civilian doctor is retribution from the Army, which he claims closed ranks and blackballed him. ...

[A] review of hundreds of pages of documents and hours of tapes from Goodrum's disciplinary proceedings show his superior officers cooperating in what looks like a concerted effort to put him behind bars. ... Officers seem to have pressured some witnesses and coached others, possibly instructing them to lie.

The documents and tapes also show Army officers trying to dig up dirt on Goodrum. Using information from a background check on a different man, the officers suggested -- incorrectly -- to military prosecutors that Goodrum might be a convicted drug dealer. A document alleging he had had an affair with a female subordinate before going to Iraq mysteriously appeared in Goodrum's record. ...

Trying to prove that you're being railroaded by officers trying to cover up for their own poor leadership, or to punish you for speaking out, is particularly difficult because superior officers have so much power. They control your salary, food and clothing, movement and freedom ... Superior officers also get to choose your punishment. ... They also appoint the investigators who will look into your case.

Read.

Army Kidnapping To Meet Recruitment Goals?

I'm very late in noticing this extremely fucked up story:

Neighbors of Ever Jandres of Encino, Calif., recently wrote a letter to U.S. Rep. Howard Berman charging recruitment malfeasance and asking him to look into the 24-year-old learning-disabled epileptic's mysterious disappearance, Mark Crispin Miller reported online at News from Underground. A spokesman for Berman confirmed that the congressman is "very concerned" about the matter.

Jandres, who is Salvadoran and has a borderline low IQ, was apparently "befriended" by a local Army recruiter, who invited him to come with him to Arizona for three days to observe basic training. Five days later, his distraught mother (who speaks no English) got a phone call from her son, who told her, hysterically, that he was on a military base in South Carolina. He was now in the Army, he said, and wasn't allowed to stay on the phone longer than a minute. Family members' and friends' attempts to get any information from the Army have been fruitless.

Veterans for Common Sense.org has a little more.

In related news, the Pentagon has postponed the release of military recruiting figures for May. The Army has "missed its recruiting goals for three straight months entering May, falling short by a whopping 42 percent in April."

Pissing Into The Wind

Can you believe this CNN headline?

Detainees, not soldiers, flushed Quran

A U.S. military investigation into the mishandling of the Muslim holy book at the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists has determined that detainees -- not U.S. soldiers -- attempted to flush the Quran down the toilet there. ...

In one incident, on February 23, 2004, the report said a guard saw a "detainee place two Qurans in his toilet and state he no longer cared about the Quran or his religion.

It's clear (and has been for a long time) that they don't give a damn how nutzo their lies sound -- it's all a game.

But wait -- here's something quite different courtesy of the Friday Afternoon News Dump:

Military Details Koran Incidents at Base in Cuba

A military inquiry has found that guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba kicked, stepped on and splashed urine on the Koran, in some cases intentionally but in others by accident, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The splashing of urine was among the cases described as inadvertent. It was said to have occurred when a guard urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into a detainee's cell. The detainee was given a fresh uniform and a new Koran, and the guard was reprimanded and assigned to guard duty that kept him from contact with detainees for the remainder of his time at Guantánamo, according to the military inquiry.

The investigation into allegations that the Koran had been mishandled also found that in one instance detainees' Korans were wet because guards on the night shift had thrown water balloons on the cellblock.

Oh, that crazy Cuban wind, blowing piss all over the place. ... Be smart; wear your galoshes.

Clearly, using the Koran for a toilet is okay, putting it in a toilet is a goddamn lie and harms the cause of freedom and never happened anyway, so stop saying that.

And water balloons? Simply more evidence that all that torture talk was really fratboy pranks on the nightshift, just like Rush said.

Interesting Crossfire Exchange

From May 31:

Joe Watkins, Co-Host: OK. Secretary Eagleburger, this is the million dollar question. I mean, folks have been waiting for three decades to know who Deep Throat was or is. Is Mark Felt, in your opinion, Deep Throat?

Lawrence Eagleburger, former Secretary of State: Probably.

Watkins: Do you think he's Deep Throat?

Eagleburger: Probably. You know, President Nixon once suspected him. I'm surprised he didn't end up dead somewhere because of that. ...

From Atrios.

Oddly, this exchange didn't get much attention.

Alternate Reading

Robert Parry: The Real Lessons of Watergate
Rigorous Intuition: What is Watergate?
Joseph Cannon: A Felt Response and More on Mark Felt

In Memoriam

E&P:

"Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau again listed American war dead in his Sunday comic this Memorial Day weekend.

The strip is titled "Operation Iraqi Freedom -- In Memoriam -- Since 4/28/04-- Part 1." Included are the names of hundreds of soldiers. So many, in fact, that the listing will continue next week ...

1,657 and counting.

Guilty Of War Crimes

When it comes to Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush, the case is pretty damning if you look at the words, memos and direct orders of these four men.

Here is Amnesty International's 164-page report, "Guantánamo and Beyond: The Continuing Pursuit of Unchecked Executive Power," released this month.

Hurray For Helen Thomas

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan
May 25, 2005

McClellan: That's all I have to update at this moment. And with that, I'll be glad to go to your questions.

Thomas: The other day -- in fact, this week, you said that we, the United States, is in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history --

McClellan: No, we are -- that's where we currently --

Thomas: -- in view of your credibility is already mired? How can you say that?

McClellan: Helen, I think everyone in this room knows that you're taking that comment out of context. There are two democratically-elected governments in Iraq and --

Thomas: Were we invited into Iraq?

McClellan: There are two democratically-elected governments now in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments, and we are there today --

Thomas: You mean if they had asked us out, that we would have left?

McClellan: No, Helen, I'm talking about today. We are there at their invitation. They are sovereign governments --

Thomas: I'm talking about today, too.

McClellan: -- and we are doing all we can to train and equip their security forces so that they can provide for their own security as they move forward on a free and democratic future.

Thomas: Did we invade those countries?

McClellan: Go ahead, Steve.

We're So Honest Nobody Needs To Investigate Us!

Independent investigation of detainee abuse unnecessary, Rice says
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off growing calls for an independent investigation of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and in an interview labeled as "absurd" a new Amnesty International report equating the facility with Soviet-era gulags.

Asked in an interview with Knight Ridder about an outside probe, Rice responded that it isn't necessary.

"The United States is as open a society as you will find," she said, and the administration is being held accountable "by a free press, by a Congress that is a separate and co-equal branch of government, and by its own expectations of what is right."

The Big Lie

George W. Bush, speaking at Greece Athena Middle and High School, Greece, New York, May 24, 2005:

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

Or, as someone else put it a few years ago:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Joseph Goebbels

White House: Unable To Not Lie

Now that the initial story has been spread far and wide and Newsweak has caved, the truth can start coming out (in dribs and drabs and not given any significant media coverage) ...

McClellan Backs Away from Claims that 'Newsweek' Story Cost Afghan Lives
Editor & Publisher

At a White House press briefing Monday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan, pressed by reporters and with Afghan President Karzai in disagreement, retreated on claims that Newsweek's retracted story on Koran abuse cost lives in Afghanistan.

He also claimed that he had never said it did, even though a check of transcripts disputes that. On May 16, for example, he said, "people have lost their lives." On May 17, he said, "People did lose their lives," and, "People lost their lives" due to the Newsweek report.

Here is the transcript from the latest White House press briefing:

Q: One other question. Karzai was quite definite in saying that he didn't believe that the violence in Afghanistan was directly tied to the Newsweek article about Koran desecration. Yet, from this podium, you have made that link. So --

McCLELLAN: Actually, I don't think you're actually characterizing what was said accurately. ...

Here are the White House links to McClellan's comments that he says he never said: May 16 and May 17.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

According to the US Army, by way of the New York Times:

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. ...

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time. ...

Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.

Just one of the many reasons I have decided I can no longer live in the United States.

Bush & The Off-Course DC Plane

Daily Kos contributor Magorn on Commander Cuckoo Bananas and the wayward plane scare in DC last week:

WaPo columnist Dan Froomkin framed the basic story up nicely:

"Yesterday, even as a goodly swath of official Washington was running panic-stricken into the streets, President Bush was riding his bike in the country, completely unaware of what was going on. Aides reportedly decided that since he wasn't personally in danger, he didn't need to know. ... The official White House line yesterday was that "protocols" established post-9/11 were being followed. But what are those protocols? ... Do they really call for the president not to be bothered if he's personally not in danger?"

... While the official story is that the crisis was too minor to bother the President, the WH at first certainly didn't react that way. Federal offices, the White House and Congress were evacuated. Laura and a visiting Nancy Reagan were quickly hustled into the WH bunker. VP Cheney on was whisked out of town in a VERY heavily armed Motorcade. ... The one person who didn't swing into action was the guy supposedly in charge. He had better things to do than worry about it. ...

[T]he place where the President was biking is almost in my back yard. The White House seems to want people to have the impression its some sort of remote wilderness area. In reality it's nothing of the sort. ... [T]he northern end of the Refuge (where the President was most likely biking given the abundance of trails in that area) actually borders the southern end of Ft. Meade [an Army base which] also houses the National Security Agency ...

While all this is going on GW is less than five minutes away even by bike from the absolute Nerve center of America's entire secure communications and electronic intelligence network. And nobody even bothers to tell him what's going on.

There's really no reasonable explanation for this except that his handlers made a deliberate decision to keep him away from the reins of power while the grown-ups handled the crisis.

Shockingly, these unusual events prompted even MSNBC's Joe Scarborough to put down the Kool-Aid for a minute:

I hate to break it to White House officials, but their fearless leader knew less about the security crisis gripping the nation's capital than millions of Americans. If the President isn't troubled by these developments, then I am. As Mr. Bush likes to remind us, we are in a war on terror where seconds count. ... If the President of the United States cannot have his bike ride interrupted to learn of a possible terror attack on Washington, then he is not fit to lead this country in its war on terror.

It is very tempting to think that this whole crisis was nothing more than a big show (there are also strange aspects of the pilots of the small plane that wandered into restricted space) to continue scaring the country -- TERROR! TERROR! -- and there was never any real danger at all.

Palast on "Newsweak"

Greg Palast:

Was there a problem with the [Newsweek] story? Certainly. If you want to split hairs, the inside-government source of the Koran desecration story now says he can't confirm which military report it appeared in. But he saw it in one report and a witness has confirmed that the Koran was defiled. Of course, there's an easy way to get at the truth. RELEASE THE REPORTS NOW. Hand them over, Mr. Rumsfeld, and let's see for ourselves what's in them. ...

Despite its supposed new concern for hidden sources, let's note that Newsweek and the [Washington] Post have no trouble providing, even in the midst of this story, cover for secret Administration sources that are FAVORABLE to Bush. Editor Whitaker's retraction relies on "Administration officials" whose names he kindly withholds. ...

As with CBS's retraction of Dan Rather's report on Bush's draft-dodging, Newsweek's diving to the mat on Guantanamo acts as a warning to all journalists who step out of line. Newsweek has now publicly committed to having its reports vetted by Rumsfeld's Defense Department before publication. Why not just print Rumsfeld's press releases and eliminate the middleman, the reporter?

Culture of Life, Part 385

Clear Channel radio host Glenn Beck, May 17, 2005:

Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong?

Newsweek's Cowardly Capitulation

Some background on the current "controversy" and Newsweek's cowardly capitulation is here and here. ... One interesting sentence from today's Times, written by Elisbaeth Bumiller, one of Bush's biggest sycophants:

Republicans close to the White House said that although President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were genuinely angered by the Newsweek article, West Wing officials were also exploiting it in an effort to put a check on the press.

The Defense Department has admitted that the Newsweek story had nothing to do with demonstrations in Afghanistan that left eight people dead.

From Yahoo:

Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo such as those described by Newsweek on 9 May 2005 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

One such incident (during which the Koran was thrown into a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a 1 May 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005, p. 35.)

The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The People the Law Forgot," The Guardian, December 3, 2003, p. 1.) It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-ray World Exclusive," Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004.)

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan: "Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. It was a very bad situation for us, said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. We cried so much and shouted, Please do not do that to the Holy Koran. (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, March 26, 2003.)

Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to British custody in March 2004 and subsequently freed without charge: "The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitution Rights, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, August 4, 2004.)

The claim that US troops at Bagram airbase prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Americains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement", April 11, 2005). An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners web site.

Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com.

Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates Share Guantanamo Ordeal," May 2, 2005.)

Thanks to Corrente:

January 9, 2003, New York Times
Investigators know the basic facts: In this poor and isolated nation with no lack of extremists, a young preacher named Ahmed Ali Jarallah assembled a small cell of militants to strike the enemies of Islam in Yemen. Two years ago, he read off a hate list in a speech at a mosque here, singling out specifically a hospital run by American Baptists. ... "In Jibla, there is the Baptist hospital, which is the source of Christian activities in the province," Mr. Jarallah said. Muslims converted to Christianity at this hospital, he charged, and even "stuff the Holy Koran into toilets of mosques."

March 26, 2003, Washington Post
The men, the largest single group of Afghans to be released after months of detainment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave varying accounts of how American forces treated them during interrogation and detainment. Some displayed medical records showing extensive care by American military doctors, while others complained that American soldiers insulted Islam by sitting on the Koran or dumping their sacred text into a toilet to taunt them. ... Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet.

June 28, 2004, Financial Times
Former prisoner Airat Vakhitov told ORT about alleged mistreatment while he was at Guantanamo. "They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet," Vakhitov said. "When people were praying, they forced their way in and put their feet on people's heads and beat them."

August 4, 2004, CNN
U.S. soldiers "would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it," Iqbal said.

August 5, 2004, The Independent (London)
In the report, released in New York, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul - the so-called Tipton Three - said one inmate was threatened after being shown a video in which hooded inmates were forced to sodomise each other. Guards allegedly threw prisoners' Korans into toilets, while others were injected with drugs, it was claimed.

August 5, 2004, New York Daily News
They say that rats and scorpions had free run of their sweltering cages, loud rock music was used to drown out the sound of prayers, and sleep deprivation was common. "They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it," Asif Iqbal wrote.

January 9, 2005, Denver Post
"They pepper sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting; in all I must have brought up five cupfuls. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed. They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of my cell in chains ... and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows." ... In August Mr Ahmed, Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal issued a 115-page dossier accusing the US of abuse, including allegations that they were beaten and had their Korans thrown into toilets. [also published in The Hartford Courant, January 16, 2005]

From Baghdad Burning:

We've been watching the protests about the Newsweek article with interest. I'm not surprised at the turnout at these protests - the thousands of Muslims angry at the desecration of the Quran. What did surprise me was the collective shock that seems to have struck the Islamic world like a slap in the face. How is this shocking? It's terrible and disturbing in the extreme - but how is it shocking? After what happened in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons how is this astonishing? American jailers in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown little respect for human life and dignity - why should they be expected to respect a holy book?

Juan Cole has some good links about the topic.

Now Newsweek have retracted the story - obviously under pressure from the White House. Is it true? Probably. We've seen enough blatant disregard and disrespect for Islam in Iraq the last two years to make this story sound very plausible. On a daily basis, mosques are raided, clerics are dragged away with bags over their heads. Several months ago the world witnessed the execution of an unarmed Iraqi prisoner inside a mosque. Is this latest so very surprising?

Detainees coming back after weeks or months in prison talk of being forced to eat pork, not being allowed to pray, being exposed to dogs, having Islam insulted and generally being treated like animals trapped in a small cage. At the end of the day, it's not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It's about what these things symbolize on a personal level. It is infuriating to see objects that we hold sacred degraded and debased by foreigners who felt the need to travel thousands of kilometers to do this. That's not to say that all troops disrespect Islam - some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. It does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy.

By doing such things, this war is taken to another level - it is no longer a war against terror or terrorists - it is, quite simply, a war against Islam and even secular Muslims are being forced to take sides.

And finally, Will Bunch, Attytood:

It's amazing how many journalists are OK with being deceived, as long as they don't have to offend anyone. ... Take the editors of the Washington Post. When confronted with a British government memo that showed that President Bush "fixed" the intelligence on Iraq to make the already-decided case for war, the newspaper did nothing for two weeks, then buried the story -- a story that in a different era, one with more courageous leadership, might be seen as an impeachable offense -- on Page A-18. Odd behavior for a business obsessed with "scoops." ...

Newsweek did make some mistakes. But its biggest one was retracting the story, instead of going back and building on the existing reporting from a half-dozen papers -- that there really was Koran desecration at Guantanamo, that the real damage to America's image came not from an aggressive and free press but from official misconduct.

US Knowingly Sends Troops Faulty Body Armor

Body Armor Issued Despite Warnings

The Marine Corps issued to nearly 10,000 troops body armor that military ballistic experts had urged the Marines to reject after tests revealed life-threatening flaws in the vests, an eight-month investigation by Marine Corps Times has found. ...

According to a government memo, the vests failed tests because of "multiple complete penetrations" of 9mm pistol rounds and other ballistics or quality-assurance tests. ... Many of the vests were issued to Marines in Iraq.

Government ballistics expert James MacKiewicz, in a memorandum rejecting two lots of vests on July 19, 2004, said his office "has little confidence in the performance" of the body armor. ... Instead of heeding MacKiewicz' warning, the Marine program manager for the vests, Lt. Col. Gabriel Patricio, and Point Blank's chief operating officer, Sandra Hatfield, signed waivers that allowed the Marines to buy and distribute the vests.

As Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque puts it: "Well, there's your goldang liberal press for you, these commie terror-symps at the Marine Corps Times. Don't these anti-Americans know that body armor doesn't have to stop bullets -- it just has to make money! Get with the program, jarheads!"

The Navy Times has a lengthy article about this travesty, but -- what a shocker -- the mainstream news has ignored this story almost completely.

USAToday has the main story linked above. It's dated May 8. Looking at Google's News Search, not one major US paper (except for, strangely, the conservative Washington Times) thinks this story is worth even a paragraph or two.

When The Questions Get Tough ...

LA Times:

At home, President Bush regularly travels the nation for "conversations" with hand-picked audiences who routinely shower him and his policies with praise. But abroad on Sunday, some Dutch citizens had a rare, unscripted opportunity to ask questions that some Americans might want to pose if given the chance.

Based on the questions asked in the first half-hour, before reporters were ushered from the room, this group of students might not have passed muster at a typical White House event. ...

The questions got too tough, so Bush had the reporters tossed out of the room!

Lies

Lies.

March 16, 2003 -- Dick Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press: "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. ... I think it will go relatively quickly, ... [in] weeks rather than months." He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle" and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard ... are likely to step aside."

February 7, 2003 -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

Blare the Lie, Whisper the Retraction

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of 'mistaken identity'

The capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W. Bush as "a critical victory in the war on terror". According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists' third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as "among the flotsam and jetsam" of the organisation.

Al-Libbi's arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as "a major breakthrough" in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a "top general" and "a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al-Qaeda network". Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was "a very important figure". Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI's most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department "rewards for justice" programme. ...

No European or American intelligence expert contacted last week had heard of al-Libbi until a Pakistani intelligence report last year claimed he had taken over as head of operations after Khalid Shaikh Mohammad's arrest. A former close associate of Bin Laden now living in London laughed: "What I remember of him is he used to make the coffee and do the photocopying."

But all the Moron-Americans will remember (or even hear) is that Bush bagged another bad guy. Which I guess is the whole point of these silly exercises. They just hope that when the truth comes out, no one is paying attention anymore.

If too many people start asking questions, well, there's always another nervous bride or Jacko update or cat up a fucking tree to broadcast about 24/7.

Yay!

I am: 0% Republican.

"You're a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure. (You hope.)"

Are You A Republican?

Blogs > Mainstream Media

Matt at Today In Iraq has outdone himself with his latest post -- a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of Bush's Mission Accomplished speech two years ago. Absolutely brilliant.

This is one of the greatest examples I've seen of how blogs -- and the internet in general -- can educate the general public. It is also an unassilable indictment of the mainstream media, who have deliberately run the other way from this kind of research, hard work and honesty.

This Should Be On The Front Page Of Every Newspaper In The Country

But, of course, it won't be. In fact, you'll probably have to go across the ocean to read about it:

Tony Blair had resolved to send British troops into action alongside US forces eight months before the Iraq War began, despite a clear warning from the Foreign Office that the conflict could be illegal.

A damning minute leaked to a Sunday newspaper reveals that in July 2002, a few weeks after meeting George Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr Blair summoned his closest aides for what amounted to a council of war. The minute reveals the head of British intelligence reported that President Bush had firmly made up his mind to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, adding that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". ...

Also:

Lord Goldsmith's legal opinion reveals the full extent of the attorney's concern about the risk of Britain being hauled before international courts which would even scrutinise allegations of war crimes by British troops.

It warns that British troops must use no more force than necessary to get Iraq to disarm. The attorney also makes it plain to Mr Blair that, in law, regime change could not be an objective of military action - a problem which did not concern the Bush administration.

Why won't you see this in your local newspaper? Because the US media is too liberal and hates Bush way too much to report this damning news about Bush. ... In other news, hot is cold, up is down and freedom is slavery.

Making Progress Toward The Light Around The Corner

We begin our third year since Bush declared Mission Accomplished. Since that speech, 1,106 Americans have been killed in Iraq. The total US dead is at least 1,586. ... Visit Today In Iraq.



A Gallup Poll released last week states that 50% of Americans believe the Bush administration deliberately misled the country about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

High School Student Doing Job Of Mainstream Media

From Colorado:

Two Army recruiters in Golden have been suspended from their jobs while military officials look into allegations the two men used improper tactics to get an Arvada high school student to sign up for duty. ... David McSwane, an Arvada West High School honors student and editor of his school newspaper, [was] "curious" to see what recruiters at a Golden recruitment facility would do if he told them he wanted to join the Army as a high school dropout with a serious marijuana problem. ...

Starting in January, McSwane met with two recruiters in Golden several times and secretly taped a series of phone calls with them. On the tapes, one recruiter is apparently heard encouraging McSwane to create a fake high school diploma to cover for the fact that he had dropped out. ... McSwane got a friend to film another recruiter driving him to a store to purchase a detoxification kit to rid his system of supposed marijuana traces.

Why are Army recruiters having such a hard time finding young men willing to go to Iraq? Where are the thousands of young Republicans with magnetic yellow ribbons on their cars? Why aren't they enlisting in droves to fight for freedom and defend our country from its enemies?

How bad can it be in Iraq? If things were really messed up, Bush would simply hop in his Vietnam Fighter Jet and zip over there and straighten things out in no time.

And If My Thought-Dreams Could Be Seen

Ted Rall reports:

They've vanished into the netherworld of a Homeland Security gulag and their story has already disappeared from the headlines, but the shocking case of two 16-year-old girls from New York City arrested a month ago ought to inspire outrage among every American worthy of the name. Since the government's reasons for the girls' imprisonment could apply to virtually any teenager, it should also spark fear. ...

Without a warrant, NYPD detectives and federal agents burst into the girl's home -- no wonder they don't have time to look for Osama! -- where they "searched her belongings and confiscated her computer and the essays that she had written as part of a home schooling program," say her family. "One essay concerned suicide...[that] asserted that suicide is against Islamic law." The family is Bangladeshi. They are Muslim. That, coupled with the mere mention of suicide bombing in her essay, was enough to put the fuzz on high alert. ...

[Based solely on that essay] the FBI says both girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to become suicide bombers." But the feds admit that they have no evidence to back their suspicions. Nothing. ...

FBI agents threatened to deport her parents and place her American-born siblings, a four-month-old baby and an 11-year-old, in foster care unless she confessed. ...

Has there been anything on the news -- anywhere -- about this story?

Oh, if only one of these girls had been engaged and then decided she wasn't quite ready for marriage and ran off. Then, we wouldn't be able to get her off our TV screens.

Homes searched without a warrant, kids thrown in prison for thoughts real and imagined, people's lives destroyed by an out-of-control federal government -- will Americans speak up for what's right? Please call and write your congressman and senator to demand the release of the two girls from Queens.

Thanks to Welcome to Gilead.

Dear God ...

Whatever we did to deserve this, we are sorry ... so very very sorry ...

The Grand Illusion

WaPo:

The US military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence [according to former Army Sgt. Erik Saar] ...

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights ... said Saar's claims support lawyers' suspicions that the official tours of Guantanamo were phony. "They couldn't show people what they were really doing, because what they were really doing was illegal and inhumane," Ratner said. "It's such a fraud. It reminds me of the special concentration camps set up in World War II. They would take the Red Cross there to see there was an orchestra and all sorts of nice things.

Also, this interview with fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds should be required reading. FUBAR barely scratches the surface.

If This Is Progress ...

Gallup Poll, Thursday:

Nearly a quarter of respondents to a Gallup Poll said that if they had 15 minutes to talk to the president they would tell him to end the war in Iraq, making it the No. 1 response. The second most popular response -- telling Bush to control the prices of fuel and oil and improve energy -- got 8 percent of respondents ... 6 percent of respondents said they would tell Bush he was doing a good job.

George W. Bush, Thursday night:

I believe we're making really good progress in Iraq.

AP, today:

Insurgents unleashed a series of car bombings and other attacks across Iraq on Friday, killing at least 41 people, including three US soldiers ... At least 11 car bombs exploded in and around Baghdad on Friday, including four suicide attacks in quick succession in the Azamiyah section of central Baghdad.

9/11 Coverup -- Judges Meet With Bush Lawyers In Secret

From Scoop:

Former FBI contract translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys were ordered removed from the E. Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse so that a three-judge US Court of Appeals panel could discuss her case in private with Bush administration lawyers. ...

Edmonds is appealing the Bush administration’s arcane use of "state secrets privilege," invoked last year to throw out her US District Court lawsuit alleging retaliation for telling FBI superiors about shoddy wiretap translations and allegations that wiretap information was passed to the target of an FBI investigation. ...

Criminal evidence in Edmonds' explosive case is apparently getting too close to Washington officials, since the former contract linguist also told us she would not deny that "once this issue gets to be ... investigated, you will be seeing certain people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally," revealing the content of the FBI intercepts she heard indicates that recognizable, very high-profile American citizens are linked to the 9/11 attacks. ...

When we asked how many Americans were named in the intercepts, Edmonds said "There is direct evidence involving no more than ten American names that I recognized," further revealing that "some are heads of government agencies or politicians -- but I don’t want to go any further than that," as we listened in stunned silence.

When asked in 2002 by CBS 60 Minutes co-host Ed Bradley, "did she seem credible to you? Did her story seem credible?" Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) said "Absolutely, she’s credible. And the reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."

Before I split this blog off from Joy of Sox, I wrote about Edmonds several times. ... For more info on Edmonds, click here and here and here. And sign the petition demanding the release of her testimony on 9/11.

Judges tossing Edmonds and her lawyers out of court so they can discuss her case about government complicity in 9/11 in secret with lawyers from that same government ... that doesn't sound completely kosher, does it?

Specific Pre-9/11 Warnings Brushed Off

Another Lost Opportunity, from Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball:

In the spring of 2001, one of the US government's most valuable terror informants gave the FBI a far more alarming account of Al Qaeda plans to attack inside the United States than has ever been publicly disclosed, according to newly available court documents.

Algerian expatriate Ahmed Ressam, whose sentencing for a Millennium-eve plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport was unexpectedly postponed today, told bureau interrogators nearly four years ago that Al Qaeda commander Abu Zubaydah had been discussing plans to smuggle terrorist operatives and explosives into the country for the purpose of launching a strike on US soil ...

Perhaps no better sign of that was the inclusion of some of Ressam's information in the now famous presidential daily briefing (PDB) — entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" - that was presented to President Bush by the CIA on Aug. 6, 2001. ...

[I]t turns out, according to the new court documents, the information from Ressam that was contained in the PDB was watered down and seemed far more bland than what the Algerian terrorist was actually telling the FBI.

Isikoff and Hosenball write that while there "is no indication that Ressam had specific knowledge of the 9/11 attacks themselves," the information he was giving about possible attacks inside the US "didn't get wider circulation within the US government" and did nothing "to shift US intelligence community assumptions that Al Qaeda was fixated on attacking US targets overseas rather than inside the country."

I guess "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" was simply too confusing.

Let The Eagle Soar

Terrified US Soldiers Are Still Killing Civilians With Impunity, While The Dead Go Uncounted:

It is very easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers treat everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right they have saved their lives and if they are wrong they face no penalty. ...

Every Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US troops for no adequate reason. Often they do not know if they were shot by regular soldiers or by members of western security companies whose burly employees, usually ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq. ...

US firepower ... cannot be used in built up areas without killing or injuring civilians. ... The immunity of US troops means that there is nothing to inhibit them opening fire in what for them is a terrifying situation.

You won't be reading anything like this in the US media anytime soon. The article accurately notes that US troops are scared shitless and are shooting at anything that moves. The sad part is that more than a few of them are well aware that they are not protecting or defending their country. They are disposable cogs in the machinery of multi-national corporate interests that couldn't care less whether they live or die.

Busted

Tom DeLay, 1995:

The time has come that the American people know exactly what their Representatives are doing here in Washington. Are they feeding at the public trough, taking lobbyist-paid vacations, getting wined and dined by special interest groups? Or are they working hard to represent their constituents? The people, the American people, have a right to know ... I say the best disinfectant is full disclosure, not isolation.

Washington Post, today:

A plane trip to London and Scotland in 2000 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff's credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number.

DeLay's expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls, and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.

A Little Bit Closer To Equality

WTNH:

It's a first for Connecticut and for the nation. With a stroke of the pen from Governor Jodi Rell, Same Sex Civil Unions are now legal in Connecticut. The state is the first in the country to do so without being forced by the courts.

Bad News? Just Hide It

Knight Ridder:

The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985 ...

[C]urrent and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism.

"Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert ...

Created last year on the recommendation of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the center is the government's primary organization for analyzing and integrating all U.S. government intelligence on terrorism.

The Bush Administration M.O.: Instead of working harder to combat terrorism, they'd rather hide the facts and hope nobody pays attention. Any why not? It's working quite well for them.

This Republican Makes Sense

Ron Paul of Texas, speaking before the House of Representatives on April 6, 2005:

The information Congress was given prior to the war was false. There were no weapons of mass destruction; the Iraqis did not participate in the 9/11 attacks; Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were enemies and did not conspire against the United States; our security was not threatened; we were not welcomed by cheering Iraqi crowds as we were told; and Iraqi oil has not paid any of the bills. ...

How much better off are the Iraqi people? Hundreds of thousands of former inhabitants of Fallajah are not better off with their city flattened and their homes destroyed. Hundreds of thousands are not better off living with foreign soldiers patrolling their street, curfews, and the loss of basic utilities. One hundred thousand dead Iraqis, as estimated by the Lancet Medical Journal, certainly are not better off. Better to be alive under Saddam Hussein than lying in some cold grave.

Praise for the recent election in Iraq has silenced many critics of the war. Yet the election was held under martial law implemented by a foreign power, mirroring conditions we rightfully condemned as a farce when carried out in the old Soviet system and more recently in Lebanon. ... The whole process is corrupt. It just doesn't make sense to most Americans to see their tax dollars used to fight an unnecessary and unjustified war. First they see American bombs destroying a country, and then American taxpayers are required to rebuild it. ...

Considering the death, destruction, and continual chaos in Iraq, it's difficult to accept the blanket statement that the Iraqis all feel much better off with the U.S. in control rather than Saddam Hussein. ... But there's another question that is equally important: "Are the American people better off because of the Iraq war?"

One thing for sure, the 1,500 plus dead American soldiers aren't better off. The nearly 20,000 severely injured or sickened American troops are not better off. The families, the wives, the husbands, children, parents, and friends of those who lost so much are not better off.

The families and the 40,000 troops who were forced to re-enlist against their will -- a de facto draft-- are not feeling better off. They believe they have been deceived by their enlistment agreements. The American taxpayers are not better off having spent over 200 billion dollars to pursue this war, with billions yet to be spent. ...

The entire speech is worth reading.

US Relied On 'Drunken Liar' To Justify War

The story has a twist -- it wasn't Dubya.

An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.

According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a "congenital liar" by his friends.

The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball's credibility, his claims were included in the administration's case for war without caveat. ...

Intelligence analysts who voiced concern were "forced to leave" the unit mainly responsible for analysing his claims, the commission found. At every turn analysts were blocked by spy chiefs and their warning never passed on to policy-makers.

The Sweet Taste Of Freedom

AP:

Almost twice as many Iraqi children are suffering from malnutrition since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, a U.N. monitor said Monday.

Four percent of Iraqis under age 5 went hungry in the months after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, and the rate nearly doubled to 7.7 percent last year, said Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.

The situation is "a result of the war led by coalition forces," he said.

Which 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Do You Believe?

An lengthy (and excellent) report from the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

[T]the most disturbing thing about the 9/11 truth movement, something you learn when you really dissect their most compelling evidence, is that the activists are raising critically important questions about the Bush administration's lies, cover-ups, and geopolitical strategy – questions that are being almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media. ... To not try to put the pieces together is to be incurious about the most profound event of this new American century.

The Bush administration offered its conspiracy theory while the buildings were still ablaze, has done little since then to deviate from it – and has done almost nothing to prove its veracity beyond a shadow of a doubt. ...

To believe [the Bush] theory, you must accept that, despite receiving an unprecedented flurry of intelligence warnings about imminent terrorist attacks on the United States, the military was caught so off guard that it couldn't even pull the commander in chief out of his elementary-school photo op or get fighter jets in place during the 34 minutes between when the second tower and the Pentagon were hit – even though everyone knew that the United States was under attack and that Flight 77 was known to have been hijacked and was being tracked on radar the entire time it barreled toward the nation's military headquarters. (Each of these facts is from the official 9/11 Commission Report.) ...

You have to believe, in other words, that one of the most secretive and manipulative administrations in U.S. history is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth about an event it has aggressively exploited to implement long-standing and far-reaching political plans ...

Republican Thomas Kean was picked to head the commission, and for executive director, he chose one of Bush's own staffers, Phillip Zelikow, a neoconservative hawk who had cowritten a book with then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice – a key figure in the intelligence breakdown – who has since been promoted to secretary of state. Oh yeah, and she just recently hired Zelikow as a member of her staff.

Zelikow and Kean were also nice enough to let Bush and Cheney – both of whom 9/11 activists accuse of culpability in the attacks – testify together, in private, and without being placed under oath. ...

The 19 hijackers were identified by name on the morning of 9/11, names that were taken from the passenger logs and haven't changed since. But in the days after 9/11, several of those identified hijackers contacted a variety of reputable news outlets – including the Guardian of London, the London Telegraph, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC, Arab News, and Asharq al-Awsat – to say they were alive and innocent. ...

[W]hat's amazing is that the 9/11 Commission never even addressed the issue and stated the identities and backgrounds of the hijackers ... as if they were incontrovertible facts.

I hope to address some of these points, including the IDs of the hijackers, in the next few weeks. In the meantime, go buy this book.

FBI = Fooking Bumbling Imbeciles

Globe:

The FBI admitted Saturday to accidentally giving an American translator back the same classified documents that he pleaded guilty last month to taking from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, who was released from jail earlier this month, contacted the FBI's Boston office Tuesday after he realized agents inadvertently gave him the secret files -- stored on a compact disc -- along with the rest of his personal property.

Morons ... or a set-up for a future arrest?

Seymour Hersh In Ithaca

Notes from Seymour Hersh's appearance at last night in Ithaca, New York:

I don't like the term insurgency. Insurgency suggests that we won the war and have Allawi as prime minister. The real simple fact is that we are still fighting the war. We are fighting against the Baathists. They gave us Baghdad. They are fighting us at their own pace. It is frightening to think that we are in the middle of something. And they are fighting us with increasing sophistication. They watch how we react. They learn. ... This war is a strategic mistake. We have made enemies for life. There will be revenge against us for life.

Also a report from the Ithaca Journal.

Just passing along this post from Kos -- found at the Angels/Dodgers blog 6-4-2 -- wherein several posters wish the Red Sox/CIA Jet story had concentrated more on our tax dollars being spent to kidnap people (guilty of anything? perhaps not) and bring them to other counties so they can be tortured and murdered. ... SusanHu writes: "We're either part of the madness of rendition or we stand against it. ... Mr. Morse has a clear choice." No word from Morse about whether he will continue renting his jet to the CIA. The story seems to have died.

And: "Bush administration lawyers urged the Supreme Court yesterday to dismiss a lawsuit against Iraq brought by US pilots and soldiers who were captured and tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime during the Persian Gulf War of 1991." LA Times

Red Sox Partner Confirms CIA Uses Jet

Gordon Edes has the Globe's report:

Phillip H. Morse, a minority partner of the Boston Red Sox, confirmed yesterday that his private jet has been chartered to the CIA and said he was aware that it had been flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ... as well as other overseas destinations.

"It's chartered a lot," Morse said by phone from his winter home in Jupiter, Fla. "It just so happens one of our customers is the CIA. I was glad to have the business, actually. I hope it was all for a real good purpose."

Yeesh. Morse admits the CIA used the plane (as opposed to it being rented by a CIA front company) and he knows the CIA flew to Guantanamo. What the fuck does he think was going on? Flying cookies from DC for a bake sale?

"I hope it was all for a real good purpose." ... There is no way Morse is as stupid as he wants us to think he is.

Red Sox Jet Involved In Torture Transports?

Jet's travels cloaked in mystery
Red Sox partner's plane hits spots U.S. sent terror suspects
By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley
Chicago Tribune correspondents
March 20, 2005

Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.

But what was the very same Gulfstream -- owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage -- doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?

Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport. Omar, whose given name is Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, was imprisoned by the Egyptians and, he claims, brutally tortured. ...

Federal Aviation Administration records obtained by the Tribune show that Gulfstream N85VM has been many places around the world that the Red Sox have almost certainly never gone.

Between June 2002 and January of this year, the Gulfstream made 51 visits to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, site of the U.S. naval base where more than 500 terrorism suspects are behind bars.

During the same period, the plane recorded 82 visits to Washington's Dulles International Airport as well as landings at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., outside the capital and the U.S. air bases at Ramstein and Rhein-Main in Germany.

The plane's flight log also shows visits to Afghanistan, Morocco, Dubai, Jordan, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic. Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan and Morocco are among the countries to which the U.S. is known to have "rendered" terrorism suspects.

Also: Boston Globe

Here is the FAA's info on the Gulfstream, now using tail number N227SV.

According to the Tribune, the Gulfstream is owned by Assembly Point Aviation, a "religious organization" with an address in Albany, NY, but no telephone number. Its sole officer and director is Phillip H. Morse, who is also a Vice Chairman of the Red Sox.

Public Education

President Bush said on Wednesday that the U.S. government's practice of sending packaged news stories to local television stations was legal and he had no plans to cease it. His defense of the packages, which are designed to look like television news segments, came after they were deemed a form of covert propaganda by the Government Accountability Office watchdog agency.

Bush Defends Packaged News Stories from Government
Reuters, March 16, 2005

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

A senior advisor to Bush, quoted by Ron Suskind
New York Times, October 17, 2004

O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. "We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature."

George Orwell, 1984

United States of Halliburton

Can the Bush Junta get any more venal (or blatantly corrupt)? Of course it can:

In 2004, the UN's International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) - the international group that oversees the use of Iraqi money on Iraqi reconstruction - wanted to know more about Halliburton. Specifically, they wanted to conduct an audit of Halliburton subsidiary Kellog Brown & Root's single-source, oh-so-lucrative Iraq contract, $1.6 billion of which came straight from Iraqi coffers. After much foot dragging, the White House finally complied, sending the IAMB heavily redacted versions of audits the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) had conducted into Halliburton's use of the money.

Blacked out of the redacted report was the fact that Halliburton may have bilked the U.S. military out of about $100 million. Also blacked out were statements critical of KBR like "KBR was unable to reconcile the proposed costs to its accounting records" and "KBR did not always provide accurate information."

Here's where it gets really interesting. Wondering why the extensive redactions blocked all of the negative findings, the crack researchers in Rep. Henry Waxman's office looked into the matter. It turns out the White House gave Halliburton a copy of the negative audit and let the company scrub out all of the negative stuff itself before it was sent to the UN group. A letter from KBR dated 9/28/04 to the Army Corps of Engineers states "we have redacted the statements of DCAA that we believe are factually incorrect or misleading and could be used by a competitor to damage KBR's ability to win and negotiate new work."

From Think Progress (thanks to Atrios) (bolding by me).

Not Necessarily The News

Somewhere, Baghdad Bob is updating his resume.

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public-relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Various government-produced segments were broadcast in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta. More here.

Chocolate rations will be reduced next week from thirty grams to twenty.

Remembering All Those Arguments Made 1,500 Deaths Ago

Hard to believe this found its way into the mainstream press.

Something about anniversaries prods us to pause and reflect on what's transpired in the intervening time. March 20 is the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and it's a good time to consider what's happened since then.

Do you recall our civilian leadership's rationale for a pre-emptive war against Saddam Hussein? ... [T]he United States had no choice but to invade Iraq. They said Saddam was hiding chemical and biological weapons, and that his scientists would be able to produce a nuclear weapon in a few years.

Do you remember those who predicted that the operation would be financed in large part by sales of Iraqi oil? It would be cheap, easy and, oh yes, so swift that civilian leaders in the Pentagon ordered the military to plan to begin withdrawing from Iraq no later than the summer of 2003.

There was no need for much post-war planning because there wasn't going to be any post-war. America would come, conquer and get out. ...

After nearly 18 months, the Pentagon admitted that a team of nearly 1,000 intelligence officials and scientists had combed Iraq for evidence of chemical and biological weapons or any sign of an active nuclear weapons program. They found nothing.

This war that was supposed to be a cakewalk has taken the lives of 1,510 American troops and sent thousands more home, maimed by improvised explosive devices that tear off arms and legs.

American taxpayers have paid more than $200 billion in two years for a war we were told wouldn't cost much, if anything, and the cost in fiscal 2006 will be at least $70 billion more. ...

It's a shame the writer did not mention the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been murdered -- some estimates put the total between 100,000 and 200,000. Piles and piles of corpses -- and no end in sight -- all paid for by you and me.

Letting You Have It Our Way

Over 100,000 Maimed

Wasn't the Hamburglar somehow invoved in smuggling Saddam's WMDs to Syria (or Iran) -- whosever easier to bomb the shit out of?

Is Mayor McCheese really is an American-hating, Kerry-supporting, Frenchophile? Some right-wing bloggers are saying his real last name is McBrie.

But I heard he and Guckert were doing some unspeakable things with a 3-day-old baguette and a glossy 8x10 of Ari Fleischer ...

And check out who owns this URL: www.hotstudgrimace.com

I'm just sayin'.

Oh Canada!

Lloyd Axworthy, current President of the University of Winnipeg and former Foreign Minister of Canada, published an open letter to Condoleeza Rice in the Winnipeg Free Press this week. It began:

Dear Condi, I'm glad you've decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It's a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.

Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government's role should be when there isn't a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such a missile defence can be made openly. ...

Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.

Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire. ...

Read the whole letter at Daily Kos.

Be the first one on your block ...

The Army missed its February recruiting goal by more than 27%, even as it offers its largest enlistment bonuses ever: up to $20,000 to some recruits willing to sign on for four years. So why the low numbers? Why, it's the media's fault -- for telling us that Americans are being killed in Iraq!

According to Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman:

"I mean, without question, when there's the kind of coverage that there has been about casualties - and we certainly mourn all the casualties, but they are covered, there's prominent media coverage of casualties in Iraq - parents factor those kinds of things in to what they want their children doing."

Well, then reporting this type of news is just irresponsible troop-hating, isn't it?

A growing number of U.S. troops whose body armor helped them survive bomb and rocket attacks are suffering brain damage as a result of the blasts. ... From January 2003 to this January, 437 cases of [traumatic brain injury] were diagnosed among wounded soldiers at the Army hospital, Lux says. Slightly more than half had permanent brain damage. ... The wound may come to characterize this war, much the way illnesses from Agent Orange typified the Vietnam War, doctors say.

The number of American dead passed the 1,500 mark this week.

At Least Four Years Too Late

Bush: "Bin Laden's message is a telling reminder that al Qaeda still hopes to attack us on our own soil. Stopping him is the greatest challenge of our day."

Did he just get around to looking at some of those 52 warnings he received in the five months before September 11, 2001?

Stoopid

Doug Schmitz, MichNews.com:

Recall the hissy fit the media leftists threw about Fox News White House Correspondent Carl Cameron when he was traveling with the Kerry campaign: Cameron, who's one of the best White House correspondents in Washington, referred to John Kerry as a "metrosexual" in a private e-mail about Kerry’s over-the-top grooming habits. But it was inadvertently posted on Foxnews.com and, subsequently, the pro-Kerry media pounced.

But these same leftist reporters never said a word when New York Times reporter and Bush-hater Adam Nagourney posted, in his "personal diary" on his Web site, false allegations about Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman.

Wanna see Nagourney's "personal diary"? It is here.

As Atrios says, this guy's dumber than dirt. Probably reads The Onion for its investigative journalism.

Avoiding the "Reality-Based Community"

Der Spiegel:

During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice. ... Bush's strategists felt an uncontrolled encounter with the German public would be too unpredictable.

To avoid that messy scenario, the White House requested that rules similar to those applied during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit two weeks ago also be used in Mainz. Before meeting with students at Paris's Institute of Political Sciences ... Rice's staff insisted on screening and approving any questions to be asked by students. ... In the end, the town hall meeting was never officially dropped from the agenda of the trip -- instead it was dealt with in polished diplomatic style -- both sides just stopped talking about it.

Thanks to "Are We Still A Democracy?" ... And to answer the question posed by that blog title -- going by what Bush told Putin this past week: "Democracies have certain things in common; they have a rule of law, and protection of minorities, a free press, and a viable political opposition" -- I'd say No. Four strikes and you're out.

Support Tax the Troops

Military.com:

Republican majorities on the House and Senate veterans' affairs committees have voted to impose an enrollment fee of at least $230 a year on 2.4 million veterans - one of every three now eligible for Veterans Affairs Administration health care.

But don't blame Bush, this is (somehow) all Clinton's fault.

New York Times:

With little fanfare, the Bush administration is proposing to stop financing the construction of new housing for the mentally ill and physically handicapped as part of a 50 percent cut in its housing budget for people with disabilities. ... [T]he federal government would discontinue financing housing for people with spinal cord injuries or psychiatric illnesses who are not necessarily homeless but may live in nursing homes or psychiatric hospitals.

On the plus side, these cuts will save approximately $120 million -- less than one day's cost for the Iraq occupation.

Damn, if this is "compassionate conservatism," I'd hate to see what they do when they get mean and vindictive.

My Name Is ...

For awhile, I've known that "This Blog Needs No Title" or "Untitled" simply wasn't going to cut it as the name of this blog. So I'm complaining about it tonight and I look over to the book shelf and spy a Truman Capote spine. "How about I call it "In Cold Blog'?" ... Hmmm, that's actually not too bad. And it makes both my blogs (The Joy of Sox being the other) slight takeoffs of book titles. I like that. ... Then, of course, I start scanning the titles on every shelf:

The Blog Also Rises
Portnoy's Blog
Blog-22
Blogs of Grass
Nicholas Bloggerby
Lady Chatterley's Lover's Blog
As I Lay Blogging
Of Mice and Blogs
Blogeo and Juliet

So many possibilities ...

... that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded

From the Guardian:

On February 9, 1963, William Zantzinger, a rich young farmer, struck Hattie Carroll, a black barmaid, with his cane. She died that night; he got six months.

The crime was immortalized in song by Bob Dylan in 1964. And Ian Frazier wonders: Where is Zantzinger now?

Ha!

Could this be the start of a new trend?

Ashcroft's Name Substitutes For Obscenity In Movie
Richard Leiby, Washington Post
Feb. 24, 2005 02:41 PM

You're an Ashcroft! No, you're the Ashcroft!

Imagine hearing that exchange in a movie - you'd think that Hollywood had come up with a crazy new insult. Well, it turns out that some airline passengers watching the Oscar-nominated film "Sideways" on foreign flights are, in fact, hearing "Ashcroft" as a substitute for a certain seven-letter epithet commonly used to denote a human orifice. ...

Flashback: A picture of Ashcroft, made entirely of little porn people.

Koufax Awards

The best of the lefty blogs from 2004. Two winners:

Best Post: Juan Cole -- If American Were Iraq, What Would it be Like

Most Humorous Post: The Poorman -- Poker with Dick Cheney

"Brooklyn's Abu Ghraib"

New York Daily News, February 20, 2005:

On the ninth floor of the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, terrorism suspects swept off the streets after the Sept. 11 attacks were repeatedly stripped naked and frequently were physically abused, the Justice Department's inspector general has found.

The detainees - none of whom were ultimately charged with anything related to terrorism - alleged in sworn affidavits and in interviews with Justice Department officials that correction officers ... shackled their hands and feet before smashing them repeatedly face-first into concrete walls - within sight of the Statue of Liberty. ...

The Justice Department's inspector general has substantiated some of the prisoners' allegations - and some incidents were captured on videotape. But the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any federal correction officer at MDC.

Out of Town

Back on Saturday.

Double Exposure

Headline at BradBlog: "CNN's Nuke Plant Photos Identical for Both Iran and N. Korea!"

Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in N. Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant!

But one is supposed to be in Iran and the other is supposed to be in North Korea!

The Liberal Media Strikes Again

Associated Press:

"... 54 percent disapprove [on Bush's job performance in January] ... The number who think the country is headed down the wrong track increased from 51 percent to 58 percent in the past month. ... Only four in 10 said they approved of Bush's handling of domestic policy in general, and a majority of people disapproved of his handling of the economy. ... Some 42 percent said they approved of the president's handling of Iraq, while 57 percent disapproved.

The headline for this? "Poll Shows Optimism About Iraq."

The apparent reason for the positive headline is that 51% of those polled "think a stable, democratic Iraq is likely"; the number had been 46% before the Iraq elections. ... 51%? Sounds like another mandate.

More 9/11 Lies Exposed

From today's New York Times:

"In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission. ...

The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable." ...

But but but we were told by Condi "Perjury" Rice that NO ONE could have imagined such a thing. And for months after the attacks, the Administration swore up and down that there had been absolutely no warning of anything.

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system.

Five months? ... Let's count backwards? January, December, November, October, September ... Why, that's right in the thick of the campaign season and just before the debates. How about that? Just another coincidence.

The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

Two weeks ago? And we're just hearing about it now? Ah, that ol' liberal media -- always on the Junta's heels ... begging for a biscuit. Actually, one of the more amazing aspects of this story is that it wasn't part of the usual Friday 4:30pm news dump.

Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time. ...

I suppose all 52 of those reports were "historical" in nature, as Rice described the August 6, 2001 PDB entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US."

The F.A.A. "had indeed considered the possibility that terrorists would hijack a plane and use it as a weapon," and in 2001 it distributed a CD-ROM presentation to airlines and airports that cited the possibility of a suicide hijacking ... Aviation officials amassed so much information about the growing threat posed by terrorists that they conducted classified briefings in mid-2001 for security officials at 19 of the nation's busiest airports to warn of the threat posed in particular by Mr. bin Laden ...

The F.A.A. did not see a need to increase the air marshal ranks because hijackings were seen as an overseas threat ...

Wait a minute. We were just told a few paragraphs ago that the FAA "warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if 'the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners ... a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable.'"

Right now, with all that we know (despite the Junta's herculean attempt to block, hide or destroy any and all information related to the attacks), the best thing you can say about the Bush Administration and 9/11 -- the best thing -- is that they knowingly sat on their asses and allowed the terrorist attacks to go forth.

You really have to wonder what it will take for the general public to wake up.

My Head Hurts

Some of the "Latest Breaking News" threads at DU:

US "in for a shock" (Shiite cleric trouncing Allawi in early results)
690,000 US servicemen to land in Korea in case of war
Marine general: It is "fun to shoot some people." (Audience applauds)
Journalists paid to write for military website
Documents reveal CIA recruited five of Eichmann's associates
Rumsfeld Debating Whether to Avoid Germany (may be arrested for war-crimes)
Tapes reveal Enron's secret role in California's power blackouts
Bush Budget Would Cut Law Enforcement Aid
Bush tells CBC he's "unfamiliar" with Voting Rights Act
GOP fundraiser for "Adopt a Sniper" shut down at college
Destroyed Embryo Deemed Human
Canada Geese Falling Out of the Sky in Oregon
Western State Hospital said to free psychotics

Stop the Insanity

Pandagon:

If Peter Orzag's calculations are correct in this New York Times article, in the first 20 years of privatization, it would cost $4.5 trillion dollars to shore up a system projected to run a $3.4 trillion deficit over 75 years. Bush wants to commit the government to an unnecessary extra $1.1 trillion of spending that will still result in my benefits getting cut when I retire.

Atrios agrees and spells it out in plain English: The Bush Administration wants to borrow an extra trillion so they can cut everyone's benefits by 40%.

Guess where all that money (yours and mine) is gonna go?

And Bush's quote in the previous post about passing the money on to your children and grandchildren -- it was a bold-faced lie. ... AP: "Any funds that remained available under these annuities after death would go to the Social Security program; the money could not be inherited."

Robbing Us Blind

Washington Post:

"You'll be able to pass along the money that accumulates in your personal account, if you wish, to your children . . . or grandchildren," Bush said last night. "And best of all, the money in the account is yours, and the government can never take it away."

Uh, not quite, Crusader Bunnypants.

Under the White House Social Security plan, workers who opt to divert some of their payroll taxes into individual accounts would ultimately get to keep only the investment returns that exceed the rate of return that the money would have accrued in the traditional system. ...

If a worker sets aside $1,000 a year for 40 years, and earns 4 percent annually on investments, the account would grow to $99,800 in today's dollars, but the government would keep $78,700 -- or about 80 percent of the account. The remainder, $21,100, would be the worker's. With a 4.6 percent average gain over inflation, the government keeps more than 70 percent. With the CBO's 3.3 percent rate, the worker is left with nothing but the guaranteed benefit."

Each day, this gets revealed as the biggest fucking scam of all time.

SOTU

Count the lies. Some dandies here, here, here and here.