Death in a whorehouse

By: Shahin

Shahin_articles@hotmail.com

UK, 23 November 2005.

"Death in a whorehouse" came to mind after reading Conal Urquhart’s article in the Guardian about the Amman bombings on 9 November 2005 (below):

Saturday November 12, 2005

The Guardian
“The bars (in Amman) are filled with tattooed ex-soldiers, young former officers and eastern European prostitutes. The men talk of the Iraq where they work for private security firms, and the women try to offer them an expensive escape.”
War in Iraq has brought an influx of Western visitors and investment to Jordan. Prostitution has become more common... Amman even has a lap-dancing bar... One of the few establishments where eastern European prostitutes could be seen in public was the basement nightclub of the Grand Hyatt hotel.”

The Grand Hyatt Hotel was one of the places which were bombed. So, those so-called Muslim hotel patrons who were either blown up or crushed to death in those crusader inns will probably find themselves on the Day of Judgement in the unenviable position of having to explain to the Almighty why they met their end in a crusader whorehouse. Not just any old whorehouse but one owned by Americans, which means funding the crusade.

Conal Urquhart reported earlier in the Guardian (10 November 2005), “it (Jordan) has become a service centre for organisations and businesses involved in the occupation (of Iraq). The nightclub of the Grand Hyatt was a popular meeting place for east European prostitutes and foreign workers.”

The Mujahideen (Islamic fighters) were not far wrong when an Al-Qaida statement posted on the Internet described the three hotels that were attacked as "filthy entertainment centres for the traitors and apostates of the umma [the Muslim world] and a safe haven for the infidel intelligence services".

Basically, Jordanian King Abdullah the Second, or rather Queen Elizabeth of England’s Corgi dog, turned Jordan into a brothel for servicing the needs of Crusaders carrying out murder, looting and rape in Iraq. Nobody should be surprised that Crusader inns were targeted.

This brings me onto the question of the wedding party caught up in one of the hotel blasts. But first read what the Associated Press reported,
“Witnesses at the Grand Hyatt, which is a short distance from the Radisson (the venue of the said wedding reception) in central Amman, said a suicide bomber blew himself up close to the hotel's lobby and bar. An American businessman, who refused to give his name, told the Associated Press news agency: "Several of my friends have died."

Conclusion: These hotels were supplying alcohol without restrictions to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. They are centres for Crusaders to plan and carry out attacks on Iraq as well as venues for promoting prostitution.

messed up tired

was looking around at bloggers i've seen cruise by here yesterday, and one had a dipped oreo cookie discussion going on.

now thats what al-gore invented the internets for people, to talk about specialty cookies.

if the nutmeg hotline hadn't mentioned these cookies i would have completly forgoten that i saw a box a few days ago in a cravas near my desk.

i'm eating them now. yes all of them.

Its not fookun Saturday anymore

Yesterday I posted some garbled crap about my old router internets and computers. blogoogle decided it was Saturday still and hasn't changed the date I rebuke thee google. See if that does it.
there were a couple other posts from Sunday and Monday I think misdated, to avoid further embarrassment of only posting on groundhog Saturday I deleted some crap.

now back to the boring program. Last night I thought I was a genius, then of course I wasn't. In the flick of a switch the karma policia got me back to earth as I know it. The computer hard drive switch I thought was gold turned south fast. It would only boot in safe mode. It froze up at normal boot at a bios error. The dumbass I am couldn't figure out that you can't load a giant hard drive on a wood burning mother boards bios. Am I makin any sense?/ well fo if you can't follow along.
about midnight I figured it out in my head and then went to bed. I got home replaced the h/d with original, asked a friend to come over and help set up router, then proceeded to hook it up on my own. I was sitting in front of second machine when shit started blinking buzzing and asking me if I wanted to update. I guess the routed connection is working we now have two shared internets in our house after at least 4 years of me "working on it"
my wife thanks me for finally getting this done. I tell her in no uncertain terms that these things cannot be rushed along. Its like making scotch whiskey aging is key here and don't expect these wires down the hall to disappear anytime soon.......

4 year old router.

That's right I've had a router in a box for 4 years and never hooked up another connection. The last time I tried it I broke out in a bad sweat after I lost my main connection for hours and had to call Kuala Lumpur to get it back.

this attempt I have my own connection working on first try and all the bells and lights are ringing on the router. But I've hit a snag with the other computer. I have an old IBM 233 that is ok in a pinch if I manage to blow up my main machine while innocently playing on the internet, it has/had a 3 gb hd hardly enough to get a chat program to work and look at nekkid pictures. So I took a 60gb h/d I had in another mobo blowd up machine installed. I turned it on and lo and behold it booted up three times. Then the gawds knIw i was close to an internet connection for "those people" so its decided not boot past some "windows is installing hardware error" and freezes up.. I can;t even get it now to boot up in safe mode. I'll work on it some more tonight, whine about it to any body that will listen, and beg several people to help me fix it. If that doesn't work I'll try the other 233 HP that I found in the church dumpster two years ago, that also worked last time I used it as a back up.

Saturday I took the cheap assed 80.00 digital camera back it sucked monkee balls and besides that the struction manual wasn't good enough at holding my attention. It was 80.00 worth of cheap shit, I need to if I'm going to camera blog crap for both of you viewers, plunge in and buy a real camera............

Rakintsanjänkä sinisessä - Rakitsanjanka mire in blue

Marraskuun - alkavan kaamoksen - väri on sininen, kuten tässä Rakitsanjängältä otetussa kuvassa. Rakitsanjänkä on satulassa Värriötuntureiden ja Rakitsanvaaran välissä. Satulasuolta laskee kaksi puroa vastakkaisiin suuntaan: pohjoisen puro Kuntasjokeen ja eteläinen puro Hirvasjokeen.

The colour of November is blue, except short moments on clear sky when the Sun still shines. Rakitsanjanka mire - here in blue - is a wetland in the saddle between Varrio fells and Rakitsa hill. The small creeks flow to opposite sites from the saddle mire. One creek is flowing to north, to Kuntas river. The other creek is flowing to south, to Hirvas river.

Test camera blog 1

this creature just came inside from running wild in the little snow fall we had this morning.

if he insists on sitting there he will start on fire, accidently







before












after
mandarine orange pancakes with raspberry jam and a blurrr

Should be on strike

If I was a European today would prolly be some kinda fake strike day just to piss off the man and an excuse to drink beer. But I aint so I won't.

was going to get firewood today but I woke up late(7:45am)and its snowing, why risk it if if I don't have to on black Friday. So me and the girl went up to radio shack, I had her call first to see if what I wanted was still there second to see how many rioters were there. The coast was clear they said, and there were two cameras left. No time to waste I said as we rushed out the door. Its maybe 4 blocks away so we made it as the last 5 mega pixel lcd display cams where handed out. One to a guy ahead of us and one to us.
I never had a LCD display camera before for my PC. I have binocular cams spy cams regular cams but never had one you could view your shot after you took it on a screen. This is very cheap unit at 80.00 hell I payed that for my binocular cam. Hardly ever use it but yah know I hadda have it in case I ever went to the beach at impa nema.
this little thing does stills and video like my logitech. I'm hoping the software is friendly with expee. The thing is fragile though you don't get armor reinforcing for 80.00 i guess. They kids have had it in the basement for an hour now its prolly broken already. Soon I do some test pics for both my blog viewers enjoy.....

SCALIA GIVES FRANKEN SOME AIR

AL Franken, the former "Saturday Night Live" star, found out the hard way not to mess with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who chided Franken as if he were a delinquent schoolboy at Time Warner Center on Monday night.

Scalia, following in the footsteps of Karl Rove and Bill Clinton, was the guest at Conversations on the Circle, a series of one-on-one interviews with outgoing Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine.

The A-list crowd included Michael Eisner, Jack Valenti, Mike Wallace, Tina Brown, Harry Evans and Stanley Pottinger. Scalia, a conservative who believes in a strict reading of the Constitution, is the scourge of liberal Democrats because he led the court's 5-4 majority in voting to stop the vote recount in Florida in 2000.

When Pearlstine opened the floor for Q&A, Franken stood up in the back row and started talking about "judicial demeanor" and asking "hypothetically" about whether a judge should recuse himself if he had gone duck-hunting or flown in a private jet with a party in a case before his court.

Franken was clumsily referring to the fact that Scalia had gone hunting and flying with Dick Cheney before the 2000 election.

First, Scalia lectured Franken, "Demeanor is the wrong word. You mean ethics." Then he explained, "Ethics is governed by tradition. It has never been the case where you recuse because of friendship."

Time Warner chairman Dick Parsons later told PAGE SIX: "Al was not quite ready for prime time." Franken was a "Not Ready for Prime Time Player" on "Saturday Night Live" long before he began hosting a radio show on Air America.

The confrontation with Scalia didn't seem to weaken Franken's interest in running for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota. Franken discussed his possible candidacy afterward at the cocktail reception overlooking Columbus Circle. "I think I got under his skin a little," Franken humbly told us.

Scalia had earlier explained why he voted to allow flag-burning, but not nude dancing, and why the 1964 N.Y. Times v. Sullivan decision — which said the press could not be held liable for wrongful reporting on public figures unless it was guilty of "actual malice" — was wrong. "I don't think that's what the founding fathers intended," Scalia said.

When Pearlstine noted that Scalia had been confirmed by the Senate 98-0, Scalia said, "The two missing guys were [Barry] Goldwater and Jack Garn," both of whom were on death's door. "Make it a hundred!"

A plague on both their houses

By Patrick Buchanan

11/23/05 -- -- Gen. William Odom has called the Iraq War the greatest strategic blunder in the history of the United States. Final returns are not yet in, but he may not be far off.

In invading Iraq, we attacked and occupied a country of 25 million that had not attacked us, did not threaten us, did not want war with us – to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Even if, as most believed, Saddam had chemical or biological weapons, there was no evidence he intended the suicidal use of such weapons on U.S. troops in Kuwait, or to hand them over to al-Qaida to use on America, risking massive retaliation. Saddam was never a suicide bomber. He was always a survivor.

After 9-11, we couldn't take the chance, countered the War Party. Nonsense. We take the chance every day with Iran and North Korea, far more powerful nations, as we did every day of the Cold War against a nuclear-armed Russia and China. They had missiles and WMD. But, like Saddam, they were deterred.

Yet President Bush, prodded by a cabal of neoconservatives who, for their own motives, had been plotting war on Iraq for years, invaded. History will hold him accountable for the consequences.

On the credit side, he liberated the Iraqis from a murderous tyrant. But the cost is high and rising: 17,000 U.S. dead and wounded – i.e., the eradication of an entire American division – $200 billion, the diversion of priceless assets from the fight against al-Qaida, rampant anti-Americanism in the Islamic world, the shattering of our alliances, the division of our nation, and the prospect of a U.S. defeat by Iraqi insurgents and terrorists.

Another cost must be added after a week in which Harry Reid and Co. accused President Bush of lying us into war, Republicans accused Democrats of cutting and running, and Rep. John Murtha accused Bush and Cheney of being chicken-hawks who dodged the draft in Vietnam.

Our leaders are behaving like the leaders of the late and unlamented French Third Republic.

But if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are responsible for the war and its consequences, so, too, are the potential Democratic nominees: Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, Biden and Bayh. In October 2002, because the country was cheering a commander in chief beating a war drum, they voted Bush a blank check to take us to war. In the fall of 2005, with the people souring on the war, they voted for a timetable to get out.

We were deceived, we were misled, we were lied to, they wail. One only awaits their explanation that they were brainwashed by a C student. The Democratic Party is a poodle of public opinion, unfit to lead the nation.

But if we were stampeded into this war, we must not let ourselves be stampeded out of Iraq by a Democratic Party in panic, scrambling to get out in front of its base. For the cost of retreat and defeat may be far more calamitous than the costs of the present war.

There are at present four exit strategies:

A. The John McCain strategy of sending 10,000 more U.S. troops, taking as long as needed to train the Iraqi army and staying as long as necessary to achieve victory.

B. The Bush strategy of "Stay the Course," with the present complement of forces staying as long as it takes to win.

C. The exit strategy envisioned in the bipartisan resolution in the Senate last week that passed with 79 votes, calling for Bush to give the Congress benchmarks of success, leading to withdrawal.

D. The Democratic option, supported by all but five Democratic senators, to set benchmarks and a timetable for getting out.

The McCain option is a non-starter, for it is non-credible. Adding 10,000 troops to the 160,000 there will not pacify a Sunni Triangle of 5 million. U.S. opposition to the war is near 60 percent. And if Bush refused to send the troops McCain has wanted for two years, he will not do so now that his support is evaporating. The failure to listen to Gen. Shinseki in 2002 was an irremediable blunder.

As for the Bush policy of "Stay the Course," with support for the war crumbling in Congress and the country and no light at the end of the tunnel, it is unsustainable. On the other hand, a House resolution, engineered by Republicans, calling for immediate withdrawal was backed by only three members. Cut and run is not an option.

However, there exists a bipartisan consensus for Iraqification – the transfer of political authority in Baghdad and responsibility for the war to the Iraqis. All that remains in dispute is the timetable.

As for the ugliness and acrimony of Washington, it reflects the rage, resentment and shame of men who know they made a horrible mistake, thousands have suffered and died for it, and worse may be yet to come. The truth is both parties failed America. What the Greatest Generation won, the baby boomers are frittering away.

© 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Thanksgiving tradition

My thanksgiving will be the same as it's been for years. I guess that makes it tradition. I'll be the last one ready to go. Ma will be kabitching at me to "come on". I'll be right there, I say. Then its off to a brother of hers house, I'll kabitch about driving all that way,(its 40 miles heh)I do it to get her goats and it does. I love saying shit in the car like "are we there yet" like 200 times
and "don't make me stop this car" I do it just to keep up all the fond memories of family travels.
we will be like the second family at the brothers house and have to wait like 2 hours before its eatin time. I wouldn't mind the time except I've fallen asleep prolly 4 times already and really aint up to eating sitting up by now. I'll endure I convince myself. I know at this point its only a matter of another 120 minutes and I'll be safely back home in my weekend underwear relaxing. There will be a call to order pie, depending on how much I've already eaten I might not have pie at this turn. Then as sure as clock work one of the brother inlaws that lives near my house will ask if its time to go yet, the wimins moan and kabitch that they just got here, but they know a few of us unsociables are leaving soon. We drive enough cars to this brothers house that groups can leave at different times and with different drivers and nobody is ever left behind.
we don't do much politics, we don't do family drunks. There is a little wine for the non-alergics. There is beer for the game. But we all can at least stand to be together for 3-4 hours and nobody leaves too ruffled. The food is always top notch and never run out.
the idea of that tradition in this America on this planet makes me, when I can truly think on it very thankful I'm alive and with the people that I dearly love and I believe inturn love me.

maybe next year all spout off on my sides traditions

Brent Scowcroft Talks Turkey Sibel Edmonds Fights Fascism

By John Stanton

The Sibel Edmonds v. Department of Justice saga continues as the year 2005 draws to a close. The only breaking news to come from the ongoing drama is the implication, published in Vanity Fair, that Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of US Representatives, was the recipient of campaign contributions and assorted bribes from the Turkish-American community. That another US politician is on the take comes as no surprise. But more on that later. Sibel’s story may have quietly died from the suffocating oppression of the US government had it not been for very recent revelations that the US sanctions and operates interrogation/torture facilities in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s and Vice President Dick Cheney’s New Europe (Poland, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, etc.). While the buzz is all around the Plame-Wilson-Libby-Woodward-Rove-Hadley affair, and the lies that got the US into Iraq again, the real news is that military and non-military torture chambers stretching from Mexico to Asia have become standard operating procedure for the US. Further, the response of official Washington to the torture expose was not disgust, but a call to prosecute the whistleblower that leaked the awful news.

Within the remarkable public revelation from the Washington Post and Human Rights Watch, is the imprimatur of Rumsfeld and Cheney—the two crusty Nixon Administration buddies—and perhaps the most ruthless and dangerous Americans ever to hold office in the corporate/government world. They and their disciples share the view that “conduct unbecoming” does not exist. No law, no boundary, no moral code, no amount of lives or an outdated parchments like the US Constitution and Bill of Rights will be a barrier as they push forward their foreign and domestic agenda for some of the US population, Turkey and Israel. They hide behind the veil of “the national security of the United States of America” and label Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information the data that would implicate them, not save a US soldier in a Humvee, or they slap a State’s Secret order on the likes of Sibel Edmonds mainly to protect balance sheets and business deals.

Chambers hotel update

the link is actually starting to look linkable

















we get to cover all that grey iron with double layer 5/8 gypsum w00fookunh000



















from the roof of procolor looking northeast















this is south 5th floor that we will be infilling with cold formed steel in about two weeks. This edge is up from street I think 65' and I'm still working out how we will get up to this area to sheet it, and finish the upper portion around that end fucking truss. If you sight up from the slab edge to the truss you can see what I mean, some genius has put my 6" wall right through this truss up to the underside of the deck that's not there yet. But its an interesting idea, that's not really feasible. But I will figure it out soon


















roof steel started 5th floor procolor

blogger strike tuesday

White House said it was "highly unlikely" that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.

of course zarqawi wasn't captured or killed in any recent operations in iraq or any place else on the planet. his usefulness as a boogie man "name brand" hasn't wore out yet. you will have to put up with this marketing gimick a little longer untill they discover another "wonder thug" to market , maybe after christmas....


Earlier Monday, U.S. forces left a house in the northern city of Mosul where eight suspected al-Qaeda members died in a weekend gunfight, and the White House said it was "highly unlikely" that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.
During the intense gunbattle with suspected al-Qaeda members in Mosul on Saturday, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were wounded, the U.S. military said.
On Saturday, police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaeda operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the two-story house.
However, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Sunday that reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible."
"I don't think we got him," said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, answering questions from reporters about whether al-Zarqawi had been killed in Mosul. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said there was "no indication" the terror leader had been killed.
U.S. forces said they nearly caught him in a February 2005 raid that recovered his computer.

The Rendon Group: Proof The Administration Manipulated Intelligence

The Rendon Group: Proof The Administration Manipulated Intelligence

From “Saddam Hussein’s Development of Weapons of Mass Destruction” [White House website]:

In 2001, an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said he had visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. … Mr. Saeed said Iraq used companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of the United Nations - and then secretly used the equipment for their weapons programs.

None of al-Haideri’s claims were true. Today’s Rolling Stone reveals that the administration’s use of al-Haideri’s lies to justify the Iraq war were “the product of a clandestine operation…that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling a war.”

At the center of this operation was John Rendon and The Rendon Group, “a controversial, secretive firm that has been criticized as ineffective and too expensive,” paid more than $56 million by the government since the 9/11 attacks. (Taxpayers are paying Rendon himself $311.26/hour.)

The Rendon Group personally set up the Iraqi National Congress and helped install Ahmad Chalabi as leader, whose main goal — “pressure the United States to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein” — Rendon helped facilitate. Pentagon documents show that Rendon has the highest level of government clearance (above Top Secret), which helped it with its INC work — “a worldwide media blitz designed to turn Hussein…into the greatest threat to world peace.”

While the White House continues to insist it did not manipulate intelligence before the Iraq war, it sure seems that it hired John Rendon and his group to do just that.

All of the Bush administration's junkyard dogs are out on the attack,

Unforgivable
By Charley Reese

11/21/05 "Lew Rockwell" -- -- All of the Bush administration's junkyard dogs are out on the attack, feigning righteous indignation that anyone would suggest that they manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people.
Of course, that is exactly what they did, and a majority of Americans are finally catching on. That doesn't absolve Congress from lazily going along and giving the president the OK to get American boys killed. The question is, Did the president do it deliberately, or was he just so intent on going to war that his mind automatically cherry-picked the conflicting information? We might never know.
The vice president made multiple trips to the CIA headquarters to "talk" to the analysts. When one veteran CIA man was asked if that was unusual, he said: "No, it's not unusual. It's unique. I've been here 28 years, and it's the first time."
Let me give you a quote from Tom Friedman, columnist for The New York Times. He's quoted by Scott McConnell in an article that appears in the American Conservative magazine:
"It's the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. ... I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened," Friedman said. Perhaps that's true. After all, we do live in a media world.
The president is calling his Democratic critics revisionists. Well, the Democrats are not trying to rewrite history; they're just trying to get the president to fess up that he played fast and loose with the truth.
What the war-sellers did was not make stuff up out of whole cloth; they just distorted the evidence and ignored all the doubts the intelligence community was expressing. Aluminum tubes, for example, were cited as evidence of Iraq's nuclear program, but the president and his crowd knew that (1) the State Department intelligence people didn't believe they were nuclear-related; and (2) the U.N. nuclear experts said they definitely were not suitable for nuclear work.
But Vice President Dick Cheney goes on national television and says, grim-faced, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has reconstituted his nuclear-weapons program and is amassing weapons of mass destruction," etc. and so forth.
They are telling still another whopper when they claim that "everyone agreed there were weapons." No, the French, Russians, Chinese and Germans didn't agree. That's why they refused to give Bush the war resolution he and his British lap dog lobbied so hard to get.
When German intelligence told the Bush administration they thought one of the so-called defectors was a loony, the administration ignored German intelligence and passed the defector's information on as fact. The administration set up a special organization in the Defense Department to short-circuit both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. An Air Force colonel who worked in that office has blown the whistle on the operation.
It's a bad thing to lie about anything. It's bad to lie under oath. It's bad to have sex in the Oval Office. But, in a rational society, it ought to be considered unforgivable to mislead the American people into a war. More than 2,000 young Americans have died in the springtime of their lives, and another 13,000 will carry wounds and scars into what's left of their futures.
And for what? Let's review: There is no doubt Saddam Hussein was not trying to build nuclear weapons; he did not possess and was not amassing any other weapons of mass destruction; he had no connection with al-Qaida and was not involved in the attacks against New York and Washington. What he was was a half-mad bloody tyrant writing romance novels and building palaces and monuments to himself. He was not a threat to the U.S.
© 2005 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

“we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”

Once the war was over and it became evident that U.S. troops occupying Iraq were unlikely to find any banned weapons, Wolfowitz calmly changed his tune and took to calling the WMDs a “secondary issue.” Returning from a visit to Iraq in July 2003, he thus said “I’m not concerned about weapons of mass destruction, I’m concerned about getting Iraq on its feet.” He further claimed that Iraqis themselves had little concern about the “historical” issue of weapons. Then came Wolfowitz’s now famous admission (see Vanity Fair, July 2003) that for bureaucratic reasons “we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.” This was a bombshell that had the refreshing quality of truthfulness. Wolfowitz’s debonair arrogance was breathtaking, and, at the level of pragmatic policy-making, apparently irrational: By admitting that he and his colleagues had taken everyone for a ride he ensured that the exercise could not be repeated as easily.

Pentagon officials have insisted that phosphorus munitions are legal since they aren’t technically “chemical weapons.”

To downplay the political impact of revelations that U.S. forces used deadly white phosphorus rounds against Iraqi insurgents in Falluja last year, Pentagon officials have insisted that phosphorus munitions are legal since they aren’t technically “chemical weapons.”The media have helped them. For instance, the New York Times ran a piece today on the phosphorus controversy. On at least three occasions, the Times emphasizes that the phosphorus rounds are “incendiary muntions” that have been “incorrectly called chemical weapons.”
But the distinction is a minor one, and arguably political in nature. A formerly classified 1995 Pentagon intelligence document titled “Possible Use of Phosphorous Chemical” describes the use of white phosphorus by Saddam Hussein on Kurdish fighters:
IRAQ HAS POSSIBLY EMPLOYED PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST THE KURDISH POPULATION IN AREAS ALONG THE IRAQI-TURKISH-IRANIAN BORDERS. […]
IN LATE FEBRUARY 1991, FOLLOWING THE COALITION FORCES’ OVERWHELMING VICTORY OVER IRAQ, KURDISH REBELS STEPPED UP THEIR STRUGGLE AGAINST IRAQI FORCES IN NORTHERN IRAQ. DURING THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN THAT FOLLOWED THE KURDISH UPRISING, IRAQI FORCES LOYAL TO PRESIDENT SADDAM ((HUSSEIN)) MAY HAVE POSSIBLY USED WHITE PHOSPHOROUS (WP) CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST KURDISH REBELS AND THE POPULACE IN ERBIL (GEOCOORD:3412N/04401E) (VICINITY OF IRANIAN BORDER) AND DOHUK (GEOCOORD:3652N/04301E) (VICINITY OF IRAQI BORDER) PROVINCES, IRAQ.
In other words, the Pentagon does refer to white phosphorus rounds as chemical weapons — at least if they’re used by our enemies.
The real point here goes beyond the Pentagon’s legalistic parsings. The use of white phosphorus against enemy fighters is a “terribly ill-conceived method,” demonstrating an Army interested “only in the immediate tactical gain and its felicitous shake and bake fun.” And the dishonest efforts by Bush administration officials to deny and downplay that use only further undermines U.S. credibility abroad.
To paraphrase President Bush, this isn’t a question about what is legal, it’s about what is right.

dinner at 5

Kuu nousee huurteisten koivujen takaa - Moon is rising behind frozen dew covered birches

Tämän, Värriö I:n itälaidalta Nuorttitunturin suuntaan otetun kuvan ottajan on syytä nöyränä tunnustaa, että kuvakulman ja kuvan otsikon taustalla on Kittilän suuren maalarin Reidar Särestöniemen samanniminen taulu. Digikuva on silti vain kalpea aavistus tunnelmasta, jonka Särestöniemi tauluunsa maalasi.


Its is fair to humbly admit that the model behind the scope and title of this photo is the painting of the famous painter Mr Reidar Sarestoniemi from Kittila, Finnish Lapland. The digital photo, taken from the eastern side of Varrio I fell, towards Nuorttitunturi fell, has however only a meager glimpse of the magic feeling of the moon rise that Mr. Sarestoniemi managed to create in his extraordinary painting.

How many deferments does it take to become a vice president

FIVE DEFERMENTS:
1st deferment: Cheney enrolled in Casper Community College in January 1963 -- he turned 22 that month -- and sought his first student deferment on March 20.

2nd deferment: (student), after transferring to the University of Wyoming on July 23, 1963.

3rd deferment:(student)on Oct. 14, 1964.

4th deferment: attended graduate school at the University of Wyoming on Nov. 1, 1965.

5th deferment: On Oct. 6, 1965, the Selective Service lifted its ban against drafting married men who had no children. Nine months and two days later, Cheney had his first daughter. Cheney applied for 3-A status, the ''hardship''exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents. It was granted.

Published: May 1, 2004, New York Times

Congress passes pay raise, little else

By David Espo
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Congress helped itself to a $3,100 pay raise Friday, then postponed work on bills to curb spending on social programs and cut taxes in favor of a two-week vacation.
In the final hours of a tumultuous week in the Capitol, Democrats erupted in fury when House Republican leaders maneuvered toward a politically-charged vote, and swift rejection, of one war critic's call to withdraw troops from Iraq.
"You guys are pathetic - pathetic," Massachusetts Rep. Martin Meehan yelled across a noisy hall at Republicans.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said Republicans want to "make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... A lot of people say: Look, this is a tough time, we just ought to pull out and leave. We pull out and leave, we strand an effort to make sure that we can tamp down terrorism."
GOP aides conceded the maneuver was designed to put Democrats in a political squeeze - voting for withdrawal and exposing themselves to attacks from the White House, or voting against it and risking the anger of voters that polls show want an end to the conflict.
Democrats angrily attacked the GOP move. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., called the measure "a piece of garbage" and an attack on Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated veteran and respected voice on military matters.
On another major issue, a renewal of the Patriot Act remained in limbo as an unlikely coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans sought curbs on the powers given law enforcement in the troubled first days after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Both the House and Senate were in session after midnight Thursday, working on the tax- and deficit-cutting bills at the heart of the GOP agenda.
"What it does is start to turn down the escalating costs ... for our children and our grandchildren. One of the things that we cannot leave to that next generation is a huge deficit that they can't afford," Hastert said after enactment of a $50 billion deficit-reduction bill.
Democrats dissented, with one eye on the 2006 elections.
Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California said: "The Republicans are taking food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to America's wealthiest. This is not a statement of America's values."
"Democrats believe that together, America can do better," she said.
The cost-of-living increase for members of Congress, which will put pay for the rank and file at an estimated $165,200 a year, marked a brief truce in the pitched political battles that have flared in recent weeks on the war and domestic issues.
Lawmakers automatically receive a cost-of-living increase each year unless Congress votes to block it.
By tradition, critics have tried to block increases by attaching a provision to the legislation that provides funding for the Treasury Department. One such attempt succeeded in the Senate earlier in the year, but the provision was omitted from the compromise measure moved toward final approval.
The overall bill provided $140 billion for transportation, housing and other programs. It cleared the House on a vote of 392-31.
Senate passage was by voice vote, although final passage was delayed when an unexplained technical difficulty required a revote in the House.
Pay-raise harmony aside, Republicans spent the day celebrating a party-line vote in which the House cleared legislation to reduce deficits by $50 billion over five years. The vote was 217-215, with all the Democrats voting in opposition, along with 14 GOP rebels.
Acting Majority Leader Roy Blunt of Missouri said Republicans would make their tax-cut bill the top item on the agenda when lawmakers return to the Capitol in December.

House votes to cut $700 mln in food stamps

let em eat cake, but not free cake for poor jake

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Friday to cut $700 million from the food stamp program, despite objections from antihunger groups complaining that estimates show some 235,000 people would lose benefits.
The House bill, which also trimmed other social programs for the poor in an effort to reduce federal spending by $50 billion, was narrowly approved 217-215.
House and Senate negotiators now must write a final, compromise version of legislation to pare federal spending over five years. The Senate did not touch food stamps in its version of a $35 billion budget-cutting bill.
Food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, help poor people buy food. Some 25.8 million Americans received food stamps in a program run by the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Saxby Chambliss said through a spokesman that he was aiming for "zero" cuts in food stamps during talks with the House. As a committee chairman, the Georgia Republican would be a senior negotiator.
The final bill should abandon proposals to cut food stamps, urged Ellen Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center. "In nutrition, the Senate did the right thing," she said.
Bread for the World, another antihunger group, said the prospect of food stamp cuts "will make Thanksgiving bleaker for hundreds of thousands of hard-working families." It pointed to government estimates that 38.2 million Americans live in "food insecure" households that have trouble buying enough food.
House Republican leaders say the cuts are only a sliver of food stamp spending that runs more than $35 billion a year. Earlier this week, House Majority Leader Roy Blunt said the cuts would focus the program on "the people you intended to help instead of just adding on at the edges."
In a statement, the White House said it supported the House "efforts to narrow overly broad exemptions from the food stamp program's eligibility limits." President (George W.) Bush proposed restrictions in February that are similar to the House-approved steps.
Under the House plan, roughly 165,000 people now automatically enrolled in food stamps when they get assistance from welfare programs would lose food stamps. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said these were mostly working families with children.
States would have the option to continue offering free school lunches to families cut off of food stamps. The Center on Budget said it was unlikely all states would do so.
The House proposal also would require 70,000 legal immigrants in most cases to wait seven years to become eligible for food stamps, rather than the current five years. That brings the total number of people affected by the plan to 235,000.

Whereas on December 5, 1945, the 5 Avenger torpedo bombers of Flight 19,

Anything I suppose to make it look like congress cares about the military,
albeit a 60 year old story.

do they waste time on things like this because they can,and there is no knowledgeable electorate around to throw out these mismanagers?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.RES.500:


At about 2:10 p.m. on the afternoon of 5 December 1945, Flight 19, consisting of five TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers departed from the U. S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on an authorized advanced overwater navigational training flight. They were to execute navigation problem No. 1, which is as follows: (1) depart 26 degrees 03 minutes north and 80 degrees 07 minutes west and fly 091 degrees (T) distance 56 miles to Hen and Chickens Shoals to conduct low level bombing, after bombing continue on course 091 degrees (T) for 67 miles, (2) fly course 346 degrees (T) distance 73 miles and (3) fly course 241 degrees (T) distance 120 miles, then returning to U. S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
In charge of the flight was a senior qualified flight instructor, piloting one of the planes. The other planes were piloted by qualified pilots with between 350 and 400 hours flight time of which at least 55 was in TBM type aircraft. The weather over the area covered by the track of the navigational problem consisted of scattered rain showers with a ceiling of 2500 feet within the showers and unlimited outside the showers, visibility of 6-8 miles in the showers, 10-12 otherwise. Surface winds were 20 knots with gusts to 31 knots. The sea was moderate to rough. The general weather conditions were considered average for training flights of this nature except within showers.

GOP Proposes, Engineers Defeat Own Iraq Resolution

watched a house debate last night about a pull out from Iraq. Is was a "sense of the house" resolution nothing binding, nothing serious. I saw it as a huge grandstanding propaganda play. I have no idea how many people watched from around this country, but it really doesn't matter. To me it was a grandstanding maneuver that serves no one in the hinterlands. Maybe it makes some people feel good, there is a sense purpose for them when they stand up and lie about facts not in evidence on the house floor. Who knows their motivations.
there is another "sense of the congress" that I'm getting loud and clear, and that is that if the united states doesn't remain in a perpetual war with the rest of the planet there can be no peace or security here at home. As we have been repeatedly told warned admonished, " if we don't fight them there we will have to fight them on mainstreet u.s.a.". Just as the specter of "mushroom clouds over Cleveland" and the 20 minutes away attack by drones of death were foisted upon us here as a pretext to invading Iraq. The next series of conflicts will also be hyped by imaginary foes, imaginary weapons and misidentified attacks.
so as long as no car bombs are going off in every city in the u.s. I guess these righteous indignant bastards will have their way with the blood and treasure , not only of this nation but any country they deem evil enough for a bombing run and pre-emptive invasion.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican-controlled House spurned calls for an immediate pullout of troops from Iraq in a vote hastily arranged by the GOP that Democrats vociferously denounced as politically motivated.

"To cut and run would invite terrorism into our backyards, and no one wants to see troops fighting terrorism on American soil," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said Friday night after the House, as planned, rejected a GOP-written resolution for immediate withdrawal.

The vote, held as lawmakers rushed toward a two-week Thanksgiving break, was 403-3.

"I first heard about Al-Qaida while I was attending the Command and Staff course in Jordan....

November 18, 2005 -- More on Al Qaeda -- the database.
Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that "Al Qaeda" is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Courtesy of World Affairs, a journal based in New Delhi, WMR can bring you an important excerpt from an Apr.-Jun. 2004 article by Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence.

Global Eye: Body Politics

Four years ago, President George W. Bush quietly assumed dictatorial powers with a secret executive order granting himself the right to imprison anyone on earth indefinitely, without charges or trial or indictment or evidence, simply by declaring them an "enemy combatant," on his say-so alone. This week, the assemblage of bootlickers and bagmen that befoul the U.S. Senate voted to codify the core of this global autocracy under the pretense of curtailing it.
With great self-fluffing fanfare, the Senate passed two measures ostensibly designed to stem the flood of torture and tyranny issuing from the White House. But the twinned amendments to a military spending bill have the curious effect of canceling each other out: The anti-torture measure leaves Bush's tyranny intact, while the anti-tyranny measure will allow torture to continue unabated. This switcheroo, we are told by one of the scam's sponsors, "will re-establish moral high ground for the United States," The Washington Post reports.
But what can we actually see from this lofty moral promontory? We see that all foreign captives in Bush's worldwide gulag have now been stripped of the ancient human right of habeas corpus. They will not be allowed to challenge "any aspect of their detention" in court -- until they have already been tried and convicted by a "military tribunal" constituted under rules concocted arbitrarily by Bush and his minions. Only then, after years of incarceration without rights or legal protection, will they be given access to a single federal appeals court that can review their conviction -- subject to the usual "national security" restrictions on challenging evidence gathered by secret means from secret sources in secret places. Remarkably, the Supreme Court is expressly prohibited from any jurisdiction whatsoever over any aspect of gulag captivity, The Washington Post reports. And of course, Bush can simply skip the tribunal and keep anyone he pleases chained in legal limbo until they rot. Neither of the ballyhooed amendments affects this raw despotism.

Diebold Attempts to Evade Election Transparency Laws

EFF Goes to Court to Force E-voting Company to Comply With Strict New North Carolina Law
Raleigh, North Carolina - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is going to court in North Carolina to prevent Diebold Election Systems, Inc. from evading North Carolina law.
In a last-minute filing, e-voting equipment maker Diebold asked a North Carolina court to exempt it from tough new election requirements designed to ensure transparency in the state's elections. Diebold obtained an extraordinarily broad order, allowing it to avoid placing its source code in escrow with the state and identifying programmers who contributed to the code.
On behalf of North Carolina voter and election integrity advocate Joyce McCloy, EFF asked the court to force Diebold and every other North Carolina equipment vendor to comply with the law's requirements. A hearing on EFF's motion is set for Monday, November 28.
"The new law was passed for a reason: to ensure that the voters of North Carolina have confidence in the integrity and accuracy of their elections," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "In stark contrast to every other equipment vendor that placed a bid with the state, Diebold went to court complaining that it simply couldn't comply with the law. Diebold should spend its efforts developing a system that voters can trust, not asking a court to let it bypass legal requirements aimed at ensuring voting integrity."
On November 4, the day that voting equipment bids to the state were due, Diebold obtained a temporary restraining order from a North Carolina superior court, exempting it from criminal and civil liability that could have resulted from its bid. EFF, with the assistance from the North Carolina law firm of Twiggs, Beskind, Strickland & Rabenau, P.A., intervened in the case on behalf of McCloy, the founder of the North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting. In a brief filed Wednesday, EFF argued that Diebold had failed to show why it was unable to meet various new election law provisions requiring source code escrow and identification of programmers. North Carolina experienced one of the most serious malfunctions of e-voting systems in the 2004 presidential election when over 4,500 ballots were lost in a voting system provided by Diebold competitor UniLect Corp. Local officials were forced to re-run a portion of the election. The new transparency and integrity provisions of the North Carolina election code were passed in response to this and other documented malfunctions that have occurred across the country.
The North Carolina Board of Elections is scheduled to announce winning voting equipment vendors on December 1, 2005.
For the brief filed in the case: http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20051117_Diebold_v_NC_Motion.pdf

Yesterday, he was called a coward.

how much blood and treasure is spent before you are no longer considered a coward by these asswipes?




An Unlikely Lonesome Dove

By Dana Milbank

Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A06

In his 37 years in the military, John Murtha won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with a Combat "V," and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. As a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania for the past 31 years, he has been a fierce hawk, championing conflicts in Central America and the Persian Gulf.

Yesterday, he was called a coward.

After Murtha stunned the Capitol with a morning news conference calling for a pullout from Iraq because our "troops have done all they can," the denunciations came quickly.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) accused Murtha of delivering "the highest insult" to the troops. "We must not cower," Hastert lectured the old soldier.
Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) informed Murtha that his views "only embolden our enemies" and lamented that "Democrats undermine our troops in Iraq from the security of their Washington, D.C., offices."
At a rival news conference called four hours after Murtha's appearance, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), who like Hastert and Blunt does not have military service on his rsum, alerted the 73-year-old Murtha that "the American people are made of sterner stuff." And Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.) said the likes of Murtha want to take "the cowardly way out and say, 'We're going to surrender.' "

big oil big liars

surprised
hahahaha
if ya are you deserve what you get.

watch this from scareborough country via crooks and liars

"Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?"

"VP Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."

Cheney called Democrats "opportunists" who were peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods"

to gain political advantage while U.S. soldiers died in Iraq.


pot kettle black need i say more?

The Bush administration's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy."

does Wayne Madsen say these outrageous things just hoping he gets sued? And then expecting that a trial, would ensure with actual rules followed by all equally, so during a discovery phase he could find the real dirt on these ****smokers? Or that maybe he could get these perps on the stand for some direct testimony? Well shiite why else would he blather this stuff? the money, fame and fortune?


November 16, 2005 -- The Bush administration's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy." U.S. intelligence sources who served in Iraq report that after photos from Abu Ghraib prison surfaced of naked male prisoners who were forced by their U.S. guards to form human pyramids and masturbate, the U.S. military went into total denial mode. "It was a 'don't ask, don't tell policy,'" according to one intelligence source who was assigned to both the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca prisons. Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered the Pentagon to release to the American Civil Liberties Union 74 photos and 3 videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib in 2003. However, the Pentagon is resisting the judge's order.



U.S. intelligence sources: Sexually-explicit photos at Abu Ghraib special ordered by a homosexual and pedophile ring inside the Bush White House

There is good reason for the embarrassment of the Pentagon in the affair. The orders to take the sexually-oriented photos and videos, some of which involve teenage Iraqi boys and girls and sodomization by their guards, came directly from a pedophile and closeted male homosexual ring operating in the White House, according to the intelligence sources. Copies of the tapes and photos were sent directly to the White House for the entertainment of senior members of the Bush White House, including officials in the Vice President's office and the Executive Office of the President.

When the photos at Abu Ghraib became public, the senior military command structure in Iraq "went nuts," according to an individual who witnessed the cover-up of the affair. "They ordered an immediate policy of denial about details of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib," said the source. The source added that senior officers were disgusted that lower ranking guards were prosecuted and jailed when the order for the mistreatment came directly from the White House.

Historian Charged With Denying Holocaust

From Associated PressNovember 17, 2005 10:49 AM EST
VIENNA, Austria - British historian David Irving was arrested last week in southern Austria on a warrant accusing him of denying the Holocaust, the Interior Ministry said Thursday. Irving was arrested Nov. 11 in Styria province, said police Maj. Rudolf Golia, an Interior Ministry spokesman. He was transferred to a prison in Graz.
Irving was detained on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws that make Holocaust denial a crime, Golia said. The accusation stemmed from speeches Irving delivered that year in Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben.
Irving in the past has faced allegations of spreading anti-Semitic and racist ideas. He is the author of nearly 30 books, including "Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.
He remained in custody Thursday, the Austria Press Agency said. Calls to the Graz court went unanswered.
If formally charged, tried and convicted on the charge, Irving could face up to 20 years in prison, said Otto Schneider of the public prosecutor's office.
But he said it was unclear whether there were sufficient legal grounds to continue holding Irving on such a charge so many years after the alleged offense was committed. A decision was expected by the end of next week on how to proceed, Schneider said.
__________________________

from, mike rivero: Note that this article (once you get past the obvious smears and bias) admits that Irving doesn't deny the holocaust happened. He is questioning the extent. How big was it? And given that even the museum at Auschwitz has revised their estimated number of dead downward from four million to 1.5 million, and that Germany's largest Jewish Weekly, "Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung", AGREES with that number, it can be argued that nobody really does know the extent of Hitler's crimes.
Israel justifies its existence and extracts vast sums of money by "selling" the memory of the holocaust to the rest of the world. But when you buy a car, don't you look under the hood, kick the tires, and otherwise exercise due diligence to make certain you know what you are paying for? Yet in "buying" the history of WW2 Germany, those daring to open the hood are seized and thrown in jail.
If a used-car salesman acts like that, you have to ask if there is sawdust in that transmission.

Political murder? Secret service critic gunned down

"IF THE GOVERNMENT ORCHESTRATES TERROR IT SHOULD BE MORE OPEN ABOUT IT."
Among many examples, he wrote critically about the dutch secret service AIVD - (Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheids Dienst) - which apparently ran it's own fake 'al Qaida terror group' named Hofstadgroep. "That is their normal way of working", Seveke wrote in his last NRC article.
One of the AIVD's 'moles' is Ali B. in this 'moslem militant's group' - an agent provocateur who - according to Seveke and dutch TV Netwerk: "Supplied handgranates to 'a very dangerous group': handgranates he covertly had received from an agent of the secret service AIVD". The same handgranates wounded police officers later on when they stormed the safe house after the usual 'water damage'-tip of 'unknown'. To restore Ali B.'s 'cover' - and in a very unintelligent way trying still to bolster Ali B.'s status as 'terrorist' - the same AIVD agents a couple of days ago 'arrested' the man fast, when too many of those facts became known.

Bush Gang Swore Saddam Was Behind 9/11 In Lawsuit

By Evelyn Pringle
11/16/05 "ICH " -- -- Much to the dismay of President Bush, Americans can remember all on their own, without any coaching from Democrats, that in the run up to war in Iraq, it was top official from the administration who were making the claim that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden and that he was secretly involved to 9/11.
The fact that the administration's disinformation campaign was entirely successful is evidenced by an October 2004, Harris Poll, taken three weeks before the last presidential election, which reported that 62% of all voters, and 84% of those planning to vote for Bush, still believed that Saddam had ''strong links" to Al Qaeda, and that 41% of all voters, and 52% of Bush backers, believed that Saddam had ''helped plan and support the hijackers" who had attacked the country on 9/11.
As we now know, the basis for these allegations were false but the saddest part of the situation is that many Americans are just now beginning to realize that Bush knew the stories were false for more than a year when he cited them as justification for taking the country to war.
Documents recently declassified and made public show that the administration was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2002, that the tale about a trip to Prague by the leader of the 9/11 highjacker, Mohamed Atta, had come from an unreliable drunk, and that the story about Iraq training members of al Qaeda on the use of chemical and biological weapons was deliberately fabricated by an Iraqi defector.
A recent poll conducted by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, indicates that Americans recognize the significance of this revelation, where 57% of Americans now believe that Bush misled the country about prewar intelligence; a 52% majority of those polled say the war was not worth it; and by a 58% to 38% margin, Americans believe that Bush has not given good enough reasons to keep our troops in Iraq.
The debate over who was most responsible for convincing the nation that there was a link between Saddam and 9/11 will probably continue for years but an important piece of the puzzle can be found by zeroing in on a woman by the name of Laurie Mylroie, that most people have probably never heard.
Mylroie had been pushing for an all-out war against Iraq for a decade. In the run-up to the first Gulf war, Mylroie, along with the recently fired New York Times reporter Judith Miller, wrote a book titled, "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf."
The original Iraq war obsession originated at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think-tank that served as a home base for the many neocons who were rendered powerless during the Clinton years such as Richard Perle, who became chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, who moved into the number-2 position at the Pentagon, and Newt Gingrich and John Bolton, to name just a few.
In 2000, at a time when Dick Cheney sat on AEI's board, the group's publishing arm put out a book by Mylroie titled, "A Study in Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America."
In the author's acknowledgement section of the book, Mylroie thanked a familiar case of characters, including John Bolton and the staff of AEI, for their assistance. She also wrote thanks to Scooter Libby for his "generous and timely assistance."
Mylroie noted that Paul Wolfowitz was instrumental to her in writing the book and said, "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." She said that Wolfowitz's wife (at the time), had "fundamentally shaped the book."

Bush 'Unsigns' War Crimes Treaty

The Bush administration has pulled out of the treaty to establish the International Criminal Court -- a move that is both unprecedented and foolhardy.



The Bush administration Monday formally renounced its obligations as a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statute to establish an International Criminal Court (ICC). Critics say the decision to "unsign" the treaty will further damage the United States' reputation and isolate it from its allies.

"Driven by unfounded fears of phantom prosecutions, the United States has hit a new nadir of isolationism and exceptionalism," said William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International's U.S. section (AIUSA).

A simple three-sentence letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan formally ended U.S. participation in an agreement to create the world's first permanent tribunal to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and other crimes against humanity. In the letter, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, asserted that Washington "does not intend to become a party to the (Rome Statute of the ICC)" and that it "has no legal obligations arising from its signature (to the treaty) on December 31, 2000."

Ibrahim, the Shin Bet wants you to join Qaida

Ibrahim, the Shin Bet wants you to join Qaida

By Danny Rubinstein

PA unveils Israeli intelligence scheme, denies Gaza links to bin Laden


Early last week, Rashi Abu Sba, head of the preventive security apparatus in Gaza, the equivalent of the Shin Bet, accused the Israeli security service of tricking young Palestinians into conducting missions in the name of Al-Qaida. Last Tuesday, a young man named Ibrahim was presented to reporters in Gaza. Ibrahim hid his face behind a mask, and told what happened to him.

He said that a year ago he sent in a personal, with his photo and phone number, to East Jerusalem's Posta, a cultural-entertainment weekly with a personals section. Three months later, the Gazan received a phone call from an older man, who introduced himself as a merchant named Ahmed, who told Ibrahim that his photo reminded him of his son. They spoke on the phone a number of times, with Ahmed asking Ibrahim about the situation - and if he was a devout Muslim.

During one of the conversations, Ahmed told Ibrahim that he wanted to help Gazans in economic distress and began sending money - cash in dollars and Jordanian dinars - through the Nablus branch of the Cairo-Amman bank. Ibrahim told Ahmed that he had never been arrested nor involved in any political organization. Then, in one of the conversations, Ahmed said he was working for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organization, and Ibrahim was meant to be one of its organizers in northern Gaza since the group already had an infrastructure in the south. Ahmed gave Ibrahim a list of people, mostly Hamas activists, and was told to collect information about them and follow them so they could also be drafted for the Al-Qaida cause.

"Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."

The SAMS paper attempts to predict events in the first year of a peace-enforcement operation, and sees possible dangers for U.S. troops from both sides.

It calls Israel's armed forces a "500-pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza and the West Bank. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management."

Of the MOSSAD, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."

On the Palestinian side, the paper describes their youth as "loose cannons; under no control, sometimes violent." The study lists five Arab terrorist groups that could target American troops for assassination and hostage-taking.

The Pentagon has confirmed that US troops used white phosphorus during last year's offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Falluja.

US used white phosphorus in Iraq

The Pentagon has confirmed that US troops used white phosphorus during last year's offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Falluja.

"It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants," spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC - though not against civilians, he said.

The US earlier denied it had been used in Falluja at all.

Col Venable denied that the substance - which can cause burning of the flesh - constituted a banned chemical weapon.

Washington is not a signatory of an international treaty restricting the use of white phosphorus devices.

Col Venable said a statement by the US state department that white phosphorus had not been used was based on "poor information".

The BBC's defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract its denial has been a public relations disaster for the US military.

searchable by keyword, such as "mushroom cloud", "uranium", or "bin Laden."

About Iraq on the Record
Presented by Rep. Henry A. Waxman

On March 19, 2003, U.S. forces began military operations in Iraq. Addressing the nation about the purpose of the war on the day the bombing began, President Bush stated: “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” Two years later, many doubts have been raised regarding the Administration’s assertions about the threat posed by Iraq.

Prepared at the direction of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Iraq on the Record is a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq. It contains statements that were misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time the statements were made. It does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, it was excluded even if it now appears erroneous. For more information on how the statements were selected, see the full methodology. The Iraq on the Record Report is a comprehensive examination of these statements.

Iraq on the Record is searchable by the the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq:

President George W. Bush
Vice President Dick Cheney
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell
Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice

It is also searchable by issue area:

Iraq's Nuclear Capabilities
Chemical and Biological Weapons
Iraq and Al-Qaeda
Iraq as an Urgent Threat

Weather alert update

There was no snow, and I didn't have to dodge the unusual amount of traffic that was hyped.

b.t.w. we have 'greasy leaves" reports to skeer drivers here.unfookun believable you say? Well most people here can't be skeeered by SARS,avian flu,or even a faked up al-Qaida, but talk about greasy leaves and people pee their fuckin pants in anticipation of running into a gaurdrail or another car I try to stay alert and watch for pee trails......

the start of the weather alert driving season starts today

the weather geeks have been hyping a winter storm for two days now, everybody should be white knuckle driving by 3 p.m. tonight. i hope i get out alive on this first driving alert day of the season....

blog strike monday f.o.

Vikings offense scores 3 points in win

24-21
first win on road in how long? dunno but they do it with huge special teams play. And set a record in the process? Go look at the stats if you feel the need
remember this is sawdust in ya hotdawg "filler"

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) - The Minnesota Vikings became the first team in NFL history to score on interception, kickoffs and punt returns in the same game Sunday.

Darren Sharper, Koren Robinson and Mewelde Moore got the touchdowns against the New York Giants.

Sharper got the first one, returning an interception thrown by Eli Manning 92 yards on the first play of the second quarter. That helped Minnesota lead 7-6 at the half despite being outgained 196-6.

On the kickoff to open the second half, Robinson took the ball at his 14, cut right and went 86 yards. Then, with 5:27 left in the third quarter, Moore returned Jeff Feagles' punt for a TD, breaking two tackles, then running out of a pack down the left side.

I found one match.....

its a little cool in here today, and if you want to sit around in ya briefs on a rainy cool fall day stay close to the firebox

Poker is a dangerously attractive game for hapless types....

Haplessly Turning the Tables on a Poker Ace

By MAX GROSSNovember 11, 2005

The Hapless Jewish Writer once lost $50 in less than five minutes, playing Texas Hold'em.
The loss occurred at a somewhat sketchy underground poker room that was run by Orthodox Jews in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn and featured free punch and Hydrox cookies. The HJW asked for $50 in poker chips (the lowest amount they were willing to give him), sat down and played two hands before another player put all his chips on the table and declared, "I'm going all in."
The HJW looked at his king and queen — of the same suit — and decided they were worth matching the insanely large bet. (He was feeling lucky.) His opponent threw down two aces, and in a matter of minutes the HJW was wandering the streets of Brooklyn in a daze.
The loss — happening as swiftly and coldly as it did — scared him enough to abstain from playing poker again for months.
Poker is a dangerously attractive game for hapless types....

Vikings @Giants noon today central

Another road game,this week at the meadowland. If you remember right the Vikings are not very good road team, maybe winning three games in 5 years on the road? I'm guessing because it really doesn't matter that much to me . Its Sunday blog filler like sawdust in yer hotdawgs, no substance or energy just filler....


Minnesota at N.Y. Giants

NFL.com wire reports

Matchup Breakdown | Game Notes

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (Nov. 9, 2005) -- With each passing week, the maturation of New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning becomes more evident.

Manning will try to keep New York perfect at home when the Minnesota Vikings make their first regular-season appearance at Giants Stadium since 1999.

Manning recorded his first career road victory Nov. 6 when he passed for 251 yards and a touchdown in New York's 24-6 victory against the San Francisco 49ers.

The Giants (6-2) have as many victories as they had all of last season.

"We just had to get the ball in our receivers' hands and let them be the athletes," said Manning, who had been 0-5 in games outside Giants Stadium. "We had to figure out a way not to hurt ourselves, and mostly we avoided that."more on the match up here

Foxes win 2-1

Lokeren 2
One Legged Pirates 1

and its a good thing to, I hear tell the team they played is like playing a team of nuns from Calcutta with mother Theresa in goal.

I can't find the highlights or a box score yet, these sods are prolly all in the pub getting ready for a night of burning cars. I'll post the highlights as soon as I find them.

Minnesota 41, Michigan St. 18

wow i'm shocked and amazed the golden gophers put two back to back and beat a michigan team. still maybe a holiday bowl or soup bowl for you mason.

Gophers' top-ranked ground crew leads way to win

Nov. 12, 2005

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - With Laurence Maroney, the Big Ten's leading rusher, stuck on the sideline Saturday, backup running backs Amir Pinnix and Gary Russell led Minnesota to a 41-18 victory over fading Michigan State.

Maroney, whose 1,345 yards were best in the conference coming into this game, went through warmups for the Gophers (7-3, 4-3) - but stood and watched all afternoon without his shoulder pads on while Pinnix and Russell wore down the Spartans (5-5, 2-5).

Russell started at tailback and gained 85 yards on 19 carries and ran for two touchdowns, playing only in the first half. Pinnix rushed 32 times for 206 yards - both career highs - and had a fourth-quarter score. Bryan Cupito was 8-of-13 for 123 yards with no interceptions and touchdown passes to Matt Spaeth and Ernie Wheelwright.

Drew Stanton went 29-for-46 for 312 yards and fourth-quarter touchdown passes to Dwayne Holmes and Terry Love for Michigan State, which was once ranked as high as 11th in the AP poll but lost for the fifth time in six games.

Prim, proper and Republican-looking BYU professor crosses into uncharted 9/11 truth waters. Bush attack dogs lurking around every corner.

12 Nov 2005

By Greg Szymanski
The story of the day in the 9/11 truth world is the prim, proper and conservative-looking BYU physics professor, coming out of the closet with a 19 page report about how the WTC buildings, defying laws of gravity, most likely collapsed due to “pre-positioned explosives.”

Professor Steven A. Jones’ highly provocative and scientifically researched report, concluded the government’s jet fuel theory was inconceivable due the nature of the freefall of the buildings, the towers falling in a matter of seconds within their own footprints exactly like a controlled demolition.

Jones’ story first appeared Friday in the Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News and was quickly circulated throughout the country on the internet. And, apparently expecting a barrage of callers, emails and faxes, Jones seems to have cut-off communications with the rest of the outside world, instead letting his 19 page report do the talking for him.

trip to wood pile

these pics are for my commie buds that won't believe i went to an actual wood pile with out photo evidance, now they won't see me personally in these photos so the reality of me actually spliting logs is going to be in the believers souls. no wait commies? souls? they have none.....where ever those people hold their truths

some crap in my brother inlaws yard, how artisticly placed. who woulda thunk he had that in him(larry the cable guys twin)











the impliments of my near heart attack, and saving granpa from one













i shoulda took the before picture, these were not split












rosco don't drive no hybred. fill er up mac

Sprimont @ Lokeren

this is an exhibition match i think a way weaker foe and some guys are even faking knee injuries just to have an extra week "vacation"

Hakim Bouchouari speelt niet mee in het bekerduel met Sprimont. De aanvaller heeft last van de knie.

but the game will have live radio updates here use IE quicktime doesn't like the link.

if you enjoy futbol as much as i do you'll love this.

Michigan State @ Minnesota

Big Ten title chase still hot in second-to-last weekend of conference action
Five teams maintain hopes of claiming the league crown

Nov. 11, 2005

Michigan State (5-4, 2-4 Big Ten) at Minnesota (3-3, 6-3 Big Ten)
11:00 a.m. CT - ESPN Plus
Metrodome - Minneapolis, Minn.

Michigan State makes its second road trip in as many weeks when the team travels to Minnesota on Saturday. After starting the season 4-0, the Spartans are still looking to notch a sixth victory to make them eligible for a bowl invitation. Despite a 28-21 setback at Purdue last weekend, the Spartans' potent offense maintained the Conference lead in total offense. Led by quarterback Drew Stanton, the Spartans are averaging 512 yards per game, and Stanton's passing efficiency ranks fifth in the nation.

The squad will get another boost from the return of three key offensive components. Missing from the lineup in recent weeks with an ankle injury, senior left tackle Stefon Wheeler returns to the line in hopes of offering Stanton added protection. Stanon will also have veteran targets downfield when senior wide receivers Kyle Brown and Matt Trannon return. here is the link to the rest of the bigten matchups

another saturday in paradise

its not raining yet this morning
there is no snow on the ground
waking the chidrens up
ma is already up
and gone for hours
coffee is done
three cups i should
be dressed and ready
just going out
to get more wood today
nothing too exciting
been ordered to
make chili when
i get home
better do it
if i want to
remain in
paradise

GOP Whitewash of White House Continues

by Steve Cobble


The Republican majority on the House International Relations Committee yesterday again refused to investigate its own party. Barely. With a 4-member advantage on the IR committee over the Democrats, the GOP managed to hang on to a 25 to 23 vote win, defeating H.Res. 505, Rep. Dennis Kucinich's attempt to actually investigate the secret activities of the WHIG, his Resolution of Inquiry (ROI) to look into the White House Iraq Group.

More than 100 House Democrats joined Kucinich in cosponsoring this resolution, even before it never made it to the floor! Only 2 Republicans stood up for finding out the truth--Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Paul, who seems to be an extremely rare species, an honest conservative who is angry about the lies that took us to war, even had the decency to publicly compliment Kucinich for being consistent by not just investigating the war now but also opposing it beforehand.

The Democrats on the committee were united--at least those who bothered to show up. Every single Republican showed, with 25 of them determined to continue their whitewash for the White House. But for some strange reason, 2 Democrats on the committee--Rep. Faleomavaega and Rep. Berman--were too burdened with other pressing concerns to bother showing up to vote.

"GRAHAM AMENDMENT PASSES: HABEAS CORPUS SUSPENDED

Senate Approves Limiting Rights of U.S. Detainees

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: November 11, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - The Senate voted Thursday to strip captured "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, of the principal legal tool given to them last year by the Supreme Court when it allowed them to challenge their detentions in United States courts.

The vote, 49 to 42, on an amendment to a military budget bill by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, comes at a time of intense debate over the government's treatment of prisoners in American custody worldwide, and just days after the Senate passed a measure by Senator John McCain banning abusive treatment of them.

If approved in its current form by both the Senate and the House, which has not yet considered the measure but where passage is considered likely, the law would nullify a June 2004 Supreme Court opinion that detainees at Guantánamo Bay had a right to challenge their detentions in court.

Nearly 200 of roughly 500 detainees there have already filed habeas corpus motions, which are making their way up through the federal court system. As written, the amendment would void any suits pending at the time the law was passed.

The vote also came in the same week that the Supreme Court announced that it would consider the constitutionality of war crimes trials before President Bush's military commissions for certain detainees at Guantánamo Bay, a case that legal experts said might never be decided by the court if the Graham amendment became law.

"Dogface" - Charcoal sketch on brown wrapping paper - attributed to war correspondent Howard Brodie (Don Wagner collection)



A tribute to those unsung heroes whose selfless sacrifices kept the world safe for democracy and ensured the standard of living which we now enjoy.


thank you

Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?

thanks to monkefister for link to story


By Steven E. Jones

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Brigham Young University

Provo, UT 84604


ABSTRACT


In writing this paper, I call for a serious investigation of the hypothesis that WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned explosives. I consider the official FEMA, NIST, and 9-11 Commission reports that fires plus damage alone caused complete collapses of all three buildings. And I present evidence for the explosive-demolition hypothesis, which is suggested by the available data, testable and falsifiable, and yet has not been analyzed in any of the reports funded by the US government.

read the rest here, make copies send to all your friends

Pat Robertson Tells PA Town God Will Punish Them For Their Vote

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

All eight Dover, Pa., school board members up for re-election were defeated Tuesday after trying to introduce "intelligent design" — the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power — as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club." the moderate voice

Judith Miller Defends Her Reporting at the 'Times'

Morning Edition, November 11, 2005 · Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller says she disagrees with criticism of her reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. She maintains that her sources got their facts wrong, and denies that her stories were improperly vetted.

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war,

it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.

from mister AWOL himself, liar extrodinare comes this bullshit filled speech on veterans day 2005.

the theme at the end of this speech seemed to reinforce the notion that the end of the cold war had to be supplemented with a new enemy if this country the united states was going to pretend to be a global force. and for the same country to be able to maintain the status quo as to the military budgets and tax payer fleecing that the commie hunt entailed.

personally I'm not convinced of this gigantic evil force these neo-conmen are dishing out. Maybe it will take a bus in my neighborhood being blown up by an evil Arab for me to become a zealot in this never ending jihad against islamo-fascists
full text of the speech with blunders I'm sure edited out for supreme leaders well being

Our Man in Damascus

gmiphotos

La times reporting on Jordanian bombings

Excellent warnings given to some? How does this happen and were others also warned? I find it very hard to believe that the IDF would have a specific threat to nationals and not tell others or attempt to thwart it.

...The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israelis staying at the Radisson on Wednesday had been evacuated before the attacks and escorted back home "apparently due to a specific security threat."

Amos N. Guiora, a former senior Israeli counter-terrorism official, said in a phone interview with The Times that sources in Israel had also told him about the pre-attack evacuations.

"It means there was excellent intelligence that this thing was going to happen," said Guiora, a former leader of the Israel Defense Forces who now heads the Institute for Global Security Law and Policy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "The question that needs to be answered is why weren't the Jordanians working at the hotel similarly removed?" ...

The sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald - November 10, 1975

"..The lake it is said never gives up her dead

when the skies of November turn gloomy

With a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more

than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty...."

always liked the song, gordon lightfoot made this particular tragedy a lifelong memory for me. not a sailor now boat person at all. just the haunting tone the lyrics puts me right on the ship with those poor souls. working men die at work to feed thier families thats something that sticks with me and will till i go from here.
click here for link