Sunday, September 30, 2007

We Can Only Hope...but not with false hope

If we truly have hope, it will be followed by action.

Jim Ridout: Silly, Stupid, Ignorant, and Hopeful

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 09/28/2007 - 11:07am. Reader Contribution

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Jim Ridout

"Mandela is dead"

These words spoken by a silly, stupid, and ignorant man contrast in a remarkable and ironic way with words spoken by Nelson Mandela, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Who really knows what George W. Bush actually meant when he uttered his jaw-dropping announcement regarding President Mandela or his discovery of who killed him.... Saddam Hussein. It was one of those moments where you feel the world sort of feeling embarrassed that we have such a man leading this nation, and at the same time you laugh out loud.

Nelson Mandela publicly opposed our invasion of Iraq. Nelson Mandela questioned President Bush's ability to think and reason, which makes the silly, stupid, and ignorant remark of George W. Bush sort of beautiful in a poetic sort of way.

George Bush lied and misled us into war. George Bush spared the life of the man who attacked us and left his promise unfulfilled. Through the deceptions of George Bush, a cauldron of hatred has been created in Iraq, thousands of our soldiers killed, tens of thousands wounded, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed, and million of Iraqis fleeing their country fearing for their lives and surviving as beggars or prostitutes.

If what George W. Bush meant to say is that there are no Mandela "like" figures left in Iraq, then he should consider his own actions in killing the next Mandela or driving him or her out of their home country as a result of his invasion of a sovereign nation. The carnage he has brought to Iraq equals that brought over the decades by Saddam Hussein.

As another world leader said, "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think." The same man claimed he went to war as a "last resort" and "God" was on his side.

How fortunate for us to know we are not alone in the world: others have stupid, silly, ignorant leaders as well, as this past week showed when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University. I believe that the greatest evidence for not invading Iran was revealed in the statements of this silly, stupid, ignorant man. That and we should take comfort that the Iranians themselves like us have had it with their moron. As a good host, we should say something nice about President Ahmadinejad, so I do agree with his concern of the Palestinian people, they are oppressed and yes their land has been under Israeli occupation for 60 years. But the Holocaust??? And No Gays in Iran???? Senator Larry Craig should be appointed our Ambassador to Iran as they have no gays there either, just men who enjoy having sex with other men, and as the Good Senator has made clear, taking a good wide stance in a men's room and peering into the stalls does not make you gay, it just makes you want to tap your feet and sing. George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, never the twain shall meet.

Now along with these events to showcase silly, stupid, and ignorant men, we did have news of other silly, stupid, and ignorant men. Our State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard (which in his native language means guarding cronies) has been accused of interfering with investigations of corruption and fraud. A couple of examples are the use of "slave labor" to build our embassy in Iraq, and of the wrong doings of those that ran our Public Broadcasting System. The revelations of Acting U.S. Attorney General Peter Keisler, who replaced "I don't remember" Gonzales, and his involvement in still more coverups of fraud and corruption in Iraq. Perhaps it was just a week of irony but it was President Lincoln (Republican) who established the "False Claims Act" to punish those who engaged in fraud and war profiteering, and this act is being so blatantly ignored by members of the Bush team. Last but not least of these men (in the Biblical sense) is Condoleezza Rice, as she shows the world just how "sovereign Iraq" really is with the slaughter brought about by Blackwater of Iraqi citizens, and the Iraqi government then demanding their departure. Rice stepped in and squashed any notion they may have had about freedom and democracy and Blackwater, those gun smuggling, murdering thugs, is back on the job.

But there is hope. There is hope that as we elect a Democrat for President, we can begin to envision an end to this war. We can bring an end to fraud and corruption, and we can bring sanity back to our government and the principles on which it was founded. We can provide healthcare for all Americans, we can rebuild bridges and levees, we can build better schools and invest in clean renewable energy. There is hope that if we the people provide them with the sufficient majority they need, Congress will be able to do the work of the people and not waste time assaulting freedom of speech or illegal wire taps, and who knows we may just take action to save the planet. And finally there is hope that in the country of Bolivia, they elected a farmer as President, an indigenous man, whose own mother was not allowed to show herself in the streets because of racism. President Evo Morales speaks of a millennium of life and of saving mankind. President Morales kept his campaign promises and has bettered the lives of his people. Sometimes I think we need to see that. One must not forget that silly, stupid, ignorant men threaten to take healthcare away from 10 million children, when others are anxious to provide it to all.

Jim Ridout
Albuquerque, NM

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

War Profiteering Is Treason; Crimes against the American Taxpayer

Criminal and Civil law suits should be filed!

Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by The Nation

Ending War for Profit

by Katrina Vanden Heuvel

Based on the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) recently determined that the Iraq war costs $720 million per day, $500,000 per minute - enough to provide homes for nearly 6,500 families, or health care for 423,529 children in just one day.

AFSC is using ten, seven-foot banners displayed at legislative and congressional offices around the country to illustrate the costs of the war and the human needs that could be addressed with those same resources. The National Priorities Project (NPP) also has a new report on the Bush Administration’s latest $50 billion spending request, which would bring the total cost of the Iraq War to $617 billion.

In addition to these staggering costs, we’re also learning more about how this war has served as a boondoggle for defense contractors, with war profit-making gone out of control. The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill was way ahead of the curve in reporting on Blackwater’s role in the most radically privatized, outsourced war in history. (Last week, Jeremy was asked to testify before the Democratic Policy Committee about his work and reporting–which may well lead to some good reforms. )

The Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy has done important research in this area. Here are some of the more disturbing facts: CEOs of defense contractors are paid more in four days than a general earns in a year; since September 11, CEOs at top defense contractors have received annual pay gains between 200 percent to 688 percent; between 2002 and 2006, the seven highest paid defense contractor CEOs made nearly $500 million - General Dyanmics’ CEO, Nicholas Chabraja, alone was paid $97.9 million, averaging $19.6 million per year. (David Lesar of Halliburton pocketed a mere $16 million per year during that period, and Lockheed Martin’s Robert Stevens has cashed in on stock options to earn over $19 million so far this year.) Many of the CEOs profitted from stock options as their companies’ stock prices soared with the increased revenues from the Defense Department.

Sarah Anderson, Director of the Global Economy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Charlie Cray, Director of the Center for Corporate Policy, suggest that defense contractors’ CEO pay be addressed directly by conditioning contracts on reasonable pay practices. For example, requiring that the CEO not make more than 25 times the lowest paid worker within the company or, alternatively, not more than 10 times the pay of a military general. This could be combined with other eligibility criteria such as no companies that relocated offshore, have a history of significant violations, or do business with states that sponsor terrorism. (Also, the disclosure rules for defense contractors should be broadened. Right now, privately held corporations are not required to make public their executive compensation. Thus, major players like Bechtel and Blackwater can keep their pay figures secret.) But Anderson and Cray believe that CEO pay is a symptom of a much broader problem - one that will only be addressed if we recognize that the entire defense and war contracting system is out of control.

“Companies like Halliburton/KBR and Blackwater are only the tip of the iceberg,” Anderson says. “We now have contractors conducting intelligence background checks, processing Freedom of Information Act Requests, writing the President’s daily brief, helping run prisons like Abu Ghraib, etc.”

After years of almost zero oversight, these broader questions are finally being examined - at least to a degree. Certainly Representative Henry Waxman is doing his part as Chair of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, looking at Iraq reconstruction corruption. And Senators Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb introduced legislation to establish a Commission on Wartime Contracting - a Truman-like Commission - to investigate waste and fraud in contracting. (Anderson and Cray suggest that the mandate for the Commission be broadened to look at the corporatization of war, intelligence, and other inherently governmental functions.) Other common-sense pieces of legislation include: the “Transparency and Accountability in Security Contracting Act”, introduced by Rep. David Price, to ensure that private security contractors like Blackwater are accountable; and two 2006 contract reform bills - Rep. Waxman’s “Clean Contracting Act” and Sen. Byron Dorgan’s “Honest Leadership in Government Contracting Act” - both bills would limit no-bid contracts, provide criminal sanctions for fraud, and address conflicts-of-interest, revolving door and other issues.

It is a systemic problem for a democracy to link corporate profits and war-making, and it has metastasized as this war has been increasingly privatized (there are now more contractors than soldiers in Iraq). Good small-d democrats need to keep watch on current legislation, hold our representatives accountable and and demand that they take bolder action to bring this system to an end.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Why All The Focus On A Weak Iranian President?

Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by Foreign Policy in Focus

My Meeting with Ahmadinejad

by Stephen Zunes

This past Wednesday, I was among a group of American religious leaders and scholars who met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. In what was billed as an inter-faith dialogue, we frankly shared our strong opposition to certain Iranian government policies and provocative statements made by the Iranian president. At the same time, we avoided the insulting language employed by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger before a public audience two days earlier.

The Iranian president was quite unimpressive. Indeed, with his ramblings and the superficiality of his analysis, he came across as more pathetic than evil.

The more respectful posture of our group that morning led to a more open exchange of views. Before an audience largely composed of Christian clergy, he reminded us that we worship the same God, have been inspired by many of the same prophets, and share similar values of peace, justice, and reconciliation. The Iranian president impressed me as someone sincerely devout in his religious faith, yet rather superficial in his understanding and inclined to twist his faith tradition in ways to correspond with his pre-conceived ideological positions. He was rather evasive when it came to specific questions and was not terribly coherent, relying more on platitudes than analysis, and would tend to get his facts wrong. In short, he reminded me in many respects of our president.

Both Ahmadinejad and George W. Bush have used their fundamentalist interpretations of their faith traditions to place the world in a Manichean perspective of good versus evil. The certitude of their positions regardless of evidence to the contrary, their sense that they are part of a divine mission, and their largely successful manipulation of their devoutly religious constituents have put these two nations on a dangerous confrontational course.

Ahmadinejad can get away with it because he is president of a theocratic political system that allows very limited freedoms and opportunities for public debate. We have no such excuse here in the United States, however, for the strong bipartisan support for Bush’s righteous anti-Iranian crusade, most recently illustrated by a series of provocative anti-Iranian measures recently passed by an overwhelming margin of the Democratic-controlled Congress.

There are many differences between the two men, of course. Perhaps the most significant is that, unlike George W. Bush, Ahmadinejad has very little political power, particularly in the areas of military and foreign policy. So why, given Ahmadinejad’s lack of real political power, was so much made of his annual trip to the opening session of the UN General Assembly?

Ahmadinejad’s Political Weakness

The president of Iran is constitutionally weak. The real power in Iran lies in the hands of Ayatollah Khamenei and other conservative Shiite clerics on the Council of Guardians. Just as they were able to stifle the reformist agenda of Ahmadinejad’s immediate predecessor Mohammed Khatami, they have similarly thwarted the radical agenda of the current president, whom they view as something of a loose cannon.

Furthermore, Ahmadinejad’s influence is waning. The new head of the Revolutionary Guard Ali Jafari is from a conservative sub-faction opposed to the more radical elements allied with Ahmadinejad. He replaced the former Guard head Yahya Rahim-Safavi, who was apparently seen as too openly sympathetic to the president. In addition, former president and Ahmadinejad rival Ayatollah Rafsanjani was recently elected to head the powerful experts’ assembly, defeating Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who was backed by Ahmadinejad supporters and other hardliners.

Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 was not evidence of a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate. The clerical leadership’s restrictions on who could run made it nearly impossible for any real reformist to emerge as a presidential contender. Ahmadinejad’s opponent in the runoff election was the 70-year-old Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who was seen as a corrupt representative of the political establishment. The fact that he had become a millionaire while in government overshadowed his modest reform agenda. By contrast, Ahmadinejad, the relatively young Tehran mayor, focused on the plight of the poor and cleaning up corruption.

As a result, Iranian voters were forced to choose between two flawed candidates. The relatively liberal contender came across as an out-of-touch elitist, and his ultraconservative opponent was able to assemble a coalition of rural, less-educated, and fundamentalist voters to conduct a pseudo-populist campaign based on promoting morality and value-centered leadership. In short, it bore some resemblance to the presidential election in the United States one year earlier.

Under Ahmadinejad’s leadership, the level of corruption and the economic situation for most Iranians has actually worsened. As a result, in addition to losing the backing of the clerical leadership, he has lost much of his base and his popularity has plummeted. In municipal elections last December, Ahmadinejad’s slates lost heavily to moderate conservatives and reformers. Why, then, is all this attention being given to a relatively powerless lame duck president of a Third World country?

Part of the reason may be that highlighting Ahmadinejad’s extremist views and questioning his mental stability helps convince millions of Americans that if Iran develops an atomic bomb, it will immediately use it against the United States or an ally such as Israel. With more than 200 nuclear weapons and advanced missile capabilities, Israel has more than enough deterrent capability to prevent an Iranian attack. Obviously, American deterrent capabilities are even greater. However, if you depict Iran’s leader as crazy, it puts nuclear deterrence in question and helps create an excuse for the United States or Israel to launch a preventive war prior to Iran developing a nuclear weapons capability.

In reality, though, the Iranian president is not commander-in-chief of the armed forces, so Ahmadinejad would be incapable of ordering an attack on Israel even if Iran had the means to do so. Though the clerics certainly take hard-line positions on a number of policy areas, collective leadership normally mitigates impulsive actions such as launching a war of aggression. Indeed, bold and risky policies rarely come out of committees.

It should also be noted that while Ahmadinejad is certainly very anti-Israel, his views are not as extreme as they have been depicted. For example, Ahmadinejad never actually threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” nor has he demonstrated a newly hostile Iranian posture toward the Jewish state. Not only was this oft-quoted statement a mistranslation - the idiom does not exist in Farsi and the reference was to the dissolution of the regime, not the physical destruction of the nation - the Iranian president was quoting from a statement by Ayatollah Khomeini from over 20 years earlier. In addition, he explicitly told our group on September 26 that there was “no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and that it was “not Iran’s intention to destroy Israel.”

The Saddam Niche

The emphasis and even exaggeration of Ahmadinejad’s more bizarre and provocative statements makes it easier to ignore his more sensible observations, such as: “Arrogant power seekers and militarists betray God’s will.” It also makes it politically easier for the United States to refuse to engage in dialogue or enter into negotiations, such as those that led to an end of Libya’s nuclear program in 2003. Ahmadinejad has welcomed American religious delegations to Iran, but the United States has denied visas to Iranian religious delegations to this country. The Bush administration has also blocked cultural and scholarly exchanges.

The disproportionate media coverage of Ahmadinejad’s UN visit also suggests that Ahmadinejad fills a certain niche in the American psyche formerly filled by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi as the Middle Eastern leader we most love to hate. It gives us a sense of righteous superiority to compare ourselves to these seemingly irrational and fanatical foreign despots. If these despots can be inflated into far greater threats than they actually are, these threats can justify the enormous financial and human costs of maintaining American armed forces in that volatile region to protect ourselves and our allies and even to make war against far-off nations in “self-defense.” Such inflated threats also have the added bonus of silencing critics of America’s overly-militarized Middle East policy, since anyone who dares to challenge the hyperbole and exaggerated claims regarding these leaders’ misdeeds or to provide a more balanced and realistic assessment of the actual threat they represent can then be depicted as naive apologists for dangerous fanatics who threaten our national security.

Furthermore, focusing on Ahmadinejad’s transparent double-standards and hypocrisy makes it easier to ignore similar tendencies by the U.S. president. Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN on September 25 was widely criticized for its emphasis on human rights abuses by Israel and the United States while avoiding mention of his own country’s poor human rights record. It helps distract attention from President Bush’s speech that same day, in which he criticized human rights abuses by dictatorial governments in Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Burma, and Cuba, but avoided mentioning human rights abuses by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea, Oman, Pakistan, Cameroon, and Chad, or any other dictatorship allied with the United States.

The outreach by Christian clergy to Ahmadinejad, whom The New York Times described as “the religious president of a religious nation who relishes speaking on a religious plane,” came out of a belief in the importance of dialogue and reconciliation. Our group emphasized that we were critical of the U.S. government’s threats but also raised concerns on such issues as Iranian human rights abuses and Ahmadinejad’s hostility toward Israel and denial of the Holocaust. Virtually all our questions, however, were thrown back in criticisms toward the United States. “Who are the ones that are filling their arsenals with nuclear weapons?” he said. “The United States has developed a fifth generation of atomic bombs and missiles that could hit Iran. Who is the real danger here?”

Indeed, it must seem odd to most people in the Middle East that the United States, which is 10,000 miles away from the longest-range weapon the Iranians can currently muster and possesses by far the most powerful militarily apparatus the world has ever seen, is depicting Iran as the biggest threat to its national security. As Ahmadinejad put it to our group that morning, “The United States has many thousands of troops on our borders and threatens to attack us. Why is it, then, that Iran is seen as a threat?” And though most Iranians, Arabs, and other Muslims recognize Ahmadinejad as an extremist, he is unfortunately correct in accusing the United States of unfairly singling out Iran, an issue that has real resonance in that part of the world.

Indeed, the United States is obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program - still many years away from producing an atomic bomb - while we support the neighboring states of Pakistan, India, and Israel, which have already developed nuclear weapons and which are also in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programs. We blame Iran for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq yet 95% of U.S. casualties are from anti-Iranian Sunni insurgents. We focus on Iranian human rights abuses while we continue to support the even more oppressive and theocratic Islamic regime in Saudi Arabia. We attack the Iranian president’s denial of the genocide of European Jews while remaining silent in the face of Turkish leaders’ denial of the genocide of Armenians. One of the most important principles of most faith traditions is moral consistency. Few receive greater wrath in most holy texts than hypocrites.

Americans have many legitimate concerns regarding Iranian policies in general and the statements of President Ahmadinejad in particular. However, as long as U.S. policy appears to be based upon such opportunistic double standards rather than consistent principles, Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory rhetoric will continue to find an audience.

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)

No One Trusts Bush On Climate Change

No one trusts him on anything. He has shown himself to be either the most incompetent numb-skull on earth or the biggest criminal of our lifetime.

Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by Reuters

Bush Draws Fire at Climate Talks

WASHINGTON - Some of the world’s biggest greenhouse polluters took aim at President George W. Bush on Friday, calling him “isolated” and questioning his leadership on the problem of global warming.

Bush, who convened the two-day meeting of the 17 biggest emitters of climate-warming gases, stressed new environmental technology and voluntary measures to tackle the issue.

“Our nations have an opportunity to leave the debates of the past behind and reach a consensus on the way forward and that’s our purpose today,” Bush told an audience that included delegates from Europe, Japan and Australia as well as fast-growing developing countries such as China and India.

But his speech did little to dampen doubts from participants and environmentalists that the climate session at the State Department would help advance crucial U.N. talks in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

“It is striking that the (Bush) administration at the moment in the international conversation seems to be pretty isolated,” said John Ashton, Britain’s climate envoy. “I think that the argument that we can do this through voluntary approaches is now pretty much discredited internationally.”

Bush’s rejection of mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that warm the planet is at odds with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and with many who attended on Friday.

“Our message to the U.S. is this: what they placed on the table at this meeting is a first step, but is simply not enough,” South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a statement. “We think that the U.S. needs to go back to the drawing board.”

The United States has long been the world’s biggest greenhouse emitter but at least one study this year put China in the lead. Given the U.S. role in contributing to the problem, van Schalkwyk said the United States should contribute its “fair share” to a solution.

LOOKING TOWARD BALI

By mid-2008, Bush said heads of state of the biggest emitting countries should set a long-term target to fight climate change and that there should be “a strong and transparent system for measuring our progress toward meeting the goal we set.”

That drew a muted response from delegates, according to Yvo de Boer, the special U.N. envoy on climate change.

De Boer said he found Bush’s speech “encouraging” because it acknowledged the urgency of the issue.

But asked to predict the outcome of the Washington meeting, de Boer replied, “The very strong indication I got is that people said, ‘This is a very interesting discussion but we need to continue it after Bali.’”

In fact, delegates applauded when Bush stressed this meeting was meant to lay the groundwork for the Bali conference. Some critics have questioned whether the Bush administration was attempting to get around the U.N. climate process with its own set of meetings.

At the meeting’s conclusion, James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and chairman of the conference, described “very vigorous discussion” and said the parties were committed to continuing the talks among the big emitters as a contribution to U.N. climate negotiations.

There was no consensus document. Instead, Connaughton offered a chairman’s summary: “I think different participants would emphasize different aspects of the summary so this is merely my attempt to capture the sense of the meeting.”

Bush said a long-term goal for reducing global warming was needed but that each nation should design its own strategy. He suggested a global clean-technology fund could be led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, to be financed by global contributions.

The Bali talks will aim to launch a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that set limits on industrial nations’ emissions. Its first phase ends in 2012. (Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

Look Who's General Bashing Now...

Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by Salon.com

Guess Who Else Likes to Attack The Honor and Integrity of War Generals

by Glenn Greenwald

As we learned from both our Senate and House last week, in the United States we must never “attack the honor and integrity . . . of members of the United States Armed Forces.” All good patriots from both parties agree on this.

That is why I was so shocked and outraged — and more than a little upset — when I went to FoxNews.com this morning and saw this:

I naturally assumed that the “disgraceful military leaders” attacked by the Fox headline must be those of another country, not those of the United States leading our Nation, putting themselves in harm’s way, during a Time of War. Yet when I clicked on the item, this is the anti-military filth that I found:

And the text of the article — by Fox News Contributor and frequent O’Reilly guest David Hunt — is even more Despicable, as it repeatedly attacks the honor and integrity of members of the United States Armed Forces in one smearing paragraph after the next, beginning with this first sentence:

Our generals are betraying our soldiers . . . again.

To accuse a general of “betrayal” is, in military parlance, the equivalent of accusing him of treason to his country. Yet that is what this Fox News article does in the very first paragraph with regard to many of our brave Generals risking their lives for our country in a Time of War — and it not only accuses Our Military Commanders of “betrayal,” but betrayal of their own troops. It continues in this same Despicable vein:

Our generals in both the Army and Marine Corps have cared more about their precious careers and reputations than their soldiers and Marines under them. The Marines have actually prosecuted a Marine for shooting a terrorist too many times . . . . In Iraq, the story is the same. The Army rediscovered a trick we used in ‘Nam’ called “baiting,” where you leave ammunition and pieces of explosive devices out and shoot whoever takes them. We used to leave exploding ammo to put in your AK — when you try to fire it, the gun blows up. It worked then and it works now . . . but guess what the Army is now putting on trial: Ranger Snipers for doing their jobs. The rules of engagement were once again being followed and once again our generals put their careers over their men’s lives. The chilling effect that these actions have over our soldiers is dramatic; this distrust weakens the very foundations of our military. It causes soldiers to second-guess themselves and their chain of command. We cannot fight like this and hope to win.

We should be putting these generals on trial, first for going along with Rummy and just as important for not trusting their soldiers. . . .

These poor excuse for officers do not deserve the soldiers they dare claim they lead.

So to recap the Hunt/Fox argument: our Generals and other military commanders currently leading our Nation at War are “betraying our troops.” They put their own selfish desire to advance their reputations and careers ahead of the welfare and lives of the soldiers they lead. The corruption and betrayal of these brave American Generals are preventing us from winning. These “poor excuses for officers” should be put on trial. I don’t recall seeing as vicious and personal an attack on the honor and integrity of the members of the United States Armed Forces — perhaps ever, but certainly during a time when America is at War. As the great American patriot and defender of military honor Senator Mitch McConnell said when urging his colleagues to condemn the attacks on the honor and integrity of the Supreme General, David Petraeus:

It’s been more than a week since the Junior Senator from Texas offered an amendment condemning an ad by MoveOn.Org that appeared last Monday in The New York Times. The ad was, by any standard, abhorrent.

It accused a four star general who has the trust and respect of 160,000 men and women in Iraq of betraying that mission and those troops, of lying to them and to us.

Who would have ever expected anybody to go after a general in the field at a time of war, launch a smear campaign against a man we’ve entrusted with our mission in Iraq.

Any group that does this sort of thing ought to be condemned.

What a monumental day for the United States that was, when the U.S Senate set a new standard that “[a]ny group that does this sort of thing ought to be condemned.” This Despicable attack on the honor and integrity of our military commanders by Fox News and former Col. Hunt — like the similar one from Rush Limbaugh, which may be the topic of a critically important Congressional vote on Monday — must not go unanswered by the Congress.

UPDATE: In Comments, several people express the unquestionably valid concern that it is inappropriate, even McCarthy-ite and dangerous, for Congress to start formally condemning private political speech. That is true, and if we had a healthy political system, that would not happen. But, as the MoveOn vote demonstrated, we have the opposite of a healthy political system, and it is thus far preferable — for reasons I set forth here — to ensure that a corrupt standard is applied equally rather than allow it to be applied by one political faction against another. Taking the corrupt political tactics wielded by the war-hungry Right and applying those same tactics to them (rather than ineffectively protesting the unfairness of the tactics) is the only way to ensure they cease.

Glenn Greenwald is a regular columnist for Salon.com

Thomas's own book gives reason forr impeachment.

Justice Thomas Lashes Out in Memoir

Book Attacks Liberals and the Media, Breaks Near-Silence on Anita Hill

By Robert Barnes, Michael A. Fletcher and Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 29, 2007; A01

Justice Clarence Thomas settles scores in an angry and vivid forthcoming memoir, scathingly condemning the media, the Democratic senators who opposed his nomination to the Supreme Court, and the "mob" of liberal elites and activist groups that he says desecrated his life.

(It was the pubic hair on the coke can that did the desecrating, Clarence.)

"My Grandfather's Son," for which Thomas has received a reported $1.5 million, is a 289-page memoir of his life in rural Georgia, his reliance on religious faith and his rise to the high court. His book ends with the day he was sworn in and contains only fleeting mentions of his time on the bench.

Can't believe anyone would pay over a mill for a book by Thomas, but that's anything-for-a-buck America for you

Thomas lovingly describes the iron-willed grandfather who raised him after his own father abandoned him as a toddler, praises the Roman Catholic Church for providing him with an education but criticizes it for not being as "adamant about ending racism then as it is about ending abortion now," and gives a detailed description of the confirmation hearings that electrified the nation in 1991 and the sexual harassment allegations by Anita Hill that he said destroyed his reputation.

It's always the accusations, not the acts, right Clarence. How has your reputation been destroyed? You are a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court. Doesn't seem like much damage has been done.

They are the most extensive comments Thomas has made about Hill since his confirmation. Though he has given numerous speeches since he has been on the court, he has rarely mentioned Hill or spoken in detail about the nomination fight. In the book, Thomas writes that Hill was the tool of liberal activist groups "obsessed" with abortion and outraged because he did not fit their idea of what an African American should believe.

Yeah right. Anita Hill, a law professor, put herself through hell because some activist group wanted her to lie to congress and tell the most god-awful, embarrassing lies imaginable, short of a rape accusation. Is that what you're saying? No one in his/her right mind would believe such drivel.

"The mob I now faced carried no ropes or guns," Thomas writes of his hearings. "Its weapons were smooth-tongued lies spoken into microphones and printed on the front pages of America's newspapers. . . . But it was a mob all the same, and its purpose -- to keep the black man in his place -- was unchanged."

So now, you are saying the liberals, the same liberals who fought for civil rights, would go to any lengths to keep a black man off the high court? That dog simply won't hunt, Uncle Thomas. The ABA also said, at the time, that you were the least qualified of any nominee in recent history. Did it ever occur to you that that was one of the main reasons so many people were against your nomination. It was pretty clear that you were going to do exactly what you have done, keep the chair warm and vote with Scalia.

Thomas, 59, says in the foreword to the book, due to go on sale Monday, that he wrote it to "leave behind an accurate record of my own life as I remember it" rather than leave it to those "with careless hands or malicious hearts." He indicates he wrote it himself, with editing help from three others.

Nobody cares, Clarence.

It has been eagerly awaited, especially in the conservative community, which is playing an active role in promoting it. The Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and the National Center for Policy Analysis are sponsoring a six-city book tour, in which patrons will pay $30 to attend events in Thomas's honor.

OK, Nobody cares except the usual suspects.

The normally media-shy justice has interviews booked on "60 Minutes" tomorrow night and ABC on Monday as well as a 90-minute interview with radio host Rush Limbaugh, also scheduled for Monday. The book's contents had been closely guarded before its publication date of Oct. 1, the first day of the Supreme Court's new term, but The Washington Post purchased a copy yesterday at an area bookstore, where it had been placed on display.

Thomas writes of the hard lessons doled out by his grandfather, Myers Anderson, who raised him after his father abandoned the family and his mother was unable to care for her boys in Pin Point, Ga. "In every way that counts, I am my grandfather's son," Thomas writes, hence the title of the memoir.

Thomas's depiction of his grandfather is of a man unsparingly tough. Anderson wouldn't let him play on sports teams or join the Cub Scouts.

When Thomas informed the family that he was dropping out of the seminary, against the wishes of his grandfather, he learned, to his surprise, that Anderson had retreated to his garage and cried. Then his grandfather kicked him out of the house, telling him: "I'm finished helping you. You'll have to figure it out yourself. You'll probably end up like your no-good daddy or those other no-good Pinpoint Negroes."

Yep, he is his Grandfather's son alright, self-loathing to the extreme.

After graduating from Yale Law School in 1974, Thomas spent the summer in St. Louis studying for the bar exam, where he was once so pressed for money that he attempted to sell his blood at a blood bank. He was turned down because his pulse rate was too low.

Throughout the book, Thomas describes himself as under siege -- variously from preening elites, light-skinned African Americans and critics who object to his conservative politics. Feeling under duress from civil rights leaders, and despondent over reports he was reading about the poor achievement of African American students in high school, Thomas writes that he simply sat at his desk at the Department of Education one evening and wept.

Under siege...constantly....sounds a little like paranoia to me.

After the death of his grandfather and grandmother in 1983 and with his first marriage on the rocks, Thomas says he had a fleeting thought of suicide. "I'd actually reached the point where I wondered whether there was any reason for me to go on," he writes. "The mad thought of taking my own life fleetingly crossed my mind. Of course, I didn't consider it seriously, if only because I knew I couldn't abandon [my son] Jamal as I had been abandoned by C," which is how he refers to his father, M.C. Thomas.

The mental health picture is bleaker than we thought. It's not just the fleeting thought of suicide, more it is the grudge he has held all these years. The man seems unstable to say the least.

Racial imagery abounds in "My Grandfather's Son," a continuation of his description of the Senate hearings as a "high-tech lynching."

"As a child in the Deep South, I'd grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult, I was starting to wonder if I'd been afraid of the wrong white people all along," he writes. "My worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony."

Oh Puleeze!!!!

Thomas writes that he did not watch Hill's televised testimony against him at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and so he does not respond in detail to her charges except to call them lies. He describes Hill as "touchy and apt to overreact" and says: "If I or anyone else had done the slightest thing to offend her, she would have complained loudly and instantly, not waited for a decade to make her displeasure known."

Hill, then, is just one of those hysterical females that you can't live with or without, eh Thomas.

He writes that Hill did a "mediocre" job at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he was chairman, and misrepresented herself at the time of the hearings as a "devoutly religious Reagan-administration employee." "In fact, she was a left-winger who'd never expressed any religious sentiments" and had a job in the administration "because I'd given it to her."

Not all religious people make a big deal of it....they feel no need to make everyone aware of just how religious and pure they are. It is a personal matter to them, and maybe they do not wish to get lumped in with the crusading crackpots. It matters not how she got the job with the Reagan administration, she got it.

Thomas has particularly caustic comments about the Democratic senators who opposed his nomination. He compares then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) to the lying hypocrites in the old song "Smiling Faces Sometimes" by Undisputed Truth. About former senator Howard Metzenbaum (Ohio): "It would be kind to describe him as unlikable."

And Howell Heflin, the late senator from Alabama, was described by the press as "courtly," Thomas says, but his manner "made me think of a slave owner sitting on the porch of a plantation house."

Thomas has been a sharp critic of affirmative action and the use of racial classifications in schools, but he acknowledges in the book that he was admitted to Yale Law School in 1971 partly because he was black. "I'd graduated from one of America's top law schools -- but racial preference had robbed my achievement of its true value."

Not unless you let it. Perhaps it was affirmative action that got you into Yale. Graduating from that august institution was all you, Clarence.

Thomas describes his confirmation hearing as a gut-wrenching experience. When told by an aide to President George H.W. Bush that he was under consideration for the high court, "I tried to think of a way to convince President Bush to choose somebody else."

Did you know before hand what was coming? How did you know, if everything Anita Hill said was a lie?

When the time came, of course, he accepted. But that night, he writes, he told his wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, "You know that some of my opponents are going to try to kill me." Thomas continues: "Of course I didn't mean it literally, but I did feel that there was a sense in which my whole life was at stake. I'd grown up in a part of America where a black man was defenseless against the accusations of any white person -- especially a woman. The fear and vulnerability that I had known then came back to haunt me now."

Again, how did you know what was coming?

Thomas credits his mentor, former Missouri senator John C. Danforth, and his wife for getting him through the hearings, and he says his faith was a critical resource: "Each day I left the Caucus Room tired, tormented and anxious, and each day Virginia and I bathed ourselves in God's unwavering love."

But by the time he was confirmed, he said, the prize meant little. Instead of watching the Senate roll call, he drew himself a bath. His wife came to tell him he had been confirmed 52 to 48.

"Whoop-dee-damn-doo," Thomas writes.

Thomas is a bitter, angry man, after all these years. How can he be a balanced Jurist when he holds this kind of grudge.

Staff writer William Wan contributed to this report.

The Loon of Fox Noise: Is he really crazy?

Probably, but that's no excuse.

Keith Olbermann: Is Bill O'Reilly mentally ill?

09/28/2007 @ 8:22 am

Filed by Nick Langewis and Mike Aivaz

"These people aren't gonna get away with this. I'm gonna go right where they live. Every corrupt media person in this country is on notice right now. I'm coming after you. I'm gonna hunt you down. And I mean it. Smear stops here. You're all on notice out there. I'm comin' for ya."
--Bill O'Reilly, The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly

"Tonight," opens MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, "as in the past few days, Bill O'Reilly has devoted large sections of his shows to defending himself against critics who pointed out the racism in his surprise that people in a black-owned restaurant know how to order iced tea without cursing about somebody's mother."

Though "an argument can be made" for a parallel between racism and mental deficiency, says Olbermann, he seeks to take a serious look into the possibility of real psychological problems plaguing the host of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor in light of recent remarks, construed racist, following a visit to a predominantly black restaurant.

O'Reilly, says Olbermann, is showing signs of paranoia stemming from a disconnect between the outside world "and his own head."

"Americans should be very skeptical of the news media. No longer can it be trusted." --Bill O'Reilly

"We haven't trusted you in ten years," quips Olbermann.

Marvin Kitman, author of The Man Who Would Not Shut Up: The Rise of Bill O'Reilly and self-proclaimed "leading O'Reillyologist," is quoted in his recent Huffington Post blog post:

"When I began studying him he was a semi-demented TV newsman, who rudely interrupted guests in debates, giving them the last word, which he also interrupted, but lately he seems to be losing it."

"He seems more unhinged than usual," says Kitman. "He has two people on debating an issue when we're lucky, but even when somebody is on his side, if they're slightly off--like, one degree--he comes down on them--and he's just about ready to implode, I can see, looking at him."

Kitman sees an air of paranoia around O'Reilly, and a fear that everybody's out to get him, "which I guess is partially true." In O'Reilly's recent "debut as a restaurant critic," he adds, O'Reilly demonstrated his trademark case of "Achilles mouth."

Olbermann wonders out loud if O'Reilly's missed the kind of backlash that disgraced MSNBC host Don Imus received for his "nappy-headed hoes" gaffe due to a lack of expectation, on the part of the public, of common decency due to diminished mental capacity.

"I think he's on the verge of having a breakdown," says Kitman. "I think he needs psychiatric help."

"Having a conversation with O'Reilly is like trying to take a drink of water from an open fire hydrant." --Marvin Kitman, September 25, 2007

Gay Basher Linked To Bush Administration

Surprise, Surprise...meanness tends to trickle down.

Son of fallen Bush aide suspected in Washington gay-bash

09/29/2007 @ 10:22 pm

Filed by Nick Langewis

(via PageOneQ)--A Georgetown University sophomore, implicated in a gay-bashing by a fellow student, has ties to the Bush Administration, RAW STORY has learned.

19-year-old Philip Anderton Cooney, pictured here in the spring of 2005, is the son of fallen Bush aide and American Petroleum Institute oil lobbyist Phil Cooney. Phil Cooney was appointed chief of staff with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, suffering criticism for his lack of environmental experience. After his resignation and subsequent hire to a position with ExxonMobil, it was found that Cooney had reportedly tampered with data to support the Bush line on climate change.Philip Anderton Cooney was identified by the victim and reported to police thanks to his Facebook profile, which contained a photograph. He is being charged with simple assault, which, as a hate crime, carries a jail sentence of up to 270 days, the Washington Post reports. On the morning of September 9, the victim says, he was attacked physically and verbally, including with anti-gay slurs, by Cooney while walking near 36th and O Streets in northwest Washington, DC.According to a WRC report, including video, the victim made it a point to "etch the suspect's face in his mind" with hopes of discovering his identity and reporting him to police. After overhearing that a student was talking about the incident to others, a friend gave him the student's initials, which were monogrammed on his bag, and the victim used them to narrow down his Facebook search."The police investigation was nothing," argues Cooney's attorney, Danny Onorato. "You have a complaining witness who said he saw somebody who he think (sic) might have attacked him vis-a-vis the Web. That's the investigation. Did they try to talk to Mr. Cooney before they arrested him? No. Would you expect the police to do that? Yes."(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

David Letterman: President Numbnuts

Every time Junior opens his mouth to describe our latest enemy, he sounds as if he is describing himself.

Letterman: It's kind of hard to tell Iran, US presidents apart

09/28/2007 @ 8:20 am

Filed by Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane

Want to get the news the media buries? Get Raw headlines in your browser.

David Letterman on Thursday announced a segment on "George Bush vs. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," promising also that each joke "will be punctuated with a ridiculous sound effect."

Along with celebrity gags and jokes playing off the Iranian president's popular image as a bloodthirsty tyrant, some of the more interesting comparisons were:

"Ahmadinejad: Member of the Islamic Society of Engineers. Bush: Member of the Chuck Norris fan club."

"Ahmadinejad: Speaks in broken, hard-to-understand English. Bush: Speaks in broken, hard-to-understand English."

"Ahmadinejad: Holocaust denier. Bush: Global warning denier."

And finally, "Ahmadinejad: Underlings refer to him as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Bush: Underlings refer to him as 'President Numbnuts.'"

The following video is from CBS's Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on September 27, 2007

Expensive Rightwing Liars

So, they are afraid that the Congress will cut off funds, the middle east will erupt and America will get hit, eh.

Well, listen up, you pin heads. America is already high on the list to get hit because of people like you and your idiot emperor.

Is there a pill for what these people have?

September 30, 2007

Big Coffers and Rising Voice at Conservative Group

By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

Freedom’s Watch, a deep-pocketed conservative group led by two former senior White House officials, made an audacious debut in late August when it began a $15 million advertising campaign designed to maintain Congressional support for President Bush’s troop increase in Iraq.

Founded this summer by a dozen wealthy conservatives, the nonprofit group is set apart from most advocacy groups by the immense wealth of its core group of benefactors, its intention to far outspend its rivals and its ambition to pursue a wide-ranging agenda. Its next target: Iran policy.

Next month, Freedom’s Watch will sponsor a private forum of 20 experts on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States, according to several benefactors of the group.

Although the group declined to identify the experts, several were invited from the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group with close ties to the White House. Some institute scholars have advocated a more confrontational policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, including keeping military action as an option.

Last week, a Freedom’s Watch newspaper advertisement called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran “a terrorist.” The group is considering a national advertising campaign focused on Iran, a senior benefactor said, though Matt S. David, a spokesman for the group, declined to comment on those plans.

“If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he could have been stopped,” said Bradley Blakeman, 49, the president of Freedom’s Watch and a former deputy assistant to Mr. Bush. “Ahmadinejad is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel.”

With a forceful message and a roster of wealthy benefactors, Freedom’s Watch has quickly emerged from the crowded field of nonprofit advocacy groups as a conservative answer to the nine-year-old liberal MoveOn.org, which vehemently opposes the Iraq war.

The idea for Freedom’s Watch was hatched in March at the winter meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalapan, Fla., where Vice President Dick Cheney was the keynote speaker, according to participants. Next week, the group is moving into a 10,000-square-foot office in the Chinatown section of Washington, with plans to employ as many as 50 people by early next year.

One benefactor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group was hoping to raise as much as $200 million by November 2008. Raising big money “will be easy,” the benefactor said, adding that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million. Mr. Blakeman would not confirm or deny whether any donor gave $1 million, or more, to the organization.

Since the group is organized as a tax-exempt organization, it does not have to reveal its donors and it can not engage in certain types of partisan activities that directly support political candidates. It denies coordinating its activities with the White House, although many of its donors and organizers are well connected to the administration, including Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary.

“Ideologically, we are inspired by much of Ronald Reagan’s thinking — peace through strength, protect and defend America, and prosperity through free enterprise,” Mr. Fleischer said.

Among the group’s founders are Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, who ranks sixth on the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s billionaires; Mel Sembler, a shopping center magnate based in St. Petersburg, Fla., who served as the ambassador to Italy and Australia; John M. Templeton Jr., the conservative philanthropist from Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Anthony H. Gioia, a former ambassador to Malta who heads an investment group based in Buffalo, N.Y. All four men are long-time prolific donors who have raised money on behalf of Republican and conservative causes.

For years, the group’s founders lamented MoveOn’s growing influence, derived in large part from its grass-roots efforts, especially on the debate about the Iraq war. “A bunch of us activists kept watching MoveOn and its attacks on the war, and it just got to be obnoxious,” said Mr. Sembler, a friend of Vice President Dick Cheney. “We decided we needed to do something about this, because the conservative side was not responding.”

Mr. Sembler, who is on the board of directors of the American Enterprise Institute, said the impetus for Freedom’s Watch “came out of A.E.I.” last winter. He said that at an institute event in December 2006 he listened to retired Gen. Jack Keane and Frederick W. Kagan, an A.E.I. scholar, talk about the need for a troop increase in Iraq, a plan adopted by Mr. Bush in January. “I realized it was not only what we needed to do,” Mr. Sembler said, “but we needed to articulate this message across the country.”

Mr. Sembler also said he was frustrated that he heard reports at institute events earlier this year that the increase was working, but that the news media was not reflecting the progress.

Mr. Fleischer said: “After the president announced the surge, and even Republicans started getting nervous, there was a palpable fear among several of us that this fall Congress was going to cut off the funding and the Middle East would explode and America would likely get hit. It really wasn’t much more complicated than that.”

Over the summer, Mr. Fleischer and the other founders recruited a president, choosing Mr. Blakeman, who served as a deputy assistant to the president in charge of scheduling and appointments. In 2000, Mr. Blakeman led the Bush-Cheney campaign’s public relations effort during the 36 days of the deadlocked election. He left the White House in January 2004.

Mr. Blakeman and Mr. Fleischer said they intended to turn Freedom’s Watch into a permanent fixture among Washington advocacy groups, waging a “never-ending campaign” on an array of foreign policy and domestic issues. They also hope to build an active, grass-roots support network.

But Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org, which was founded in 1998 by two Silicon Valley venture capitalists, said he doubted the group’s ability to meet that goal.

“This is the fourth or the fifth group that intends to be the right-wing MoveOn,” Mr. Pariser said, naming other fledgling groups like TheVanguard.org and Grassfire.org. “So far, it’s not clear that this group is anything other than a big neoconservative slush fund. They are a White House front group with a few consultants who are trying to make a very unpopular position on the war appear more palpable.”

Like Freedom’s Watch, MoveOn had its origins in an attempt by wealthy political donors, including George Soros, to shape the debate in Washington. MoveOn began shortly after the Starr report was delivered to Congress in September 1998, detailing accusations of perjury and obstruction of justice against President Bill Clinton.

Already, Freedom’s Watch and MoveOn have clashed through competing advertisements over Gen. David H. Petraeus’s war progress report to Congress earlier this month.

In one Freedom’s Watch ad, Sgt. John Kriesel, a National Guardsman from Stillwater, Minn., who lost his legs in a bomb attack near Falluja, pleads with Congress and the American people not to “surrender” in Iraq. As the screen shows a still photograph of the second hijacked plane bearing down on the burning World Trade Center, Sergeant Kriesel adds, “They attacked us, and they will again. They won’t stop in Iraq.”

Several of the group’s spots suggested that Iraq, rather than Al Qaeda, was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, even though the independent Sept. 11 commission investigation and other inquiries found no evidence of Iraq’s involvement. But in August, when the organization rolled out the advertisement with Sergeant Kriesel to two focus groups in Pennsylvania, its upbeat, patriotic message was well received, even causing a few viewers to weep, Mr. Blakeman said.

“The focus groups couldn’t tell whether it was a Republican ad or a Democratic ad,” he said. “It was the voice of a soldier, and that’s the message we want to deliver to Americans: listen to the opinions of real people.”

The campaign was seen as a way to head off any momentum in Congress toward halting the financing for the Iraq war. The group’s advertisements, placed in nearly 60 Congressional districts in 23 states, targeted wavering moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats.

Freedom’s Watch also pounced on MoveOn.org’s full-page “General Betray Us” advertisement published Sept. 10 in The New York Times. Mr. Bush called the advertisement “disgusting.” Both chambers of Congress passed resolutions condemning the advertisement. The New York Times was also embroiled in the debate after giving MoveOn a discounted price for the advertisement, which the newspaper later acknowledged was a mistake. MoveOn has since agreed to pay the difference.

That advertisement, Mr. Blakeman said, “was an unexpected gift,” allowing Freedom’s Watch to “take the high road” and demonstrate that it is a “conservative voice that is not divisive.”

Mr. Pariser, of MoveOn, said his group’s grass-roots membership — it claims 3.3 million members — was the envy of Freedom’s Watch. “I think people see that Freedom’s Watch is a few billionaires, and not a large, mainstream constituency,” he said.

Mr. Blakeman denied the accusation that Freedom’s Watch is a White House front group. “I don’t need their help,” he said of his former colleagues at the White House. “I don’t seek their help. And they don’t offer it.” Mr. Blakeman is a long-time friend of Ed Gillespie, the new counselor to Mr. Bush who succeeded Dan Bartlett. Mr. Blakeman said that he speaks with Mr. Gillespie, but that they are careful not to discuss the activities of Freedom’s Watch.

Mr. Fleischer said Freedom’s Watch was not coordinating with the White House and had an agenda beyond the Bush administration. “On Jan. 21, 2009, what will these critics say when we are still here, doing the same thing?” he said. “We will still be here after George Bush is gone.”

Another Pentagon Contract For Blackwater?

Jeeebus, will these jackasses ever learn? $92 Million hit men, killing in our name and with our treasure.

We are fools if we continue to pay for this....or maybe just cowards

Pentagon Gives Blackwater New Contract

by Ali Gharib

A U.S.-based private security firm received a contract worth up to 92 million dollars from the Department of Defense amid hard questions about its involvement in two separate violent incidents in Iraq.

"Blackwater has been a contractor in the past with the department and could certainly be in the future," said the U.S.’s top-ranking military officer, General Peter Pace, at an afternoon press conference here.

The future arrived just two hours later when the Pentagon released a new list of contracts – Presidential Airways, the aviation unit of parent company Blackwater, was awarded the contract to fly Department of Defense passengers and cargo between locations around central Asia.

The announcement comes as a cloud of suspicion is gathering around the "professional military" firm for its actions as a State Department security contractor in Iraq in which at least eight Iraqis and possibly as many as 28 were killed, including a woman and child.

Last week, the Iraqi government announced that it had revoked Blackwater's license to operate in the country.

The initial report by the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security on the incident was put together by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and details of the event where a car bomb exploded near a meeting attended by officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Some of the Blackwater team hired as security for the officials was involved in the shootout while apparently trying to clear an evacuation path.

In a statement issued last week, Blackwater USA spokesperson Anne Tyrrell denied any wrongdoing and said that, "Blackwater's independent contractors acted lawfully and appropriately in response to a hostile attack in Baghdad on Sunday. Blackwater regrets any loss of life but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life."

However, an official with knowledge of the investigation told the New York Times that the evacuation effort was marked by confusion and chaos – the Blackwater employees believed they were being fired on, but this contradicted the initial Iraqi report on the incident that said there was no enemy fire. There was also apparently an incident of infighting when one guard did not heed a ceasefire call.

In a press conference Wednesday, the deputy press secretary of the State Department gave a non-denial of reports in the press that the Department of Defense has hinted to the State Department that the investigation into Blackwater should be reined in, only highlighting that the departments were working together and that the reports in the press had come from anonymous sources.

Blackwater USA, which has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and 800 million dollars in U.S. government contracts, has been one of the most prominent private security firms operating in the country. Some of its notable assignments have included protecting L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, as well as Crocker, who is currently the leading U.S. diplomatic envoy to Iraq.

The firm came into the public eye in March 2004, when four of its employees were killed and mutilated by an Iraqi mob in Fallujah, the war-torn Iraqi city that was an insurgent stronghold at the time. The incident touched off the unsuccessful U.S. attempt to retake the city in April 2004.

Family members of the four employees slain in Fallujah have since sued Blackwater, alleging that the firm failed to provide necessary equipment and manpower that could have saved the employees' lives.

A separate report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee faulted Blackwater’s conduct in the Fallujah incident, in which Blackwater was transporting flatbed trucks when its team was ambushed.

"Blackwater embarked on this mission without sufficient preparation, resources and support for its personnel," concluded the report, saying that the firm had ignored warnings by another security company, cut the staff for the mission by putting rear gunners for both involved security vehicles on administrative duties, and went out with insufficiently armored vehicles.

"Management in North Carolina made the decision to go with soft skin due to the cost" despite the fact that the contract paid for armored vehicles, said a Blackwater employee quoted in the report, referring to Blackwater’s headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina.

The Congressional report noted that the Blackwater men had been sent on their mission without maps and ended up at the wrong military base, where they had to spend the night because of fighting nearby.

Control Risks Group, another security force working in the area at the time, warned Blackwater about the mission after they had twice been offered the same task but "refused both times due to the obvious risk transporting slow-moving loads through such a volatile area."

On the heels of the House Committee report, Congressman David E. Price of North Carolina will introduce legislation next week to extend the reach of U.S. civil courts to include security contractors in Iraq. The proposed bill, H.R. 2740, will also establish F.B.I. investigative units in the war zone charged with investigating allegations of misconduct.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week, Price wrote, "The allegations related to the Sept. 16 incident have the potential to become a flashpoint in terms of Iraqi antagonism toward U.S. personnel, with wide-ranging implications for our mission and our troops. There is no question that the lack of clarity surrounding the legal options for prosecuting criminal acts has significantly undermined our efforts in Iraq."

The various investigations into security contractors working for the U.S. government in Iraq and related legislation are heralded by critics of the Bush administration’s approach to the war, pointing to the failures of the so-called [Donald] Rumsfeld doctrine, which promotes a more streamlined and greatly privatized military based on an "entrepreneurial approach" and raising questions about rampant war-profiteering.

(Inter Press Service)

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