Thursday, March 30, 2006

ACCEPTANCE IS THE KEY TO SERENITY

"If you think yourself too wise to involve yourself in government, you will be governed by those too foolish to govern." Plato

When they are exposed to what Jesus actually preached, many ignorant so-called "Christian Conservatives" cry "Communism". Ray Dubuque LiberalslikeChrist.org Please check out this amazing site, which explains where the religious wrong got their ideas. Read about slavery in the south, and how this is the model they are going for. This is an amazing website by a minister who says exactly what every good Christian knows: Christ had the values of liberals, definitely not conservatives. But you have to read how they distort the bible, and quote Paul of Tarsus over Jesus of Nazareth. Now I get it; they are not interested in Christ's teachings at all!

Drewl said: "Did anyone happen to see Tom Delay's comments the other day about "the enemies of virtue" who are out to destroy Christianity? He said this at a conference called, I kid you not, "War on Christians". What is with these people? The hypocrisy is incredible. If anything, these people are destroying what Christianity is supposed to be about. Sad."

You're right Drewl, I don't recognize Christ's teachings AT ALL in the religious right. In fact, they preach the exact opposite of what Christ taught. The hardest thing in the world is to love these people, these "enemies" who have so perverted The Great Peacemaker's teachings and mission. But that is what we are called to do: see them as children of God and forgive them, for they know not what they do. They are persecuting Christ all over again, on a daily basis. But the truth, the Christ consciousness, is resurrected every day and we have to go forward spreading the truth: "Blessed are the Peacemakers, bless those who persecute you; love your enemies, love your neighbor as yourself... BUT THAT DOESN' T MEAN NOT POINTING OUT CORRUPTION WHEN YOU SEE IT. Christ called the corrupt leaders of HIS day, "A brood of vipers!"

PORN AND THE RAPTURE: To My Last post's "Anonymous": Do you know who is responsible for the porn in America, and the incessant attention to Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Pam Anderson and Paris Hilton? The conglomerates who make money off selling sex-appeal and TV ratings: and they are CONSERVATIVES. There are not many liberals who pander to the homogenized pop-culture, nor to the "ratings" of reality series. The big thinkers like David Kelly "Boston Public" and Paul Haggis "Crash" are liberals; they win awards for deeper-themed art. By the way, many protestants do not believe in the rapture; and certainly not the one designed by Tim LaHaye in the Left Behind books. This is an arrogant, self-serving construct meant to exclude people, and it is preposterously un-Christian.

I am so angry most of the time about the war, the needless deaths, the corruption of our government, the environment, global warming, the lackadaisical attitude in Washington, the powerlessness of the Democrats. How can Bush get away with so many crimes, such unconscionable lack of wisdom or care!? What is a public servant anyway? Isn't he supposed to serve the people? But the anger I am carrying around is not healthy. There must be a better way. And there is. The serenity prayer is amazing: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." If you can get to acceptance, really accept whatever is going on, no matter how tragic or bizarre, then you can dwell in the present moment - and that's where the key to peace lies. With peace, solutions come.

My husband and I have just been betrayed by a "friend" who is trying to steal his investment in a book he published. She is also going to the author of the book and trying to steal his book rights. This woman (and the people who are influencing her) are operating soley from greed, and after a few days of crying and thinking the worst of them, I realized that I must not fight my enemies. I must see the good in Julie and in these people, and the good will rise. This is a principle, a law of the universe. It is also the Christ truth. After praying about this yesterday, I suddenly picked up one of my favorite books by Wayne Dyer, "You'll See it When you Believe It" and I turned to page 151, and here was a solution to most of my current problems: "Whatever you are currently against can be restated and rethought so as to promote abundance in your life. Everything you are against blocks you from abundance. EVERYTHING! If you are against terrorism and war, you become part of the problem. You are one more soldier fighting for what you believe in. And fighting always weakens you and brings more scarcity into your life. Instead of being AGAINST terrorism and war, try being FOR peace. Once you are for peace, you will start directing your thoughts and consequently your actions in that direction. You will become a peacemaker (or environmental problem-solver) simply by not being against anything. This may sound like semantic juggling, but it is much more than that. Once you are focused on something that you FAVOR, you will expand that in your life. Whatever you tend to be against puts you right into a fighting mold, and expands dissension in your consciousness."

When it comes to Bush & Co, I have not quite gotten to acceptance yet. Watching Bill Maher last night, I had forgotten how mad I was at bush for his deliberate snuffing of the truth about global warming. He actually hired an oil magnate as part of his staff to quash Hansen's scientific evidence that we have only 10 years left to turn it around.

I know for a fact that what you focus on GROWS. Whatever we negatively dwell on, worry or obsess about, stays in our life and becomes more and more of a catastrophe. This is not Pollyanna optimism; it's actually detaching from the worry and placing it in God's hands. Whether you believe in God or not, it doesn't matter; this is actually scientific. Thought is energy and power. Fear attracts like energy. When you radiate peace and love you attract peaceful and loving people, solutions, ideas. Maybe it's not as sexy as fighting (hence the proliferation of hate-speak, reality shows, Jerry Springer and Ann Coulter) — but it actually heals the situation. It works like magic. By the way, God is the force of love: and this power is greater than any other. I know here on this website, fighting really gets people going and it is very addictive and exciting — and sometimes by duking it out you can hear your point of view better or formulate solutions. But I am wondering what people have to say to "higher consciousness" for a change. And by the way, if you are an old-fashioned fire and brimstone Christian, these concepts are harder to understand. It takes a "spiritually open mind" to grasp what Christ really came here to tell us when he said, "You can move a mountain with faith (of a mustard seed.) But remember, the bible was written about flawed, desperate, imperfect people who needed healing. No one was perfect, and we have to remember that about our president too. We must see him with God's eyes: as a man in need of our loving prayers (as hard as that is to stomach!)
Love & more later .. and GO DIXIE CHICKS!! They have a great new song out, and they aren't backing down.
Lyd

167 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:22 AM

    Lydia, what you wrote speaks the truth of Christ, he tests us in more ways than we know, to see our reactions to what goes on in life.
    You speak very beautifully, and that in itself tells me alot about you.You have all the qualities needed to run this country, and if everyone feels the way we do,this would be a great place to be. I always say count your blessings, even though times maybe perilous, we do have alot to be thankful for, abundance of food, technology, and the freedoms of speech, vote, religion, and so on. So keep up the great work you do.

    You have a fantastic website, especially your beautiful pics!

    I recommend this website to everyone I know.

    God Bless You!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:28 AM

    For true answers to all your nagging questions please refer to the websites listed below:

    1) http://www.rbc.org/utmost

    2) http://www.infowars.com

    Love God, family and country in that order

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:26 PM

    Sit this one out Morph.
    You seem to have alot of anger within you, by the way you write. You seem to very critical and insulting to most people. "Seek the Lord and he will free you from all your fears and anger". Meet that special someone in your life and you will then find your way to happiness.

    God Bless you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous12:50 PM

    wow thanks Lydia. We're all so mad we can't see straight, and this helps calm us down a little. I felt suicidal the past few weeks and now I'm saying the serenity prayer.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous12:53 PM

    Worf, you also speak a lot of wisdom about Christ. You say the same things about what the New testament is about, and what Christ's teachings are about.

    But if we can't apply this to our own lives on a smaller scale, how can we expect Bush & Co, the eye-for-an-eye Christians, to apply it to their foreign policy?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous12:56 PM

    Never give up hope.
    The problem everyone's having today is we are focusing on all the anger and violence of the world.
    We have to shift our focal point on what is calm and serene.
    Morph and a few others on these websites, seem to know what's right, but total extreme profuse anger gets in their way. We will all pray for you!

    God Bless You!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous1:01 PM

    Morph, and his other butt buddies are happy in their own way, (if you know what I mean)!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous1:03 PM

    Yeah, I know what you mean, they have smeared this and all websites and their hate talk. They are doing each other in the butt about now.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous1:13 PM

    Hey that's not nice; and it's the furthest thing from the truth. Worf actually is one of the best champions of the truth. I have to delete that comment.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey Worf, if you choose to sit this one out thats fine, your certainly entitled, but I just wanted to say that what I took from the blog is not that Lydia is saying just lay down and stop speaking out and fighting altogether, but rather to fight in a different way, Hate feeds off of hate, take the trolls here the past few days, what did we really add that was worthwhile or of substance by rolling around in the mud with them and stooping to name calling and insults, (nothing) in fact we actually helped them in their cause to derail discussion, instead of ignoring their ignorance we legitimized them by trading insults, when if we had simply ignored them they would have either gotten board and left or been revealed as the spamming lowlifes they are, if no one is talking to them and they keep spamming or posting insults that says a lot. BTW although many of us have fallen into this trap, I deserve more blame than you or some of the others because I actually spent more time here than you did the last few days (never thought i'd say that)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Lydia I finally watched your Relationshop while I was on vacation, It wouldnt play on my DVD player and my computer lost its sound. I liked it, is that similar to your comedy act with Destiny??

    BTW I agree with anonymous, that is a fantastic pic for the last Blog, keep em coming (same dress as from Relationshop) you look amazing in that dress BTW.

    One last question if you have the time, do your husband or children share your spiritual and political views???

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous1:27 PM

    I agree. What she apeaks of says a whole lot. It's unfortunate that their are so many people out there with strange statements. Don't fught anger with anger it only leads to more anger. The Lord tests us all in good and bad time, and it's all in how we pass the test that endures us to Christ that much more..."Keep GREAT thoughts"

    God Bless

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks Mike. Relationshop was a one-woman show I did a couple of years ago, based on a true story of a guy who dumped me (James.) The "gay" sister character eventually went into a pilot about my sister. It was actually was a joke about how hard it is to find love in L.A. So my comedy with Destiny is quicker back-and forth insult/love life comedy. More basic standup, but with some really new ideas.

    My husband is growing in prayer; he is very willing, which is all that counts anyway since none of us know everything. Faith is the substance and willingness to believe in the unseen, or something like that, right? I have to take the kids back to Sunday school because they are very resistant and very influenced by peer pressure and the material world. They are approaching PUBERTY!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank you anonymous #1 comment! That was beautiful and I really appreciate it.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous1:40 PM

    I agree, to defend yourself , and your family is one thing, but, thankfully in my 43 years so far, I never had to think about such things."Keep the Peace", and hold great thoughts... GREAT thoughts bring GREAT ideas!!!

    God Bless!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Well Worf, i'm with you that at times you do need to stand up and fight and kick some ass, I wish the democrats would do that their spinelessness in not attacking Bush right back and holding him accountable for his actions really bothers me alot, but Lydia also has a point and I realized that what I had been doing the last few days is wrong before she even posted this blog, in fact I realized it last night when Clif and I were bantering with the troll its a about time I started practicing what I preach. There are times when you should take the high road and not stoop to their level and there are times you do need to fight to make the world a better place and help others, the hard part is rising above the ego or pettyiness that urges you to retaliate so you can be wise enough to discern the difference.

    ReplyDelete
  17. And THANK YOU to all the other anonymous commenters too.

    Worf, I agree, but we have to pick our battles. I'm talking more about our thought-life. before we "go into battle". Often we forget to solve a crisis BEFORE we go into battle, or choose to fight physically, as in the Iraq conflict. There were many diplomatic options, including prayer and negotiating.

    But now that we know Bush had planned an invasion all along, we have to pray for a good outcome. Otherwise we are rooting for him to fail, which will harm all of us.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Thanks Lyd, I meant to ask if Relationshop was a true story, thanks for reading my mind. :D

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous1:55 PM

    Does anyone here believe in the supernatural? Are you talking about supernatural miracles in prayer? Because I've had these kinds of things, and when it happens, you just know there is a God.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Lydia! Lydia! Lydia! What am I to do with you?

    How many times must I try to rescue your soul? I have been barking at you for months to understand the neccesity of maintaining a good balance and you still dismiss it.

    Life offers many different scenarios that require's us to morally challenge ourselves in choosing the appropriate measure for each circumstance.

    Sometimes we have to operate from strentgh in an effort to combat evil, thus preseving our own right to exist and preventing our being taken advantage of by individuals with nefarious intent.

    However, if we consistently operate from strength then we run the risk of becoming unbalanced and tend to become bullies.

    Therefore, it is very important to remain calm, cool, and collective, and not overreact to every little annoyance or suffering in life.

    Choosing only one solution for each and every circumstance in life is unhealthy and narrow minded, thus paving the way towards anarchy and mayhem!

    Night and day.

    Black and white.

    Good and bad.

    These are all symbols of balance where one without the other would suck.

    I suggest you bury the fatheads who took advantage of you and your hubby.

    Scumbags, who steal from a nice family, need to be taught a legal lesson. Ive done it! With great satisfaction I might add :D

    ReplyDelete
  21. Worf, this is a little off topic, but do you believe that giants and angels really existed and would you know of any passages to read about them, the old testament and biblical stories and mythology about them always fascinated me.

    ReplyDelete
  22. James W said

    "I felt suicidal the past few weeks"...

    Take care James! Your an original here who has always been level headed.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous2:36 PM

    Johnny Moo Moo, For 3 years we've been in a lawsuit with a person whom I directed anger and hatred towards; it got us nowhere. Now we have a chance to repeat the experience in a different way.

    Of course we will send a legal letter and explore our options, but I am doing preemptive prayer by transcending the easy route: which is to rehears the error over and over with all my friends, bad-mouth the woman, and dwell on how horrible she is -- I'm reversing that and actually expecting a miracle.

    By the way, the goodness in the universe is creative; it is the only power and this is a principle: win-win.
    The evil in the universe has no real, lasting power but that which we give it with our thoughts.
    Lydia

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous Lydia

    My lawsuit got me everywhere....I won thousands I worked hard for!

    Please listen to my point again!

    "Life offers many different scenarios that require's us to morally challenge ourselves in choosing the appropriate measure for each circumstance."

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous2:43 PM

    Johnny Moo Moo -- Oh I meant to type my name, I'm just sick of my picture popping up each time.
    Lydia

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous2:47 PM

    JMM: Okay, but I'm praying "preemptively" for divine guidance, which always comes when we listen for it. And thank you for that advice; it may come to that and you're right.

    Actually I'm looking forward to sending the legal letter, because she is behaving like a monster. But I am stopping myself from retaliating with worry, fear and phone calls telling her what a jerk she is.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Ok, Lyd! I wasnt sure if you were a snake or something?

    But I was begginning to like you if you wernt Lydia Cornell.

    ReplyDelete
  28. JMM - What was your lawsuit about?

    ReplyDelete
  29. And Lyd! Ive taken a little of your advice as well....if I didnt, I would jump on individuals like a fox on a Jack Rabbit!

    ReplyDelete
  30. Lyd

    My lawsuit had to do with contract law. The bum who broke our contract actually laid out a blanket for our 7 year old daughter pretending to be friendly, thus to gain my trust.

    I was wary of him the whole time.

    Anyways, I looked the judge straight in the eye and told her the truth and I won my well earned 5 grand.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Thats enough about me!

    I want to tell everyone about Lydia.

    She chose to write me an e-mail on her sons birthday. This kind and thoughtful act goes FAR beyond anything I would expect from any human being.

    Shes the best! Lydias lovely face should grace the cover of Time Magazine....not the fake and phony ann coulter.

    Sniff.....please pass me a hanky!

    Johnny moo moo
    atheist

    ReplyDelete
  32. Thanks Johnny Moo Moo, I appreciate your comment very much.

    ReplyDelete
  33. lydia said "Actually I'm looking forward to sending the legal letter, because she is behaving like a monster. But I am stopping myself from retaliating with worry, fear and phone calls telling her what a jerk she is."

    see this is what i'm saying theres a diference between being passive and doing nothing and letting people walk all over you and taking action in a positive way, just like there's a difference between letting hatred consume you and falling into unproductive name calling, I wish the democrats would learn the difference. neither end of the extreme is good.

    There are some times you need to take action and stand up for what you believe and fight and sometimes when you need to overlook things or take the high road.

    ReplyDelete
  34. I dont know Worf, I think you all have valid points on this one, even regardless of wether it was worth it to Johnny financially to pursue the issue or not, sometimes principles are more important than money, but as you say sometimes it is not worth the financial costs, leisure time lost or aggravation to fight something.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Worf said "Hey I liked seeing your pic pop up. It makes your comments seem so much more in person, and kinda like an official Lydia Cornell stamp of approval on them."

    I have to say I agree Worf, although in your case i'm partial to the gator. :D

    ReplyDelete
  36. Johnny said "Shes the best! Lydias lovely face should grace the cover of Time Magazine....not the fake and phony ann coulter."

    Ok I gotta bite on this one, please tell they didnt put Coulter on the cover of Time Magazine, gotta agree I wouldnt mind seeing Lydia on the cover either.

    ReplyDelete
  37. somtimes its about getting even, and sometimes its about proving you were in the right, either way you raised a valid point.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Mike said

    "sometimes principles are more important than money".....

    Absoulutely Mike! I still want to rip the turban off of the guy who I lent ten bucks to on a Friday night for a submarine sandwich.

    He assured me, quite convincingly, that he would pay me back within a few days.

    Those days have turned into years!

    ReplyDelete
  39. ANONYMOUS: Thank you for the websites you listed. I am enjoying reading them.

    ReplyDelete
  40. I'm referring to Anonymous #2 (the second comment in this thread.)

    ReplyDelete
  41. Did anyone happen to see Tom Delay's comments the other day about "the enemies of virtue" who are out to destroy Christianity? He said this at a conference called, I kid you not, "War on Christians".

    What is with these people? The hypocrisy is incredible. If anything, these people are destroying what Christianity - in theory - was/is supposed to be about. Sad.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Worf said "If someone injured you physically or financially and refuses to compensate you, then a suit is a method of enforcing payment for just due monies.

    But most suits in court today are frivolous, and end up costing the person suing more time, money and possible damage to his career or business, than the suit is worth.

    In these cases the prime motivating factor is usually revenge, which they invariably will call justice."

    in most cases your probably right Worf, but two cases that come to my mind were it was more about justice and proving you were right than revenge or money were:

    1) my best friend agreed to partner with his neighbor to buy a fairly large piece of land in back of his house that extended about 6 or 7 houses down to the end of the street ending at the erie canal, trouble was his neighbor bought all the land behind his back for himself. They had an oral agreement and nothing was in writing, as is usually the case among friends and neighbors(i'm sure this is probably the case with Lydia's situation as well, because if it were in writing it would be a cut and dry contract case) long story short my buddy sued based on the fact that they had an oral implied contract, it took over 2 years to settle but finally this fall the guy sold ALL the land to my buddy, now my friend wasnt suing for money or revenge, him and his wife are pretty comfortable they make close to 250K a year he sued for the principle.

    Another example, about 10 years ago while I was in college, I bought a brand new jetski for like $9000 the owner of the dealer who I had been going to since I was 12 told me to bring in my old one which wouldnt start and they would give me a free diagnosis since I just spent $9000 with them, I told them when I brought it in as well as at least 10 more times that I have a new jetski and dont want to put more than $200-$300 into fixing the old one, if its anything serious i'll just sell it for parts or junk it. well after 5 months of them doing nothing with it I started to tell them I either wanted it fixed or to part it out, at this point the mechanic called and said it needed a stator and that it would be about $1100 to fix but because i'd been such a good customer they would "hook me Up" he said they had a used stator and would hook me up on the labor and do it for $350, so I told them to go ahead. Well 4 months later after getting jerked around numerous times the mechanic was hmming and hawing and basically said that he screwed up and didnt tighten down the bolts on the stator when he installed it and when he started it up it sheared off and did damage to the crankcase, flywheel and other components and it would now cost me $1700 to fix it. I then told them that it was their screw up and I wanted them to pay me the retail value of the ski minus the $1100 it would have cost to fix the stator before they damaged it. At this point they denied ever having worked on it and said that the used stator had mysteriously disapeared 5 months ago and I owed them $300 labor for them looking at it, so I took them to court not for revenge or to make a profit but to try to get justice and prove I was in the right.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Lydia said "No one was perfect, and we have to remember that about our president too. We must see him with God's eyes: as a man in need of our loving prayers (as hard as that is to stomach!)

    I'm glad you added the hard to stomach qualifier for Bush and co, i'll admit its hard for me to think good thoughts in relation to Bush & co,when I look at them I see a bunch of power mad Nazi's.

    But having said that, I do pretty much agree with everything you've been saying, I look forward to reading your book and learning more about your views on spirituality, that is such a broad topic and i'm interested in hearing your views and experiences regarding it.

    the only thing you really lost me on in the current blog is using Ann Coulter's name and the word sexy in the same sentence. LOL :D

    ReplyDelete
  44. Anonymous11:59 PM

    There is something seriously wrong here....

    More mentally ill soldiers heading to Iraq:

    "“If people are suffering from mental-health problems, they should not be sent on the battlefield,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer who recently formed the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health, which is expected to start work next month.

    Pentagon officials claim that they don’t know the exact number of soldiers sent back to Iraq while taking mental-health medication or the number of those diagnosed with mental illness. But medical officers for the Army and Marine Corps acknowledge that medicated service members, and those suffering from combat-induced psychological problems, are returning to war.

    Recent surveys, backed by the U.S. government’s own studies, show that the number could be significant. According to a 2004 army report, more than 17% of combat-seasoned infantrymen experienced major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder after one combat tour to Iraq. Less than 40% of them had sought mental-health care. A Pentagon survey released last month also found that 35% of the troops returning from Iraq had received psychological counseling during their first year home."

    posted by james j. risser

    http://www.rissercouk.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  45. Anonymous12:23 AM

    One lie he knew he told....

    PREWAR INTELLIGENCE
    Insulating Bush

    Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.

    Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."

    Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

    The previously undisclosed review by Hadley was part of a damage-control effort launched after former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV alleged that Bush's claims regarding the uranium were not true. The CIA had sent Wilson to the African nation of Niger in 2002 to investigate the purported procurement efforts by Iraq; he reported that they were most likely a hoax.

    The White House was largely successful in defusing the Niger controversy because there was no evidence that Bush was aware that his claims about the uranium were based on faulty intelligence. Then-CIA Director George Tenet swiftly and publicly took the blame for the entire episode, saying that he and the CIA were at fault for not warning Bush and his aides that the information might be untrue.

    But Hadley and other administration officials realized that it would be much more difficult to shield Bush from criticism for his statements regarding the aluminum tubes, for several reasons.

    For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.

    For another, the president and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium.

    And finally, full disclosure of the internal dissent over the importance of the tubes would have almost certainly raised broader questions about the administration's conduct in the months leading up to war.

    "Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes." A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: "This was about getting past the election."

    http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm

    The story goes much deeper......

    ReplyDelete
  46. Anonymous12:23 AM

    The President's Summary
    Most troublesome to those leading the damage-control effort was documentary evidence -- albeit in highly classified government records that they might be able to keep secret -- that the president had been advised that many in the intelligence community believed that the tubes were meant for conventional weapons.

    The one-page documents known as the "President's Summary" are distilled from the much lengthier National Intelligence Estimates, which combine the analysis of as many as six intelligence agencies regarding major national security issues. Bush's knowledge of the State and Energy departments' dissent over the tubes was disclosed in a March 4, 2006, National Journal story -- more than three years after the intelligence assessment was provided to the president, and some 16 months after the 2004 presidential election.

    The President's Summary was only one of several high-level warnings given to Bush and other senior administration officials that serious doubts existed about the intended use of the tubes, according to government records and interviews with former and current officials.

    In mid-September 2002, two weeks before Bush received the October 2002 President's Summary, Tenet informed him that both State and Energy had doubts about the aluminum tubes and that even some within the CIA weren't certain that the tubes were meant for nuclear weapons, according to government records and interviews with two former senior officials.

    Official records and interviews with current and former officials also reveal that the president was told that even then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had doubts that the tubes might be used for nuclear weapons.

    When U.S. inspectors entered Iraq after the fall of Saddam's regime, they determined that Iraq's nuclear program had been dormant for more than a decade and that the aluminum tubes had been used only for conventional weapons.

    In the end, the White House's damage control was largely successful, because the public did not learn until after the 2004 elections the full extent of the president's knowledge that the assessment linking the aluminum tubes to a nuclear weapons program might not be true. The most crucial information was kept under wraps until long after Bush's re-election.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Anonymous12:24 AM

    Choreography
    The new disclosures regarding the tubes may also shed light on why officials so vigorously attempted to discredit Wilson's allegations regarding Niger, including by leaking information to the media that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. Administration officials hoped that the suggestion that Plame had played a role in the agency's choice of Wilson for the Niger trip might cast doubt on his allegations.

    I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, then chief of staff and national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted on October 28 on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice in attempting to conceal his role in outing Plame as an undercover CIA operative. Signaling a possible defense strategy, Libby's attorneys filed papers in federal court on March 17 asserting that he had not intentionally deceived FBI agents and a federal grand jury while answering questions about Plame because her role was only "peripheral" to potentially more serious questions regarding the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the prewar debate. "The media conflagration ignited by the failure to find [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq and in part by Mr. Wilson's criticism of the administration, led officials within the White House, the State Department, and the CIA to blame each other, publicly and in private, for faulty prewar intelligence about Iraq's WMD capabilities," Libby's attorneys said in court papers.

    Plame's identity was disclosed during "a period of increasing bureaucratic infighting, when certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability," the attorneys said. "The White House and the CIA were widely regarded to be at war."

    Only two months before Wilson went public with his allegations, the Iraq war was being viewed as one of the greatest achievements of Bush's presidency. Rove, whom Bush would later call the "architect" of his re-election campaign, was determined to exploit the war for the president's electoral success. On May 1, 2003, Bush made a dramatic landing on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce to the nation the cessation of major combat operations in Iraq. Dressed in a military flight suit, the president emerged from a four-seat Navy S-3B Viking with the words "George W. Bush Commander-in-Chief" painted just below the cockpit window.

    The New York Times later reported that White House aides "had choreographed every aspect of the event, even down to the members of the Lincoln crew arrayed in coordinated shirt colors over Mr. Bush's right shoulder and the 'Mission Accomplished' banner placed to perfectly capture the president and the celebratory two words in a single shot."

    On May 6, in a column in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof quoted an unnamed former ambassador as saying that allegations that Saddam had attempted to procure uranium from Africa were "unequivocally wrong" and that "documents had been forged." But the column drew little notice.

    A month later, on June 5, the president made a triumphant visit to Camp As Sayliyah, the regional headquarters of Central Command just outside Qatar's capital, where he spoke to 1,000 troops who were in camouflage fatigues. Afterward, Rove took out a camera and began snapping pictures of service personnel with various presidential advisers. "Step right up! Get your photo with Ari Fleischer -- get 'em while they're hot. Get your Condi Rice," Rove said, according to press accounts of the trip. On the trip home, as Air Force One flew at 31,000 feet over Iraqi airspace, escorted by pairs of F-18 fighters off each wing, the plane's pilots dipped the wings as a sign, an administration spokesperson explained, "that Iraq is now free."

    There were few hints of what lay ahead: that sectarian violence would engulf Iraq to the point where some fear civil war and that more than 2,440 American troops and contractors would lose their lives in Iraq and an additional 17,260 servicemen and -women would be wounded.

    ReplyDelete
  48. Anonymous12:26 AM

    Blame The CIA
    The pre-election damage-control effort in response to Wilson's allegations and the broader issue of whether the Bush administration might have misrepresented intelligence information to make the case for war had three major components, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials: blame the CIA for the use of the Niger information in the president's State of the Union address; discredit and undermine Wilson; and make sure that the public did not learn that the president had been personally warned that the intelligence assessments he was citing about the aluminum tubes might be wrong.

    On July 8, 2003, two days after Wilson challenged the Niger-uranium claim in an op-ed article in The New York Times, Libby met with Judith Miller, then a Times reporter, for breakfast at the St. Regis hotel in Washington. Libby told Miller that Wilson's wife, Plame, worked for the CIA, and he suggested that Wilson could not be trusted because his wife may have played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. Also during that meeting, according to accounts given by both Miller and Libby, Libby provided the reporter with details of a then-classified National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE contained detailed information that Iraq had been attempting to procure uranium from Niger and perhaps two other African nations. Libby and other administration officials believed that the NIE showed that Bush's statements reflected the consensus view of the intelligence community at the time.

    According to Miller's account of that meeting in The Times, Libby told her that "the assessments of the classified estimate" that Iraq had attempted to get uranium from Africa and was attempting to develop a nuclear weapons program "were even stronger" than a declassified White Paper on Iraq that the administration had made public to make the case for war.

    The special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has said that he considers the selective disclosure of elements of the NIE to be "inextricably intertwined" with the outing of Plame. Papers filed in federal court by Libby's attorneys on March 17 stated that Libby "believed his actions were authorized" and that he had "testified before the grand jury that this disclosure was authorized," a reference to the NIE details he gave to Miller.

    In the same filings, Libby's attorneys said that Hadley played a key role in attempting to have the NIE declassified and made available to reporters: "Mr. Hadley was active in discussions about the need to declassify and disseminate the NIE and [also] had numerous conversations during [this] critical early-July period with Mr. Tenet about the 16 words [the Niger claim in the State of the Union address] and Mr. Tenet's public statements about that issue."

    Three days later, on July 11, while on a visit to Africa, Bush and his top aides intensified their efforts to counter the damage done by Wilson's Niger allegations.

    Aboard Air Force One, en route to Entebbe, Uganda, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave a background briefing for reporters. A reporter pointed out that when Secretary Powell had addressed the United Nations on February 5, 2003, he -- unlike others in the Bush administration -- had noted that some in the U.S. government did not believe that Iraq's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for nuclear weapons.

    Responding, Rice said: "I'm saying that when we put [Powell's speech] together ... the secretary decided that he would caveat the aluminum tubes, which he did.... The secretary also has an intelligence arm that happened to hold that view." Rice added, "Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or me."

    In fact, contrary to Rice's statement, the president was indeed informed of such doubts when he received the October 2002 President's Summary of the NIE. Both Cheney and Rice also got copies of the summary, as well as a number of other intelligence reports about the State and Energy departments' doubts that the tubes were meant for a nuclear weapons program.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Anonymous12:29 AM

    Discrediting Wilson
    After Air Force One landed in Entebbe, the president placed the blame squarely on the CIA for the Niger information in the State of the Union: "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services." Within hours, Tenet accepted full responsibility. The intelligence information on Niger, Tenet said in a prepared statement, "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed." Tenet went on to say, "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."

    Behind the scenes, the White House and Tenet had coordinated their statements for maximum effect. Hadley, Libby, and Rove had reviewed drafts of Tenet's statement days in advance. And Hadley and Rove even suggested changes in the draft, according to government records and interviews.

    Meanwhile, as the president, Rice, and White House advisers worked to contain the damage from overseas, Rove and Libby, who had remained in Washington, moved forward with their effort to discredit Wilson. That same day, July 11, the two spoke privately at the close of a White House senior staff meeting.

    According to grand jury testimony from both men, Rove told Libby that he had spoken to columnist Robert Novak on July 9 and that Novak had said he would soon be writing a column about Valerie Plame. On July 12, the day after Rice's briefing, the president's and Tenet's comments, and the conversation between Rove and Libby regarding Novak, the issue of discrediting Wilson through his wife was still high on the agenda. According to the indictment of Libby: "Libby flew with the vice president and others to and from Norfolk, Virginia on Air Force Two." On the return trip, "Libby discussed with other officials aboard the plane what Libby should say in response to certain pending media inquiries" regarding Wilson's allegations.

    Later that day, Libby spoke on the phone with Time magazine's Matthew Cooper. Cooper had been told days earlier that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. During this conversation, according to Libby's indictment, "Libby confirmed to Cooper, without elaboration or qualification, that he had heard this information, too." Also that day, Libby's indictment charged, "Libby spoke by telephone with Judith Miller ... and discussed Wilson's wife, and that she worked at the CIA."

    On July 14, Novak published his now-famous column identifying Plame as a CIA "operative" and reporting that she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger.

    On July 18, the Bush administration declassified a relatively small portion of the NIE and held a press briefing to discuss it, in a further effort to show that the president had used the Niger information only because the intelligence community had vouched for it. Reporters noted that an "alternate view" box in the NIE stated that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (known as INR) believed that claims of Iraqi purchases of uranium from Africa were "highly dubious" and that State and DOE also believed that the aluminum tubes were "most likely for the production of artillery shells."

    But White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett suggested that both the president and Rice had been unaware of this information: "They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document." Later, addressing the same issue, Bartlett said, "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."

    Because the Bush administration was able to control what information would remain classified, however, reporters did not know that Bush had received the President's Summary that informed him that both State's INR and the Energy Department doubted that the aluminum tubes were to be used for a nuclear-related purpose.

    (Ironically, at one point, before he had reviewed the one-page summary, Hadley considered declassifying it because it said nothing about the Niger intelligence information being untrue. However, after reviewing the summary and realizing that it would have disclosed presidential knowledge that INR and DOE had doubts about the tubes, senior Bush administration officials became preoccupied with ensuring that the text of the document remained classified, according to an account provided by an administration official.)

    On July 22, the White House arranged yet another briefing for reporters regarding the Niger controversy. Hadley, when asked whether there was any reason that the president should have hesitated in citing Iraq's procurement of aluminum tubes as evidence of Saddam's nuclear ambitions, answered, "It is an assessment in which the director and the CIA stand by to this day. And, therefore, we have every reason to be confident."

    Later that summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation of intelligence agencies to determine why they failed to accurately assess that Saddam had no viable programs to develop chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion.

    As National Journal first disclosed on its Web site on October 27, 2005, Cheney, Libby, and Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, rejected advice given to them by other White House officials and decided to withhold from the committee crucial documents that might have shown that administration claims about Saddam's capabilities often went beyond information provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Among those documents was the President's Summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

    In July 2004, when the Intelligence Committee released a 511-page report on its investigation of prewar intelligence by the CIA and other agencies, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said in his own "Additional Views" to the report, "Concurrent with the production of a National Intelligence Estimate is the production of a one-page President's Summary of the NIE. A one-page President's Summary was completed and disseminated for the October 2002 NIE ... though there is no mention of this fact in [this] report. These one-page NIE summaries are ... written exclusively for the president and senior policy makers and are therefore tailored for that audience."

    Durbin concluded, "In determining what the president was told about the contents of the NIE dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- qualifiers and all -- there is nothing clearer than this single page."



    And for the LIES George Bush KNEW he was telling we now send MEDICATED soldiers back to the combat zone that caused them to need the medication in the first place.......

    some christian huh?

    ReplyDelete
  50. DREWL - may I post this on the blog? "Did anyone happen to see Tom Delay's comments the other day about "the enemies of virtue" who are out to destroy Christianity? He said this at a conference called, I kid you not, "War on Christians".

    What is with these people? The hypocrisy is incredible. If anything, these people are destroying what Christianity - in theory - was/is supposed to be about. Sad."

    ReplyDelete
  51. CLIF - this is astounding information about the mental health of our troops and about the tubes/WMD/Bush... I'll condense it and post some of it.
    Thanks,
    Lyd

    ReplyDelete
  52. Clif,what drives me nuts is just like many other things,we heard a while ago that the aluminum tubes were not for nuclear weapons and that Bush knew about it and the person who came out with this imformation was silenced just like everyone else who has spoken out against this administration.

    fromthis information,it is clear the president and much of the administration lied with the intent of deceiving the public and yet there has been no repercussions or accountability for it, how many times has he lied and not been called on it or held accountable,if this isnt grounds for impeachment,I dont know what is. And the sad part is there have been many more lies crimes and deceptions committed by this administration. if they really have this much controlof the media and our government then that is truly scary.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Also Clif/Lydia the sending people into the military who are not fit to serve who who have mental health problems is very widespread, I know a guy from my town whowas taking medication for depression and other mentalhealth problems and the recruiter told him how to fudge the test so they would accept him, and now he is fighting over in Afghanistan. Even though I am strongly against the war,if we need soldiers that badly we need to start up the draft rather than pulling scams to strong arm people into joining or accepting people not qualified. but this administration would never do that because it is politically unpopular so instead they pull scams, its all smoke and mirrors with these clowns and thats really sad how many are suffering from their arrogance.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Anonymous4:02 PM

    Finally someone agrees Bush is a great president.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Anonymous4:24 PM

    yeah but fox news is going to publicize this one good thing Bush did and he will be thought of as a good man. Obviously he is doing it because every american president is supposed to reach out to countries affected by disaster. that's what we always do. Plus he has a good p.r. firm guiding him, of course he didn't do anything for Katrina.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Anonymous4:27 PM

    What did Barbara Bush say the other day, or what was it someone discovered that she only sent money to Katrina relief with the prerequisite that the money be spent on educational software her son Neil Bush owns and manufactures.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Anonymous5:34 PM

    I agree Lydia GO DIXIE CHICKS! God there are so many nasty mean comments about them on certain websites, but I love them and I'm glad they recommitted to the truth by writing that new song.

    Natalie Maines ROCKS!!!!!!!
    Kathy I.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Anonymous6:13 PM

    Let's not forget that Saddam Hussein started a war that resulted in over ONE MILLION Iraqi and Iranian deaths, and for what? That war accomplished absolutely NOTHING.

    Let's not forget that Saddam Hussein tortured and killed his own people if they had the temerity to step out of line. He used VX nerve gas, a WMD, on the Kurds in his own country. (This proves, by the way, that Saddam a) had WMDs, b) gave us the best proof of his willingness to use them: He DID use them.

    Let's not forget that coalition forces have found mass graves in which over 300,000, count 'em, victims of his oppression were discarded like so much garbage. Many, if not most, of these victims were interred unceremoniously in mile-long watery graves, and, many of them, upon autopsy, were found to have unhealed broken bones. In other words they were tortured to death.

    War is neither pretty nor popular, but often neccesary, even if the present generation doesn't recognize it.

    Between Iraq

    ReplyDelete
  59. Anonymous6:24 PM

    I hope you're right. I wish you were right. But what about Rwanda? What about genocide in Darfur?

    ReplyDelete
  60. Anonymous6:25 PM

    And why do we only have interest in Muslim countries?

    ReplyDelete
  61. Anonymous6:35 PM

    Forgive me, my post at 6:13 PM was submitted prematurely. (I hit the "publish" button by mistake.)

    Why is there no cheering for the fifty-million people, between Irag and Afganistan, who may now vote. Yes, Americans have spilt blood, but our actions in both theaters are consistent with noblest of American traditions. These are not wars of conquest, but wars of liberation, and we now have 50,000,000 free people who were formerly the subjects of brutal totalitarian regimes.

    How in any way can anyone say this is a bad thing? Is it perfect? No, these budding democracies need time to work through their growing pains, just like former satellite nations of the former Soviet Union. Ancient rivalries emerged, but in the end, the greater good was served, just as it is now.

    The world is far safer now, which causes many Democrats to wince, which tells me that the Dems are more concerned with the back and forth of our own politics than the liberation of 50,000,000 people. Is this not a good thing?

    You people can spend the rest of the night twisting my words or cherry-picking certain areas where there are problems, but please, be honest with your own heart and take your personal hatred of Bush out of it.

    America has done a great thing, and as someone once said after WWII, "We do not want any land, except for a few acres to bury our dead."

    ReplyDelete
  62. TT said

    "The world is far safer now,"

    OMG! This is the funniest joke ever! LOL!

    Uhhhh, ok!

    I think they are putting too much Drano in the pot nowadays!

    Havent we like, been through all this before? Is it too difficult to ask people to go through a few of the archives?

    TT, your points are old news to all of us. We have evolved far beyond your spectrum of stale reasoning.

    ReplyDelete
  63. The Dixie Chicks look better with their clothes on; just like they sound better with the volume down.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Music has a significant emotional component, particularly vocals. We listen to country music largely because it conveys a sense of common heritage, nostalgia for the past, continuity with our community, and pride in our history.

    Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.
    -Natalie Maines speaking to a crowd of cheering fans in London

    Now this pathetic attempt, to curry favor on foreign soil at America's expense, is what folks think about everytime they hear the Dixie Chicks. Then they made sure no one would ever forget by plastering their naked bodies, scrawled with epithets, on the cover of a magazine. The Chicks are all about Maines' big mouth -- no longer country music.

    So us "rednecks" will chose to exercise our first amendment rights to buy...Garth, Dolly, Wynonna, Alan, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Dwight, Hal, Hank Sr. and Jr., Rick Trevino, George Jones, Tammy, Clint, Buck Owens...in fact everyone except the Dixie Chicks. If they sing on the radio, we will change the station.

    So the success of the Dixie Chicks now depends upon you libs who are just as obsessively ashamed of our country, our President, Texans, our flag, our silly patriotism, and our nation's noble legacy.

    So good luck with that, all y'all millions of liberal country and western music fans!

    But look on the bright side, since the Chicks have come out with another song, it must be a relief to all you libs to know that the right wing did not forcibly silence them like some of y'all were recently contending. Golly, another goofy liberal conspiracy theory down in flames.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, wrote an article about fascism
    which appeared in Free Inquiry magazine, a journal of humanist
    thought. Dr. Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany),
    Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet
    (Chile). He found the regimes all had 14 things in common, and he calls
    these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The article is "Fascism
    Anyone?," Lawrence Britt, Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20.
    The 14 characteristics are:
    1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans,
    symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as
    are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
    2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -
    Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in
    fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in
    certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way
    or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long
    incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
    3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause-
    The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to
    eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious
    minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
    4. Supremacy of the Military
    Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is
    given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the
    domestic agenda i s neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
    5. Rampant Sexism
    The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-
    dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made
    more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-
    gay legislation and national policy.
    6. Controlled Mass Media
    Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in
    other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation,
    or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship,
    especially in war time, is very common.
    7. Obsession with National Security
    Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
    8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
    Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in
    the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and
    terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major
    tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's
    policies or actions.
    9. Corporate Power is Protected
    The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the
    ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually
    beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
    10. Labor Power is Suppressed
    Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist
    government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely
    suppressed .
    11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
    Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher
    education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other
    academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is
    openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
    12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
    Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to
    enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and
    even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a
    national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
    13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
    Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and
    associates who appoint each other to government positions and use
    governmental power and authority to protect their friends from
    accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national
    resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen
    by government leaders.
    14. Fraudulent Elections
    Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times
    elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even
    assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control
    voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the
    media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate
    or control elections.
    Any of this sound familiar?


    
    What’’s coming
    When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political agendas (the
    14 points listed by Britt), then it is not hard to predict where a new
    fascist uprising will lead. And it is not hard. The actions of fascists
    and the social and political effects of fascism and fundamentalism
    are clear and sobering. Here is some of whats coming, what will be
    happening in our country in the next few years:
    The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to those who
    control money, and the increasing destitution of all those
    dependent on social security and social welfare programs.
    Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already has
    the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in
    the developed world.
    Increased loss of funding for public education combined with
    increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust
    their children’’s education to Christian schools.
    More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into the
    police state necessary for fascism to work
    Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and
    the Public Broadcasting System. At their best, these media
    sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly
    seen as enemies of the state’’s official stories.
    The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of privileged
    parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest
    children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that
    could never benefit them anyway. (That was my one-sentence
    Veterans’’ Day sermon for this year.)
    More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the
    construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq.
    More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national security.
    Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument of
    free communication that is exempt from government control.
    This will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure.
    Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this one,
    and to characterize them as anti-American.
    Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and
    demonization of the few media they are unable to control ––
    the New York Times, for instance.
    Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs, to
    produce greater profits for those who control the money and
    direct the society, while simultaneously reducing America’’s
    workers to a more desperate and powerless status.
    Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an
    increasing number of Americans to own their homes. As they
    did in the 1930s, those who control the money know that it is
    to their advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than
    owning.
    Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with arrests,
    detentions and harassment increasing. We already have a
    higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other
    country in the world. That percentage will increase.
    In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to say the
    things I have said here this morning. In the fascist story, these
    things are un-American. In the real history of a democratic
    America, they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of
    critical questions that kept the American spirit alive —— the
    kind of questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed
    to be pressing.
    Can these schemes work? I don’’t think so. I think they are murderous,
    rapacious and insane. But I don’’t know. Maybe they can. Similar
    schemes have worked in countries like Chile, where a democracy in
    which over 90% voted has been reduced to one in which only about 20%
    vote because they say, as Americans are learning to say, that it no longer
    matters who you vote for.


    This is for you Fascism Fan, Enjoy this should be utopia for you.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Anonymous11:08 PM

    Let's not forget that Saddam Hussein started a war that resulted in over ONE MILLION Iraqi and Iranian deaths, and for what? That war accomplished absolutely NOTHING.

    But the Reagan Administration was behind Saddam on that one including George Herbert walker Bush a Key cheerleader, and Donald Rumsfeld was sent to Baghdad in 1983 to give Saddam the government of the United States under Ronald Reagan's tacit approval

    Let's not forget that Saddam Hussein tortured and killed his own people if they had the temerity to step out of line. He used VX nerve gas, a WMD, on the Kurds in his own country. (This proves, by the way, that Saddam a) had WMDs, b) gave us the best proof of his willingness to use them: He DID use them.

    Yes in the 1980's RERPEAT 1980's Hell moron I found nerve gas and mustard gas rounds in Iraq in 1991 while I served in Iraq, part of my job but those rounds were destroyed in the mid 1990's by the Un weapons inspectors lead by David Kay.

    Another way to prove my point is to remind you we are the only nation EVER to use nuclear weapons and we have never relenquished them either. But neither your statement or mine has very much relevance in the 2002-2003 run up to the Iraqi invasion.

    Let's not forget that coalition forces have found mass graves in which over 300,000, count 'em, victims of his oppression were discarded like so much garbage. Many, if not most, of these victims were interred unceremoniously in mile-long watery graves, and, many of them, upon autopsy, were found to have unhealed broken bones. In other words they were tortured to death.

    Moset were the result of the insurection right after ht eGulf War where George Herbert Walker Bush advocated that the shiites in the south revolt but never gave them any material or military help in fact WE WERE DIRECTLY ORDERED NOT TO INTERFEER, I was there and do remember that.

    War is neither pretty nor popular, but often neccesary(WRONG WRONG WRONG) even if the present generation doesn't recognize it.

    The Iraqi Invasion was TOTALLY optional. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz WANTED it and they got it. It was poorly planned, poorley executed and the follow on to battle is a study of incompetence as what NOT to do after invading and OCCUPING any country.

    They protected the oil ministry and oil feilds but left the civilians on their own. They had no plans for taking over the government operations Bremer admits that. They pretended that the Iraqi's would welcome them with open arms in direct contradiction to historical president and the US Army war colleges study done in Feb 2003 right before the invasion. During the Assult Tommy Franks pushed for his time table not the militarily intelligent tactical control of the battle field cduring the advance by passing many we now presently fight leaving them and their weapons free to go that day and to come back to fight on their terms.

    Basically the invasion was and is a stragetic blunder, and a tactical fisaco, both of which shouyld sit squarely on the shoulders of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers and Franks...The last two knew better.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Thanks Mike. Now allow me to demonstrate to you and Clif, the courteous way to convey a large amount of information. It's a new-fangled thang called a link:

    Fascism is utterly disgusting; no Conservative would ever allow his country to be taken over by fascists. Perhaps the only thing almost worse than actually being a fascist, is falsely accusing someone of being one. To do so trivializes the horror perpetrated by real fascists and minimizes the honorable sacrifices of those who oppose tyranny--whatever it is called--wherever it raises its ugly head.
    Fascism by Freedom Fan

    ReplyDelete
  68. Anonymous11:26 PM

    Freedom Fan said...

    Thanks Mike. Now allow me to demonstrate to you and Clif, the courteous way to convey a large amount of information. It's a new-fangled thang called a link:

    Yo Free(really)dumb Fool when you have your own blog you get to write the rules.....otherwise as I have said before unless Lydia tells me different I Shall post what i believe is relevant even if YOU PRESONNALY do not like it.....

    ReplyDelete
  69. I never accused you of being a fascist FF, your just guilty of supporting the fascists.

    ReplyDelete
  70. Anonymous11:48 PM

    Tall Texan Bill Buckley also know more than you.....

    Buckley Says Bush Will Be Judged on Iraq War, Now a `Failure'
    March 31 (Bloomberg) -- William F. Buckley Jr., the longtime conservative writer and leader, said George W. Bush's presidency will be judged entirely by the outcome of a war in Iraq that is now a failure.

    ``Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq,'' Buckley said in an interview that will air on Bloomberg Television this weekend. ``If he'd invented the Bill of Rights it wouldn't get him out of his jam.''

    Buckley said he doesn't have a formula for getting out of Iraq, though he said ``it's important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure.''

    The 80-year-old Buckley is among a handful of prominent conservatives who are criticizing the war. Asked who is to blame for what he deems a failure, Buckley said, ``the president,'' adding that ``he doesn't hesitate to accept responsibility.''

    Buckley called Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a longtime friend, ``a failed executor'' of the war. And Vice President Dick Cheney ``was flatly misled,'' Buckley said. ``He believed the business about the weapons of mass destruction.''

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=anN._IfoJo1M&refer=us

    At least he can call a disaster what it is and a failure a failure....

    ReplyDelete
  71. Anonymous12:09 AM

    TT thr bozo does not know how to run a war but does know how to ruin the military;

    Damage to the military will take years to repair

    Anyone else might be embarrassed when not one but two detailed studies of the way he's doing business conclude that his plans and assumptions are totally wrong, but not Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
    A recent Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon of the U.S. Army in this time of war concluded that without an increase in manpower the Army ''simply cannot sustain the force levels needed to break the back of the insurgent movement'' in Iraq.
    Yet another study, conducted by the Defense Department's own Institute for Defense Analyses, concluded that the Army's Transformation program, intended to add combat brigades without boosting manpower, cuts the number of maneuver battalions in those brigades while adding more headquarters troops.
    ''The essence of land power is resident in the maneuver battalions that occupy terrain, control populations and fight battles, not in headquarters and enablers,'' the IDA study said. ''Yet the Army plan reduces the number of maneuver battalions by 20 percent below the number available in 2003, while increasing headquarters by 11.5 percent.''
    The IDA study noted that under the Army plan, now well under way, the number of infantry battalions in infantry brigades and the number of armor battalions in armor brigades had been cut from three to two.
    Army spokesmen counter that each reorganized brigade also has been given a combat-capable reconnaissance squadron.
    They also argue that improved information technology and the use of ''joint capabilities,'' i.e. Air Force bombing, will make up for any reduction in manpower. This is a siren song that's heard nearly as often as ''off we go into the wild blue yonder'' but seldom proved satisfactory to those mired in the mud and blood on a battlefield.

    http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_3660623

    From the beginning of his current tour as defense secretary, Rumsfeld has shown an amazing ability to hear only advice that agrees with him. Contrary advice, especially from a uniformed expert in the subject of combat power, is met with swift retribution. Telling the truth in Rumsfeld's Pentagon will get you in trouble quicker than a tour of duty in Iraq's Triangle of Death.
    It's of interest that when budget time came around this year, Rumsfeld told the service chiefs that they could have manpower increases or money for weapons systems. One or the other, but not both. The service chiefs, to a man, opted for money to throw at defense contractors for weapons systems that were designed 20 or 30 years ago for the Cold War, or that haven't been designed at all.
    Then the chiefs were informed that they'd also have to swallow decreases in manpower over the next five years.
    Rumsfeld's arrogance and incompetence have done unprecedented damage to the military in a time of peril that won't end when he leaves town. Those who've lived long enough may recall that it took a long, difficult decade and more to repair the damage that was done to our military during another unpopular war in Vietnam.
    Fixing everything that Donald Rumsfeld has broken may take even longer.



    And cost more money....

    ReplyDelete
  72. Anonymous12:14 AM

    By the way Tiny cowboy if we are doing SOOOOO good in Iraq why is the US military needeing to send messages like this?

    U.S. raid on Shiite shrine served as a warning

    The U.S. military was trying to send a "little reality jab" to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr when American and Iraqi troops raided a Shiite community center and shrine over the weekend, says a top U.S. military official.

    The joint assault killed at least 16 people, most of them believed to be tied to Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army. U.S. officials insist the center was being used as a base for insurgent activities and was not a mosque. But many Iraqis say the complex did indeed include the Shiite equivalent of a mosque, and the raid has drawn harsh condemnation from Shiite politicians and prompted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to launch an investigation.

    The mayor of Baghdad promptly cut off cooperation with the U.S. Embassy, and Shiite politicians suspended their negotiations to form a new government. The U.S. military has long contemplated taking tougher steps against Sadr and his troublesome militia but has held off in the past because it did not want to antagonize his many fervent supporters. This raid, officials say, was intended as a reminder to Sadr of the U.S. military's reach in Iraq.

    U.S. officials had been quietly praising Sadr's group in recent weeks because of its calls for calm in the wake of the bombing of a Sunni mosque in Samarra that sparked a wave of sectarian violence.




    Seems they don't really want to deal with us, sort of counter productive don't ya thunk?

    ReplyDelete
  73. Anonymous12:40 AM

    Tall Texan said,

    Why is there no cheering for the fifty-million people, between Irag and Afganistan, who may now vote.

    Maybe because most of them are ducking bullets scanning everywhere they go for IED's fearing their door gets kicked in and they end up part of a daily statistic, maybe they have more pertinant things to worry about.............. but cheer the mess if you must.




    Yes, Americans have spilt blood,


    LOOOOOTS and LOOOOOTS and LOOOOOTS of it needlessly



    but our actions in both theaters are consistent with noblest of American traditions.

    OIL, political dominance,


    These are not wars of conquest,

    but of imperial agression

    but wars of liberation(of the Iraqi's over their control of the oil in their country), and we now have 50,000,000 free people who(are scared shitless out of their minds of what is going to happen next) were formerly the subjects of brutal totalitarian regimes.

    How in any way can anyone say this is a bad thing? (Ask them they do not want us there and are working harder each day to get us to leave.)

    Is it perfect? No,(not even close) these budding democracies(why is George Bush telling them, their pick for their national leader he Bush does not aprove of that person?)need time to work through their growing pains,(like us)

    (Where were the IED's, internal sectarian strife, Declining standard of living and general slide toward in Europe except for Yugoslavia?)

    just like former satellite nations of the former Soviet Union. Ancient rivalries emerged, but in the end, the greater good was served, just as it is now.(Yes Halliburton stock is up and the OIL companies have never made more money)

    The world is far safer now,(really why does virtually nobody think so, from the people who live there, or here?) which causes many Democrats to wince, (the senseless loss of life on both sides, and even more people who are wounded and maimed for life does more than make me winch, The sending soldiers who are diagnosed with psychological trama and prescribed medicine backm into the same situation that caused their tramsas does more than make me winch)which tells me that the Dems are more concerned with the back and forth of our own politics than the liberation of 50,000,000 people. (Not liberated just occupied and living in an ever deteriorating situation) Is this not a good thing?NO

    You people can spend the rest of the night twisting my words or cherry-picking certain areas where there are problems, but please, be honest with your own heart and take your personal hatred of Bush out of it. I for one do not HATE the man but think he should live up to the principles he espouses, and TELL THE WHOLE TRUTH....care for people just as JESUS described, cast no stone... remove the log in his eye.... quit celebrating with the pharisees, and return to the message of the sermon on the mount which is the central message of Jesus to us as how to live, Forgiveness is a central theme and Bush seems to have NONE... compassion is christian beliefs in action not a political slogan.

    America has done a great thing,

    Historically the "great thing will be just as wrong headed as the great thing we did in vietnam from 1947-1975(We were there with the French helping the Logistically from their return to reoccupy Indochina after WW2 in direct violation of the UN charter and principles we advocated at the time....



    and as someone once said after WWII, "We do not want any land,(just the raw materials like oil) except for a few acres to bury our dead."(And a few hundred for theirs)

    ReplyDelete
  74. Anonymous1:42 AM

    Quotes from Democrats on Iraq and WMD:

    "[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." -- From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

    "This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." -- From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

    "Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" -- From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002

    "Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

    "(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

    "Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

    "The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002

    "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

    "What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

    "The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton in 1998

    "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

    "I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." -- Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003

    "Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people." -- Tom Daschle in 1998

    "Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

    "The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." -- John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

    "I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction." -- Dick Gephardt in September of 2002

    "Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002

    "We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." -- Bob Graham, December 2002

    "Saddam Hussein is not the only deranged dictator who is willing to deprive his people in order to acquire weapons of mass destruction." -- Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002

    "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." -- Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

    "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." -- Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002

    "I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002

    "The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, October 9, 2002

    "(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War." -- John Kerry, Jan 23, 2003

    "We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." -- Carl Levin, Sept 19, 2002

    "Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States." -- Joe Lieberman, August, 2002

    "Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 - 1994, despite Iraq's denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons.U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq's claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction." -- Patty Murray, October 9, 2002

    "As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

    "Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production." -- Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998

    "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources -- something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

    "Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." -- John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

    "Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration’s policy towards Iraq, I don’t think there can be any question about Saddam’s conduct. He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts." -- Henry Waxman, Oct 10, 2002

    ReplyDelete
  75. Anonymous1:50 AM

    From the American Thinker:



    Spy Valerie and the rogue CIA
    July 18th, 2005



    Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken.



    Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss’s long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte.



    Judging by Director Goss’s remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA “experts” in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame’s outfit – who completely failed to anticipate the Indian and Pakistani nukes, and just couldn’t figure out what was going on with Iraqi WMDs. Valerie Plame’s bosses are facing the axe for decades of failures.



    And it’s about time, because Iran is within sight of its first nukes. You don’t suppose that has anything to do with the Plame/Wilson publicity stunt, do you?



    Clearly the CIA managers who failed the United States so terribly on 9/11 should have been fired four years ago. Others now worried about their careers include officials who have long resisted the onerous task of building a topnotch human intelligence capability in the most dangerous parts of the world.



    Porter Goss’s new broom should also sweep away:

    1) personnel who utterly failed to thwart critical technology theft by China during the Clinton years;

    2) those who constantly undermine the war on terror;

    3) the ones who make a regular habit of dropping media stinkbombs against the White House.

    4) Finally, there is the faction that supported Saddam Hussein’s hold on power, as Joe Wilson did.



    It could be a bloodbath, and the Permanent Establishment knows it.



    The farcical Plame/Wilson assault on Karl Rove is a shot across the bow of the White House. The spook bureaucracy is fighting for its perks, hand-in-hand with the Democrats and the media. This is exactly the same iron triangle that destroyed Richard Nixon.



    The charge against Rove is based on a blatantly forged document, purporting to show that Saddam tried to buy Niger yellowcake uranium. We now know that the document was forged by the French government to embarrass Secretary Colin Powell, and undermine the American case against Saddam at the UN. It was classic disinformation bait. Powell flourished the Niger forgery at the Security Council, and the very next day “European intelligence agencies” leaked word that it was a laughable fraud.



    Months later, the London Telegraph published the fact that it was all a French disinformation ploy.



    The CIA has to know all about the French forgery, just as it knows that Joseph Wilson’s famous trip to Niger was pure bilgewater. Nobody sends a has-been diplomat to Africa to drink mint tea with corrupt old President Tandja Mamadou, expecting to discover whether Mamadou has secretly been selling nuke materials to Saddam.



    That’s pure Inspector Clousseau.



    Valerie Plame’s CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr.

    Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time. As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, “The CIA isn’t stupid. They wanted this story out.”





    It was a publicity stunt from the get-go. Wilson’s “confidential trip” to Niger gave him the superficial credentials to publish his “expose” in the Times. He’d gone there, talked to the top officials face to face, and by gum, they told him it was all a lie! Not even Gail Collins could possibly believe this banana sauce, but Wilson’s charges provided a useful stick with which to beat the White House.



    What Karl Rove apparently did was to hint to reporters about the fraudulence of the whole Wilson stunt, and for that the media mob wants him drawn and quartered. No good deed goes unpunished.



    Everything else Wilson has been saying on his two-year speaking tour around the country has been shown to be lies, but well-designed lies—- lies that fit right into the mad-dog world of the Democrat Left.



    Telling lies to confirm somebody’s paranoid beliefs is a classic disinformation gambit, right out of Spy School 101. But such gambits would be far more usefully employed against al Qaeda, our opponent in war. If the United States is attacked again by terrorists, one reason will be that our CIA has wasted time fighting the White House rather than the enemy.



    Given Wilson’s Niger trip, set up by wife Valerie for Joe Wilson to publicly show that a blatant forgery was, well, a forgery, the current media attack on the White House was completely predictable.



    The Permanent Establishment had a perfect dress rehearsal last year with the uproar about Richard Clarke, who also worked in the Clinton White House, possibly next door to Joe Wilson. The barely-disguised message to George W. Bush was: if you try to get rid of us, we may pull a Deep Throat on you. J. Edgar Hoover would have seen through it instantly.



    When the Twin Towers exploded in 2001, President Bush did not touch the FBI or the CIA. By comparison, after the Japanese decimated the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR and George Marshall churned the commanding ranks of the Army and Navy, elevating talented officers like Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton. They created Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS, the seed of the CIA. Donovan in his turn brought street spooks to the top, political correctness (of the day) be damned.



    A lot of careers were broken, and the new talent skyrocketed. It worked like a charm. The infusion of new blood into a stale bureaucracy was the key to victory in World War II. The old crew had allowed a deplorable situation to develop, and were obviously incapable of recognizing what needed to be done.



    So why didn’t Mr. Bush clean out the dead wood at CIA?



    A reasonable guess is that his father warned against it. George Bush, Sr. is a former CIA Director, after all, and is intimately familiar with its ways. He was a GOP Congressman during Watergate, when Mark Felt destroyed Richard Nixon for thwarting his lifelong ambition to succeed J. Edgar Hoover.



    Paraphrasing LBJ’s immortal words, it was smarter to keep the CIA inside the tent pissing out rather than the other way around. So George Tenet wasn’t fired, and as far as we can tell, neither was anybody else. Instead, the President met with Tenet every day for five years to get the latest about al Qaeda, and surely gained a deeper understanding of the intelligence maze at the same time.



    The White House has played a very careful poker game since then, picking its cards one by one until it was ready to make the big move. Today, George Tenet is out, State and Defense are in the hands of Bush loyalists, the House and Senate have GOP majorities, and the new CIA Director is not an insider. The CIA itself is now subordinate to the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte, a no-nonsense diplomat in the Kissinger mold. When Goss became Director, Agency bureaucrats complained bitterly to the press. Mr. Bush now holds all the cards, and it is time to play them.



    All this isn’t just fun and games. It casts a deadly light on internecine warfare in Washington at a time of great national danger.



    We know that Hoover blackmailed four successive Presidents by threatening to reveal confidential FBI secrets. We know that Hoover’s fair-haired boy, Mark Felt, destroyed the Nixon Presidency – a virtual coup d’etat that the media tell us was a victory of Democracy over the Secret Government. With the media as destiny’s servant.



    We know that Nixon taped visitors to the Oval Office without their permission, but that FDR, LBJ, and Kennedy did the same, without facing media exposure. And during the unbelievable Clinton years we know that Bill and Hillary abused presidential power in a dozen egregious ways, and may still control copies of raw FBI files to use against their domestic enemies.



    But it was Richard Nixon alone who got caught by a rogue FBI bureaucrat. Deep Throat showed how a president can be destroyed by a bureaucrat.



    The farcical “outing” of Valerie Plame therefore raises a genuinely frightening monster from the swamp: A subversive alliance between the intelligence bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and the media. The common thread among all the characters in this low-brow comedy is hatred of President Bush and American power. Joe Wilson’s eyebrows go ballistic when he talks about the White House. Just watch him sometime.



    The sneering media mob is on display on C-SPAN whenever the White House holds a press briefing. The Left is apoplectic: “Karl Rove + traitor” brought up 97,000 entries on google three days ago, and 124,000 this morning.



    But Karl Rove is merely today’s target for a permanent state of rage so deep and hot that it is always seeking new witches to burn. As for the failed CIA spooks who are now living in fear of losing their perks, one can only imagine the steam blowing from their ears, as the day of reckoning draws closer.



    I’m cheering for the good guys.




    James Lewis
    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles_print.php?article_id=4656

    ReplyDelete
  76. Anonymous2:14 AM

    Tiny Tim Texan we need to clean up our previous messes before we create new ones, Dioxin was our WMD present to Vietnam (A Chemical weapon as recognised by the fact the VA gives US Veterans disability for exposure to it.)



    Agent Orange: the legacy of a weapon of mass destruction
    Thirty-five years after the US sprayed the jungles of Vietnam with toxic defoliant, thousands of babies are still being born with horrific defects. But unlike the American veterans, no one in the war-ravaged country has received any compensation. Jeremy Laurance reports from Ho Chi Minh City
    Published: 01 April 2006

    On a table in the dimly lit room lay a small white bundle, tied with a silver ribbon. With a brilliant smile and a barked order, Professor Nguyen Thi Phuong had directed me to the morgue of the Tu Du maternity hospital to see the latest evidence of the impact of a war that ended more than 30 years ago.

    Outside on the streets, thronged with motor scooters in the 30C heat, young men and women stopped to buy roses from the flower sellers at the hospital gates, preparing to give them to loved ones. In the morgue, an anonymous block at the back of this 1,000-bed hospital, love had had an unexpected, tragic outcome. Somewhere in the hospital, a mother was grieving for the loss of her son.

    A porter donned latex gloves and untied the ribbon. Carefully unwrapping the bundle, he revealed a tiny corpse, delivered a few hours earlier, its skin a livid purple, fine black strands of hair plastered to its head. He turned the infant over and there, at the base of the spine where the tissues had failed to form, like a wound, was the unmistakable sign of spina bifida.

    This is the only birth defect recognised by the US as a legacy of Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant sprayed by American troops from 1965 until 1971 during the Vietnam war. But there is worse, far worse, in this hospital, the largest in south Vietnam. Some of the most severely affected babies, abandoned by their parents, live on two floors in a wing known as the Peace Village.

    Entering it is like stepping back 40 years to the days of Thalidomide, the morning-sickness pill prescribed in Britain in the 1960s that left babies hideously deformed. In the first room, cots line the walls. In one, a four-year-old girl rocks on all fours, gently banging her head against the bars. A nurse turns her round to reveal a face with no eyes. Under a thick fringe of dark hair, there are soft indentations in the skin either side of her nose, where her eyes should be. Above her cot a printed label gives her name as Tran Sinh, and her date of birth as 27 February 2002. According to the nurses she was born in an area heavily sprayed with Agent Orange, where the land is still contaminated 35 years after the spraying stopped.

    In the cot next to her, Tran Loan, aged five months, has a head the size of a melon and is whimpering softly. He has hydrocephalus - fluid on the brain. Next to him a child wearing a stripey red T-shirt has stumps for legs. A three-year-old with a crazily pointed skull and bulging eyes lies on his back staring at the ceiling. But for his Mickey Mouse T-shirt, he looks as if he belongs to another world.

    A group of less severely affected children are setting off for school. Minh Phlic, 15, binds himself into his artificial legs with his one good arm. "I can be taller than you," he says proudly, levering himself to his feet.

    There were 454 babies with congenital defects born in the hospital last year, out of 36,000 deliveries. "Those are just the visible ones. We do not know about defects to internal organs, or those that only emerge years later," Professor Phuong said. The Vietnamese government estimates 500,000 children have been born with birth defects caused by contamination with Agent Orange and two million suffered cancers and other ill effects - innocent victims of a chemical intended to harm plant life, not humans. But unlike the American soldiers who sprayed the defoliant, they have never received compensation.

    This month they have the best chance in a generation of obtaining redress. A lawsuit against the US manufacturers of Agent Orange to be heard in the US courts is generating unprecedented support, nationally and internationally.

    Agent Orange, so-called because of the orange stripe on the drums in which it was stored, contained dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals known. An estimated 80 million litres of the defoliant, containing 386kg of dioxin, were sprayed on Vietnam. One millionth of a gram per kilo of body weight is enough to induce cancers, birth defects and other diseases when exposure persists over a long period - as the US veterans discovered in the years after the war.

    Cancers, birth defects and other diseases struck the returning veterans in unexpected numbers. Those who had had contact with the chemical sued the manufacturers and in 1984 won what was then the largest ever settlement of $180m against seven of the world's biggest chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto. But more than 20 years on, while the Americans who did the spraying have been compensated, the Vietnamese who had the toxic chemical sprayed on them are still waiting for redress.

    Last year, Vietnamese veterans sued the same US chemical companies claiming that they knew Agent Orange contained a poison - dioxin - and their action in supplying it to the US government breached international law and constituted a war crime. They lost in the first round but they are pinning their hopes on an appeal, due to be heard in Brooklyn, New York, this month.

    Dioxin is a by-product of the manufacturing process of Agent Orange and a key issue in the case is how much the manufacturers knew about their product, and at what stage. If the appeal fails, the veterans have pledged to take their fight to the Supreme Court. In the run-up to the hearing, they have turned up the pressure on the US government with a tour of US cities last December, and an international petition co-ordinated from London. An early day motion put down by the Labour MP Robert Marshall-Andrews in the Commons this month calls for the Vietnamese to be "similarly compensated" to the Americans 20 years ago.

    The veterans' long campaign for justice has seized the public imagination in Vietnam, according to British diplomats in Hanoi, with fund-raising parties and newspaper campaigns backing the fight. The veterans are ageing - many have died - and there is a sense that time is running out. But there is also anger at the continuing effects of the toxin on current generations.

    The mother of the spina bifida baby whose body lay in the morgue of the Tu Du hospital had not been born when the Vietnam war ended. Yet high levels of dioxin remain in the soil in hotspots across southern Vietnam, taken up by plants and crops and leaching into the water to contaminate new generations.

    Professor Phuong, 63, consultant obstetrician and until last November medical director of the Tu Du hospital, has spent much of her 40-year career researching the effects of Agent Orange and has watched the rate of birth defects rise. But she admits that obtaining hard evidence linking individual cases to the poison is difficult. "The US soldiers have diaries of where they were sent and what they were doing. We have no data. So how can we have proof?"

    Vast areas of Vietnam were stripped bare of vegetation by the defoliant. One of the most contaminated is at Cu Chi, 25 miles outside Ho Chi Minh City, where tourists crawl through the famous network of Viet Cong tunnels. Visitors are shown a film of women picking fruit in what was once known as the Garden of Cu Chi, where office workers came to picnic at weekends and watch the harvest.

    Today the picnickers have gone. Slender saplings, no thicker than a man's arm, have grown up in the past 20 years to shade the tourists - but there are no fruit trees and no harvest. In a speech to the US Senate in August 1970, displayed in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Senator Nelson said: "Never in human history have people witnessed one country's making war on the living environment of another."

    Bien Hoa, two hours' drive to the west along narrow roads jammed with scooters, bicycles and carts, is the site of an old US military base where 7,000 gallons of Agent Orange were spilt during the war. People who live in the town have among the highest levels of dioxin in the country - 413 parts per trillion, 207 times higher than in unsprayed areas. But research on the health effects has never been done and pledges of support from America have come to nothing.

    Soldiers standing guard at the base, now operated by the Vietnamese military, turn away unauthorised visitors. As darkness fell at the Quinh Lanh café opposite the gate, where workers were settling down to watch the TV, I bought a bottle of mineral water. It was sourced from the mountains in the north. The water in nearby lake Bien Hung is so heavily contaminated with dioxin, more than 30 years since the spraying stopped, that fishing is still banned.

    In Hanoi, Professor Nguyen Trong Nhan, former minister of health and vice-president of the Vietnam Association of Agent Orange Victims, says international support is growing for what he calls Vietnam's "great social and humanitarian problem". In January, a South Korean court ordered US chemical companies to pay $63m compensation to 6,800 South Korean soldiers who fought in Vietnam. "No one can tell how many more generations will be affected. We think the compensation [for Vietnam] must be large. People's lives and health are severely affected. Unfortunately, the Americans have avoided their responsibility," he says.

    Aged 76, and a veteran of the war against the French in which he lost his two brothers, he points to a picture of himself meeting Bill Clinton. The former US President in 1996 formally accepted a recommendation from the American Institutes of Medicine that 13 conditions ranging from prostate cancer to peripheral neuropathy (numbness in the hands and feet), should be recognised as likely to have been caused by Agent Orange. That decision led to American veterans with the conditions receiving payments worth thousands of dollars a year while the Vietnamese get nothing. "It is a battle even more difficult than the battle with weapons. We must have confidence that we will win," said Professor Nhan.

    There is one major barrier to success. The Vietnamese government is anxious to join the World Trade Organisation to open up new markets for its booming economy, and the Americans are the last big obstacle in their way. Embarrassing the US government at this point could sink Vietnam's hopes.

    Portraying their country as poisoned is also not the best way to boost trade. Vietnam is the world's second largest exporter of shrimp to the European Union. Any suggestion of contamination could wipe out this lucrative market. President Tran Duc Luong is thus caught on the horns of a dilemma. During a visit to the US last year, he raised the matter of Agent Orange but did not make an issue of it. The American embassy in Hanoi declined The Independent's request for an interview.

    The Americans hoped that concern in Vietnam about Agent Orange would gradually die, along with the ageing war veterans. Instead, the sense of injustice has grown. In Tu Du hospital, and in the 10 Peace Villages across the country where the children with the worst birth defects live, they are pinning their hopes on the outcome of this month's court case.

    With a shake of her head, Professor Phuong says: "Please ask for justice for the Vietnam victims. Time is running out."

    On a table in the dimly lit room lay a small white bundle, tied with a silver ribbon. With a brilliant smile and a barked order, Professor Nguyen Thi Phuong had directed me to the morgue of the Tu Du maternity hospital to see the latest evidence of the impact of a war that ended more than 30 years ago.

    Outside on the streets, thronged with motor scooters in the 30C heat, young men and women stopped to buy roses from the flower sellers at the hospital gates, preparing to give them to loved ones. In the morgue, an anonymous block at the back of this 1,000-bed hospital, love had had an unexpected, tragic outcome. Somewhere in the hospital, a mother was grieving for the loss of her son.

    A porter donned latex gloves and untied the ribbon. Carefully unwrapping the bundle, he revealed a tiny corpse, delivered a few hours earlier, its skin a livid purple, fine black strands of hair plastered to its head. He turned the infant over and there, at the base of the spine where the tissues had failed to form, like a wound, was the unmistakable sign of spina bifida.

    This is the only birth defect recognised by the US as a legacy of Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant sprayed by American troops from 1965 until 1971 during the Vietnam war. But there is worse, far worse, in this hospital, the largest in south Vietnam. Some of the most severely affected babies, abandoned by their parents, live on two floors in a wing known as the Peace Village.

    Entering it is like stepping back 40 years to the days of Thalidomide, the morning-sickness pill prescribed in Britain in the 1960s that left babies hideously deformed. In the first room, cots line the walls. In one, a four-year-old girl rocks on all fours, gently banging her head against the bars. A nurse turns her round to reveal a face with no eyes. Under a thick fringe of dark hair, there are soft indentations in the skin either side of her nose, where her eyes should be. Above her cot a printed label gives her name as Tran Sinh, and her date of birth as 27 February 2002. According to the nurses she was born in an area heavily sprayed with Agent Orange, where the land is still contaminated 35 years after the spraying stopped.

    In the cot next to her, Tran Loan, aged five months, has a head the size of a melon and is whimpering softly. He has hydrocephalus - fluid on the brain. Next to him a child wearing a stripey red T-shirt has stumps for legs. A three-year-old with a crazily pointed skull and bulging eyes lies on his back staring at the ceiling. But for his Mickey Mouse T-shirt, he looks as if he belongs to another world.

    A group of less severely affected children are setting off for school. Minh Phlic, 15, binds himself into his artificial legs with his one good arm. "I can be taller than you," he says proudly, levering himself to his feet.

    There were 454 babies with congenital defects born in the hospital last year, out of 36,000 deliveries. "Those are just the visible ones. We do not know about defects to internal organs, or those that only emerge years later," Professor Phuong said. The Vietnamese government estimates 500,000 children have been born with birth defects caused by contamination with Agent Orange and two million suffered cancers and other ill effects - innocent victims of a chemical intended to harm plant life, not humans. But unlike the American soldiers who sprayed the defoliant, they have never received compensation.

    This month they have the best chance in a generation of obtaining redress. A lawsuit against the US manufacturers of Agent Orange to be heard in the US courts is generating unprecedented support, nationally and internationally.

    Agent Orange, so-called because of the orange stripe on the drums in which it was stored, contained dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals known. An estimated 80 million litres of the defoliant, containing 386kg of dioxin, were sprayed on Vietnam. One millionth of a gram per kilo of body weight is enough to induce cancers, birth defects and other diseases when exposure persists over a long period - as the US veterans discovered in the years after the war.

    Cancers, birth defects and other diseases struck the returning veterans in unexpected numbers. Those who had had contact with the chemical sued the manufacturers and in 1984 won what was then the largest ever settlement of $180m against seven of the world's biggest chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto. But more than 20 years on, while the Americans who did the spraying have been compensated, the Vietnamese who had the toxic chemical sprayed on them are still waiting for redress.

    Last year, Vietnamese veterans sued the same US chemical companies claiming that they knew Agent Orange contained a poison - dioxin - and their action in supplying it to the US government breached international law and constituted a war crime. They lost in the first round but they are pinning their hopes on an appeal, due to be heard in Brooklyn, New York, this month.

    Dioxin is a by-product of the manufacturing process of Agent Orange and a key issue in the case is how much the manufacturers knew about their product, and at what stage. If the appeal fails, the veterans have pledged to take their fight to the Supreme Court. In the run-up to the hearing, they have turned up the pressure on the US government with a tour of US cities last December, and an international petition co-ordinated from London. An early day motion put down by the Labour MP Robert Marshall-Andrews in the Commons this month calls for the Vietnamese to be "similarly compensated" to the Americans 20 years ago.

    The veterans' long campaign for justice has seized the public imagination in Vietnam, according to British diplomats in Hanoi, with fund-raising parties and newspaper campaigns backing the fight. The veterans are ageing - many have died - and there is a sense that time is running out. But there is also anger at the continuing effects of the toxin on current generations.

    The mother of the spina bifida baby whose body lay in the morgue of the Tu Du hospital had not been born when the Vietnam war ended. Yet high levels of dioxin remain in the soil in hotspots across southern Vietnam, taken up by plants and crops and leaching into the water to contaminate new generations.

    Professor Phuong, 63, consultant obstetrician and until last November medical director of the Tu Du hospital, has spent much of her 40-year career researching the effects of Agent Orange and has watched the rate of birth defects rise. But she admits that obtaining hard evidence linking individual cases to the poison is difficult. "The US soldiers have diaries of where they were sent and what they were doing. We have no data. So how can we have proof?"

    Vast areas of Vietnam were stripped bare of vegetation by the defoliant. One of the most contaminated is at Cu Chi, 25 miles outside Ho Chi Minh City, where tourists crawl through the famous network of Viet Cong tunnels. Visitors are shown a film of women picking fruit in what was once known as the Garden of Cu Chi, where office workers came to picnic at weekends and watch the harvest.

    Today the picnickers have gone. Slender saplings, no thicker than a man's arm, have grown up in the past 20 years to shade the tourists - but there are no fruit trees and no harvest. In a speech to the US Senate in August 1970, displayed in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Senator Nelson said: "Never in human history have people witnessed one country's making war on the living environment of another."

    Bien Hoa, two hours' drive to the west along narrow roads jammed with scooters, bicycles and carts, is the site of an old US military base where 7,000 gallons of Agent Orange were spilt during the war. People who live in the town have among the highest levels of dioxin in the country - 413 parts per trillion, 207 times higher than in unsprayed areas. But research on the health effects has never been done and pledges of support from America have come to nothing.

    Soldiers standing guard at the base, now operated by the Vietnamese military, turn away unauthorised visitors. As darkness fell at the Quinh Lanh café opposite the gate, where workers were settling down to watch the TV, I bought a bottle of mineral water. It was sourced from the mountains in the north. The water in nearby lake Bien Hung is so heavily contaminated with dioxin, more than 30 years since the spraying stopped, that fishing is still banned.

    In Hanoi, Professor Nguyen Trong Nhan, former minister of health and vice-president of the Vietnam Association of Agent Orange Victims, says international support is growing for what he calls Vietnam's "great social and humanitarian problem". In January, a South Korean court ordered US chemical companies to pay $63m compensation to 6,800 South Korean soldiers who fought in Vietnam. "No one can tell how many more generations will be affected. We think the compensation [for Vietnam] must be large. People's lives and health are severely affected. Unfortunately, the Americans have avoided their responsibility," he says.

    Aged 76, and a veteran of the war against the French in which he lost his two brothers, he points to a picture of himself meeting Bill Clinton. The former US President in 1996 formally accepted a recommendation from the American Institutes of Medicine that 13 conditions ranging from prostate cancer to peripheral neuropathy (numbness in the hands and feet), should be recognised as likely to have been caused by Agent Orange. That decision led to American veterans with the conditions receiving payments worth thousands of dollars a year while the Vietnamese get nothing. "It is a battle even more difficult than the battle with weapons. We must have confidence that we will win," said Professor Nhan.

    There is one major barrier to success. The Vietnamese government is anxious to join the World Trade Organisation to open up new markets for its booming economy, and the Americans are the last big obstacle in their way. Embarrassing the US government at this point could sink Vietnam's hopes.

    Portraying their country as poisoned is also not the best way to boost trade. Vietnam is the world's second largest exporter of shrimp to the European Union. Any suggestion of contamination could wipe out this lucrative market. President Tran Duc Luong is thus caught on the horns of a dilemma. During a visit to the US last year, he raised the matter of Agent Orange but did not make an issue of it. The American embassy in Hanoi declined The Independent's request for an interview.

    The Americans hoped that concern in Vietnam about Agent Orange would gradually die, along with the ageing war veterans. Instead, the sense of injustice has grown. In Tu Du hospital, and in the 10 Peace Villages across the country where the children with the worst birth defects live, they are pinning their hopes on the outcome of this month's court case.

    With a shake of her head, Professor Phuong says: "Please ask for justice for the Vietnam victims. Time is running out."

    ReplyDelete
  77. Anonymous2:22 AM

    For the last 30 years all the while we have congratulated ourselves that we learned the "lessons of Vietnam". We have also condemned the Vietnamese to live in places that make Love Canal look dreamy. While we condemn Saddam, who are we to judge? We have NO right unless we go and clean up the mess we created before Saddam even came to power.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Anonymous2:31 AM

    The Vietnamese government estimates 500,000 children have been born with birth defects caused by contamination with Agent Orange and two million suffered cancers and other ill effects - innocent victims of a chemical intended to harm plant life, not humans.

    Victums of the US Military campaign in Vietnam... numbers to rival Saddam.... and he no longer is in power but the Dioxin is sill working..............and working...........and working..............

    ReplyDelete
  79. Anonymous2:36 AM

    In January, a South Korean court ordered US chemical companies to pay $63m compensation to 6,800 South Korean soldiers who fought in Vietnam. "No one can tell how many more generations will be affected. We think the compensation [for Vietnam] must be large.

    Funny even our allies in the war and the region want compensation for what is tantimount to a war crime.(Attacking civilians with chemicals that will cause death. Where is Bush et al on this issue of mass suffering of people from the effects of chemical spraying?)

    ReplyDelete
  80. Anonymous2:36 AM

    In January, a South Korean court ordered US chemical companies to pay $63m compensation to 6,800 South Korean soldiers who fought in Vietnam. "No one can tell how many more generations will be affected. We think the compensation [for Vietnam] must be large.

    Funny even our allies in the war and the region want compensation for what is tantimount to a war crime.(Attacking civilians with chemicals that will cause death. Where is Bush et al on this issue of mass suffering of people from the effects of chemical spraying?)

    ReplyDelete
  81. Anonymous2:40 AM

    An estimated 80 million litres of the defoliant, containing 386kg of dioxin, were sprayed on Vietnam. One millionth of a gram per kilo of body weight is enough to induce cancers, birth defects and other diseases when exposure persists over a long period


    Lets see 386,000 times 1,000,000 equals enough dioxin in vietnam for more people than has ever lived....

    ReplyDelete
  82. Anonymous2:42 AM

    Agent Orange in Vietnam is probably the worst military Chemical Attack of one nation upon another in the history of the world...but it is not over yet.

    ReplyDelete
  83. Anonymous2:46 AM

    Why so silent TT you could repost a bolviated rambling self serving list of quotes taken out of context, and add a rambling disjointed critique of the outing of an active CIA agent that has very little substance of fact but Opinions rehashed to support other opinions... the DIXON story IS FACT that every American who calls themselves a Christian should be extremely ashamed of.

    ReplyDelete
  84. Anonymous2:49 AM

    Remember Diem in Vietnam was their Chalibi, and had about as much real support(The US government even sanctioned his removal, read the pentagon papers if you do not believe me)

    ReplyDelete
  85. Anonymous2:50 AM

    Do you think invading Iraq was the right strategic decision?
    No 70%
    Yes 25%
    I'm not sure 5%
    Total Votes: 86,633


    http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060331043909990001

    ReplyDelete
  86. Anonymous2:57 AM

    Want another opinion of what is happening in Iraq is a mess that is getting worse, read this:

    Thomas Friedman: Iraq at the 11th Hour

    Friedman has been saying for months - years, really - that it's still not too late to salvage things in Iraq, but to do so we have to move fast before things spiral out of control. Now, yet again, he sees Iraq at a critical juncture, but we still might be able to fix things. Sorry, but if anyone at this point doesn't admit that Iraq is totally FUBAR they're fooling themselves.

    Iraq at the 11th Hour
    By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
    Published: March 31, 2006

    The fate of the entire U.S. enterprise in Iraq now hangs in the balance, as the war has entered a dangerous new phase. It is the phase of barbaric identity-card violence between Sunnis and Shiites. In the late 1970's, I covered a similar moment in Lebanon, and the one thing I learned was this: Once this kind of venom gets unleashed — with members of each community literally beheading each other on the basis of their religious identities — it poisons everything. You enter a realm that is beyond politics, a realm where fear and revenge dominate everyone's thinking — and that is where Iraq is heading.

    Jeffrey Gettleman reported last Sunday in this paper about Mohannad al-Azawi, a quiet Sunni pet shop owner in Baghdad who was abducted from his store and found murdered the next morning. His skin was covered with purple welts, and his face and legs had drill holes in them. His brother Hassan, the story noted, "carries the autopsy photos with him, along with a pistol. 'I cannot live without vengeance,' he said."

    Once embedded, this cycle of fear and revenge is almost impossible to break. People conclude that the only thing that can protect them is a militia from their own sect, not the police or the army. Then these militias, which come to life to protect the neighborhood, take on a life of their own. They develop protection rackets, feel the thrill of power and, as that happens, start to do all they can to prevent the government from restoring its authority. Finally, as the BBC noted in a recent report from Baghdad, some Iraqi politicians are now concluding that "they can gain more power and influence from building on sectarian loyalties than from appeals for national unity." When politicians decide they can get ahead by appealing more to fear than to hope, national reconciliation goes up in smoke.

    A Baghdad blogger, the Mesopotamian, quoted by AndrewSullivan.com, gave a vivid description of his neighborhood: "The confusion and conflict between the Americans, the army and the Ministry of Interior is producing a situation where the citizens don't know anymore whether the security personnel in the street are friends, enemies, terrorists or simply criminals and thieves. Everybody is wearing the same uniforms. Whole sections of the city have virtually fallen to gangs and terrorists, and this is especially true for the 'Sunni'-dominated neighborhoods. People and businesses are being robbed and the employees kidnapped en masse in broad daylight and with complete ease as though security forces are nonexistent, although we see them everywhere.

    "I don't know anymore what can be done to rescue the situation. At least, those who are supposed to be in positions of responsibility should stop lying and painting a false picture. ... I regret sounding so pessimistic, but the alarm must be sounded. ... What is happening is Baghdad is something really awful."

    Donald Rumsfeld's criminally negligent decision not to deploy enough troops in Iraq to begin with created this security vacuum. But the insecurity was compounded by the unique enemy that emerged to take advantage of that vacuum — Sunni Islamo-nihilists. These are a disparate collection of groups with one common agenda: America and its Iraqi allies must fail; they must not be allowed to build Iraq into a Western-style, democratizing society. When you are up against an enemy whose only goal is that you must fail, and which does not care about how much death and destruction it inflicts on its own people, let alone on others, it is extremely difficult to establish order.

    The Iraqi Shiite community showed remarkable restraint in the face of the murderous provocations by these Islamo-nihilist gangs during the past three years. But that restraint is over. It's now clear that some Shiite militias are ready to match the Sunni nihilists, killing for killing. So the slide into a medieval barbarism has begun.

    Do not believe any of the Bush team's happy talk. It doesn't matter if Iraq is quiet in the south and quiet in the north. If Baghdad, the heart of the country, is being ripped apart, then there is no Iraq — because there is no center.

    There is only one hope for halting this slide and that is the formation — immediately — of a national unity government in Iraq, with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds sharing power, and the deployment on the streets — immediately — of massive numbers of troops and police, both Iraqi and American, to prevent more of these tribal killings. If a national unity government is not formed soon, and if these identity-card murderers gain more momentum, any hope for building a decent Iraq will vanish.

    It is five minutes to midnight.

    http://www.pekingduck.org/archives/003579.php


    Wonder if we are going to send in the Marines like Reagan did....oops they are already there,


    But keep believing that we did the "right" thing and Rummy and Cheney and Bush have done nothing really wrong or have nothing to apologize for, keep believing it until it bites the repugs in their a$$(both figuratively and literally ie financially)

    ReplyDelete
  87. Anonymous3:00 AM

    We did Vietnam in the name of freedom too, hopefully we won't leave as large a mess in Iraq as we left in Vietnam, and then choose to ignore it.

    How very Christian of this "great" and compassionate country.......if this is how we spread freedom then most people would probably ask us to stay home.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Anonymous3:06 AM

    Another voice from the vietnam era that thinks you don't know that much TT;

    Documentary sends warning to Congress
    BY WALTER CRONKITE

    When young Anh Duong fled war-torn Saigon in 1973, she never imagined she'd grow up one day to make bombs for the U.S. military. She was just a child whose passage to safety in the United States she credits to ''a thirst for freedom'' and ``the sacrifice of other people.''

    In the important new documentary film Why We Fight, Duong's remarkable saga is told alongside the stories of a number of everyday people working for America's defense. From a wide-eyed young recruit to the pilots who launched the opening strike of Operation Iraqi Freedom to a New York policeman who lost his son on 9/11, the film is a scrapbook of the American family at a time of war, trapped in a tragedy of history repeating.

    Today, Duong is an explosives expert employed at the Naval Surface Warfare Station at Indian Head, Md. Credited with the development of a powerful bunker-buster used in Afghanistan and Iraq, she proudly recounts her rise from refugee to ``defense technician.''

    ''I do remember the desperation,'' Duong recalls, the obvious sunshine in her nature battling the anguish of memories.

    ``A lot of South Vietnamese felt that the Americans had left them to fend for themselves. That in the end, America deliberately withdrew all the support.''

    Though the pain of betrayal is not lost on her, there is an irony in her path from war victim to war professional. Though Duong's tale is a stirring immigrant success story, watching the movie's scenes of Saigon's fall at a time when we are facing the withdrawal question in Iraq gave me a profound sense of déj vu.

    Not unlike the Vietnam quagmire on which I reported in 1968, we are today presented with the Iraq quagmire. The threat of world communism has been replaced by international terror as a pretext for another misbegotten and mismanaged war, but the falsehoods, broken promises and withering national faith are too familiar.

    Now, as then, with each further escalation, we come closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. A recent poll revealed that three-fourths of U.S. troops serving in Iraq want full withdrawal, one-fourth immediately. Despite the executive's stubborn optimism, two-thirds of the public now favor withdrawal.

    Yet in Congress, such voices are the minority.

    In my February 1968 broadcast, I called the position of Vietnam a stalemate.

    I'm not sure ''stalemate'' fits the U.S. military's loose footing in the sands of Iraq, but the need to cut losses does. In the wake of the Golden Mosque bombing in Samarra, Shiites and Sunnis now clash across the region. Our men and women in uniform face the task of trying to stave off a civil war when their very presence as an occupying force more often than not fuels the violence and represents an obstacle to Shiite and Sunni reconciliation.

    As I stated in relation to Vietnam, the only rational way out is to proceed not as victors but as an honorable people who tried to defend democracy the best they could. Recently, I suggested that in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there was an opportunity to withdraw from Iraq and still maintain our sense of honor. We had an urgent need to redirect our resources to the aid of our communities and people stricken by the devastation of the great storm. Almost no one on Capitol Hill was listening.

    Why We Fight should be required viewing for Americans but even more for those on Capitol Hill. The film sends a chilling warning that should not be ignored by Congress and our executive branch.

    Walter Cronkite is a former anchorman for CBS News.

    http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14164005.htm

    But what does walter know about war, he covered most of the starting with europe in WW2, Korea, Vietnam, he probably ahs spent as much time in combat zones as a lot of combat vets.....

    ReplyDelete
  89. Anonymous3:16 AM

    How about the views of one of the archetics of the neo-con movement as to how foolish Cheney Bush Blair(and you) look in your defense of the Iraqi fisaco;

    On second thoughts

    AFTER THE NEOCONS: Where the Right Went Wrong
    by Francis Fukuyama

    A celebrated New Yorker cartoon of the 1950s showed a plane crashing on a runway. As everyone rushed to rescue the crew, a solitary scientist walked in the opposite direction. He sighed, “Oh well, back to the drawing board.”

    As George Bush’s Iraq adventure smoulders on the Tarmac, a small group of neo-cons are starting to escape the scene with varying degrees of dignity. Some, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer, have vanished. A handful, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair, remain in denial, parroting the Vietnam line: “We are winning, really.” Others, such as Francis Fukuyama, have a more valid licence to recant, having doubted whether neo-conservatism was relevant to Iraq all along.

    In a devastating resumé of the saga so far, Fukuyama concludes that the so-called creation of democracy in Iraq cannot “justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project”. The war has not worked. In any counter-terrorism operation, “successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming”. The Bush doctrine “is now in a shambles”. America is asisolated as never before. The chaos in Iraq is spoiling the case for any further global projection of American values. More Americans than at any time since the end of Vietnam are now saying that America “should mind its own business”.

    The realists are coming back into the ascendancy. From Afghanistan through Iran and Iraq to the Levant, America is in strategic retreat. It cannot realistically fight another war. The Bush doctrine has polluted not promoted American values. It has made America less not more safe, and its ally Israel with it.

    None of this will come asbe particularly new to consumers of the voluminous catalogue of Iraq bookbooks so far. It was predicted by the State Department predicted it, andas did many in the American military and round the world (not least in Europe). before being discovered by Fukuyama.To Fukuyama, the realisation must be the more bitter, since part of his “end of history” thesis was that America had won not just the cold war but the global argument.

    Fukuyama, the supreme rationalist, assumed that the rest of the world would accept defeat and American hegemony. Like many Americans he forgot nationalism, and did not predict how ineptly Americans would react to being stung. He forgot that the nuclear bomb is a useless weapon since theowners cannot really use it. It has owners cannot really use it. It has no deterrence value, as aggressors from North Vietnam to Iraq to Argentina to Al-Qaeda have realised. Military supremacy does not conquer all. Philip Bobbitt and others have shown that it merely changes the nature of the game. America’s biggest enemies after 9/11 were paranoia, risk aversion and a belligerent revenge psychosis. It now spends more on protecting itself against its own fears than it did against communism. In the process it has sown mayhem across the Muslim world.

    Fukuyama is intrigued by how this disaster came about. He rehearses the often-told story of the early neocons, born of a mixture of Zionism, oil imperialism and honest evangelism for democracy. Among the many ironies was their neo-conservatives’libertarian aversion to state power at home yet anenthusiastic belief in its legitimacy and efficacy abroad when deployed against foreigners. Watching eager neo-cons at work in Baghdad’s Green Zone I remember wondering where I had seen this before. It was under the BritishLabour government of Harold Wilson.

    I am sure Fukuyama is right to see his former friends’ desire to nanny the world as arising out of the cold war. I am less sure that its motives were wholly benign. The cold war left a giant military apparatus eager for employment. It left Washington’s multitudinous defence think tanks seeking new enemies. It left rich lobbies swirling round Israel and oil. To all these, the crusade to bring democracy to the Middle East was useful as much as noble.

    What is extraordinary, and what Fukuyama does not fully answer, is how so small a group of often crackpot intellectuals came to hijack a superpower. Men such as Wolfowitz, Cheney, Richard Perle, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer , should have been locked away in some log cabin with their fantasies. Kristol and Robert Kagan declared, “It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power.”

    Where do these people live? Such words would have been hubristic arrogance at the height of the British Empire. The neo-cons still cannot see what harm is done to their cause by Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the 101st Airborne and extraordinary rendition. They cannot see that these methods of hegemony, minor in themselves, are 9/11 to the defenceless poor of Afghanistan, Iraq and the ghettoes of Palestine. Americans cried “Feel our pain” after 9/11. They cry now. Justified or not, this is a fact with which diplomacy (or war) must contend.

    The good intentions of the neo-cons may seem axiomatic from within the beltway. America’s friends abroad can only reply, and at the tops of their voices, that is not how it seems elsewhere in the world. When Cheney and company now threaten Iran, again with the best of intentions, those friends wonder respectfully if America has taken leave of its senses.

    Kantian ethics require as the test of a moral precept that it be capable of generalisation. Fukuyama protests a central flaw in the 2002 National Security Strategy, Bush’s core document of global intervention, that “it could not safely be generalised through the international system”.

    America, he points out, “would be the first to object if Russia, China, India or France declared a similar right of unilateral action”. Washington cannot pass judgment on others, however venal, “while being unwilling to have its own conduct questioned in places like the International Criminal Court”.

    Fukuyama writes clear prose and is a pleasure to read. Nor is he chary of offering advice. His old creed is now discredited, “indelibly associated with coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony”. A new international order, he says, can only be promoted by peaceful persuasion through international institutions so derided by the neo-cons. While no friend of the United Nations, he preaches “multi-multilateralism”. America must move forward through “its ability to shape international institutions”, not sideline them. Either way, if American policy can only stop making the world a worse place, it might be on the road to making it a better one. Amen.

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-2097307,00.html

    Seems that the rats are leaving the ship USS Uncurious George as fast as they can......

    ReplyDelete
  90. Anonymous3:34 AM

    Oh yea about the "victory" in Afghanistan?

    British minister warns against Taliban Afghan comeback;

    COPENHAGEN (AFP) - British Defence Minister John Reid warned that
    Afghanistan faced the danger that the ousted Taliban and terrorists might stage a comeback.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    "The greatest danger of all would be to allow Afghanistan to fall back into the hands of the Taliban and the terrorists," he told reporters in Copenhagen after a meeting with his Danish counterpart Soeren Gade.

    "We are also at a critical point in Afghanistan."

    Reid's remarks coincided with the seizure by the Taliban of three villages in a restive southern province after clashes with regular army troops in which the Taliban were reported to have lost six dead.

    Attacks on local authorities and government forces have intensified in recent months in the east and south of the country, the heartland of opposition to the Kabul government and stronghold of the Taliban, overthrown by US-led forces in 2001.

    "It will be a direct threat to Great Britain and Denmark's populations" if the Taliban regained power, Reid said.

    "Let us remember why we are there. It was in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban, that Al-Qaeda planned, rehearsed, trained and launched the biggest terrorist attack in history, in which over 3,000 people died in New York," he said.

    "That is why have now embarked on stage 3, expanding our presence under the
    United Nations, to the south of Afghanistan. Our aim is to extend the authority of President (Hamid) Kharzai's government, to protect those civilian agencies assisting them to build a democratic government and to enable security, stability and economic development throughout the country."

    About 3,300 British troops are shortly to be deployed in the south of Afghanistan as part of a
    NATO force expanding its presence in the country.

    "We don't go there to make war or destroy the terrorists. It's not our mission. It's the (job of the) coalition headed by the American forces," he said.

    The purpose was to help the Afghan people and government build their democracy, economy and security forces, he said, noting that 290 Danish troops would be under British command in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

    "But if attacked, we have to respond," Reid said.

    Most of the British forces will be in the volatile Helmand province, as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

    NATO said Friday that ISAF could by August finish its process of building up to 25,000 troops and expanding its presence throughout the war-torn Central Asian nation.



    It has only been four years and no Mullah Omar, no Osama Bin Laden, no Iman Al Zarhari, no peace, no consolidation of the countryside into the central government control, just more deployments and more fighting, too bad Bush kept most of the US military for his OPTIONAL war in Iraq, instead of actually catching the culprit of 9-11 and defeating the root of the terrorists on the battle field. He might not be in the basement of poll numbers and have the repugs in congress trying for a hail mary play to hold power to keep the democrats from expanding the Abramoff, Delay, Frist, intellgate, illegal spying, katrina fiasco(lead by an allegeded shoplifter), plamegate, investigations into actual congressional oversight like the US constitutiopn calls for.

    ReplyDelete
  91. Anonymous3:34 AM

    Oh yea about the "victory" in Afghanistan?

    British minister warns against Taliban Afghan comeback;

    COPENHAGEN (AFP) - British Defence Minister John Reid warned that
    Afghanistan faced the danger that the ousted Taliban and terrorists might stage a comeback.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    "The greatest danger of all would be to allow Afghanistan to fall back into the hands of the Taliban and the terrorists," he told reporters in Copenhagen after a meeting with his Danish counterpart Soeren Gade.

    "We are also at a critical point in Afghanistan."

    Reid's remarks coincided with the seizure by the Taliban of three villages in a restive southern province after clashes with regular army troops in which the Taliban were reported to have lost six dead.

    Attacks on local authorities and government forces have intensified in recent months in the east and south of the country, the heartland of opposition to the Kabul government and stronghold of the Taliban, overthrown by US-led forces in 2001.

    "It will be a direct threat to Great Britain and Denmark's populations" if the Taliban regained power, Reid said.

    "Let us remember why we are there. It was in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban, that Al-Qaeda planned, rehearsed, trained and launched the biggest terrorist attack in history, in which over 3,000 people died in New York," he said.

    "That is why have now embarked on stage 3, expanding our presence under the
    United Nations, to the south of Afghanistan. Our aim is to extend the authority of President (Hamid) Kharzai's government, to protect those civilian agencies assisting them to build a democratic government and to enable security, stability and economic development throughout the country."

    About 3,300 British troops are shortly to be deployed in the south of Afghanistan as part of a
    NATO force expanding its presence in the country.

    "We don't go there to make war or destroy the terrorists. It's not our mission. It's the (job of the) coalition headed by the American forces," he said.

    The purpose was to help the Afghan people and government build their democracy, economy and security forces, he said, noting that 290 Danish troops would be under British command in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

    "But if attacked, we have to respond," Reid said.

    Most of the British forces will be in the volatile Helmand province, as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

    NATO said Friday that ISAF could by August finish its process of building up to 25,000 troops and expanding its presence throughout the war-torn Central Asian nation.



    It has only been four years and no Mullah Omar, no Osama Bin Laden, no Iman Al Zarhari, no peace, no consolidation of the countryside into the central government control, just more deployments and more fighting, too bad Bush kept most of the US military for his OPTIONAL war in Iraq, instead of actually catching the culprit of 9-11 and defeating the root of the terrorists on the battle field. He might not be in the basement of poll numbers and have the repugs in congress trying for a hail mary play to hold power to keep the democrats from expanding the Abramoff, Delay, Frist, intellgate, illegal spying, katrina fiasco(lead by an allegeded shoplifter), plamegate, investigations into actual congressional oversight like the US constitutiopn calls for.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Anonymous3:43 AM

    Think the Taliban is done there?

    Analysis: The fallout from Rahman's release

    WASHINGTON -- Abdul Rahman, the Afghan Muslim who last week faced possible execution for converting to Christianity was safe in Italy Thursday, but left behind him a heated controversy over his aborted trial. The Taliban issued a statement calling for a Jihad (holy war) against President Hamid Karzai, who had intervened on Rahman's behalf under strong pressure from President Bush and the international community. The fundamentalist movement said the release of the Christian convert proved that Karzai was nothing but "a puppet," with foreigners pulling the strings.

    "Afghan judges are no longer independent," said the Taliban statement distributed in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "Their decisions are dictated by foreign elements." Their protest echoed the sentiments of many Afghans even though they have no love for the Taliban, for the Rahman case had brought to the fore the underlying tension between the secular government and a society that is traditional, tribal, and deeply chauvinistic.

    "Karzai will pay a political price for this at some point, although we don't know what it will be," Afghan expert Vali Nasr, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the U.S. think tank the Council on Foreign Relations told United Press International. "The perception is that he caved in under Christian pressure."

    http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060331-013613-5019r

    Seems like a lot of Afghans don't like foriegners meddling with their views on the GOD and law any more the christian here do. And they do not seem any more tolorant of those who do not adhere to thier views, they attack their character and "morality". They probably can "swiftboat" with the best of them (Karshi fought along side the Taliban and other jihadists against the Soviets in the 80's)

    ReplyDelete
  93. Anonymous3:55 AM

    You keep telling me how well it is going in Iraq TT why don't all these Iraqi's agree?

    Tens of thousands flee conflict in Iraq: IOM

    GENEVA (AFP) - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have fled their homes in the face surging violence in recent weeks and are in desperate need of aid, the International Organisation for Migration said.

    Jemini Pandya, spokeswoman for the international body which looks after people displaced within their own countries as well as migrants, said that 30,000-36,000 Iraqis had left their homes.

    Most of them were from Baghdad, as well as the Anbar and Diyala regions, Pandya told reporters.

    "More than one million people are now displaced in the country as a result of three decades of conflict and the on-going violence," she said.

    The IOM is handing out food, as well as other supplies including mattresses and blankets, and providing clean water and medical assistance.

    However, many of the people who have fled also lack proper shelter, said Pandya.

    The IOM needs 10 million dollars (8.3 million euros) to fund a year-long emergency programme for people who are either living with family or friends or who are squatting in public or abandoned buildings, she said.

    In a separate operation, Pandya said, the IOM has sent 150 patients to other countries for medical treatment after the Iraqi health ministry asked it to restart its medical evacuation programme.

    At least 6,000 Iraqis are currently on the ministry's list awaiting life-saving treatment abroad for conditions including cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders, said Pandya.

    Many of those on the list are children injured by bomb explosions or mines or those who have medical conditions which Iraqi hospitals are unable to treat due to lack of staff, equipment or medicines, she added.

    The IOM's programme, which is also in need of funds, matches patients with hospitals abroad that are prepared to give free medical assistance. The previous programme, from 2003-2005, assisted almost 300 patients, said Pandya.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060331/wl_mideast_afp/iraqdisplacediom

    ReplyDelete
  94. Anonymous4:01 AM

    Might the reason that the Iraqi's on the ground disagree with you safe in you home TT is that you do not face what they do, and it is getting worse for them;

    U.S. military deaths drop in Iraq

    WASHINGTON - U.S. military deaths in Iraq during March hit a two-year low, even as religious and ethnic violence between Iraqi factions skyrocketed.

    According to Pentagon statistics, 30 American service members died during the month, the lowest level since February 2004, when 20 troops died. All but four of the deaths were by hostile fire.

    The number of deaths attributed to roadside bombs, which remain the overall top killer of U.S. forces, was 12, the lowest in a year.

    American military officials credited the drop to improved performance of Iraqi security forces in recent weeks and better training of U.S. troops.

    "What I would tell you is the Iraqi security forces' capability is getting better," said Army Maj. Gen. James Thurman, the commander of coalition forces in Baghdad. "And I attribute ... a lot of the decline in our fatalities (to) the alertness and the training levels of our soldiers."

    But some analysts said the nature of the war had changed, with Iraqi factions now attacking one another rather than American forces.

    "What you have is the insurgents are trying to block the formation of a coalition government and trying to cause a civil war," said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who's now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "That means that a lot of these attacks now focus on Iraqi civilians."

    U.S. fatalities in Iraq reached a 12-month high last October, when 96 service members died.

    Statistics released by the American-led coalition show that the number of Iraqis killed in violence has zoomed since the Feb. 22 insurgent bombing of the Askariya mosque in Samarra, an important Shiite Muslim shrine.

    More than 1,300 Iraqis have died in retaliatory killings between Sunni Muslim and Shiite groups since the mosque bombing. Nearly 1,000 of those deaths were in Baghdad, according to the statistics.

    Car bombs killed at least 173 Iraqis in the same period, 146 of them in Baghdad, according to coalition statistics.

    Kidnappings and executions of Iraqis also rose. According to Iraqi officials, an average of 40 kidnappings are reported daily in Iraq, most in Baghdad. Iraqi and coalition forces are finding an average of 20 bodies a day from the wave of killings.

    Attacks on Iraqi police and soldiers are also up 36 percent, from an average of 55 a day from August 2005 through early February 2006 to an average of 75 a day from Feb. 10 to March 24, according to coalition statistics.

    Thurman suggested that one reason U.S. deaths from roadside bombs are down is that troops are finding more of the devices before they explode. In March, coalition forces encountered 602 roadside bombs, and found about half of them before they went off, he said.

    http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14235829.htm


    Good news for the soldiers and their families that they are somewhat safer, but really a drag to be a civilian there now HUH?

    Democracy if you can live through it and Keep your sanity....ever wonder what the problems the civilians have if over a quarter of our soldiers come home and need psychological treatment?

    Ever wonder that the spirialing rise in the violence might be some people whose home is there are passing the breaking point and reacting in less than calm rational ways, but with pure rage and emotion which feeds itself.

    ReplyDelete
  95. Anonymous4:22 AM

    How about a plan to find an end to the madness(and no George does not get to call all the shots);

    Former US presidential advisor Brzezinski presents plan to quit Iraq;

    WARSAW - Polish-born former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has put together a four-point plan for the United States to withdraw from Iraq, he told private Polish television TVN24.

    The plan would allow Washington to disengage gradually in Iraq, ”without victory, but also without defeat,” said Brzezinski, who worked for US President Jimmy Carter.

    The first step would involve “Washington suggesting to the Iraqi authorities that they publicly ask the United States to pull out of Iraq,” he said.

    Next, a date would be set for US troops to be pulled out, following which the Iraqi government should invite its neighbours to a “regional conference of Muslim countries” aimed at stabilising the situation in Iraq, Brzezinski said.

    Lastly, the United States should call an international conference to discuss funding for the reconstruction of Iraq.

    “I think that a programme such as this one, set up in the space of one year, would close the affair in such a way that we might not be able to speak of a clear victory, but also not of defeat or running away,” Brzezinski said.

    Poland, which has backed the US-led military campaign in Iraq since it began three years ago, should work with Washington to make the plan reality, said Brzezinski, stressing that the intended end result was “in the interests of both countries.”


    It's more of a plan than Rumsfeld has had up to now, and might even be acceptable to the Iraqi's and regional countries who would be needed to make such a plan work. Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, could probably work out a plan that would work better than the fiasco we have now, Hell at least they can talk to the people with out the interpertors we don't have(so we rely on the civilians, you know the same ones who are relatives and neighbors to the sectarian militias and insurgents we are fighting)

    ReplyDelete
  96. Anonymous5:36 AM

    BTW this is the VA page about what they compensate US veterans who were exposed to Dioxin in Vietnam:


    Vietnam Veterans Benefit From Agent Orange Rules

    They are society's leaders. They run businesses; direct organizations; hold political office. In their mid-50s, they are at the height of their social and economic power, earning more than others in their age group. Yet, with their success, they can't escape the inevitable health concerns of a graying population.

    They are Vietnam veterans, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is concerned they may regard diseases associated with aging, such as prostate cancer, as just another illness rather than as the result of their military service in Southeast Asia.

    VA wants these Vietnam veterans to know that they may be eligible for compensation and health care for certain diseases associated with Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed to unmask enemy hiding places in the jungles throughout Vietnam.

    Special health care and compensation benefits are available to the 2.6 million men and women who served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975, only 3,300 of whom remain in uniform today. Those discharged during that period are the largest group of veterans receiving VA health care and monthly compensation.

    Yet a small percentage of their disability claims are for illnesses scientists have listed as being associated with Agent Orange. VA presumes that all military personnel who served in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange, and federal law presumes that certain illnesses are a result of that exposure. This so-called "presumptive policy" simplifies the process of receiving compensation for these diseases since VA foregoes the normal requirements of proving that an illness began or was worsened during military service.

    Based on clinical research, the following diseases are on VA's Agent Orange list of presumptive disabilities: chloracne, Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, porphyria cutanea tarda, respiratory cancers (lung, bronchus, larynx and trachea), soft-tissue sarcoma, acute and subacute peripheral neuropathy and prostate cancer. A regulation is being developed to add diabetes mellitus.

    In addition, monetary benefits, health care and vocational rehabilitation services are provided to Vietnam veterans' offspring with spina bifida, a congenital birth defect of the spine. A new law authorizes health care and monetary benefits to children of female veterans who served in Vietnam for certain additional birth defects. Those additional benefits under the new law will not be payable to the beneficiaries until Dec. 1, 2001.

    Veterans who served in Vietnam during the war also are eligible for a complete physical examination. If a VA physician suspects a disease might be related to Agent Orange, VA will provide free medical care. Those who participate in the examination program become part of an Agent Orange Registry and receive periodic mailings from VA about the latest Agent Orange studies and new diseases being covered under VA policies.


    http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/benefits/herbicide/AOno1.htm


    This page proves the federal government accepts responsibility for the exposure of the US veterans that the US military exposed, now as christians what are we as a country going to do for those who do not fit into this program but who were exposed by the US military just the same?

    One small problem the population of Vietnam is, 83,535,576 (July 2005 est.)

    An April 2003 report paid for by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that during the Vietnam War, 3,181 villages were sprayed directly with herbicides. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million people "would have been present during the spraying."(wikipedia)

    And why it is our problem....We are a signatory to the Stockholm Convention, The treaty obliges signatories to take measures to eliminate where possible, and minimize where not possible to eliminate, all sources of dioxin.(like the estimated 19 million gallons of herbicide had been sprayed on Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, somewhat more than half (55%) of that Agent Orange, between 1962 and 1971. Early estimates from 1974 had placed the amounts lower, between 12 and 14 million gallons. In total about six million acres were sprayed in Vietnam alone.)

    Seems that maybe we have a chemical log in our eye too....

    ReplyDelete
  97. Anonymous5:36 AM

    BTW this is the VA page about what they compensate US veterans who were exposed to Dioxin in Vietnam:


    Vietnam Veterans Benefit From Agent Orange Rules

    They are society's leaders. They run businesses; direct organizations; hold political office. In their mid-50s, they are at the height of their social and economic power, earning more than others in their age group. Yet, with their success, they can't escape the inevitable health concerns of a graying population.

    They are Vietnam veterans, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is concerned they may regard diseases associated with aging, such as prostate cancer, as just another illness rather than as the result of their military service in Southeast Asia.

    VA wants these Vietnam veterans to know that they may be eligible for compensation and health care for certain diseases associated with Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed to unmask enemy hiding places in the jungles throughout Vietnam.

    Special health care and compensation benefits are available to the 2.6 million men and women who served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975, only 3,300 of whom remain in uniform today. Those discharged during that period are the largest group of veterans receiving VA health care and monthly compensation.

    Yet a small percentage of their disability claims are for illnesses scientists have listed as being associated with Agent Orange. VA presumes that all military personnel who served in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange, and federal law presumes that certain illnesses are a result of that exposure. This so-called "presumptive policy" simplifies the process of receiving compensation for these diseases since VA foregoes the normal requirements of proving that an illness began or was worsened during military service.

    Based on clinical research, the following diseases are on VA's Agent Orange list of presumptive disabilities: chloracne, Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, porphyria cutanea tarda, respiratory cancers (lung, bronchus, larynx and trachea), soft-tissue sarcoma, acute and subacute peripheral neuropathy and prostate cancer. A regulation is being developed to add diabetes mellitus.

    In addition, monetary benefits, health care and vocational rehabilitation services are provided to Vietnam veterans' offspring with spina bifida, a congenital birth defect of the spine. A new law authorizes health care and monetary benefits to children of female veterans who served in Vietnam for certain additional birth defects. Those additional benefits under the new law will not be payable to the beneficiaries until Dec. 1, 2001.

    Veterans who served in Vietnam during the war also are eligible for a complete physical examination. If a VA physician suspects a disease might be related to Agent Orange, VA will provide free medical care. Those who participate in the examination program become part of an Agent Orange Registry and receive periodic mailings from VA about the latest Agent Orange studies and new diseases being covered under VA policies.


    http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/benefits/herbicide/AOno1.htm


    This page proves the federal government accepts responsibility for the exposure of the US veterans that the US military exposed, now as christians what are we as a country going to do for those who do not fit into this program but who were exposed by the US military just the same?

    One small problem the population of Vietnam is, 83,535,576 (July 2005 est.)

    An April 2003 report paid for by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that during the Vietnam War, 3,181 villages were sprayed directly with herbicides. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million people "would have been present during the spraying."(wikipedia)

    And why it is our problem....We are a signatory to the Stockholm Convention, The treaty obliges signatories to take measures to eliminate where possible, and minimize where not possible to eliminate, all sources of dioxin.(like the estimated 19 million gallons of herbicide had been sprayed on Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, somewhat more than half (55%) of that Agent Orange, between 1962 and 1971. Early estimates from 1974 had placed the amounts lower, between 12 and 14 million gallons. In total about six million acres were sprayed in Vietnam alone.)

    Seems that maybe we have a chemical log in our eye too....

    ReplyDelete
  98. Anonymous5:36 AM

    BTW this is the VA page about what they compensate US veterans who were exposed to Dioxin in Vietnam:


    Vietnam Veterans Benefit From Agent Orange Rules

    They are society's leaders. They run businesses; direct organizations; hold political office. In their mid-50s, they are at the height of their social and economic power, earning more than others in their age group. Yet, with their success, they can't escape the inevitable health concerns of a graying population.

    They are Vietnam veterans, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is concerned they may regard diseases associated with aging, such as prostate cancer, as just another illness rather than as the result of their military service in Southeast Asia.

    VA wants these Vietnam veterans to know that they may be eligible for compensation and health care for certain diseases associated with Agent Orange, the defoliant sprayed to unmask enemy hiding places in the jungles throughout Vietnam.

    Special health care and compensation benefits are available to the 2.6 million men and women who served in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975, only 3,300 of whom remain in uniform today. Those discharged during that period are the largest group of veterans receiving VA health care and monthly compensation.

    Yet a small percentage of their disability claims are for illnesses scientists have listed as being associated with Agent Orange. VA presumes that all military personnel who served in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange, and federal law presumes that certain illnesses are a result of that exposure. This so-called "presumptive policy" simplifies the process of receiving compensation for these diseases since VA foregoes the normal requirements of proving that an illness began or was worsened during military service.

    Based on clinical research, the following diseases are on VA's Agent Orange list of presumptive disabilities: chloracne, Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, porphyria cutanea tarda, respiratory cancers (lung, bronchus, larynx and trachea), soft-tissue sarcoma, acute and subacute peripheral neuropathy and prostate cancer. A regulation is being developed to add diabetes mellitus.

    In addition, monetary benefits, health care and vocational rehabilitation services are provided to Vietnam veterans' offspring with spina bifida, a congenital birth defect of the spine. A new law authorizes health care and monetary benefits to children of female veterans who served in Vietnam for certain additional birth defects. Those additional benefits under the new law will not be payable to the beneficiaries until Dec. 1, 2001.

    Veterans who served in Vietnam during the war also are eligible for a complete physical examination. If a VA physician suspects a disease might be related to Agent Orange, VA will provide free medical care. Those who participate in the examination program become part of an Agent Orange Registry and receive periodic mailings from VA about the latest Agent Orange studies and new diseases being covered under VA policies.


    http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/benefits/herbicide/AOno1.htm


    This page proves the federal government accepts responsibility for the exposure of the US veterans that the US military exposed, now as christians what are we as a country going to do for those who do not fit into this program but who were exposed by the US military just the same?

    One small problem the population of Vietnam is, 83,535,576 (July 2005 est.)

    An April 2003 report paid for by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that during the Vietnam War, 3,181 villages were sprayed directly with herbicides. Between 2.1 and 4.8 million people "would have been present during the spraying."(wikipedia)

    And why it is our problem....We are a signatory to the Stockholm Convention, The treaty obliges signatories to take measures to eliminate where possible, and minimize where not possible to eliminate, all sources of dioxin.(like the estimated 19 million gallons of herbicide had been sprayed on Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, somewhat more than half (55%) of that Agent Orange, between 1962 and 1971. Early estimates from 1974 had placed the amounts lower, between 12 and 14 million gallons. In total about six million acres were sprayed in Vietnam alone.)

    Seems that maybe we have a chemical log in our eye too....

    ReplyDelete
  99. Anonymous5:54 AM

    Jeeze, Cliff, I posted a few quotes from Democrats on Iraq and WMDs and you went into such a severe state of cognitive dissonance that you spent the night filling Lydia's blog with articles about Vietnam.

    What gives? Did I touch a nerve?

    ReplyDelete
  100. Clif,

    Please come back and cut-and-paste more reams of crap that everyone will simply scroll over. Ah kin hardly wait for more offals of wisdom.

    Were ya raised in a cyber-barn, ya bandwidth burning genius?

    ReplyDelete
  101. Clif,

    Zzzzzzz. Please come back and cut-and-paste more reams of crap that everyone will simply scroll over. Ah kin hardly wait for more offals of wisdom.

    Were ya raised in a cyber-barn, ya bandwidth burning genius?

    ReplyDelete
  102. Boy do I feel like a clone.

    ReplyDelete
  103. I remember Nixon telling CIA director Richard Helms:

    " The CIA has no policy except that which I dictate."

    I have always found it fascinating how a president can feel intimidated by one of his own organizations.

    Cliff said:

    "cuts the number of maneuver battalions in those brigades while adding more headquarters troops."

    This is very similiar to the Vietnam war and in my opinion a huge mistake.

    In Vietnam, in many cases, a combat battalion of 900 men could only field approximately 150 to 200 combat effective soldiers to partake in any maneuver operation or to engage any enemy threat.....and this is if all went well!

    ReplyDelete
  104. TT said "Jeeze, Cliff, I posted a few quotes from Democrats on Iraq and WMDs and you went into such a severe state of cognitive dissonance that you spent the night filling Lydia's blog with articles about Vietnam.

    What gives? Did I touch a nerve?"


    Actually if you guys cant see the similarities between this war to Vietnam and the similarities between Bush-co and Fascists then I dont think i can help you if your not willing to take off the Rose colored glases or the rose colored prescription windows on your SUV's and Beemers or the Rose colored prescription bay windows on your houses, then it may be too late for you guys to see whats going on if you even care.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Lydia, you and me both. I'm an ordained minister and I struggle mightily with reconciling my belief with my knowledge of the world.

    I refuse to believe in a God that wants us to take vengeance on our fellow man, or to judge our brethren (and sistren).

    You ought to hang out at Blondesense (link's at my blog) and talk to Blondesense Liz. Maybe the three of us can take Jesus back for the good guys.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Freedom Fan said...
    Boy do I feel like a clone.


    Maybe if you crawl out of that vat of ick you're splashing about in....

    ReplyDelete
  107. Anonymous11:37 AM

    FREEDOM FAN said: "you libs who are just as obsessively ashamed of our country, our President, Texans, our flag, our silly patriotism, and our nation's noble legacy."

    Actually, liberals including myself are fiercely patriotic. You have it all wrong. To be patriotic means you care about AMERICA ...not Bush's desire to sell off America and cause WWIII. You can't really care about America if you support this administration. It is pure evil.

    ReplyDelete
  108. I hate doing housework! Thats a womans job! Im pissed off! My hands are all dry and cracked now! :|

    Lydia

    Wheres Destiny? I need a good female comedian to scrub my floors, wash my dishes, do the laundry, and polish my furniture.

    If she does a real good job, I may be kind enough to buy her a high powered vaccum or decent mop :D he he he

    And should we start dating, I will even let her out of the house once in a while for a quick breather! :D

    ReplyDelete
  109. Carmelina said "Actually, liberals including myself are fiercely patriotic. You have it all wrong. To be patriotic means you care about AMERICA ...not Bush's desire to sell off America and cause WWIII. You can't really care about America if you support this administration. It is pure evil."

    well said.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Steve said "Ann Coulter has to be one of the most misanthropic people in the world!!'

    read what I posted about fascism last night then insert Ann Coulter's picture at the the bottom, Coulter and the Neo Cons should be pictured in the dictionary under Fascism.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Anonymous2:44 PM

    Well said Steve

    ReplyDelete
  112. Actually, liberals including myself are fiercely patriotic. You have it all wrong. To be patriotic means you care about AMERICA ...
    -Carmelina

    Maybe you are patriotic; I hope you are. However, most liberals definitely are not. They equate patriotism with jingoism and nazism.

    Liberals are in love with a bogus socialist utopian ideal into which they are trying to shape America; they don't love America as it currently exists. They despise the magnificent accomplishments that the U.S. has achieved over the last two hundred and thirty years. Their hero is noam chomsky, who thinks America is far worse than the nazis.

    Take a look at Worf's post after post quoting Mark Twain and other famous people maligning patriots.

    Most liberals wouldn't be caught dead flying an American flag. No doubt you have several flying in front of your house.

    Anyone, who chortles with glee over every bit of bad news from Iraq and yearns for America to be humiliated in war, is no patriot. Advocating, that we cut and run, declare defeat, and abandon our Middle Eastern friends to dictators like saddam, is hardly a characteristic which defines someone who "cares about AMERICA".

    ReplyDelete
  113. FREEDOM FAN said: Liberals despise the magnificent accomplishments that the U.S. has achieved over the last two hundred and thirty years.

    Which accomplishments are those?

    You mean THESE: "Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things – every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." From Carl's website: Simply Left Behind.

    ReplyDelete
  114. Anonymous5:17 PM

    Republicans assassinated Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy...

    WHY? Because they worked for the average American.

    ReplyDelete
  115. Anonymous5:19 PM

    And please don't tell me Lincoln was a Republican in those days; yes because Republican meant Democrat in those days. Good values were always the Democratic party.

    The party of slavery was the party that is now the Republican party.

    ReplyDelete
  116. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...
    -Lydia Cornell

    I disagree with your attempt to re-write history.

    The Republican party was established because it opposed slavery. It broke off from the Whig party and nominated Abe Lincoln who became the first Republican President, who later emancipated all slaves after the bloody War Between the States. What do you suppose was the Democrat party position on slavery during this time?

    The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s resulted in passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act was supported by 80% of Republicans, but only 64% of Democrats. george wallace was elected Governor of Alabama as a Democrat four times. You remember george – he was the segregationist famous for standing in the schoolhouse door to block integration of black students.

    Today the Democrat party actively supports Affirmative Action, a euphemism for legal race and gender discrimination in employment and education.

    Once again the Democrat party is absent from the new civil rights movement: Speaking out to encourage reform of Islamic fundamentalism and its Shariah laws which oppress everyone, especially Muslim women. Where are the liberal feminists as their fellow women suffer around the world?

    Where are the brave hollywood liberals when it comes to defending free speech? Would they dare make a movie about the life of Muhammad? Would they dare to speak out in defense of Danish cartoonists who now have fatwas for death sentences on their heads? Would they dare to honor fellow film-maker, Theo Van Gogh, murdered for making a film inspired by the oppressive early life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Do you even know about the brave woman in your neighborhood named Wafa Sultan? Do you care?

    No, the hollywood liberals' brave movie idea is about a couple shepards who decide to go gay and leave their wives. Gee, that takes a lot of courage in a community with a large gay population.

    Another favorite movie was Bowling for Columbine, in which liberal icon michael moore smears gun owners, including NRA president Charlton Heston, as racists. A minor problem with this revisionism is that Heston is an avid civil rights advocate who marched in support of civil rights in the 1960s when moore was a little boy.

    What does it say about how liberals feel about the rights of women and minorities when two of the most powerful Democrat senators are serial womanizer ted kennedy, and former kkk kleagle robert byrd?

    Liberals are AWOL when it comes to defending liberty today, just as they have been AWOL in the past. Liberals may attempt to re-write history, just as “anonymous” attempts to poison the well, but facts are stubborn things.

    ReplyDelete
  117. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...
    -Lydia Cornell

    I disagree with your attempt to re-write history.

    The Republican party was established because it opposed slavery. It broke off from the Whig party and nominated Abe Lincoln who became the first Republican President, who later emancipated all slaves after the bloody War Between the States. What do you suppose was the Democrat party position on slavery during this time?

    The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s resulted in passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act was supported by 80% of Republicans, but only 64% of Democrats. george wallace was elected Governor of Alabama as a Democrat four times. You remember george – he was the segregationist famous for standing in the schoolhouse door to block integration of black students.

    Today the Democrat party actively supports Affirmative Action, a euphemism for legal race and gender discrimination in employment and education.

    Once again the Democrat party is absent from the new civil rights movement: Speaking out to encourage reform of Islamic fundamentalism and its Shariah laws which oppress everyone, especially Muslim women. Where are the liberal feminists as their fellow women suffer around the world?

    Where are the brave hollywood liberals when it comes to defending free speech? Would they dare make a movie about the life of Muhammad? Would they dare to speak out in defense of Danish cartoonists who now have fatwas for death sentences on their heads? Would they dare to honor fellow film-maker, Theo Van Gogh, murdered for making a film inspired by the oppressive early life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Do you even know about the brave woman in your neighborhood named Wafa Sultan? Do you care?

    No, the hollywood liberals' brave movie idea is about a couple shepards who decide to go gay and leave their wives. Gee, that takes a lot of courage in a community with a large gay population.

    Another favorite movie was Bowling for Columbine, in which liberal icon michael moore smears gun owners, including NRA president Charlton Heston, as racists. A minor problem with this revisionism is that Heston is an avid civil rights advocate who marched in support of civil rights in the 1960s when moore was a little boy.

    What does it say about how liberals feel about the rights of women and minorities when two of the most powerful Democrat senators are serial womanizer ted kennedy, and former kkk kleagle robert byrd?

    liberals are AWOL when it comes to defending liberty today, just as they have been AWOL in the past. Liberals may attempt to re-write history, just as “anonymous” attempts to poison the well, but facts are stubborn things.

    ReplyDelete
  118. Voltaire,

    A bonehead assertion doesn't hafta actually make any sense to be useful to a liberal to try to smear conservatives.

    Hey, any idea how to delete duplicate posts? Clif has posted so much spam that this thread barely responds now.

    ReplyDelete
  119. Voltaire,

    There's a funny thing that libs do when you point out the historical facts about slavery and the civil rights movement. They try to counter with: Well Republicans were really Democrats and vice versa at that time. Do they really think folks will buy that black is white and the sky is really the sea? They have been selling this revisionism so long that most of them don't even know it's bogus.

    /so what's a "garbage can"?

    ReplyDelete
  120. Voltaire,

    Good point. I found this:

    ...In 1917, Jeannette Rankin, a Montana Republican, became the first woman to serve in the House...

    Shortly after Ms. Rankin's election to Congress, the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919. The amendment's journey to ratification had been a long and difficult one. Starting in 1896, the Republican Party became the first major party to officially favor women's suffrage. That year, Republican Sen. A. A. Sargent of California introduced a proposal in the Senate to give women the right to vote. The proposal was defeated four times in the Democratic-controlled Senate. When the Republican Party regained control of Congress, the Equal Suffrage Amendment finally passed (304-88). Only 16 Republicans opposed the amendment.

    When the amendment was submitted to the states, 26 of the 36 states that ratified it had Republican-controlled legislatures. Of the nine states that voted against ratification, eight were controlled by Democrats. Twelve states, all Republican, had given women full suffrage before the federal amendment was finally ratified.

    Republican Women in History

    ReplyDelete
  121. "both parties in Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Act, and President Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964."

    Wikepedia

    I am unable to locate any info that suggests Republicans opposed "The Civil Rights Act."

    Carls shocking statement almost put me into cardiac arrest. And nearly convinced me that Republicans really are evil.

    Perhaps Carl should revise his statement.

    ReplyDelete
  122. Voltaire, more fun facts:

    90% of Congressional Republicans voted for the 19th Amendment granting womens suffrage, compared to 58% of Democrats.
    -Womans Suffrage and Politics.

    ReplyDelete
  123. I know Voltaire!

    I was trying to locate some info to support Carls claim but could only find info on how repubs enourmously supported civil rights.

    ReplyDelete
  124. BTW, please dismiss my 11:49 am post. I dont believe any of what I said for one second.

    I was simply trying to intice the "Kinder and Gentler" of the species to start posting on here.

    My efforts failed miserably!

    Nite...Im toast!

    ReplyDelete
  125. In one sense it is encouraging that both parties want to take credit for certain things about which everyone is proud.

    The U.S. has many things about which to be proud. The problems that our country faced were not unique. For example, the U.S. granted women the vote in 1920. The first country to grant womens' suffrage was Australia in 1894, and the last Western countries were Switzerland in 1971 and Liechtenstein in 1984.

    The first Arab women to vote were in Israel in 1948. Today women still may not vote in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

    ReplyDelete
  126. Liberals are in love with a bogus socialist utopian ideal into which they are trying to shape America; they don't love America as it currently exists.

    This is true. We want the 90s back. Maybe you remember? Peace? Prosperity for all? Rising incomes for all?

    Yea. What a socialist dream: everyone had jobs and business made money hand over fist.

    Damn, son, yer an idjit!

    ReplyDelete
  127. Voltaire said...
    Actually, it was Republicans who got women and blacks the right to vote, ended segregation and passed the civil rights act.


    Correct. LIBERAL Republicans, like Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller. Liberal Republicans like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt....and then they became the haven for the John Birch Society and the rest is history.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Anonymous5:42 AM

    What's the matter FF, voltair, no come backs when it is pointed out WITH FACTS that the US government has caused as many chemical warfare problems as almost any other country.

    The government admits it and refuses to abide by the stockholm convention which it signed.....reminds me of somebody GWB lied about when he started his optional and illegal war.....

    ReplyDelete
  129. Anonymous5:45 AM

    You see Saddam is no longer in charge in Iraq but Dioxin is still killing people and causing birth defects in Vietnam....What is the matter don't those fetuses count?




    Rage fanatical again my foolish brothers.....

    ReplyDelete
  130. Anonymous8:29 AM

    BTW of this is the VA side over, which they adjust for US of veterans, the dioxin in Viet Nam was suspended: Viet Nam veterans profiting from the central orange guidelines you are leaders of the society. They let business run; direct organizations; dress political office. In their mid-50s they are on the height their social and economic energy and acquire more than others in its age group. However with their success, they can escape not the inevitable health interests of one graying population. They are Viet Nam veterans and the department of the affairs of veteran (VA) are concerned the fact that they can regard the diseases, which with aging, like Prostatakrebs, when straight another illness instead of than the result their military services in Southeast Asia is connected. VA wishes this Viet Nam veterans knows that they for reconciliation and health care for certain diseases can be suitable, which are connected with central orange the Entblaetterer, which is sprayed unmask hostile hiding places in the jungles in Viet Nam. Special health care and balance use is for the 2,6 million men and women available, who served in Viet Nam between 1962 and 1975, only 3,300 of, remain whom in the uniform today. Those, which will unload during this period, are received the largest group of the veterans, the VA Gesundheitspflege and monthly reconciliation. A small percentage of their requirements for inability for diseases, which registered scientists, nevertheless is as, connects with central orange. VA presupposes that all military personnel, who served in Viet Nam was suspended central orange, and Federal law presupposes that certain diseases are a result of this exposure. This so-called "supposed policy" simplifies the process of the receiving of reconciliation for these diseases, since VA lets the normal requirements of the examination go that an illness began or was worsened during military services. Based on clinical research, the following diseases on central orange are list Virginias of the supposed inability: chloracne, illness Hodgkins, repeated myeloma, lymphoma of the non Hodgkins, porphyria cutanea tarda, AtmungsSarkoms, acute and subacute auxiliary neuropathy and Prostatakrebs of the cancers (lungs, Bronchus, Larynx and trachea), soft fabrics. A regulation is developed, in order to add diabetes mellitus. Additionally financial use, health care and vocational rehablitation services to the sekundaerteilchen Viet Nam veterans with Spina Bifida, a kongenitaler birth damage of the thorn are provided. A new law authorizes health care and financial use to the children of the female veterans, who served in Viet Nam for certain additional birth damage. That additional use under the new law is not to the beneficiaries until December. 1, 2001 payable. Veterans, who also served in Viet Nam during the war, are suitable for a complete physical examination. If a VA physician assumes, an illness with central orange, VA could is connected supplies free medical treatment. Those, which participate in examination the program, part central orange of a register and receive periodic mails from the VA over the newest central orange studies and the new diseases, which under VA-POLITICAL guidelines are covered http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/benefits/herbicide/AOno1.htm this side examine that the Federal Government accepts responsibility for the exposure of US of veterans, whom US put out the military now as a Christian, what we as country are, which goes, doing for which does not fit into this program, but who became put out by US the military straight the same? A small problem the population of Viet Nam is, 83.535.576 (July 2005 est.) One April 2003 report paid for by national the Academy OF Sciences determined that during Viet Nam of the war, 3,181 villages became sprayed directly with herbicides. Between 2,1 and 4,8 million people would have been present "during the spraying."(wikipedia) and to eliminate and lower why it is our problem..., a sind.We signer for Stockholm meeting, connect the contract signer, mass, where possible, where one does not eliminate possible, everything, sources of dioxin.(like, which the estimated 19 million gallons herbicide had been sprayed on Viet Nam, Kambodscha and Thailand to take, a little more than half (55%) of this central orange, between 1962 and 1971. Early estimations of 1974 had set the quantities lower, between for 12 and 14 million gallons. In the total quantity approximately six million morning in Viet Nam alone) seems sprayed that possibly we a chemical machine log book in our eye also....

    ReplyDelete
  131. ...Liberal Republicans like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt...
    -carl

    Good for you carl. Go ahead; try to claim Lincoln and TR for your side. Maybe Clif will buy it; no on else will. Yeah I believe Lincoln's slogan was "War is Never the Answer". Um hum...and Teddy Roosevelt's slogan was "Speak Softly and Carry A Big Bong".

    This "idjit" has just exposed the entire motto of your website as a transparent fraud. What does that make you, genius?

    Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote... Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act... What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things – every one.
    -carl

    What a total self-serving crock of horse dootie, as the MooMeister observed.

    ReplyDelete
  132. Liberals are in love with a bogus socialist utopian ideal into which they are trying to shape America; they don't love America as it currently exists.
    -Freedom Fan

    This is true. We want the 90s back. Maybe you remember? Peace? Prosperity for all? Rising incomes for all?
    -carl

    Gee, well maybe we really do want the same thing after all -- another Republican Contract With America.

    Newt Gingrich for President!

    ReplyDelete
  133. Looks like Clif is still protesting the Vietnam war. I'm pretty sure that war was started by Nixon and the eevil Republicans. I think Kennedy and Johnson also had something to do with it but I'm not really sure...um...didn't they end the war?

    /channelling liberal revisionists like carl

    ReplyDelete
  134. Read this in my local paper this morning:

    "A boys parents beat him with a rod, forced him to perform exercises, and deprived him of food for failing to memorize Bible verses."

    Thank God Im an atheist!

    Ahhhh.....religion! Sigh!

    ReplyDelete
  135. Anonymous9:45 AM

    Actually, FF, the Vietnam War was started by Democrats Kennedy and Johnson, and it took Republicans Nixon and Ford to end it.

    ReplyDelete
  136. No TT, the Vietnam War was discussed between Eisenhower and Kennedy and their intentions were most nobile.

    Kennedy kind of looked up to Ike and both pondered a real solution in preventing the dominoe effect of communism.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Well, at least their intentions were nobile in my opinion.

    Unless, of course you disapprove of Freedom of Speech and enjoy a Wonderbread Man waiting ouside your door anticipating your mistake of placing a coffee cup on a photo of a meglomaniac.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Anonymous10:48 AM

    US troop levels peaked under Johnson in 1969, and it still took Republicans (Nixon and Ford) to end it.

    ReplyDelete
  139. Honestly, I dont care whether the Repubs or Dems started the Vietnam war. The "Oscar the Grouch" party could have started it for all I care.

    The point is we were fighting evil communism and the right to have thought!

    Does anyone understand Stalin and his warped, backstabbing, philosophies that propelled the United States into defending democracy for years to come after 1945?

    Does anyone know that Stalin took off like a coward to his cottage chalet in June 1941 when Germany invaded Russia? He couldnt be reached for days.

    ReplyDelete
  140. I cant take it anymore! LOL! I could only read a few paragraphs before I burst out laughing at this website " Masturbate for Peace."

    I mean no insult towards anyone, but this site cracked me up.

    ReplyDelete
  141. Nevertheless, I am always of the opinion that the "Six Million Dollar
    Man" should have been sent in to topple Saddam before a full scale and costly invasion!

    ReplyDelete
  142. Anonymous2:29 PM

    Yo FF the elections of 1956 were blocked by John Foster Dulles while Eisenhower was president and HE was the first president to put troops in the country;

    QUIT BEING SOOOOO DISHONEST

    ReplyDelete
  143. Anonymous2:37 PM

    BTW Barry Goldwater suggested Nucs in north vietnam in 1964 and that is why soooooooooooo many people did NOT vote for him, they thought the radical right was nuts then, and people are begining to realise that assesment is correct.

    And as for where Lincoln would stand here's Barry's opinion(and he knows a hell of a lot more than you);

    Goldwater, with his customary bluntness, remarked: "We would have lost even if Abraham Lincoln had come back and campaigned with us. Not that he would have campaigned with a right-wing fundamentalist militarist wingnut like me anyway, he'd have probably endorsed Johnson."


    Bloviate away.....

    ReplyDelete
  144. Anonymous2:52 PM

    Another nugget from Barry;

    When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.

    Barry Goldwater, The Washington Post (July 28, 1994)


    Seems Barry agrees with us on a few things you claim we are wrong on, but do quibble foward on......

    ReplyDelete
  145. Clif, I just got American Theocracy testerday, I read the preface this morning and it looks really good.

    ReplyDelete
  146. you think he is going to run worf?

    ReplyDelete
  147. Anonymous8:10 PM

    About a third of the way through that book, also picked up Wealth and Democracy and American Dynasty at Barnes and Nobles for about $5.00 each and got Gods Politics by Jim Wallis and am about one chapter in good critique of the right wing fundementalists and where they go wrong...

    ReplyDelete
  148. Sounds like you have your hands full with reading too Clif, You might also want to try reading Devil's Game, and The End of Oil, as well as some of the other books Lydia and I recommeneded in previous Blogs, let me know if any of the other titles you picked up are good, I already kind of skimmed American Dynasty.

    ReplyDelete
  149. Anonymous9:03 PM

    I have end of oil as well as end of ancient sunlight both about the coming oil crisis, I also picked up Will They Ever Trust Us Again (a compiliation of letters from veterans and their families to Micheal Moore)

    ReplyDelete
  150. You think he'll run as an independent or Democrat Worf, I really hope we have some good candidates for 2008, the Democrats really need to stick together and rally behind and support one person if they want to take back the White House

    ReplyDelete
  151. Anonymous9:19 PM

    Wesley Clark would make a good VP pick but he does not have the name recognition that Washington, Grant or Eisenhower had(the only three Army Generals who could run at the top of a ticket and win...)

    Nato commander is not the same as a winning General in a major war that the future of the country rested on winning.

    ReplyDelete
  152. Anonymous9:40 PM

    Worfeus I would vote for him also. But like Gen. Zinni who took Bush and Rumsfeld to task on meet the press today theirs is not a household name. So they have to rise on something above the party machines that have vested time in other canidates....

    McCain in 2000 was one such canidate who got swiftboated by the repug machine because he was derailing their boy of the year.

    Clark has to have more to offer both as a military expert and show he understands the domestic situation and has ideas that both are accepted and could work, not an easy task for somebody trying to break in at the top of the political game.

    ReplyDelete
  153. Anonymous10:04 PM

    But you have to get Hillary, Kerry, Biden, Edwards, Warner to move aside(for Clark)and that is one thing in this country the "professional" politicians are out for #1, more than the party or country.

    That applies to both parties equally. In 2000 McCain would have thrashed Gore, and on 9-11 he would not have had a fool like Rumsfeld in thae way of finding and catching Osama and his crew.

    This year McCain is trying to be the repugs boy so he wants bush's team behind him. He has become as big a sellout as anybody just to get nomonated.

    ReplyDelete
  154. Anonymous10:08 PM

    I think Gore is even trying to position his image as the anti-war, anti-bush candidate, hoping he can outmaneuver the others.

    ReplyDelete
  155. Anonymous4:17 AM

    FISA judges say Bush within law

    By Brian DeBose
    THE WASHINGTON TIMES
    March 29, 2006


    A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
    The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president's constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.
    "If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now," said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. "I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute."
    The judges, however, said Mr. Bush's choice to ignore established law regarding foreign intelligence gathering was made "at his own peril," because ultimately he will have to answer to Congress and the Supreme Court if the surveillance was found not to be in the best interests of national security.
    Judge Kornblum said before the 1978 FISA law, foreign surveillance was done by executive order and the law itself was altered by the orders of Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan.
    It has been three months since President Bush said publicly that the NSA was listening to phone conversations between suspected terrorists abroad and domestically. The actions raised concerns from Congress and civil liberties groups about domestic spying, but the judges said that given new threats from terrorists and new communications technologies, the FISA law should be changed to give the president more latitude.
    Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican and committee chairman, called the hearing to get advice on his bill that would expand FISA to codify less stringent rules on wiretapping of domestic phone conversations with suspected foreign terrorists and include new technologies like the Internet and satellite communications.
    Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said the Congress should pass new legislation to ease existing restrictions under FISA.
    "However, we should not rush to give the administration new powers it has not deigned to request, based on concerns it has not articulated," Mr. Leahy said.
    The panel of judges unanimously agreed that the law should have been changed before now to deal with new threats from terrorists and new communications technologies, a point made by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat.
    "It is confusing that if you take something off of a satellite it is legal, but if you take it off of a wiretap it's not," she said. "We need to include new technology."

    ReplyDelete
  156. Anonymous6:42 AM

    "If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review,

    Did you EVEN bother to read the post.........BUSH had to request the warrent in order for the above condition to be met, and according to Bush he didn't thus this does not apply,..............MORON

    The judge knows he has to include the provision or he would be testifing to congress dishonestly.

    ReplyDelete
  157. Anonymous8:19 AM

    Clif, did you even bother to read your own post where you write "In the total quantity approximately six million morning in Viet Nam alone) seems sprayed that possibly we a chemical machine log book in our eye also...."

    What the heck does that mean?

    Further, there is no controlling legal authority that the president must go to FISA. If I am wrong, please cite the law or case.

    ReplyDelete
  158. Gold Understands the Fed's Profligacy
    April 2nd, 2006
    Robert McHugh, Ph.D.

    There has been a rumor floating around the internet the past few days, suggesting the Fed is busy printing $2.0 trillion. I probably had 200 subscribers email it to me. Thanks. I don't know if that is remotely true or not, but precious metals are certainly behaving as if it is. The thrust up we have been waiting for in Gold has started, Gold catapulting $23.00 this week to $583.00. Silver has also done nicely, and has now gone parabolic. The problem with parabolic spikes is that all bets are off as to where the top comes in. The ascension becomes vertical until exhaustion, then a dramatic decline usually follows. Silver was up 0.77 this week to close at 11.50. Oil is rising sharply, up $2.60 a barrel to 66.86. These are inflation assets. It suggests a surge in inflation is coming, a surge in the kidnapped M-3 figure no doubt. U.S. Bonds agree, dropping like someone glued them to rocks and tossed them off a high rise, down two points this week to close Friday to 109^06. None of the above surprises us, as the charts have all suggested this was coming for a while now. It is just that, once it comes, it still takes your breath away.

    Speaking of interest rates, the Fed raised the Federal Funds interest rate by one-quarter of a percent for the fifteenth time in a row, to 4.75 percent, accomplishing this with the power of suggestion rather than open market operations. In other words, they are raising interest rates at the same time they are increasing the money supply, which is not supposed to happen in a free market. It has been going on like this for a while now. It is called central planning.The Fed left the impression that more rate hikes were coming. Sure there are. It is their feeble and suicidal attempt to support the Dollar while they paint our economy with the next generation of Continentals, you know, the fiat currency that financed the Revolutionary war, which collapsed worthless shortly thereafter, and was quickly replaced by a precious metals backed currency and coinage. Suicidal because if rates rise much further, along with the stealth Federal Reserve bank examiner curtailment of commercial real estate lending policy, consumer and small business spending will go negative. Now class, can anyone spell the word R-E-C-E-S-S-I-O-N?

    Here's a fascinating stat: Since the Fed announced it would hide the M-3 number, Gold has risen $123.11 or 26.4 percent. Since the Fed has actually stopped reporting M-3 two weeks ago, Gold has risen $39, or 7.1 percent. Gold understands the nonsense going on at the Fed. Of course, M3 has been kidnapped by the Federal Reserve, an institution that has forgotten that this great nation, America, is of the people, by the people, and for the people. The Fed has forgotten that it is a public servant, not the king, and is accountable to We, the people as our U.S. Constitution says in its first three words. The purpose of a Constitution is that it lays out the laws that government, in its servant position, must follow. Our government is subservient to the people, not the other way around, which makes America different, and makes America great. When government-appointed institutions, like the Federal Reserve, decide to hide their activities from public scrutiny, nothing good can come of it.

    On March 7th, United States Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, introduced House Resolution 4892, in the 109th Congress, 2nd session. Cosponsoring the bill was Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina.This bill would require the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to continue to make available to the public on a weekly basis information on the measure of the M3 monetary aggregate, and its components, and for other purposes.

    Please contact your congressional representative and ask her or him to vote For H.R. 4892. This is critical if We the people are going to be able to hold the Federal Reserve accountable for its profligate monetary actions. You can simply do a Google search, loading your Representative by name, and an email button will come up. If you load in the word "Congressman" or "Senator," you will be taken to a window where you can find your representative. This is critical if we are to protect the concept of free markets in America.

    ReplyDelete
  159. Central Banks, Weimar Germany and Gold

    Richard J. Greene

    The man on the street is increasingly beginning to figure it out that the Government has been lying to him and, in effect, stealing from him. The retired person is finding out because after his cost of living adjustments he is just not making ends meet. The purchaser of inflation-adjusted securities is noticing that after his return of capital the capital does not purchase what it once did. The sender of a Federal Express letter can find a fuel adjustment charge of $4.13 now for just a single letter! Even producers of gold and silver, the ultimate defense against inflation, notice the price of steel and fuel are rising even faster than their end products. These are all dead giveaways that inflation is higher than reported and the masses are waking up in larger and larger numbers that it is a matter of survival to keep pace with inflation.

    All of the government manipulations have largely worsened the situation by not only deceiving the masses, but also the allocators of capital which has resulted in serious misallocations of capital. Do we really need more retail stores or housing? Would we even come close to needing what we already have if it weren't for free and easy money? (In real terms money has in actuality been less than free unless you believe the ridiculous measures of low inflation that have been bandied about over the past few years.) The credit-based emphasis on consumption and asset bubbles to drive economic growth has gutted the longstanding, self-sustaining infrastructure of the US economy that had been its greatest strength.

    The differences between our economy today with the centrally-planned economies of Russia in the past are less decipherable every year. The neglect of savings and investment that is crucial to a solid foundation for economic growth has been replaced by central planning of the economy by economic illiterates. While paying lip service to free markets and free trade, markets are manipulated and consumption is now entirely dependant on foreign capital. On top of all of this the foreign capital is precluded from investing in assets of its own choice but rather are directed toward more US debt; debt that is unlikely to be repaid in real terms. It is becoming obvious that the free money phase has played out, and as foreigners refuse to provide more capital except with higher compensation for the increasingly necessary monetization, more and more monetization will become necessary. The seeds of hyperinflation have been sown.

    The US economy is heavily dependent on keeping asset bubbles from deflating. Just think how many people are employed as real estate agents, mortgage brokers, stock brokers, and other paper shuffling activities, not to mention the huge employment in the retailing industry that is totally dependent on the US continuing to consume more than it produces. Unemployment probably already exceeds 10%, yet, again government statistics assure us everything is sound. With such a heavy dependence on stocks and real estate never going down again, it makes sense to look at the Weimar experience and the great inflation in Germany in the early 1920's. Wall Street and the Government have the masses fooled that everything is just fine since the market never goes down. Yet if we look at the German experience the stock market went from under 100 to over 26 Billion in five years' time. A lifetime of savings and retirement funds were wiped out in a matter of months and people were forced to live from hand to mouth. With $50 trillion in present value of future benefits promised to workers, do Americans really believe they will get anything close to that in real terms? They may get it in nominal terms but it will probably not buy a bologna sandwich.

    ReplyDelete
  160. Anonymous9:05 AM

    The FISA law passed by the congress of the United States as per section 8 Powers of Congress;

    To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

    and

    To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

    And having been properly signed by a sitting president, the FISA is the law of the land.

    NO WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION DOES EXPLICITALLY STATE THAT A PTESIDENT MAY IGNORE THE LAWS PASSED BY THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

    A president must like any other citizen attempt to use the judiciary branch to check the legicstrative but since a sitting president signed the law the case might look rather weak.

    The quote I posted CAME DIRECTALLY FROM tiny texan's post and obviously you on the right do not like it but the judge said;

    "If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review,

    He knew the president MUST FOLLOW the law, simple really he is not above the law any more than you or I.

    ReplyDelete
  161. Anonymous9:14 AM

    Clif, did you even bother to read your own post where you write "In the total quantity approximately six million morning in Viet Nam alone) seems sprayed that possibly we a chemical machine log book in our eye also...."

    What the heck does that mean?

    Very simple if you know your bible Christ states;

    38 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
    39 Or how canst thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
    40 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

    Any other questions, read the book....

    ReplyDelete
  162. 9/11 Detainees in New Jersey Say They Were Abused With Dogs
    Sign In to E-Mail This Print Single Page Reprints Save By NINA BERNSTEIN
    Published: April 3, 2006

    But for Ibrahim Turkmen and Akhil Sachdeva, the image evokes something closer to home: the dogs used inside the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey. The two men, plaintiffs in a pending class-action lawsuit known as Turkmen v. Ashcroft, were among hundreds of immigrant detainees held in the Passaic jail for months after 9/11 before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported on visa violations.

    Until now, lawsuits brought by former detainees against top American officials have focused attention on the maximum security unit of a federal detention center in Brooklyn where the Justice Department's inspector general found widespread abuse. But today in Toronto, as Mr. Sachdeva, a Canadian citizen born in India, gives his first deposition for the class-action lawsuit, the spotlight will shift to the New Jersey jail.

    There, about 400 of the 762 mainly Muslim detainees rounded up in the United States after 9/11 were held. The lawsuit charges that the detainees' confinement was arbitrary, illegally based on their religion or national origin, and that guards routinely terrorized them with aggressive dogs.

    In November 2004, federal officials who oversee the detention of immigrants facing deportation said they would no longer send detainees to jails that used dogs to patrol inside. That decision by the Department of Homeland Security came a day after National Public Radio broadcast an investigative report saying that the dogs had been used over a three-year period to intimidate, attack and, in at least two cases, bite immigrant detainees in the Passaic County Jail.

    "To hear about the use of dogs in this way within the United States is truly shocking," said Jonathan Turley, a professor of national security and constitutional law at George Washington University, who is not involved in the case. "But Abu Ghraib didn't spring from the head of Zeus."

    Mr. Turley, an expert in prison law, said in an interview on Friday that the use of the dogs to frighten detainees in the New Jersey jail underscored "the trickle-down effect" of the disregard for immigrants' civil rights that top government officials showed after 9/11. "It trickled down through military intelligence, through low-level personnel and to sheriffs," he said. "Suddenly people who were predisposed to the use of such harsh measures thought they had license to use them, and 9/11 gave them a great appetite."

    But the dogs were described as part of a nightmarish form of psychological torture by the two plaintiffs, who spoke in separate telephone interviews last week — Mr. Turkmen from Konia, Turkey, and Mr. Sachdeva from Toronto.

    Two or three times a week, they said, often around 3 a.m. when the detainees were fast asleep in dormitory cells housing about 50 men, the electronic doors would open and 10 to 20 officers would rush in with four to six unmuzzled, barking dogs on leashes. The dogs, mostly German shepherds, would strain to within inches of the detainees' faces, they said.

    "The guards would barely be able to hold the dogs back," said Mr. Turkmen, who could not come for his scheduled deposition because he was denied a visa by the Canadian government, without explanation. "The day of judgment would begin for me — that's what it would feel like."

    Mr. Sachdeva said that he found himself trembling uncontrollably, and that some detainees started to cry. "The guards who were holding the dogs used to always laugh," he recalled. "There were like four or five dogs, barking, terrorizing, and the officers shouting: 'Get up! Raise your hands! Against the wall!' One time the dog was so close his tongue touched me."

    ReplyDelete
  163. "Thought is energy and power. Fear attracts like energy. When you radiate peace and love you attract peaceful and loving people, solutions, ideas."

    Funny you should post this. I was reading a book on how we create our reality and thought the same thing. The more fear-based extremists leaders our world has the more dangerous it becomes.
    Very thoughtful blog today. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  164. I was reading a book on how we create our reality...
    -dandelion

    Yes, my mind holds the only reality because I am the center of the universe. I can make all the bad things in the world simply disappear by thinking only happy thoughts.

    /narcissistic lib babblespeak

    ReplyDelete
  165. Anonymous8:34 PM

    Hey Mike,here's a new's flash.Half the population of New Jersey has been abused by dog's.BFD.

    ReplyDelete
  166. Anonymous2:06 PM

    now isn't that a sonofabitch

    ReplyDelete