Does Anyone Believe This Crappola?

Fallon was the only man standing between us and another insane war. This time, with Iran and we are supposed to believe that he stepped down on his own?

OK, maybe he did, but if he did, it was a warning to the rest of us that war is coming, before the Monkey leaves office.

Look out Dems! The Goof-balls in the W.H. are about to drop a big bomb on you too.

Bush Administration Denies Central Command Chief Forced to Resign

By VOA News
12 March 2008

A spokeswoman for President Bush says the head of the U.S. Central Military Command is not being forced to resign, despite reports that Admiral William Fallon disagrees with the president's policy on Iran.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino Wednesday, said President Bush welcomes robust and healthy debate and is grateful for the admiral's service.

Fallon was on a trip to Baghdad Tuesday when he announced he is resigning at the end of the month. That announcement followed a report in Esquire magazine that said Fallon disagrees with the Bush administration on whether to take military action against Iran for failing to stop its nuclear program.

Admiral Fallon denied that his opinion differs from the president's, but he said the perception of discord makes it difficult for him to serve effectively.

The Navy admiral is in charge of managing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. military engagement throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and East Africa.

At the Pentagon Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called "ridiculous" the notion that Fallon's resignation signals the Bush administration is preparing to go to war with Iran. Gates said the admiral made the decision to step down on his own.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, expressed concern that the departure is an example that dissenting opinion is not welcome in the Bush administration.

Admiral Fallon's resignation takes effect March 31, marking the end of more than four decades of service. He will be replaced temporarily by his deputy, Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP.

(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.

Harry Reid Is Shameful And A Disgrace!

I'm not going to take a lot of your time this morning. Not because I couldn't go on and on about this, I could. But it's not necessary. It's simple. Let's start with this:

If you should run into Hillary or Barack on the campaign trail ask them the following question:

If you become President of the United States of America, making your running mate the constitutional president of the US Senate, will you demand that the current Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, be replaced immediately?

It's a critical question. Harry Reid is, to put it mildly, the worst, most ineffective, mealy-mouth, wimp to lead the US Senate in my adult life time. And he proved that again this week when he allowed the administration's bill granting immunity to the telecoms to pass the Senate.

In effect what Reid did by allowing that legislation to pass is to ratify Richard Nixon's stated belief that, "if the President does it it's not illegal."

Fortunately the House, under Nancy Pelosi's leadership, showed more backbone than Reid and his Senate colleagues by refusing to ratify the Senate's version giving the telecom's a get-out-jail free card for aiding and abetting the administration's illegal wiretapping. Instead the House shelved the matter allowing the current authority to lapse this Saturday and took two weeks off.

This morning President Bush was on TV whining that refusing to grant the telecoms immunity will mean "it will be harder for us to get companies to cooperate with us in protecting you."

The statement is correct, though worded incorrectly. The correct way to put it is that, failing to provide telecoms protection from lawsuits will, "make it harder for us to get companies cooperate with us to protect you by illegally spying on you."

To which I say, good. It should make it harder, just as the threat of lawsuits make it's harder for companies to screw consumers, which many companies would be delighted to do if they figured they could get away with it. But also, and more importantly, the threat of lawsuits will force the telecoms to do a basic cost/benefit analysis before they pull a stunt like this again. That analysis would go something like this:

- By helping the government spy on Americans the govenment owes us one the next time we want something from the government, be it legislation or regulatory favors.

- But, without immunity if the courts later find we broke the law it could cost of billions of dollars in damages, more than wiping out any gains we might garner by cooperating.

(Do notice that the top three recipients of telecom money are also the top three candidates for President -- Here)

What Harry Reid did last week was to assure that the telecoms would only see upside and no downside when faced with any similar requests from this or any other administration in the future.

The reason this is so important is that the nexus of big government and big business must always be viewed with the greatest attention and suspicion. If history has taught us anything it's that it is at that nexus where seeds of corporate fascism geminate, and if allowed to grow, thrive.

Those seeds took root in a startlingly aggressive way under this administration. Not only did major telecom companies comply with the administration's request for assistance in its illegal warrantless wiretapping, but they did so with frightening gusto, efficiency and enthusiasm.

AT&T built warrantless wiretap rooms for the NSA

AT&T has asked a court to suppress documents leaked to the Electronic Frontier Foundation by an ex-employee detailing how the company indiscriminately diverted domestic and international traffic to the National Security Agency for warrantless wiretapping:

AT&T built a secret room in its San Francisco switching station that funnels internet traffic data from AT&T Worldnet dialup customers and traffic from AT&T's massive internet backbone to the NSA, according to a statement from Klein.

Klein's duties included connecting new fiber-optic circuits to that room, which housed data-mining equipment built by a company called Narus, according to his statement.

Narus' promotional materials boast that its equipment can scan billions of bits of internet traffic per second, including analyzing the contents of e-mails and e-mail attachments and even allowing playback of internet phone calls.

Eventually Klein blew the whistle saying that, "We all remember Big Brother, and suddenly there I was hooking everyone up to the Big Brother Machine."

Harry Reid failed us and he violated his oath of office, the oath he took to "preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States of America from enemies foreign or domestic."

So, ask the two Democratic candidates if they would push to replace Reid immediately upon taking their oath of office.



(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.

Reid Pulls FISA Bill, After Dodd Begins His Filinuster

The Democrats could not possibly find a worse leader for the Senate than Harry Reid. The man is either a crook or a coward or both. I think we haver all had enough of both these past years.

The American people need to be ready to take back our country, not only from the likes of the Bushites, but from the cowardly, crooked congress as well. We look to congress to do their job. They don't. We will, and they are not going to like it very much when that happens.

The headline says it all…threatened with a filibuster and after eight hours of angry, eloquent debate on the vileness of supporting warrantless wiretapping and amnesty for lawbreaking telecom companies, Harry Reid has pulled the FISA reauthorization from the calendar for this Congressional session.

Make no mistake–this bill will be back next year. Protection for AT&T and Verizon is too high a priority for Bush, Mike McConnell, and the other enablers like Harry Reid. But the battlefield will be very different next time around. Next time the momentum will be on the side of Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, the ten Democratic Senators who voted against cloture, the many committed bloggers and activists who rallied the forces, and the thousands of committed Americans who wrote, sent e-mails, signed petitions, and made phone calls to stop this travesty of justice from becoming law.

Plus, Clinton, Obama, and Biden–all of whom pledged to support Dodd–will have seen how much of a bounce this gave him, and will want a piece of that action. If even one of them joins the next filibuster, that will mess up the Senatorial calendar something fierce and screw Reid’s day. Imagine how much fun it’ll be to have a superhuman orator like Barack Obama up there railing against telecom immunity, then imagine being Harry Reid at that moment. Wouldn’t want to be that guy.

Chris Dodd pledged to give his last breath–to speak until he could speak no longer–to remind a corrupt, complacent Congress that America believes in the rule of law, in due process, in accountability for crimes committed, and in the idea that we do not adopt the tactics of our foes to beat them. We believe in the Constitution. We believe that our country has to stand for something better. And he came through.

It’s not just him, though. It’s Matt Browner-Hamlin and Tim Tagaris from Dodd’s team. It’s the peerless Glenn Greenwald and Christy Hardin Smith, who were on this train from the beginning. It’s the literally tens–hundreds of thousands of people who wrote, sent e-mails, called, faxed, and made their voices heard. It’s the 23-year-old new voter who raged eloquently and fiercely against an indolent, failing, crippled government that abets elite privilege and tries to squash dissent. In other words, it’s you and I.

The “300″ motif I keep using is cliche, yes, but accurate. Just like the Spartans (and a few thousand Greeks) holding the line against the hordes of Darius because of a carefully chosen battleground, we held back a vastly superior force, emboldened by a worthless media and millions of lobby dollars. There will most certainly be a next round, and we may not win.

But each and every time they bring this back, we’ll be there to fight. And we’ll make sure they know how we feel, again and again.

(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.

Is Petraeus Drinking The Kool-aid

June 15, 2007
Sen. Reid Is Right About Gen. Petraeus (Brent Budowsky)
@ 1:26 pm

In a democracy it is extremely unhealthy to put any commander in the position of being the de facto commander in chief for credibility.

It is true, the president’s credibility is in tatters with a majority of the American people and world opinion doubting the truthfulness of his word. No war policy can be sustained when an overwhelming majority of the nation has lost confidence in the war and in the integrity of the commander in chief.

This is not merely obvious, or my opinion. This is what Republicans have told the president and
what the strong majority of Senators and members of the House, in both parties, believe.

No general should be asked to substitute his name for credibility that can only be held by the commander in chief. No general should be used as a political shield, a political football, a public relations talking point, or a lobbyist in chief.

This is Gen. Petraeus’s third major task in Iraq. In his first task he did a spectacularjob in the aftermath of the first stage of war, when he brought Iraqis together politically within his areas of command. In his second task he was in charge of training the Iraqi military and did a mediocre to poor job.

Regarding what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said about Gen. Peter Pace: The problem with Pace was not his ability as a military leader, but his lack of political courage in speaking out when he knew that policies were wrong.

Gen. Pace was almost universally called “Perfect Peter” throughout the Pentagon andthe command structure. He was seen, very correctly, virtually universally, as constantlyallowing bureaucratic politics and career advancement to trump the courage to speaktruth to power.
Everyone should be clear about one thing.

When the president overruled his military leadership and ordered the escalation:
First, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously advised against the surge.
Second, the Iraq commanders at the time equally strongly opposed the surge.
Third, as Gen. Abizaid, then the highest ranking commander in the region, testified: He sought the opinion of battlefield level commanders throughout Iraq and they allopposed the escalation.

From the beginning of this war, the president has ignored and overruled much of the most important advice given by the commanders, while he publicly claimed to be the “commander guy,” which was flat out untrue, and a major reason the president’s credibility is in tatters.

Think about this: Gen. Sheehan was offered the job of “Iraq Czar” and flat out turned it down, then publicly attacked both the policy and the manner in which the policy was made and managed by the president.

Think about this: Gen. Lute was named as the “Iraq Czar” and when he was interviewed for the post, and when his appointment was publicly announced, he madeit clear he had joined the others in opposing the surge.

Ask yourself this: Could the president not find one general or admiral for the post who has supported the escalation? What does this suggest? What it suggests is obvious, and true.

Many have reacted to Reid’s remarks, but few have actually understood what he was saying and very few have read the June 13 USA Today story that prompted his warning.

Everyone should read that story closely. In the story, Petraeus painted an almost rhapsodic portrait of the progress he suggested was being made by the surge.

Granted, in other statements Petraeus has been far more direct about the problems. Granted, as all of us who deal with the press know, statements can be taken out of context.

But read the story. It is genuinely alarming because the portrait Gen. Petraeus paints is dangerously out of touch with the reality on the ground in Baghdad. He makes Baghdad appear like a Fourth of July picnic, with soccer balls in green grass parks, and friendly markets with happy faces.

There are places in Baghdad where this is true, but they are few and far between, andthe portrait from Petraeus in this story is far out of touch with the ugly reality in Iraq. Had he given that portrait in testimony before the Congress it would have been a disaster.

Sen. Reid was firing a cannon across the bow of the president to stop the talking points and spin, to end the public relations hype and happy talk of war. Reid was warning that our country has paid a heavy price for the distortions, misrepresentations, falsehoods and lies that have far too often surrounded this war and led us to the crisis today.

The USA Today story, following the sorry history of this war, creates significant doubt that Gen. Petraeus will call it straight in September.

Harry Reid leveled a powerful and important warning and was absolutely right in doing so.
Petraeus’s comments in the story build on doubts that exist for more than two-thirdsof the American people. He should take every opportunity, starting today, to put those doubts to rest. He must speak with total candor and honesty about the good, the bad and the ugly in Iraq today.

If Gen. Petraeus does this, he will well serve the president, the troops, the nationand the truth in what must not become a war without end, pushed by a politics without truth.

(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.