The Tao of Politics, Chapter Five

Matt,

The Tao of Politics is timeless and as you pointed out, relevent today. I agree with what you wrote. The extreme views and 'hollier' than thou devotion to being "reborn" has left Bush with the same illogical ideology to fly his own "airplanes" into a sovereign (mean but sovereign) nation and leaving them with the same destruction Bin Ladin's Saudi terrorist who devotedly flew their planes and destroyed the innocent lives of our own people.

That is one reason why Bush and the fundamentalists to me are the American religious taliban.

But it's important to note, not all deeply religious people support this immoral war. Some voted for Bush because they didn't really pay attention to the inner devil who was shown in each of his policies. He preached faith, he preached devotion to God, and he preached "a kinder gentler nation" and they fell for it without further investigation.

Some, I have to hope are seeing their mistake now. Some fell into believe the all out lies/spin against Kerry and I hope they regret their vote for the next 4 years! I hope they see this horrible agenda of this evil man and I hope they learn to investigate and participate in democracy by educating themselves persistantly and looking beneath the surface spins of the propaganda networks.

"Never has the sage’s wisdom in this verse been more pertinent than in our era of sacred madness."

Sacred madness may be the best descriptor I have heard of what is going on.

This morning Dick and I talked about what we can do, beyond what we are already doing--which is onsiderable, but still, they force us into their whacked sense of reality. It is hard to breathe in this one-dimensional world.

EXAMPLE: We saved 100 million dollars for public television, but they cut funds for Head Start--again. (beating our heads against the wall now)

We revisited the Howard Zinn quote he sent us in response to Christy's question about when the revolution starts: How will we know? I repeat it here:

"Must we know when the revolution starts? Instead of looking, waiting, observing, we should just act and it will gradually become obvious. John Dewey said: "Don't predict, so you'll know what to do. Do, so you'll know what to predict."

And so this is the answer: The revolution does not start at a time, or a place. It begins when we act.

TODAY, people, TODAY is Amnesty International's STOP TORTURE DAY. There are activities going on all over the country. Go here:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/events.html

and you, too, can ACT.

Good action item:

The People's Email Network Leadership ALERT

With the president stuck in a quagmire over his choice of U.N. ambassador, people are saying it's time for our side to take the initiative and suggest our own alternatives. Why is this such a good idea? First, it demonstrates to the American people in a positive way, "These are the kind of nominees you would get IF YOU ELECTED US." Second, it forces the president to turn his nose up at each and every one of 2-5 strong candidates. And third, it further shows the intransigence of a president incapable of admitting or correcting his mistakes, regardless of how apparent the failure of his policies is to everyone else. Tell your senators we need to hold a PRESS CONFERENCE this coming week and do just exactly that.

http://www.usalone.com/unambassador.htm

And if you have not yet submitted the MEDIA ACTION PAGE on the Downing Street minutes, our one click form now also sends your personal message to the ombudsmen for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and 7 of the most important TV network news programs. They still are not giving this scandal the coverage it warrants so let's all demand it.

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.

Blair's son to intern with US. Republicans
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-06-26T114140Z_01_N26242528_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BRITAIN-BLAIR-EUAN-DC.XML

Great (front page) photo of Barack Obama
http://www.chicagotribune.com/

also:
When it comes to race, Obama makes his point--with subtlety
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0506260271jun26,1,2506201.story?coll=chi-news-hed

~~Who's negotiating with terrorists in Iraq???

I Thought Bu$h said, "we don't negotiate with terrorists" because that would make us soft on terror, etc. etc????
I thought someone told me Bu$h got re-selected because he means what he says..
Apparently Bu$h, now facing harsh reality, has done the ultimate FLIPFLOP....
Bu$hInc. now negotiating with terrorists in Iraq, front page Times/UK today:

June 26, 2005

US 'in talks with Iraq with Iraq rebels'
Hala Jaber
Insurgents reveal secret face-to-face meetings


AT a summer villa near Balad in the hills 40 miles north of Baghdad, a group of Iraqis and their American visitors recently sat down to tea. It looked like a pleasant social encounter far removed from the stresses of war, but the heavy US military presence around the isolated property signalled that an unusual meeting was taking place.

After weeks of delicate negotiation involving a former Iraqi minister and senior tribal leaders, a small group of insurgent commanders apparently came face to face with four American officials seeking to establish a dialogue with the men they regard as their enemies.

The talks on June 3 were followed by a second encounter 10 days later, according to an Iraqi who said that he had attended both meetings. Details provided to The Sunday Times by two Iraqi sources whose groups were involved indicate that further talks are planned in the hope of negotiating an eventual breakthrough that might reduce the violence in Iraq.

Despite months of American military assaults on supposed insurgent bases, General John Abizaid, the regional US commander, admitted to Congress last week that opposition strength was “about the same” as six months ago and that “there’s a lot of work to be done against the insurgency”.

That work now includes secret negotiations with rebel leaders, according to the Iraqi sources.

complete in-depth article here~
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1669601,00.html

Whoa... If Congress won't hold BushCo accountable, maybe Italy will. All this time I had thought, Berlusconi was another poodle in Bush's kennel. Before long, the Pugs will be screaming to appoint the judges in Italy, too.

This story is in the Chicago Tribune-- Once again, take a minute to consider what to this régime is just business as usual.
________________

Italy charges CIA agents
In rare act by ally, officials seek arrests of U.S. agents in kidnapping of imam who allegedly was tortured in Egypt

Four days before Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan vanished into the thin Italian air, three middle-aged American visitors checked into the $300-a-night Milan Hilton on Via Luigi Galvani.

The Americans, a man and two women, might have been tourists or fashion buyers, the hotel's usual foreign clientele. The U.S. passports and visa cards, the driver's licenses, even the frequent-flyer IDs they presented to the desk clerk were genuine enough.

Only the names on those documents were bogus. So was their shared corporate address, a non-existent company with a post office box in Washington.

According to Italian authorities, there was a reason for all the cloak-and-dagger business: The three Americans really were spies, the last-arriving members of a covert action team assigned to snatch Hassan off the street and ship him back to Egypt, where he would later say he was brutally tortured.

On Thursday an Italian judge issued arrest warrants charging two of the three Americans and 11 of their colleagues with illegally detaining Hassan, a fundamentalist Muslim preacher better known in Milan's Islamic community as Abu Omar.

The move was no less extraordinary for coming from a country whose prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is one of the few European leaders who support the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq and which has contributed 3,000 troops to that effort.

Current and retired CIA officers, none of whom agreed to be quoted by name, said they could not remember one of their own having been charged abroad with a crime other than espionage, and certainly not in a country friendly to the U.S.

Although the CIA refuses to talk about the Milan abduction or even acknowledge that it occurred, documents obtained by the Tribune clearly link the intelligence agency with the identities, addresses and cell phones used by several of the American operatives.

The existence of the CIA's supersecret abduction squads has come to light since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, although the agency's practice of snatching suspected criminals abroad goes back at least to the Reagan administration.

Congressional Democrats have called for a public inquiry into the practice of covert abductions, which the CIA euphemistically terms "extraordinary rendition," and have introduced legislation that would ban what they term the "outsourcing of torture" to other countries such as Egypt.

News reports and human-rights organizations have identified at least 33 suspected terrorists who have been "rendered" by the U.S. since Sept. 11. Unnamed intelligence officials have been quoted as putting the number over the past two decades at closer to 100.

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazief, whose country has received more renditions than any other, recently told a group of Tribune reporters and editors that he was aware of "60 or 70" cases in which U.S. agents have seized Egyptian nationals abroad and flown them to Egypt.

In most of the known renditions, suspects have been arrested by local authorities in such countries as Indonesia, Sweden and Macedonia before being handed over to the CIA.

Even when such arrests are made purely at the behest of the U.S.--"there are arrests, and then there are arrests," a senior American intelligence official said with a laugh--they technically absolve the CIA of responsibility for unlawful seizure.

In the case of Abu Omar, the absence of any prior arrest has left the CIA open to kidnapping charges. Indeed, the police in Milan, who had been tapping Abu Omar's telephone, were as surprised as his wife and friends by his sudden disappearance.

When they learned he was gone, the puzzled police opened a missing-person investigation.
...&more

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0506250082jun25,1,1654457.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Sorry for the long post-- I just have to post the rest of the article started in my 10:35 AM post. It is just mind-boggling... (the Italian prosecutor "who gained his reputation by prosecuting the Mafia in Italy" refers to the CIA agents as accused kidnappers-- somebody in the world actually is in reality.)
____________

The key sleuth

Armando Spataro, the Milan prosecutor who requested the warrants, said the names of those accused, which have not been made public, were taken from the passports and other documents used at hotels and car rental agencies in Milan.

None of the databases accessible by the Tribune contains any indication that individuals with those names have ever had a spouse, a residence, an employer, a driver's license, a telephone, a mortgage, a credit history or a family--in short, none of the things typically associated with real people.

Spataro, who gained his reputation by prosecuting the Mafia in Italy, said in a telephone interview Friday that he believed most of the names were probably not the true identities of the accused kidnappers.

Spataro's investigators, however, have pictures of the suspects taken from photocopies of their passports made by hotels. He intends to ask the U.S. government to help him identify the suspects, none of whom is believed to still be in Italy.

"We have a convention for mutual cooperation with the U.S. in criminal matters," Spataro said in a recent interview. "I will ask them to identify some people, and I will ask them to interrogate [the suspects], because I don't believe they will surrender them to Italy voluntarily."

Italy is part of an agreement under which any member of the European Union can arrest and extradite someone wanted by another member country, and Spataro expressed some optimism the suspects would be found if they are in Europe and are still using the same names.

"They will become fugitives in Italy but also in all the other countries" of the European Union, he said.

On Monday, Italy will issue the arrest warrants through the European police agency, Europol, and the international police agency, Interpol.

While Italy also has extradition treaties with the U.S., Spataro did not directly address the question of whether he planned to ask the U.S. Justice Department to act on any of the suspects who might be in the U.S.

In at least one instance, the U.S. has extradited an American citizen to a European country--Germany--to stand trial in a criminal case.

Spataro dismissed suggestions that Abu Omar's abductors, who like many CIA officers working abroad may have been posing as American diplomats, might enjoy diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution.

"If we have evidence of their involvement in kidnapping, there is no immunity for that," he said.

Posing as diplomat

A senior official with the prosecutor's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that one of those accused was a CIA officer posing as a U.S. diplomat in Milan at the time of Abu Omar's abduction.

The official said that the diplomat was well known as the CIA's representative in Milan and that the dozen other suspects charged had been in cell phone contact with him during their stay in Milan.

The diplomat is believed to have left Italy, and his whereabouts are unknown. Several U.S. telephone numbers listed in his name were unanswered or disconnected on Friday.

In all, Spataro asked the court for warrants on 19 people. But the Italian judge, Chiara Nobili, refused his requests for warrants on three men and three women on the basis that they had been brought to Milan only to help monitor Abu Omar's movements before the abduction and might not have known the reason for the surveillance.

A prosecution official said Spataro plans to appeal the judge's decision and hopes to obtain the six arrest warrants next week.

The Italian court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Abu Omar. The 103-page document consists mostly of transcripts of conversations picked up by police wiretaps and microphones before his abduction. Prosecution sources said the warrant was sought principally in hope of forcing Egypt to return Abu Omar to Milan.

The Egyptian government has ignored two formal diplomatic requests, sent last year through the Italian Justice Ministry, asking for confirmation that Abu Omar is in Egypt and an explanation of how and why he entered Egypt.

Spataro also is seeking permission to interview Abu Omar's mother, his two brothers, his sister and a prominent lawyer, all of whom are believed to be living in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria.

"We asked the Egyptian authorities for their cooperation, but they haven't responded," Spataro said.

The Egyptian Embassy in Washington has declined to respond to repeated requests from the Tribune for similar information.

Costly web of intrigue

Judging from the information gleaned by Spataro's investigators, the abduction of Abu Omar on the afternoon of Feb. 17, 2003, was an elaborate and expensive operation.

The 18 people brought into the city for the operation spent at least $150,000 at the Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton and Westin hotels, according to documents obtained by the Tribune.

According to their U.S. passports, several of the first CIA operatives to arrive, and who apparently were used to track Abu Omar's comings and goings, were of late middle age, suggesting they might have been posing as retired Americans on holiday.

Nearly all gave post office boxes as their home or business addresses.

Those names and addresses are linked to what appears to be a CIA network of dozens of post office boxes in the Washington area with hundreds of names attached.

Hotel records show that several of the 13 suspects visited Milan in early January and then left, suggesting that the abduction operation was put on hold at the beginning of 2003.

The first to return, on Feb. 1, 2003, was a 33-year-old woman with a Hispanic-sounding name whose passport said she was a native of Florida. She was joined two days later by six other alleged team members and five more the day after that.

They included a 64-year-old man whose passport said he had been born in Alaska, a 57-year-old woman whose passport said she had been born in Florida and a 50-year-old man whose U.S. passport said he had been born in the former Soviet republic of Moldova.

The Moldovan-born man listed his U.S. employer's address as a post office box in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington.

His name is linked, via a half-dozen post office boxes in the Washington and Boston areas, to a Massachusetts company, Premier Executive Transport Services, that until last year was the nominal owner of a Gulfstream executive jet spotted at the scene of post-Sept. 11 "renditions" in Pakistan and Sweden.

Before checking into the Sheraton's Room 814, the man also left the hotel's front desk a Virginia telephone number. When the Tribune first began making inquiries, the number was answered "Coughlin Enterprises" by an operator who described the company as a "management consulting" firm.

According to the operator, the company's owner, a man she identified as Robert Coughlin, was unavailable.

"He's in and out a lot, but he always checks his messages," she said.

The next day, a different operator who answered the same number identified the company's owner as "Rosemarie Coughlin," who she said was similarly unavailable.

Neither Coughlin ever returned a reporter's telephone calls. The operators have since been replaced by an anonymous answering machine.

Most of the aircraft known to have been used in CIA renditions are executive jets, such as Gulfstreams or Learjets, that are either owned by the agency through front companies like Premier Executive Transport or chartered for upward of $5,000 an hour.

Several planes shown by FAA records to have visited Afghanistan or the CIA's training facility at Camp Peary, Va.--destinations not normally accessible by private corporate aircraft--are registered to companies with names like Rapid Air Transport, the Path Corp. and Braxton Management Services, with mailing addresses in Nevada, Montana and Delaware.

The plane that carried Abu Omar to Cairo was not a CIA aircraft but a chartered Gulfstream owned by Phillip H. Morse, a multimillionaire Florida businessman and a co-owner of the world champion Boston Red Sox.

Morse confirmed to the Boston Globe in March that he charters his plane to the CIA and other clients when it is not being used for Red Sox business. But Morse said he knew nothing about the uses to which the intelligence agency had put the plane.

The Globe quoted Morse saying he was "stunned" by an earlier Tribune report that the Gulfstream, with the usual Red Sox decals missing from its fuselage and tail, had been present at the Cairo airport at the time Abu Omar arrived in the early hours of Feb. 18, 2003.

Moving on their prey

Abu Omar's abduction began on a busy street in broad daylight, as he was walking to a mosque that has been identified as a center of radical fundamentalist activity.

The startled imam was hustled inside a parked white van that, according to a passerby, drove away at high speed, followed closely by another vehicle.

The baffled police, who had been keeping tabs on Abu Omar, had no idea where he had gone, although it seemed unlikely that he would have run away from his wife and friends in a country where he had been living lawfully.

Abu Omar was granted political asylum by the Italian government after arriving in Milan in 1997, apparently on the grounds that his membership in a radical Egyptian Islamic organization, Jamaat al Islamiya, which he had joined as a university student, left him at risk for political persecution if he returned home.

Inspector Bruno Megale, the chief of Milan's police anti-terrorism unit that learned a great deal about the structure and functioning of radical Islamic cells in Italy from the wiretap on Abu Omar's phone, began the investigation into his disappearance by collecting the numbers of all the cell phones in use in the area where he disappeared.

Megale and his investigators looked first for phones that had moved across the Italian cellular network in the direction of Aviano, the site of a large joint U.S.-Italian air base some 175 miles from Milan, where Abu Omar's abductors had put him aboard a Learjet Model LJ-35 that was using the call sign "SPAR 92."

SPAR is short for Special Air Resources, a military airlift service that uses Learjets and other executive-style jets to transport senior military officers and civilian VIPs.

Abu Omar was a VIP of sorts, and at 6:20 p.m. on Feb. 17, SPAR 92, with Abu Omar aboard, departed from Aviano and headed to an air base at Ramstein, Germany, where Abu Omar was moved to the Red Sox Gulfstream.

At 8:31 P.M. the Gulfstream took off and turned southeast, headed for Cairo, where it arrived in the early hours of Feb. 18.

Records showed that the phones singled out had also been in use at a number of Milan hotels in the weeks preceding the abduction. When the hotel registers were scoured, police learned that a few of the operatives, including the Moldovan-born man, had given the hotels their cell phone numbers

In all, 17 cell phones were identified as belonging to members of the abduction team. Records showed numerous calls among the team members and several others that proved interesting: to a U.S. Air Force colonel at Aviano, to the American Consulate in Milan and to four numbers in northern Virginia, where the CIA headquarters is.

One of those numbers is listed to a man in Ashburn, Va., who has the same name as one of the names used by the CIA operatives in Milan and who apparently registered at a Milan hotel using his real name. A message left on the man's answering machine was not returned Friday.

After 14 months, a call

Fourteen months after Abu Omar disappeared without a trace, the telephone rang in his Milan apartment. His wife, whom Abu Omar married after moving to Italy, still had no clue what had become of her husband.

Now she was astounded to hear him explaining that he had just been released from an Egyptian prison, reportedly after a ruling by an Egyptian judge that he was not a terrorist threat.

The police in Milan had continued tapping his telephone in his absence. While their tape recorders turned, Abu Omar told his wife he had been held incommunicado in Egypt since being grabbed off the street in Milan.

During that call and in a later conversation with another Egyptian imam in Milan, Mohammed Reda, whose cell phone was also tapped, Abu Omar said he had been tortured by the Egyptian security service.

According to Reda's account of that conversation, published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Abu Omar "underwent terrible tortures" after arriving in Cairo.

"He told me that the initial seven months were very tough," Reda said. "They hit him day and night. They made him listen to sounds at full blast, which was the reason why his hearing was impaired.

"They closed him in a sort of sauna and then in a refrigerator cell, causing him dire pain, as if his bones were shattered. They hung him head downward, applying electrodes onto his most sensitive parts, including his genitals. The electric shocks made him become incontinent. He could not walk."

The Milan police concluded that Abu Omar's account hadn't been invented for their benefit, because it evidently hadn't occurred to him that his telephone was still being tapped. Among his requests to his wife was that she erase the hard drive on his computer before it fell into the hands of the police.

Shortly after his telephone conversations with his wife and Mohammed Reda, Abu Omar was rearrested by Egyptian authorities. He has not been heard from since.

----------
jcrewdson@tribune.com
thundley@tribune.com
lsly@tribune.com

Hi Moderator--
it'd OK to yank my post-- it's even longer than I thought it would be...
Sorry

~Rove, speaking for Bu$h, always accuse Dems/libs of doing exactly what the Repubs are actually doing themselves in secret.
This is from Billmon, on the news from the UK Times that Bu$hcheney now negotiating with terrorists in Iraq:

"The basis of Bush's appeal has always been his obsessively cultivated image of strength and resolution -- of never backing down or looking for a way out of a fight. Likewise, the administration's last effective selling point for the war is the classic circular argument: America must stay in Iraq because it is in Iraq. Withdrawing before the "mission" is completed would show weakness and encourage the terrorists.

Negotiating with the "terrorists" completely undermines both arguments. It makes Bush look like a trimmer -- exactly the charge leveled with such effect against John Kerry, as in this explanation from the nutcase conservatives at NewsMax:

The Bush campaign's central message on Kerry: Anyone who would negotiate with terrorists can't be trusted with U.S. national security in a post-9/11 world.
By opening negotiations (according to the Sunday Times, the Americans made the first move, not the insurgents) the administration has shown weakness -- every bit as much, if not more, than it would by setting a timetable for withdrawal.
snip~
And so we arrive at the heart of the problem: To salvage any ending short of total defeat in Iraq, the Cheney administration must act like those spineless, flip-flopping liberals. They have to negotiate with the terrorists, listening to their demands, trying to understand their grievances and goals -- (!), offering them therapy sessions for all I know. But at the same time, Bush also has to keep up the never-give-an-inch macho act, lest the silent majority finally grasp the dismal truth: Their sons and daughters must go on dying in the quagmire so the neocons can find a way out that doesn't involve losing too much face.

That's why I think this story has the potential to develop into a PR debacle that dwarfs Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the Downing Street memos put together. It echoes all too painfully the primal sin of Vietnam as enshrined in popular mythology: that the politicians led the army, and the country, into war, but weren't willing to pursue it to victory.

more~
http://billmon.org/archives/001942.html

Hi aimzz,

I personally don't think the post is all that long! You should have seen what I posted the other day. Well, it wasn't long, because it had no paragraphs.

Though this is a democratic country, or so I'm told, so I say lets take a vote on it:

Vote YES if the post is so long that aimzz should make it up to us by sending us all chocolate.

Vote NO if the post is just right but aimzz should still make it up to us by sending all of us chocolate!

*********************************************

There you have it, aimzz. The chocolate wins! When can I expect to see my package of dark chocolate?

Uh oh... I already ate all the dark :-p

Aimzz

That is quality and quantity.

Andree will watch a tv special in France tonite about David Kelly, the British reporter that committed suicide during the run-up to the Iraq war. I don't read French well but acc/the newspaper coverage of the program, there may be a link with the Downing Street Memo. Now I don't think alot of Americans were alerted to this suicide/coverup/mystery (David Kelly) but it was a big deal in the Guardian/Observer & BBC at the time & something just didn't seem right.

It seems like a whole lot of cats are coming out of bags all over.

Truth Shall Prevail

& instant karma's gonna get ya!

Here is a fairly recent link from the WaPo where a British reporter takes questions on-line (transcript) about the Downing Street Memo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/06/14/DI2005061401261.html

& Kos covers possible link between David Kelly & the Downing Street memo:

http://bcgntn.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/20/17116/3834

An excerpt:

Downing David Kelly
by alsauf
Mon Jun 20th, 2005 at 14:01:16 PDT
Is there a link between the Downing Street Memo and the death of David Kelly?
Kelly was the Ministry of Defence employee who created a firestorm when he told BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan about his doubts concerning claims being made by the British government viz. Iraq and WMD.
With the release of the Downing Street Memo, this possibly casts a new light on the mysterious death of Dr. David Kelly.
More after the break -->

Diaries :: alsauf's diary :: ::
A lot of people feel that David Kelly did not commit suicide in 2003, for a variety of reasons.  For starters, in 1999, David Kelly joined the Baha'i Faith, which expressly prohibits suicide.  Paramedics at the scene of his death reported that they did not feel there was enough blood at the scene to warrant the idea that Kelly had slit his wrists.  
How does the Downing Street Memo fit in?  Well, as we all know, on July 23, 2002, several members of the British government, intelligence and defence institutions met to discuss the Iraq situation.  A key line from this meeting is

"We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

Around August of 2002, a claim was made that Saddam Hussein was capable of launching a WMD attack within 45 minutes.  This claim made it into the offical dossier that David Kelly was proofread.
On May 22, 2003, Kelly met with Andrew Gilligan and told him of his doubts about the claim that Hussein could launch an attack in 45 minutes.  Kelly attributed the claim to Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's Director of Communications.  A week later, Gilligan broadcast his report, stating that the "45 minute claim" had been inserted into the report by the British government, even though they knew the claim to be dubious.

A political scandal broke out over the "sexed up" dossier.  Attention soon fell on Kelly as the source.  On June 30, 2003, he wrote his line manager that he had talked to Gilligan, but that he did not feel that he was the primary source.  Two weeks later, Kelly appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

On July 17, Kelly was found dead near his home.

on.to.victory4Dems @ 10:59 AM

I hope you're right. To me it has that Iran-Contra feeling, where too many members of the current régime learned how to avoid criminal prosecution & somehow come out looking quasi-patriotic

They can't hide the bodies.

the US negotiating with terrorists/insurgents in Iraq story: Rumsfeld on all the morning talking-head shows, trying to minimize the impact.
Bu$h, the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" prez, has done the ultimate FlipFlop:

Report: U.S. Secretly Met With Insurgents

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
56 minutes ago

LONDON - U.S. officials recently met secretly with Iraqi insurgent commanders at a summer villa north of Baghdad to try to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, a British newspaper reported Sunday.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked about the report, suggested that meetings between Iraqi officials and insurgents "go on all the time" and said "we facilitate those from time to time."

The insurgent commanders "apparently came face to face" with four American officials during meetings on June 3 and June 13 at a summer villa near Balad, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, The Sunday Times newspaper in London said.

The report, which quoted unidentified Iraqis whose groups were purportedly involved in the meetings, said the insurgents at the first meeting included the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Iraq and an attack that killed 22 people in the dining hall of a U.S. base at Mosul last Christmas.

Two others were Mohammed's Army and the Islamic Army in Iraq, which in August reportedly killed Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, the newspaper said.

One American at the talks introduced himself as a Pentagon representative and declared himself ready to "find ways of stopping the bloodshed on both sides and to listen to demands and grievances," The Sunday Times said.

The official indicated that the results of the talks would be relayed to his superiors in Washington, the newspaper said.

Rumsfeld sought to play down the report, saying the Shiite-dominated government was reaching out to the disaffected Sunni minority — believed to be the driving force behind Iraq's insurgency — and the Americans were helping them.

"The Iraqis have a sovereign government. They will decide what their relationships with various elements of insurgents will be. We facilitate those from time to time," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

"My understanding is some London paper reported this and everyone is chasing it. I would not make a big deal out of it. Meetings go on frequently with people," Rumsfeld said.

Discussing the report on ABC's "This Week," the defense secretary said: "I get reports on dozens of meetings. If you're asking: 'Are the Iraqis — whose country it is — reaching out to the Sunnis?' Yes, they are."

"Are our people involved in helping them? Sure. We talk to people all the time," he added.

The U.S. officials tried to gather information about the structure, leadership and operations of the insurgent groups, which irritated some members, who had been told the talks would consider their main demand, a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, the newspaper said.

During the June 13 talks, the U.S. officials demanded that two other insurgent groups, the 1920 Revolution and the Majhadeen Shoura Council, cut ties with the country's most-feared insurgent group, al-Qaida in Iraq, according to the report.

A senior U.S. official said earlier this month that American authorities have negotiated with key Sunni leaders, who are in turn talking with insurgents and trying to persuade them to lay down their arms. The official, who did not give his name so as not to undercut the new government's authority, did not name the Sunni leaders engaged in dialogue.

Iraq's former electricity minister, Ayham al-Samarie, has told The Associated Press that two insurgent groups — the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of Mujahedeen — were willing to negotiate with the Iraqi government, possibly opening a new political front in the country.

Al-Samarie, a Sunni Muslim, said he had established contact with the groups which account for a large part of the Sunni insurgents and were responsible for attacks against Iraqis and foreigners, including assassinations and kidnappings.

A senior Shiite legislator, Hummam Hammoudi, also told AP recently that the Iraqi government had opened indirect channels of communication with some insurgent groups.

The contacts were "becoming more promising and they give us reason to continue," Hammoudi said, without providing details.

U.S. and Iraqi officials also are considering amnesty for their enemies as they look for ways to end the country's rampant insurgency and isolate extremists wanting to start a civil war.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050626/ap_on_re_eu/britain_iraq_7

from the UK/Times:

Bush acknowledged on Friday that “the way ahead is not going to be easy” and for once the Iraqi insurgent commander agreed with him.

“It looks like the Americans are in big trouble in Iraq and are desperate to find a way out,” the commander said. “Why else would they have rounds of negotiations with people they label as terrorists?”

continue~
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1669601_1,00.html

From on.to.victory4Dems @12:10 PM- Classic Rummy:

...I would not make a big deal out of it. Meetings go on frequently with people," Rumsfeld said.

snip

If you're asking: 'Are the Iraqis — whose country it is — reaching out to the Sunnis?' Yes, they are."

"Are our people involved in helping them? Sure. We talk to people all the time," he added.

Posted by: aimzzz at June 26, 2005 09:56 AM

Aimzz go buy more dark chocolate! you owe me!

And Tony Blair's son will intern with the same party who refuses to support an investigation into the DSM? Can you say...conflict of interest?

Even if he did equal time with the dems, it's absolutely ridiculous to allow it at this time when Blair and Bush have their fingers drippin with the blood of American and Brittish soldiers and Iraqius people too.

Blair's son is interning with US Republicans?!
Is that the one who was arrested for drunkenness?

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-06-26T114103Z_01_MOL641979_RTRUKOC_0_BRITAIN-BLAIR-EUAN.xml

Well I have my own British intern (one of my 2 "adopted" sons) here who made me "high tea" when I got back from my trip. He worked to defeat Bush, then to defeat Blair & now he's fundraising for our Mayor! So there is some justice!

Here's a story he wrote 3 years ago about young people getting the vote:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/apathy/story/0,12822,998082,00.html

Kit (the Brit):

"I was astounded when I read that. Apparently, he's quite rightwing anyway."

Says he went to a Conference where Blair's son was and he spent half the time "slagging off" a guy in Parliament who opposed Blair going to war in Iraq.

Sun Tzu wrote a definitive book called "the art of war" It is to long to post everything but i was rereading it last night. The circumstances in which the United States finds itself in Iraq is a War that cannot be won, nor stalemated. We are fighting an entrenched insurgency battling for their Honor and land.
Iraqi resistance did everything by the book, and drew less intelligent strategists into a protracted military campaign on foriegn soil in an inhospitable environment. We will lose this War, it is a Matter of how many people will pay the price for the ineptness of our leadership.

There is a story floating around of westerners buried in US body bags...close to 20.
the circumstances of this mass grave are suspect.

We must continue applying intelligent pressure. We cannot let karl roves rants deter our goal, which is the removal of a corrupt government. We need to work harder, smarter and think ahead farther than the neoreligious group currently creating crisis after crisis in our nation and the world.
We owe this not only to ourselves but to the people of Iraq. This is escalating to a point where trying to control the damage will cause greater damage. We had no business being there, and everything we are reading and seeing today is the result of that grave error in judgement.
We cannot turn back the clock but we can surely bring to justice the people that caused so many needless deaths and grevious injury to so many.

Toolmaker:

Its our local consensus here that when Karl Rove is out there personally attacking Democrats on Iraq, that the White House is in the deep D-D.

We're waiting for the third shoe to drop. We've had:

1) Downing Street Minutes
2) Gitmo and Abu Ghraib leaks on the practice of torture;

now

Would #3 be the minutes of the Vice-President's meetings on energy policy?

Iraqi resistance did everything by the book, and drew less intelligent strategists into a protracted military campaign on foriegn soil in an inhospitable environment. We will lose this War, it is a Matter of how many people will pay the price for the ineptness of our leadership.

Posted by: Toolmaker at June 26, 2005 01:28 PM

Toolmaker,

I think we need to change the tense. We have already "lost" the war in Iraq. Rove knows that. Therefore, he and his disciples are making a minor adjustment to their rhetoric and calling it the "war on terrorism".

I can't wait for the Rovians to call the General a weak kneed liberal.

General admits to secret air war

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1669640,00.html

THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.
Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.

The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations” for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.

If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally.

The wheels are starting to come off. The floor is falling out from underneath them. Take your pick. Use any cliche you wish, but this guy is a dead duck.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1514898,00.html

Battered Bush watches as support ebbs away

With memories of his poll victory still fresh, the President already seems a lame duck. Backing for the Iraq war has collapsed and his domestic agenda is in disarray. Even his party is rebelling.

And so the preparations begin for war in Iran -

Rummy on the new Iran President: "No friend of Democracy."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050626/ts_nm/iran_usa_dc_4;_ylt=AvTf5vGhY5jFsgpa.iI0Ev1Sw60A;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Posted by: KeryOn62 at June 26, 2005 03:01 PM

I just saw that earlier today myself. Ol' George has an itch he's just itchin to scratch. Deja vu?

Great posts today, everyone! Check this out:

Outlook shifting in swing state

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Sun National Staff
Originally published June 26, 2005

MARYSVILLE, Ohio -Last November, factory worker Wesley R. Combs held his breath, broke with his union and voted for President Bush.

Now, he says that he believes that Bush is leading the country in the wrong direction and that the president is ignoring the nation's problems.

"I'm not very happy with him right now," says Combs, a 50-year-old self-described independent, standing in the driveway of his tidy home in a small subdivision amid the rolling cornfields of southeastern Ohio. "Our country's not in very good shape," he says, "and he's paying too much attention to foreign things and not enough to what affects us here."

...........

The trend suggests an ominous possibility for Bush, whose second-term success could depend in large measure on how well Republicans fare in the 2006 elections. As low as Bush's approval ratings have dropped, Congress' popularity has plunged even more.

That's usually a bad sign for the party in power, which can fall victim to a "throw-the-bums-out" mentality among voters who support their president but feel that their leaders in general are out of touch with the public's priorities.

"Congress shares credit and blame for these things," said Lee Whittaker of Springfield, the manager of Udders and Putters, a miniature golf course, driving range and batting cage in Clark County. Whittaker, who voted for Bush and approves of the job he's doing, said he's "disappointed in some of the Republican leaders in Congress" for failing to help repair the economy by approving measures like an energy plan Bush has been pushing since 2001. "I wouldn't mind seeing some new leadership - we need new blood," Whittaker said.

Those can be chilling words for a president looking toward his legacy. "There is a real danger that whatever problems the current officials are suffering will rub off on the Republican Party generally," Green said. "2006 will be a real test for him, and right now it's not clear he'll pass it."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.ohio26jun26,1,5831897.story?page=1&coll=bal-iraq-headlines

I've heard it asked "How do you tell a man he's the last man to die for a mistake?"

How do you tell a soldier you are sending to war he's the next to die for a mistake?

Matthew,

Thank you once again for a fine article.

Your work flows from an understanding heart, and you give your message with your typical grace and mastery of language.

It is refreshing to read a voice of reason and sanity in the midst of "sacred madness". Once again, you have turned "seeing the forest for the trees" into a shared art form.

Posted by: Truth Shall Prevail at June 26, 2005 03:55 PM

No, it's not a mistake.

It's a premeditated LIE.

It's a premeditated MURDER.

It's a pre-meditated violation of our constitution.

It's a violation of trust.

It's a evil mans way of making more money for himself and his friends.

It's a bullies way of making a "name" for himself and building his self-esteem.

It's a man who has never learned right from wrong!

AND it's absolutely inhumane!

Rummy again: "Iraq Insurgency Could Last for Years."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050626/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq

9/11 Families Agree: Bush Admin. Has Failed America

http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/6/24/1834/99778

These are EXCELLENT.

Posted by: Suz at June 26, 2005 04:24 PM

Yes it is.

In case you haven't seen it... some military folks respond to Karl's remarks:

http://takeittokarl.blogspot.com/

That's great Victoria.

But I hope each person who responds to Mr. Evil Rove doesn't take their eyes off the ball elsewhere. The "philosophy" between the parties is not the true question.

The question is, "Did this regime go to war without the proper powers of congrss? Did this regime fake the evidence for war? Have THOUSANDS of people died becuase this regime abused their power?"

Because WE THE PEOPLE know that according to the constitution of the United States of America, "NO man is above the law! Not even the President."

So...Republicans and Democrats in Congress, WE THE PEOPLE who asked you to go serve us in Washington want to know, "Do YOU support an investigation of this President to see if he committed high crimes and misdemeanors? OR Are you only serving your own puppet master in DC but not the American people?"

Fe, the energy minutes will be highly damaging.

When the nation as a Whole finally sees what we see, the charade comes to an end. This point is approaching. The final straw will be when our military "refuses" to continue playing along. I highlighted the word to explain it;

The Invasion of Jordon by Israel in the early 80s stopped when IDF pilots refused to drop bombs on innocent people. They dropped bombs in the ocean and the invasion stopped. The military placed the lives of people above the orders they were given. Their superiors backed them. It was a Political act Not military. God bless those IDF Pilots.

There is no telling what the act in Iraq or here in the US may be. It could be a General standing before congress and opposing the President nationwide. It could be the resignation of top level commanders in protest.
That will be the signal to the Nation that the military does not agree with the strategy.

Thats when the Nation as a whole must demand the removal of this corrupt administration, and get it. We owe our military a Debt, we owe the world as well.

When the Nation was attacked on 9/11 there were no democrats, no republicans. We will need to reach that level again when its time to remove this leadership.

~~Who's negotiating with terrorists in Iraq???
----------

I don't think they were negotiating.

I think they were offering them therapy.

Rummy on Rove:"it was the move on thing,not dems." Guess they've got their talking points from on high! We're going to hear this over and over again.

Posted by: Patti Ferschke at June 26, 2005 05:43 PM

Well, at least we'll have consistency for a change.

~ ~ * * ~ ~

I think they were offering them therapy.

Posted by: spinnaker at June 26, 2005 05:29 PM

Offering them therapy, or asking for therapy.
(Willing to pay a high price, of cour$e)

Actually I think they were trying to purchase their war plans. :)

Truth, you nailed it.

Military officials know they cannot win this war, they are arranging for a Political solution. The interesting aspect is if the President knew about the meetings.
It appears the insurgents left when officials kept coming back to their logistics and methods instead of negotiating for withdrawel.

I was being facetious Toolmaker, so I can't take any credit for nailing it.

Like you, I also think they were meeting to try to buy their way to a resolution that saves face. Who knows what they will do. Maybe they will buy a sector and put them in Iraqi uniforms and pass them off as trained members of the Iraqi army.

The people who really need therapy are the ones who got us into the mess in the first place.

~now that's an interesting title from the folks at the LATimes:

Bush's Credibility Takes a Direct Hit From Friendly Fire

By Doyle McManus Times Staff Writer
Sun Jun 26, 2005

WASHINGTON — For months, President Bush has struggled to maintain public support for the war in Iraq in the face of periodic setbacks on the battlefield. Now he faces a second front in the battle for public opinion: charges that the administration is not telling the truth about how the war is going.

snip~
What's interesting in this decline in support for the war is that it has sprung from the public itself," said pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center. "It wasn't led by politicians or by an antiwar movement. It started back in May, when the focus in Washington was on other issues."
snip~
Senators are hearing from back home: If things are going so well, why do we hear every morning that 30 people have been killed in Baghdad?" said a top Republican advisor who refused to be identified.

more~
http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050626/ts_latimes/bushscredibilitytakesadirecthitfromfriendlyfire

Posted by: on.to.victory4Dems at June 26, 2005 07:00 PM

I surf to the front page of the Times every morning, and see a story where 20 or 30 more Iraqis have been killed. There is never any follow up about the severity of the injured - you know, how many received scratches and how many are now missing several limbs. We keep hearing about the number of American dead, but it's the number of Iraqi dead and wounded that turn my stomach. But Donald Rumsfeld didn't think we needed 300,000 troops in Iraq for the occupation.

This is what you get when you put the CEO of Arbusto and Harken in charge of the one remaining superpower.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050626/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_rumsfeld_2
Excerpts:
Rumsfeld Nixes Independent Panel on Gitmo
WASHINGTON - A new independent investigation of abuse allegations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "doesn't make sense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.
"I think that to go back into all of the things that's already been reviewed by everybody else doesn't make sense," Rumsfeld said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on NBC.

"But that's not a decision for me. That's a decision for the president," he said.

Word from Bush could end prison abuse
By HELEN THOMAS

WASHINGTON -- Is President Bush living on Mars? Is he tone deaf?

At a news conference last month, he wrote off as an "absurd allegation" the conclusion by Amnesty International that the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the "new Gulag" because of the mistreatment of prisoners there.

Bush insisted that "the United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world, and when there are accusations about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way."

"It's just an absurd allegation," he said.

But how does he account for the slew of reports from the Pentagon and the FBI that some prisoners were subjected to mistreatment, torture and unspeakable indignities during interrogation?

Does he read the reports? Does he care?

continued at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/229938_thomas26.html

We went to the Pride Parade, Seattle, & were able to stop at the Microsoft booth & give them a piece of our minds about their recent $20,000/month consultant, Ralph Reed, & his predecessors at the company.

Here's a joke:

Bill Gates dies in a car accident. He finds himself being sized up by God....

"Well, Bill, I'm really confused on this call. I'm not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you helped society enormously by putting a computer in almost every home in America, yet you also created Windows '95. I'm going to do something I've never done before. In your case, I'm going to let you decide where you want to go."

"Well, what's the difference between the two?" Bill asks.

God says, "I'm willing to let you visit both places briefly, if it will help your decision."

"Fine, but where should I go first?"

"I'll leave that up to you."

"Okay, then," says Bill. "Let me try Hell first."

So Bill goes to Hell. It's a beautiful, clean, sandy beach with clear waters and lots of beautiful women running around, playing in the
water, laughing and frolicking about. The sun is shining, the temperatures perfect.

He is very pleased. "This is great!" he tells God. "If this is Hell, I REALLY want to see Heaven!"

"Fine," says God, and off they go.

Heaven is a place high in the clouds, with angels drifting about, playing harps and singing. It's nice, but not as enticing as Hell. Bill thinks for a quick minute and decides. "Hmm. I think I'd prefer Hell," he tells God.

"Fine," replies God. "As you desire."

So Bill Gates goes to Hell. Two weeks later, God decides to check on the late billionaire to see how he is doing in Hell. When he gets there, he finds Bill shackled to a wall, screaming amidst hot flames in a dark cave, being burned and tortured by demons.

"How's everything going?" he asks Bill.

Bill responds, his voice filled with anguish and disappointment, "This is awful! This is nothing like the Hell I visited two weeks ago! I can't believe this is happening! What happened to that other place, with the beaches and the beautiful women playing in the water?"

"Oh ... that was the SCREENSAVER."

Speaking of therapy, America has taken a long time to recover from the Viet Nam disaster-some may say we have yet to recover. Similarly if and when we leave Iraq, we will not be leaving a country that is anywhere near what Americans had hoped would be accomplished. The failure will have profound effects on our national psyche, and this country will be struggling for decades to recover from the harm Bu$hco caused our country and to others around the world.

This site is worth visiting. If you have any military members in your family-think of posting to it. Some of the comments are great.

Here is a sample:

Military Mom: Morally Ugly

From the mailbag:

Karl, it’s time you shut up and listened. My father was a decorated veteran of FOUR WARS – he fought fascism in Spain, he fought for Israeli independence, and he fought in World War II and Korea with HIGHEST distinction. His chest could have been full of his medals, but he kept them in a drawer out of modesty. My son is CURRENTLY in the Navy, a Democrat fighting Bush’s understaffed and underhanded mother-of-all-messes. “Patriotism is not a showy burst of emotion, but the slow and steady dedication of a lifetime.” -- remember THAT next time you’re feeling like making a stupid remark.

Oh, and by the way? Your ruthlessness in the political world is to be ashamed of. You probably feel smarter than the rest of us, and triumphant because your behind-the-scenes strategies work. But you are a dishonorable man, so none of that matters. In the end, you have to face what you’ve done and how you’ve done it. Which is so morally ugly that you might melt.

And another:

Veteran: PO'd

From the mailbag:

I am a Vietnam Veteran who sevrved in the US Army 4th Infantry Division Company B 3/12 in 1968-1969. I was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds recieved in combat in March of 1969 and I also hold the Combat Infantry Badge.

I am also a Liberal and a Democrat and have been all my adult life. I would like to know who Karl Rove thinks he is questioning my patriotism. He is a chickenhawk with a yellow streak down his back a mile wide who ran as far as he could from military service when called on to serve and he questions other people's patriotism. The only thing that would satisfy me is for Bush to fire him immediatley. Since Bush is another chickenhawk I suppose that that is too much to ask.

http://takeittokarl.blogspot.com/

On Call

I passed that on to Vets for Peace.

On another topic - summer festivals -
last year we worked to elect John Kerry & defeat Bush - all summer long.

There are about a dozen festivals this summer & we're still at it, but with some different slants - pragmatic & tailored to each event & crowd.

We're using a grassroots approach, very bottom-up and volunteer-directed - then working with other groups. I love getting "Are you going to be at ..?" emails & continuing to work with some of the same people as last summer, locally & on-line.

It makes it easier to keep on.

Of the good in you I can speak.
But not of the evil.
For what is evil but good, tortured by its own thirst and hunger?

For when good thirsts it will drink, even of dead waters.

And when good is hungry it will feast, even of dead flesh.