thanks to atrios, we find gail sheehy's report on what questions the 9/11 widows want to ask rumsfeld. (such as, how come he didn't break up his pitch session for the star wars missle defense program when he learned about the attacks on the wtc?)
help make sure richard clarke's message is not awol from the airwaves
we got an email from moveon.org, which is trying to put together a tv ad to get richard clarke's point of view about awol's short-sightedness to the american public. as the email says:
instead of refuting clarke's claims, the bush administration has launched a campaign of character assassination, hoping that the story will just go away.
we're committed to stopping that from happening by making sure that the american public hears clarke's extraordinary comments. if we can raise $300,000 in the next few days, we can run a hard-hitting ad nationally that highlights his message. you can see a rough story board of the ad and donate to get it on the air at:
moveon rightly points out that clarke is a repubbblican and a hawk, and has independent witnesses confirming his conversation where awol hinted strongly to find a connection between 9/11 and al-qaeda.
if you've got any spare cash, even $5.00, send it to moveon.
we don't know, and personally, we don't have a dog in this fight. since grade school, skippy has left certain words unspoken whenever he's recited the pledge, (sometimes "under god," sometimes not...but always "for all" at the end). so none of us at skippy international can understand why people who don't like specific phrases in the pledge just refrain from saying them as they recite. you don't see skippy going to the supreme court because somebody made him say something he didn't like!
imagine our delight to find that left is right is of the same opinion!
we must commend jj and the gang at cookies in heaven for a great product! the entire staff at skippy international and mrs. skippy, too, highly recommends these wonderful cookies!
if the middle east terrorists had these cookies, there'd be peace in the world!
reuters tells us of a brazilian pastor who died while watching "the passion of the christ":
jose geraldo soares, a 43-year-old presbyterian pastor, had reserved two movie theaters at a belo horizonte shopping mall on sunday afternoon to see the film with his family and the congregations of two local churches.
but halfway through the movie, soares' wife noticed that he was no longer awake. a doctor who was also watching the film tended to soares, but the priest was already dead.
"he was calmly watching the movie next to his wife," said amauri costa, a family friend who also attended soares' funeral on monday.
soares is at least the second person to die while watching "the passion," which opened in brazil on friday. peggy scott, 56, died of a heart attack on feb. 25 in wichita, kansas while watching film's climactic crucifixion scene.
we're waiting to hear about the audience members who became zombies while watching dawn of the dead.
another explosion occurred in baghdad today, in another hotel. the baghdad sheraton was hit, presumably by a missle of some sort. reuters tells us:
a suspected guerrilla rocket struck a central baghdad hotel used by foreign contractors and journalists early on wednesday, but caused limited damage and no injuries.
"there's evidence of some sort of rocket hitting the hotel at about the sixth floor,'' said one guest at the ishtar sheraton hotel.
the powerful blast, about a third of the way up the hotel, shattered some windows and smashed concrete.
apparently many foreign reporters were housed at the sheraton.
book on awol's connection to saudis now awol in britain
craig unger's book house of bush, house of saud, detailing the extensive links between the two blood lines, has been banned in britain, due to the publisher's (rightly placed) fear of lawsuits by the saudi's.
"we've had to withdraw it for legal reasons," says an editor at secker & warburg, a u.k. division of random house. "we expected we would be able to publish it with a degree of risk. but regrettably in the final analysis we decided we could not."
"essentially it's been quashed," says author craig unger. scribner published the book in the united states on march 16. (shortly before that, salon ran exclusive excerpts from the book.)
unger's literary agent elizabeth sheinkman stresses the decision had nothing to do with the book's quality and that secker & warburg editors "were very excited about" the manuscript. "but they were concerned that it could be very costly for them," she says. "in the process of having it legally vetted they were ultimately advised it would be dangerous to publish the book. or rather, the likelihood of random house being sued by the saudis was too likely for them to go forward."
we cannot criticize the british publishers for this action. the libel laws are very "plaintiff-friendly" in that country, and it's better to run away and live to fight another day.
ayn coulter's sarcasm not awol on the american street
imagine our stunned surprise to see our arch enemy, ayn coulter, blogging on the american street, where we often post (the same crap we post here because we are too damn lazy to write original stuff for another blog).
we can't wait for the follow up, what if david brooks wrote like ray bradbury?
it was quiet on the veldt, as condi and rummy looked to the east, over the mosques, the compounds, the spider-holes, over the grass that was cut all wrong.
"something wicked this way comes," said condi.
rummy nodded his head, his eyes closed.
"it's coming," she said.
again, the nod, imperceptable.
"soon."
"it's terror," said rummy. he opened his eyes, the dark pale eyes of a man who has seen too much, but knows there is more to see. "and it's coming."
they began to walk away, slowly at first, then picking up speed, walking, then stepping lightly, like a jog, but not a jog; then faster, faster till they were running, as if running could take them out of harms way, though they both knew better.
"someone had better tell the boss," condi remarked, as the horizon loomed before them, "that the martian chronicles is not a newspaper the rover spirit found."
pardon us if we pat ourselves on the back, but thanks to cursor, we find a usatoady article that pretty much confirms our previous rant of a couple days ago.
pakistani officials hinted late last week that ayman al-zawahiri, 52, an egyptian doctor and islamic militant regarded as an architect of al-qaeda's sept. 11 attacks in the usa, was cornered in the mountainous south waziristan district. but asked sunday whether the government had evidence of zawahiri's presence in the semi-autonomous tribal belt, mehmood shah, the head of security in the combustible northwest frontier province, was unequivocal.
"no. we have no indication. our guess was based on the amount of resistance we faced and the number of foreign fighters," shah said during an interview in his office here. "later on, many people started guessing names, and that's how his name came up."
pakistan's ambassador to the united states, ashraf jehangir qazi, told cnn on sunday that the intensity of the fighting indicated a "high-value target." he added, "we've made it absolutely clear that we do not know the identity of the high-value target that might be there."
we had wondered aloud ealier why the screeching heads were going to the "all zawahiri cornered in pakistan all the time" format late last week. and now this only confirms our suspicions that they had no basis on which to pre-empt all other news (including the continuing violence in iraq) for this non-story.
mcclellan inadvertantly admits awol was awol on 9/12
of course, the story of the day is ex-counterterrorism czar richard clarke accusing awol of not being on the ball (or even in the ball park) when it came to counter-terrorism. and just as of course, the repubbbs are working overtime to discredit mr. clarke.
one reporter, we don't remember who, forgive us, questioned white house press secretary scott mcclellan about clarke's claim that a day after 9/11 awol asked him to pursue the links between the horrible attacks and iraq:
q: clarke now says that he has three eyewitnesses, and he repeated it again this morning, and he named them -- to the conversation.
mr. mcclellan: let's just step backwards -- regardless, regardless, put that aside. there's no record of the president being in the situation room on that day that it was alleged to have happened, on the day of september the 12th.
[ed. note: emphasis, and astonishment, ours.]
is that really what they want to go on record with? the day after the worst attacks on america in this country's history, the time when he was supposed to be leading the nation in time of crisis, they have proof that awol was never in the situation room?
where was he? clearing brush in crawford? golfing in new haven? choking on a pretzel in the bedroom?
fercryininthesink, shouldn't the leader of this country be in the situation room at least once the day after the most horrific attacks this nation has ever seen?
and even if he wasn't, does he want his minions to admit as much to the public?
blogger kelley kramer sends us this link to the daily show's page, where they have the video from faux news showing dick cheney's recent speech on why awol's administration is such a success, sharing split screen with the breaking news of bombing in iraq.
star tribune believe richard clarke not awol on facts
an editorial in the minneapolis star tribune makes a compelling case for former counterterrorist czar richard clarke making a compelling case against awol:
a few facts about clarke: he's a republican. he served 30 years in government; for 10 years, under three republican presidents and one democrat, he served in the white house as one of the nation's most senior national security advisers. clarke is not a dove. he believes in an assertive foreign policy and a vigorous projection of u.s. military power, which should make him a natural ally of…cheney…rumsfeld and…wolfowitz...finally, what clarke has to say about the current bush administration's obsession from the start with iraq is corroborated by former treasury secretary paul o'neill in his memoir, "the price of loyalty."
last night on 60 minutes, the former counterterrorism chief who served under the reagan, first bush, clinton and second bush administrations, laid some pretty heavy charges at the feet of this current administration: ie, they are stupid.
frankly," he said, "i find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. he ignored it. he ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. maybe. we'll never know."
clarke went on to say, "i think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
why? well, apparently awol had his mind made up who he was going to hold responsible for 9/11, even before any, let alone all, the facts were in:
the president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'i want you to find whether iraq did this.' now he never said, 'make it up.' but the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that george bush wanted me to come back with a report that said iraq did this.
"i said, 'mr. president. we've done this before. we have been looking at this. we looked at it with an open mind. there's no connection.'
"he came back at me and said, "iraq! saddam! find out if there's a connection.' and in a very intimidating way. i mean that we should come back with that answer. we wrote a report."
clarke continued, "it was a serious look. we got together all the fbi experts, all the cia experts. we wrote the report. we sent the report out to cia and found fbi and said, 'will you sign this report?' they all cleared the report. and we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the national security advisor or deputy. it got bounced and sent back saying, 'wrong answer. ... do it again.'
wolfowitz fidgeted and scowled. … “well, i just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin laden.”
“we are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al qaeda, that happens to be led by bin laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the united states,” i answered. …
wolfowitz turned to me. “you give bin laden too much credit. he could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on new york, not without a state sponsor. just because fbi and cia have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don’t exist.”
i could hardly believe it, but wolfowitz was actually spouting the totally discredited laurie mylroie theory that iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the world trade center, a theory that had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue.
say what you will about the "all awol all the time format," we loved writing that headline. but apparently we weren't the only ones.
the remake of george romero's least interesting of his zombie trilogy films, dawn of the dead, pushed mel gibson's the passion of the christ out of first place in the weekend box office sweepstakes. and when you want to know about jesus and zombies, where else do you turn but mtv?
the $26 million "dawn of the dead" remake easily cruised to a #1 finish with an estimated $27.3 million take over the weekend, according to studio estimates. the surprisingly strong finish for the sarah polley/ ving rhames popcorn flick meant that gibson's run at #1 was stopped at three weeks. the controversial retelling of the final 12 hours in the life of christ lost 40 percent of its audience, but slipped only one spot on $19.2 million in estimated grosses, bringing its to-date domestic total to $295.3 million.
interestingly enough, as the uk guardian tells us, the jim carrey film eternal sunshine was the pleasant dark horse of the bunch:
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, starring jim carrey and kate winslet, was the weekend's surprise, opening in fifth, with around $8.6m. distributors focus had clearly not expected much and had not given the film an especially wide release. but it seems carrey can still pull them in - indeed, according to variety, showings sold out in many venues.
skippy has forgone seeing both christ and the zombies, but can highly recommend the jim carrey film.
cheney awol on meetings for counterterrorism but not energy taskforce
judd legum, who helps pen (or "type"?) the cap's blog progress report, sends us an interesting compare/contrast email:
energy task force met at least ten times: in 2001, vice president cheney formally convened his energy task force "10 times between january 29, 2001, and may 16, 2001. all but two of the meetings were held in the vice president’s ceremonial office." his staff also met at least 6 times with enron energy executives. [source: gao report, 8/22/03; ap, 1/8/02]
versus
counterterrorism task force never met: “bush said [in may of 2001] that cheney would direct a government-wide review on managing the consequences of a domestic attack, and 'i will periodically chair a meeting of the national security council to review these efforts.' neither cheney's review nor bush's took place.” - washington post, 1/20/02
maybe because ken lay wasn't on the counterterrorism team...
5/10/01 – ashcroft new doj budget goals memo: official annual budget goals memo from Attorney General Ashcroft dated 5/10/2001 (directly compares to the 4/6/2000 reno memo). out of 7 strategic goals described, not one mentions counterterrorism, a serious departure from reno...
post 9/11 – budget document detailing omb rejection of fbi counter-terror request: internal document showing that fbi requested $1.499 billion for counterterrorism for the post-september 11 emergency supplemental but received just $530 million from the white house, despite serious counterterrorism needs.
quite interesting, and we'll be eager to hear how the administration denies it.
reader and contributor rose sends us this excite news piece telling us that the campaign to re-elect awol is offering a beautiful jacket made in myranmar...whose imports are, unfortunately, illegal in this country.
a "bush-cheney '04" campaign jacket sold on the internet has stirred controversy because it was made in myanmar, whose imports have been banned by the united states.
although the company that shipped the fleece pullover, spalding group of louisville, kentucky, has said it did so in error, human rights groups blamed president bush's re-election campaign staff for not taking a more careful look at the origin of the products being sold in its name.
the bush administration has had sanctions in place since september against myanmar -- also known by its colonial name burma -- in an attempt to punish the government over human rights violations.
"burma is one of the most repressive, brutal dictatorships in the world," said charles kernagan, head of the national labor committee, a group that seeks to combat sweatshops internationally. "the bush-cheney campaign was putting money into the hands of dictators with that purchase."
due to circumstances beyond our control (ie, pollhost screwed up), we are forced to run our poll "should skippy keep using the all awol all the time format?" for another week.
if you voted before, your vote has been lost somewhere in cyberspace. please vote again. we promise, this won't take long.
roger ailes tells us about a repubbblican contributor and small business owner ("christian financial counseling") who has been arrested on charges of intercourse with a 15 year old girl. but wait, it gets better...turns out the guy has spent more than a million dollars on purchasing the favors of "professional" women. gotta love them repubbbs!
south knox bubba has a great poster for the one year anniversary of the iraq war.
the democratic veteran tells us that the afghani minister of aviation has been assinated.
orcinus has the lowdown on a freeper successfully getting the organizer of the fresno peace rally arrested.
body and soul covers the coverage of the church trial of the methodist pastor who admitted she was a lesbian.
blue streak finds some of what the governator will be cutting to balance california's budget.
talkleft gives us a great reason to move to canada (other than the obvious political ones). and tchris, guesting at talkleft, links us to the great nytimes mag piece on al franken.
awol top terrorism administrator admits awol awol on terror
tonight on 60 minutes, richard clarke pretty much points the finger directly at awol for all the problems we've gotten ourselves into with the "war on terror." the asspress tells us:
richard a. clarke, the former white house counterterrorism coordinator, accuses the bush administration of failing to recognize the al-qaida threat before the sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and then manipulating america into war with iraq with dangerous consequences.
he accuses bush of doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
clarke, who is expected to testify tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, writes in a new book, against all enemies, going on sale monday, that bush and his cabinet were preoccupied during the early months of his presidency with some of the cold war issues that had faced his father's administration.
"it was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier," clarke told cbs for an interview to air today on its 60 minutes program.
tom tomorrow has the most comprehensive analysis of the reality of why the spanish elections went down as they did. it's an email from a spanish reader of his, detailing the reasons why he and millions of other spanairds voted for the socialist candidate, and it has little to do with al qaeda's reprisals for the spanish support of the coalition:
so, many people began to ask "who did it?", "not all of us are here, we lack 200" and "we want the truth before voting" already in the mammoth antiterrorist demonstrations on friday. the government stuck to the eta [basque separatist group] hypothesis trying to avoid this probable electoral damage. they must have thought that using their massive media control they could cover it up for four days, until election's aftermath. government-controlled public and private televisions, radios and newspapers broadcasted once and again "it was eta", but each minute less people was buying it. it has been said that workers of some of this media were near to revolt because of the pressures to avoid the islamic hypothesis (today, efe -spanish state press agency- workers' unions have asked for the immediate resignation of their boss because of this)…
and sunday came, and it was election's day. i didn't see fear. i saw mourning. a strange feeling, believe me. spaniards use to be very funny. people is continously laughing and making jokes about everything, specially the younger. watching all that people lining up to vote without a laugh nor a smile was impressive. and there was something more in truckloads of eyes. anger. deep anger. no incidents…
but let me tell you that i honestly think that we voted not guided by fear, but guided by anger. in the critical hours after the attack, aznar's government confronted and bipolarized the spanish people lying and manipulating even when the truth was alreday obvious for millions. this caused an automatic reaction in the low and middle classes thinking "they make wars against our opinion, then it's our blood who pays them, and furthermore they're lying us and insulting our deads and our intelligence". not a good cocktail for a government seeking re-election, i'm afraid.
"not a good cocktail for a government seeking re-election." tell that to awol.
bad news for those of you who were watching the big game on thursday and friday. no, we don't mean ncaa march madness, we mean the big "battle on the border" (actual news logo on one of the screeching head networks) involving pakistani and us forces as they "cornered" ayman al-zawahiri, bin laden's number two (no laughing, austin powers fans!) in a tribal compound.
turns out he wasn't there. or he might have been there but he left early in the fighting. or he was there and now he's dead. or he was dead and now he's alive. or something.
not a big surprise, and we are not saying that the screeching heads news networks shouldn't be following the story. we just found it suspicious and pointless to have practically a two-day breaking news story about a battle in the tora bora mountains which was not only unresolved, but not even particularly confirmed that there was anything there.
especially when this week in iraq, the supposed anniversary rah rah of what a great job we did in that war, was one of the bloodiest weeks (week 54)in the past year.
we've got bad news for everybody who voted in this week's poll "should skippy continue to use the all awol all the time format?"
and it's bad, irrespective of which way you voted.
for some reason pollhost has lost the individual tallies for each answer. we know the total tally of people who voted, well over 150. but we can't tell which answer got the largest number of votes.
even worse, pollhost had refused to even answer our emails until we threatened to publicize on our blog how lousy their service is.
their terse email said, "we are investigating the matter."
(since they actually did answer our emails, we will refrain from telling everybody what a lousy stupid pointless and waste of time service pollhost runs. we'll just let you all decide that for yourselves.)
however, this means that we will have to run the poll for another week. and we are asking everybody who voted last week to please vote again this week.
for the record, we were able to view the vote tally for the first two days the poll was up. and it looked very much like we were asking america "should awol be elected again?" because the votes were pretty evenly split, with a little more tippage towards the "yes" side, because a larger number of people did not want the crack smoking headline writer to get rehired.
31 women and 50 men were arrested in yesterday's anti-war protests in san francisco. the sfchron tells us:
[sheriff's spokeswoman eileen] hirst and police spokeswoman isabel crowell said they believe all 81 are from a group of about 100 that split off from the main march and rally around 3 p.m. they allegedly blocked market street and refused to disperse, resulting in what police described as some minor physical confrontations.
the day's events were otherwise peaceful, police said.
protesters gathered in dolores park this morning, making their way through the mission to market street, then headed to the civic center where speakers called for an end to the military occupation of iraq.
act now to stop war and racism (answer), which organized the protest, claimed that 50,000 people filled the streets of san francisco. police do not release their estimates of crowd totals, crowell said.
meanwhile, the asspress has this to say about the number of demonstrators at the la protest:
police estimated the crowd at 2,500 while organizers said about 10,000 people showed up. the conflicting estimates could not immediately be reconciled.we were there, and there were definately far more than just 2,500 people.
charges, let alone logic, awol from case against guantanamo chaplin
all charges against capt. james yee have been dropped according to the muslim american society:
in all, the military had brought six counts against yee, but never brought espionage-related charges against him, reports reuters news agency…
guantanamo base commander major gen. geoffrey miller dropped all the charges against yee because of the difficulty of prosecuting him without giving defense lawyers additional classified information, u.s. southern command spokesman lieutenant colonel bill costello told afp.
the military had initially linked him to a possible espionage ring at the naval base in cuba. but the government failed to build a capital espionage case against him. prosecutors have not disclosed much about their case, reports the ap…
they collapsed. chaplain yee has won his case," yee's civilian lawyer, eugene fidell, told reuters. "this represents a long overdue vindication. in our view, he's entitled to an apology and we'll be looking forward to receiving one."
asked if yee would get an apology, [u.s. southern command spokesman lieutenant colonel bill] costello said, "i don't know."
fidell said that "we reject the notion that security concerns played any role in this decision," instead saying the government's case went "up in smoke”…
yee's lawyers had offered to have yee submit to 30 days of polygraph exams for questioning on spy-related issues, reports reuters.
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