This Wasn't In The Sales Brochure

I think this latest preposterous lie [that they told US the Iraq war would last a generation] will do them more harm if they go around spewing that.
John & Jane Q Polling-Public have already decided, enough is enough: 2+ years into Iraq, 1700+ American lives & counting, at a $$ cost of 300 Billion & counting, America has already decided this was the colossal mistake of the new century, only no one can figure out HOW to get out now.
Telling America NOW that we told ya before we started that it will take 25 YEARS or so of sacrifice of never-ending blood & taxpayer $$ to build back Iraq after we've destroyed it sounds like the biggest flip-flopping lie of all time. Smells like des-per-a-shun!

Meanwhile, the beat goes on...here's a sample of this week's editorials from across America:

Editorials Grow Increasingly Skeptical of War

By E&P Staff
Published: June 19, 2005

NEW YORK It was a week when opinion polls showed a plunge in support for the Iraq war, and the Downing Street memos finally made it into hundreds of newspapers across the nation. The congressman who turned french fries into freedom fries on Capitol Hill revealed he’d had a change of heart on Iraq, and now was in favor of U.S. withdrawal. On Saturday, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nevada told U.S. News, "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq.”

With this as a backdrop, it was no surprise that editorials in many newspapers took a more negative view of the conflict, but others stood firm. Here’s a sampling:

Louisville Courier-Journal:

“The Downing Street memo -- as well as an earlier British briefing paper concluding that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for a 'protracted and costly' postwar occupation -- is a timely reminder of how many unanswered questions remain about the Bush administration's inept and ill-conceived misadventure in Iraq.

“Those issues won't be addressed by the White House, which dismisses inquiries about the Downing Street memo as rehashing the past.

“Americans' hopes for a full and truthful accounting of the President's handling of Iraq rest primarily with the Senate intelligence committee. Its Republican leaders have refused to launch such a probe. But they are not in Washington to protect the President. It is time for them to do their jobs, conduct a thorough review and ask tough questions.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“A growing tide of developments on the ground in Iraq and in the United States itself may result in irresistible pressure on the Bush administration to end U.S. involvement there, sooner rather than later.

“There is always ambiguity in what one government's observers say about another's machinations. If the Downing Street memo was on the mark, however, it is saying that all the administration consultations with the United Nations, America's allies and the Congress itself between July 2002 and March 2003 were pure theater: The Bush administration had already decided to go to war for its own reasons and was simply playing political games in the meantime with the other interested parties, including the American people.

“One result of this confluence of events in Iraq and in the United States is growing pressure from Congress on Mr. Bush to declare a timetable for withdrawal. He is still acting as though he doesn't get it, but he will not be able to maintain that posture for long, faced with violent events and plummeting popularity figures. Wars should not be determined on the basis of polls, but only 3 out of 8 respondents to a New York Times/CBS News poll this week approved his handling of Iraq.”

Chicago Tribune:

“This much is certain: Suicide bombers will never rule Iraq. But when, many Americans want to know, will Iraqis rule and protect Iraq?

”With that question heavy on his nation, President Bush is expected to speak often in the coming days about the future he envisions, both for Iraq and for the young Americans serving there.

”Americans re-elected Bush because they trusted his judgment in difficult moments such as this. Yet the insurgents, by sustaining the bloodshed in Iraq and slowing the formation of the new government, haven't just murdered innocents. They also have shaken America's resolve. It is time for the president to step forward.”

Bradenton (Fl.) Herald:

“Here we have a war in which thousands are dying and being maimed, and a top-secret document that says evidence was ‘fixed’ to justify it. It's not quite as definitive as a tape recording with the president's own voice, which Watergate produced, but it is definitely a smoking gun loaded with fingerprints.

“Why is there so little interest in it being investigated?”

Newsday (Melville, N.Y.):

“Rummy, get real. Tell Americans the painful truth about what's going on in Iraq and what must be done to overcome an insurgency that is not in its ‘last throes,’ in Vice President Dick Cheney's absurdly optimistic words.

”That's the message that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld must hear. Neither he nor other key members of President George W. Bush's foreign policy team can continue to try to bridge the yawning gap between what they say is steady improvement in Iraq's security nightmare and what is actually happening on the ground.”

Los Angeles Times:

"The Bush administration should publicly set a target for the number of Iraqi soldiers and police who will be trained, equipped and capable of defending their country by July 1, 2006. That means troops able to protect their positions and go on the offensive against their enemies, with enough guns, bullets and tanks to do the job. If the objective is not reached, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should be fired, along with the top U.S. military commanders in Iraq.

"No one has been held accountable for the blunders, from the bad intelligence before the war to the failure to provide sufficient troops during the conflict and since. Fixing responsibility is long overdue."

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000964520

Casey,

They are simply reframing the word generational. As in the "generation of chicken-hawks" who intentionally MISSED their war now want to have a war. So it's the war for their generation. They just are sending young brave soldiers to die in their place while they play their war-games from their offices.

Hey, woah, Condi- I didn't sign in for that!!

Taleban fighters 'kill captives'
Last Updated: Sunday, 19 June, 2005, 15:20 GMT 16:20 UK

Taleban rebels in Afghanistan say they have killed a district police chief and seven other policemen captured last week in Kandahar province.

Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said Nanai Khan and the others were shot on the order of religious leaders.

His claims could not be verified by Afghan officials. The policemen were captured in Miana Shien on Thursday.

Mr Hakimi said "trials" of the other abducted officials were continuing.

Kandahar province, a former stronghold of the deposed Taleban regime, has seen much of the upsurge in violence affecting south and east Afghanistan since a lull in insurgent activity over the winter.

Rockets fired

There are conflicting reports about how many policemen were abducted - the numbers range from 10 to 31.

Gen Salim Khan, deputy provincial police chief, said he had no information on the fate of those held. He said he believed 13 people had been captured.

The officials were taken in an attack on a convoy on the road from Kandahar to Miana Shien district, about 90km (60 miles) to the north-east.

The Taleban spokesman said one of those taken was the chief of the district.

Gen Khan has denied reports that Taleban fighters attacked the town of Miana Shien and said it remained under government control.

In a separate incident on Sunday, three rockets were fired into Kandahar, one of which landed close to the former home of Taleban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, which now hosts US special forces. There were no casualties.

Nearly 400 people have died this year in violence linked to the Taleban - many of them suspected insurgents.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4108108.stm

Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight

by Michael Nolan

I'm a war president, George Bush informed Tim Russert over a year ago on "Meet the Press", in perhaps the single Bushism upon which all Americans - and all the world - can agree. I make decisions here in the oval office, in foreign policy matters, with war in mind.

Despite this single-mindedness, there are real doubts about the War President's understanding of his very own war, an understanding Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh has characterized as hallucinatory. As our troops were crossing into Baghdad city limits, our Commander-In-Chief was doing a victory jig on the deck of an aircraft carrier under a banner reassuring us (and presumably him) that the mission had been accomplished. Over two years later, all that's been accomplished is the loss of 1700 of our GIs. Upwards of thirteen thousand Americans have been horribly wounded and only God can count the number of Iraqi children who have been killed, maimed and orphaned.

And now, not surprisingly, we are running out of new recruits. In May the army missed its recruiting goal for the fourth month in a row. Applications are down significantly at our prestigious service academies, reflecting a drop off of post 9/11 patriotic fervor. Parents are learning to shoo recruiters from their doorsteps.

This all makes Americans jumpy about a future draft. Well draft be damned, why don't those who profess to support this insupportable war come forward to fight in it?

Why doesn't George W. Bush do his duty as War President by going to his base (those souls who can say with a straight face that this war is in the best interests of the United States) and asking, publicly, for volunteers? Perhaps he doesn't do it because this administration doesn't do anything publicly. Americans didn't even know they were involved in a decades-long war until many of their young had already died in Iraq.

snip~
The neocons and White House sycophants, whose job it is to punch in every day and determine the fate of Western Civilization for Mr. Bush and the rest of us, should be made to realize that true American patriots value the lives of those they ask to serve.

If Mr. Bush were the strong leader he says he is, he'd deliver the message personally.

continue~
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0619-20.htm

June 20, 2005

Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About Users; Confirm U.S. Agents Have Snooped

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The NY Times

WASHINGTON, June 19 - Law enforcement officials have made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001, according to a new study that adds grist to the growing debate in Congress over the government's counterterrorism powers.

In some cases, agents used subpoenas or other formal demands to obtain information like lists of users checking out a book on Osama bin Laden. Other requests were informal - and were sometimes turned down by librarians who chafed at the notion of turning over such material, said the American Library Association, which commissioned the study.

The association, which is pushing to scale back the government's powers to gain information from libraries, said its $300,000 study was the first to examine a question that was central to a House vote last week on the USA Patriot Act: how frequently federal, state and local agents are demanding records from libraries.

The Bush administration says that while it is important for law enforcement officials to get information from libraries if needed in terrorism investigations, officials have yet to actually use their power under the Patriot Act to demand records from libraries or bookstores.

The library issue has become the most divisive in the debate on whether Congress should expand or curtail government powers under the Patriot Act, and it was at the center of last week's vote in the House approving a measure to restrict investigators' access to libraries.

The study does not directly answer how or whether the Patriot Act has been used to search libraries. The association said it decided it was constrained from asking direct questions on the law because of secrecy provisions that could make it a crime for a librarian to respond. Federal intelligence law bans those who receive certain types of demands for records from challenging the order or even telling anyone they have received it.

As a result, the study sought to determine the frequency of law enforcement inquiries at all levels without detailing their nature. Even so, organizers said the data suggested that investigators were seeking information from libraries far more frequently than Bush administration officials had acknowledged.

"What this says to us," said Emily Sheketoff, the executive director of the library association's Washington office, "is that agents are coming to libraries and they are asking for information at a level that is significant, and the findings are completely contrary to what the Justice Department has been trying to convince the public."

From Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, and author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy, to be published by I B Tauris in October 2005.

June 20, 2005

-smip-

"Liberation" and the spread of "democracy" have become none-too-subtle code words within the neo-conservative cabal that formulates and executes American foreign policy today for militarism and war.

By the intensity of the "liberation/democracy" rhetoric alone, Americans should be put on notice that Iran is well-fixed in the cross-hairs as the next target for the illegal policy of regime change being implemented by the Bush administration.

But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.

As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream.

The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.

The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.

President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.

Great thread! Check out today's Five Minutes--lots of hope for a new media outlet!!!

Down the rabbit hole

By Tom Engelhardt

If we haven't all gone down the rabbit hole in Baghdad and come out in the Saigon of another era, you can't prove it by recent news from catastrophic Iraq. Eerie doesn't do it justice. In Washington, our leaders plead for patience; they insist, as they've been doing for a year or more, as President George W Bush has done recently, that this - the latest bad news, whatever it may be, from the urban battlefields and bomb-implanted highways of Iraq - is "progress". They swear that the most recent upsurge in violence and death (49 dead American soldiers in the first 14 days of this month and scores on scores of dead Iraqis) represents, in Dick Cheney's recent phrase, "the last throes" of the insurgency that will, the vice president predicted, end within the president's second term in office.

Think "light at the end of the tunnel". Think the era of Lyndon B Johnson. Think of that flood of positive numbers - the "metrics" of victory - that came pouring out of Vietnam and now, in the form of numbers of troops armed and trained for the new Iraqi army, police and security forces, is flooding out of Iraq.

Top generals back in Washington all lend a helpful hand. (Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers: "Well, first of all, the number of incidents is actually down 25% since the highs of last November, during the election period. So, overall, numbers of incidents are down. Lethality, as you mentioned, is up ... I think what's causing it is a realization that Iraq is marching inevitably toward democracy.") Hang in there, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice similarly assured just the other night, it's like the period after World War II when we occupied Germany and Japan; it takes patience and time to implant democracy in a defeated country. The growing strength of the insurgency, Washington officialdom has been officially saying this past month in all sorts of ways, is but proof of the progress we're making. It's just the "last gasp" of a dying movement.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, American officers fighting the war tell another story to reporters.

snip~
For years in Vietnam, the bloodbath that was Vietnam was partly supplanted by a "bloodbath" the enemy was certain to commence as soon as the United States withdrew. This future bloodbath of the imagination appeared in innumerable official speeches and accounts as an explanation for why the United States couldn't consider leaving. In public discourse, this not-yet-atrocity often superseded the only real bloodbath and was an obsessive focus of attention even for some of the war's opponents. In the meantime, the bloodbath that was Vietnam continued week after week, month after month, year after year in all its gore. Or how about the development of right-wing theories that the war in Iraq was won on the battlefield but lost on the home front; that, as in Vietnam, we were militarily victorious but betrayed by a weak American public and stabbed in the back by the liberal media? Watch for all of these, they're soon to come to your TV set.

continue~
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF17Ak02.html

Glad to have him back in top form at the BostonGlobe, Tom Oliphant tells it like it is:

Conservative spin befuddles the media

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist | June 19, 2005 WASHINGTON

WEAK IN THE face of The Great Conservative Attack Machine, two of America's more beleaguered institutions are now struggling with its equally ugly sibling, The Great Conservative Retreat Machine.

From pre-Iraq War British government memos to an autopsy report in Florida to the release of all the scraps of John Kerry's military records, conservatives are attempting to argue the opposite of what they recently claimed .

In the political world, the consensus is that it's working and that those beleaguered institutions, namely the news media and the Democratic Party, are once again flat-footed or worse.

The Bush administration insisted three years ago that war with Iraq was essential to halt Saddam Hussein's program developing weapons of mass destruction. Faced first with no evidence after the war and now with documents from Tony Blair's government detailing US hype, deception, and lack of preparedness for the war's aftermath, the same people are now using almost identical words to mask today's absurd realities.

continue~
http://tinyurl.com/cvark

Feel free to get this information about Condi's lies out there on every blog you can think of, but don't necessarily blogwhore to do so.

I think it's more important to push this out to the MSM than it is for US to be the ones taking the credit for it. If someone would kindly volunteer for the task of e-mailing the media list, that would be greatly appreciated.

Also, great articles on this thread! Thanks gang.

I think what bothers me the most about her saying this, is that she is such an accomplished liar, she does it with an amazingly casual ease, thereby having you wonder to yourself, "Oh wait, did they say that to usthree years ago or not? Or, in the alternate, oh, of course they told us that, I jsut wasn't watching the news that day." That kind of smoothness with prevarication is extra scary.

CIA chief has 'excellent idea' where bin Laden is

Monday, June 20, 2005

(CNN) -- CIA Director Porter Goss says he has an "excellent idea" where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but that the al Qaeda chief will not be caught until weak links in the war on terrorism are strengthened.

In an interview with TIME magazine published Sunday, Goss said part of the difficulty in capturing bin Laden was "sanctuaries in sovereign nations."

The magazine asked Goss when bin Laden would be captured.

"That is a question that goes far deeper than you know," he said. "In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links. And I find that until we strengthen all the links, we're probably not going to be able to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice.

"We are making very good progress on it. But when you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play.

"We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways that are acceptable to the international community.

Asked whether that meant he knew where bin Laden is, Goss responded: "I have an excellent idea where he is. What's the next question?"

Read more... http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/20/goss.bin.laden/index.html

Asked if al Qaeda could strike the United States again, Goss said: "Yes, it could. Certainly the intent is very high. And we are trying to stay ahead of their capability. And so far, I think we have done pretty well carrying the war to them, as it were. I think that's mattered."

~on Condo & her, shall we say, less-than-honest spin-o-matic mouthpiece for bu$hINC:
DKos had 1 diary yesterday & another today, on topic:

Condi lies again! Don't allow her to get away with it!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/19/152644/120

CONDI RICE SATIRE
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/20/95029/0641

Bush faces a stalled agenda, as 2006 races rev up

By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Mon Jun 20

WASHINGTON - As President Bush's ambitious agenda sags under the weight of public skepticism - and a growing willingness among some Republicans to break ranks - political observers would love nothing more than to be the proverbial fly on the wall in the Oval Office.

Of course, those who know what Bush and his advisers are saying to each other aren't talking. But in public, at least, the White House betrays no hint that it will change course on its two biggest agenda items, Social Security and Iraq. A third priority, tax reform, has been put off until the fall.

Only five months into his second term, Bush has already begun to abandon talk of bipartisanship and blame the Democrats for what he calls their "agenda of the roadblock" - a tactic that points more toward scoring points in the 2006 congressional elections than winning converts to his side in the current, closely divided Congress. The 2006 campaign has already begun, creating an incentive for Republicans to put protecting themselves ahead of loyalty to the term- limited Bush.

continue~
http://tinyurl.com/8x39w

Just about to head to the land of no internet access! I'll check for what I missed when I get back!

Important breaking news:

Tom Cruise has been hit by a water pistol!

progressive vs conservative blogs

http://stevelu.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/6/13/134225/847

Who has more freedom of speech ..

~Many regulars here do not watch cable tv talking- head shows...but for those who might, Chris Matthews is saying he will discuss Downing Street Minutes tonight:

ON HARDBALL TONIGHT MSNBC
• Monday, 7 p.m. ET repeat at 11 Pm ET
Does the "Downing Street Memo" prove America was misled about the need for war in Iraq?
Join Chris for a Hardball special report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/

This could be one of the most important stories of the year that will get little if no coverage. I was one of those that poo pooed the Ohio conspiracy stories but as you will read it was obvious that the Ohio Republican party and Mr. Noe deliberately covered up this story about coin gate at least 3 weeks before the Nov election and it sounds like it would have changed the Ohio and presidential election had it been disclosed. There was absolutely no price the RNC, the Florida Republican party and Bush paid in stealing the 2000 election. Ohions now need to step up to the plate to punish the Republican Ohio Repulican party and see to it that they don't repeat Florida 2000 and their subsequent Governor's race that essentially rewarded jeb Bush and Katherine Harris for their 2000 misdeeds.

"COLUMBUS - In the final weeks of the 2004 presidential race, the nation focused on Ohio as both campaigns carefully choreographed every move by their candidates, knowing one misstep could throw the keys to the White House into the hands of the opponent.

The national media scrutinized every detail of the high-stakes political battle, as President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry crisscrossed Ohio, energizing their bases and reaching out to swing voters in the Buckeye state, which ultimately decided the race by fewer than 120,000 votes.

At the same time - beneath the surface and out of public view - allegations were swirling that Tom Noe had laundered contributions into President Bush's campaign, and facts were emerging that the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation had lost $215 million meant for injured workers in a Bermuda hedge-fund.

Now, more than six months later, those bombshells have created the biggest state government scandal in decades in Ohio. Democrats are charging that Republican leaders suppressed the potentially explosive information until all the votes were counted to save the President's re-election campaign.

The Blade has learned that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio knew of the campaign-finance allegations against Mr. Noe about "three weeks before the November, 2004, election," giving it little time to do a thorough investigation.

Mr. Noe, a Toledo-area coin dealer, was chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in northwest Ohio.

Democratic allegations of a GOP cover-up in the loss of $215 million managed by a Pittsburgh firm have surged in the last few days. Records released last week show that high-ranking aides to Gov. Bob Taft worked to suppress revelations about the hedge fund loss in the final days before the presidential election.

"Would it have been enough?" asked Jim Ruvolo, a Toledo consultant who was chairman of Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign in Ohio last year. "With only 118,000 votes, it doesn't take much."
Republicans scoff at the talk.

David Mark, editor of Campaigns & Elections, a Washington-based nonpartisan political magazine, said if the scandal at the Bureau of Workers' Compensation had leaked before last year's election, the national media would have jumped on the story.

"It could potentially have had a 'tremendous impact' on the Republican machine, which won Ohio for Bush and ultimately won him the election," Mr. Mark said.

"If there was all of this negative publicity surrounding Noe as Bush was trying to carry Ohio, there would have been a firestorm of negative publicity," he added.

Mr. Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, conceded the presidential race on Nov. 3 after concluding that the counting of provisional ballots would not prevent Mr. Bush from carrying Ohio.
Mr. Noe was one of several dozen Ohioans whom the Bush campaign recognized as a "pioneer" for raising more than $100,000 each for the re-election campaign. Mr. Noe and his wife, Bernadette, met with Mr. Bush backstage at a campaign stop in downtown Toledo in October and co-sponsored Ohio's inaugural gala in January in Washington.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Noe embraced. The President then hugged Mrs. Noe.

Questions arise early

The air was thick with talk in Toledo about investigations surrounding the Noes long before last year's election. It centered on contributions to the Bush campaign at an Oct. 30, 2003, fund-raiser in Columbus, where Mr. Noe sponsored a table and invited a number of people to attend.

At issue was whether Mr. Noe gave others money in order for them to give to the Bush campaign, allowing him to skirt federal spending limits, law enforcement sources told The Blade.

Last week, Lucas County Prosecutor Julia Bates, a Democrat, offered details on the investigation that started in her office in January, 2004, when Mr. Noe's wife and Sam Thurber, members of the Lucas County Board of Elections, came to her with complaints about Joe Kidd, then executive director of the elections office.

Frank Stiles, an investigator who works for Ms. Bates, began examining the allegations in March, 2004. Mr. Kidd denied the claims and then fired off one of his own.

Officials won't disclose that allegation, but they have confirmed they are probing whether Mr. Noe gave several people money so they could contribute to Mr. Bush's re-election.

Mr. Kidd, like several other high-profile Toledo-area residents, gave $2,000 to the Bush campaign. On June 1, he appeared as a witness before a federal grand jury in Toledo that is investigating Mr. Noe.

Also testifying before the grand jury were several prominent area Republicans who contributed to the President's campaign, including former Toledo Mayor Donna Owens, Lucas County Commissioner Maggie Thurber, Toledo Councilman Betty Shultz, and former state Rep. Sally Perz.

Although Mr. Kidd made his allegation in March, 2004, it wasn't until September that the county prosecutor's office received information - generated by a subpoena that a county grand jury issued - that ruled out the allegation by Mrs. Noe and Mr. Thurber against Mr. Kidd.
That's when the investigation turned to Mr. Noe, Ms. Bates said.

Another subpoena was issued to get records to check out Mr. Kidd's counterallegation. Ms. Bates will not say what records were sought, citing confidentiality of grand jury proceedings.

The county prosecutor's office received that information Sept. 29, 2004. Mr. Stiles, the investigator, was on vacation, and he did not see the records until Oct. 12. He immediately went to Ms. Bates, and she called David Bauer, the assistant U.S. attorney in Toledo, because the allegations involved violations of federal campaign finance laws.

"The interest level was, `Yes, we'll take it,'" Ms. Bates said.

Investigation begins

On Oct. 13, 2004, Ms. Bates met with Mr. Bauer, other assistant U.S. attorneys, and FBI agents.

That same day, Mr. Bauer contacted the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. In an e-mail later that day to the U.S. attorney's office in Cleveland, the Public Integrity Section authorized the opening of the investigation.

On Oct. 15, 2004, the files from the Lucas County prosecutor's office were turned over to the FBI.

Gregory White, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said there are "standard procedures" on national campaign issues and the Justice Department handled the allegations against Mr. Noe with "professionalism and dispatch and in keeping with the rules and the regulations."

When two Blade reporters interviewed Mr. Noe in March, he read a written statement when asked about a federal investigation into campaign contributions.

"If this fabrication of facts by you, your editors, or anyone involved in the newspaper persist, I assert they are libelous and slanderous in content, and I will take whatever legal action is necessary to protect my reputation and my business interests. So you should be governed accordingly," Mr. Noe said.

Officials muffle concerns

The Blade first reported problems with Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation investments on April 3 in a story revealing that the agency had given $50 million since 1998 to Mr. Noe to create a rare-coin fund.

At the time, he was a Republican appointee to the Ohio Board of Regents and Ohio Turnpike Commission and a major GOP fund-raiser for not only President Bush but for Governor Taft and a host of other top Ohio Republicans.

Three weeks ago, Mr. Noe's attorneys told law enforcement authorities that $10 million to $12 million of the state's rare-coin assets were "unaccounted for."

In a 2000 review of Mr. Noe's coin investment, Keith Elliott, manager of internal audits for the bureau, wrote that the practices of the coin fund "could potentially expose both the BWC and the fund managers to adverse public scrutiny regarding the appropriate use of state funds."

In the year before the election, a number of concerns about the coin fund came to the attention of top state officials, who failed to make them public.

First, in October, 2003, two state-owned coins worth $300,000 were reported stolen in the mail, and then a 2004 audit of the venture's Colorado subsidiary showed that 119 coins worth $93,000 were reported missing.

Mr. Noe never notified Colorado authorities about the missing coins - and information was not made public about the loss until The Blade's stories began.

Pace of inquiry defended

"On April 27, Mr. White confirmed the federal investigation of Mr. Noe for possible violations of campaign contribution laws."

Mr. White, a former "Republican Lorain County prosecutor" who was appointed by Mr. Bush in 2003 as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said it was not possible to make that announcement before the Nov. 2, 2004, election.

"These things happen all over the country and on both sides of the political spectrum. In my view, I'm appointed by the President to supervise enforcement of the law, and that is what I intend to do. I take pride in that and the people who work in this office who maintain the integrity of the Justice Department in the Northern District of Ohio," Mr. White said.

Mr. Bauer declined to talk about specifics of the investigation into Mr. Noe, but he said financial cases are complicated and can sometimes take years to unravel.

Last week, state Sen. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo) said in every election people "monitor information," and she questioned how federal authorities managed the information they had about Mr. Noe last October.

"To assume that information probably wasn't controlled is to assume the American people don't have minds of their own. Connect the dots," Senator Fedor said. "Bernadette Noe was the head of the board of elections. There is no mistake that Lucas County had the highest [percentage] of provisional ballots rejected in Ohio.

"Tom Noe was chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in northwest Ohio, a Pioneer, a member of the Board of Regents who threatened the president of the University of Toledo because George Soros was going to speak there," said Ms. Fedor. Mr. Soros, a billionaire, traveled around the country last fall to criticize Mr. Bush.

Mr. McLear, the RNC spokesman, said: "As far as any suggestion that there was some kind of conspiracy, it's so far-fetched, I wouldn't even want to entertain that." Yea Right!

Ms. Bates, who supported Mr. Kerry for president, said she knew the allegations against Mr. Noe were politically explosive. But if unfounded, they could improperly tar Mr. Noe, she said.
"It was a very difficult situation to be in to have something in your possession that could be very damaging and political,'' she said last week. "If this dropped in my lap on Oct. 13, I'm not sure if I would have time to do much before the election."

Hedge fund loses $215M

Last fall, high-ranking officials with the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation and Governor Taft's office found themselves in a similar situation - with information that could be damaging to the political fortunes of Mr. Bush and U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, a Republican and former governor.

The bureau is the state agency charged with paying medical bills and providing monthly checks to Ohio workers injured on the job.

In 1998, during the final year Mr. Voinovich was governor, the bureau hired Pittsburgh-based MDL Capital Management. Over the years, the state invested $355 million in a long-bond fund that the firm managed.

In September, 2003, the bureau agreed to a proposal from MDL to create an "active duration fund," which would act like a hedge fund.

But in just a few months last year, MDL lost $215 million from the bureau's investment portfolio when the Bermuda-based hedge fund tanked, wiping out the millions the state had placed in it.

On Sept. 27, 2004, the bureau's administrator-chief executive, James Conrad, learned about the state's loss in the hedge fund, according to records the bureau released last week.

That evening, James McLean, the bureau's chief investment officer, told Mr. Conrad in a conference call that when he wanted to "tighten the screws" on MDL, chief financial officer Terrence Gasper had told him that Mr. Conrad had given permission to "give MDL a break."

Mr. Conrad said that was untrue, according to records. Mr. McLean also said Mr. Gasper had told him that George Forbes - a member of the bureau's oversight commission appointed by Mr. Voinovich and a former Cleveland City Council president who was Mr. Voinovich's ally when he was mayor - had called Mr. Conrad to discuss giving MDL a break.

According to records, Mr. Conrad then called Mr. Forbes, "who adamantly denied having called Conrad." MDL hired Mr. Forbes' daughter, Mildred "Mimi" Forbes, as an executive in 2001. The Ohio Ethics Commission and inspector general are investigating the bureau's investment practices.

Two days later, after Mr. Conrad learned about the hedge-fund investment, the bureau requested that Mark Lay, MDL's chairman and chief executive, terminate it.

In a recent interview, James Samuel, a former bureau official who in July, 2003, joined the governor's office as executive assistant for business and industry, said he recalls getting a phone call in late September from Mr. Conrad. Mr. Samuel said Mr. Conrad talked about an investment problem, and he may have mentioned MDL.

Mr. Samuel said he met with Mr. Conrad and Jon Allison, the governor's chief of staff, that day or the next.

Based on that meeting, Mr. Allison then told Mr. Taft that there was an investment loss at the bureau from $10 million to $20 million, said press secretary Mark Rickel.

In an Oct. 26, 2004, e-mail to Mr. Samuel, Mr. Conrad wrote that the "entire value" of the portfolio that MDL managed was down about $225 million.

Mr. Samuel said he "probably" received the Oct. 26, 2004, e-mail from Mr. Conrad. He said he recalls briefing Mr. Allison about the topic.

"In all honesty, I don't remember talking about the $225 million," Mr. Samuel said. "Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't."

By the time the state exited the hedge fund, it had gained back about $9 million, resulting in a final loss for the bureau of $215 million.

In an Oct. 28, 2004, e-mail, Mr. Conrad wrote that Mr. Allison and Mr. Samuel had agreed to exclude information about the MDL loss from a weekly report to the governor "due to the wide and uncontrolled circulation of the Governor's weekly."

State waits to reveal loss

On Election Day, which was Nov. 2, 2004, a Columbus law firm was hired as special counsel by Republican Attorney General Jim Petro's office to examine MDL and its Bermuda hedge fund.

But the state did not release any information about the $215 million loss until June 7 - a day after The Blade began making calls after learning that state investigators had uncovered huge losses at the bureau.

At a June 9 press conference, Mr. Taft said he was not told about Mr. Conrad's Oct. 26, 2004, e-mail and did not know of the extent of the loss until two weeks ago.

"Should I have been told? Obviously," Mr. Taft said. "Should the administrator of the bureau have informed me directly, personally? I think so. I think that was his obligation; $200 million is a huge amount of money to lose."

Mr. Conrad announced his resignation May 27 after Mr. Taft said the bureau had "failed to implement proper controls to safeguard" the rare-coin investments. Mr. Taft demoted Mr. Samuel Friday for failing to inform him last year about the $215 million hedge fund loss.

Was election affected?

U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, a Lorain Democrat, said if Ohioans had learned about the MDL loss and the federal investigation into Mr. Noe's campaign contributions to President Bush before the Nov. 2, 2004, election, state results may have been different.

In addition to the presidential race, the ballot included a U.S. Senate seat. Voters re-elected Mr. Voinovich to a second six-year term over Democratic state Sen. Eric Fingerhut of Cleveland.

"This is likely the biggest scandal in our state's history," Mr. Brown said. "To keep that out of the public domain to save George Bush and George Voinovich's political future is pretty reprehensible," he added.

Mr. Ruvolo, the Toledo-based consultant who was chairman of Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign in Ohio last year, said voters tend to focus on the two presidential candidates and state politics often play a small role in that choice.

But the scale of the scandal at the Bureau of Workers' Compensation could have made a difference in the presidential race in Ohio, he said. "The massiveness of this might have cut through."

Mark Weaver, a GOP political consultant who represented the Ohio Republican Party last year in election-law disputes with the Democrats, referred to that Democratic sentiment as "wishful thinking times 10."

He recalled giving a speech to Republican county chairmen in Ohio in the spring of 2004. Based on polling results, Mr. Weaver said he told them that the presidential race in Ohio was "over."

"Everyone snickered. I told them, `That does not mean we have won.' What it means is the persuasion part was over. We had to find out who our people were and get them to the polls. Those who were for Bush could not be moved. Those who were for Kerry could not be moved. And those who were undecided could not be found," said Mr. Weaver, who is working for Republican Auditor Betty Montgomery's gubernatorial campaign.

Mr. Mark, the editor of Campaign & Elections, said it is not surprising that The Blade began reporting on investment problems at the Bureau of Workers' Compensation just a few months after the presidential election was certified.

He said major U.S. political scandals tend to come to light in the aftermath of a campaign.

"With Watergate, within a couple of months, all of this started to unravel after [President] Nixon won the election. It's always hard to pinpoint if information was held based on political reasons, but in this case it looks like a lot of people could have had that in mind."

This new Blade story not only reiterates the coin scandel but apparently ties it into the presidential race and the cover up by the Ohio Republican Party weeks before the election.

On to Victory

Still here.. I don't watch those shows but I may watch that (at my mom's) - esp. since can't read about it on here right away!
--
My friend Bert is a photographer so he just took studio photos of me in my 'Chirac Please Help Us' t-shirt. Funny! I told him he should specialize in "glamour political shots" of middle-aged women (soft-lighting etc).

Once again Mr. Herbert, the conscience of the NYTimes, hits the bullseye:

Someone Else's Child

By BOB HERBERT Op-Ed Columnist NYT
Published: June 20, 2005

It has become clearer than ever that Americans do not want to fight George W. Bush's tragically misguided war in Iraq.

You can still find plenty of folks arguing that we have to stay the course, or even raise the stakes by sending more troops to the war zone. But from the very start of this war the loudest of the flag-waving hawks were those who were safely beyond military age themselves and were unwilling to send their own children off to fight.

It's easy to be macho when you have nothing at risk. The hawks want the war to be fought with other people's children, while their own children go safely off to college, or to the mall. The number of influential American officials who have children in uniform in Iraq is minuscule.

Most Americans want no part of Mr. Bush's war, which is why Army recruiters are failing so miserably at meeting their monthly enlistment quotas. Desperate, the Army is lowering its standards, shortening tours, increasing bonuses and violating its own recruitment regulations and ethical guidelines.

Americans do not want to fight this war.

snip~
I don't know how you win a war that your country doesn't want to fight. We sent too few troops into Iraq in the first place and the number of warm bodies available for Iraq and other military missions going forward is dwindling alarmingly. The Bush crowd may be bellicose, but for most Americans the biggest contribution to the war effort is a bumper sticker that says "support our troops," and maybe a belligerent call to a talk radio station.

The home-front "warriors" who find it so easy to give the thumbs up to war endanger the truly valorous men and women who are actually willing to put on a uniform, pick up a weapon and place their lives on the line.

The president and these home-front warriors got us into this war and now they don't know how to get us out. Nor do they have a satisfactory answer to the important ethical question: how do you justify sending other people's children off to fight while keeping a cloak of protection around your own kids?

continue~
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/opinion/20herbert.html?hp

Posted by: Ira at June 20, 2005 11:42 AM

Ira, like you, I too have been following Ohio / Coingate via the ToledoBlade. I agree, its an enormous story of Republican corruption that the MSM is not picking up. Are they dismissing it as a local Ohio story? Or perhaps its because it took over a month for the blogosphere's herculean effort to get them to even begin to acknowledge DowningStreet...our corporate MSM cannot cover 2 on-going stories of Republican corruption at once, didn't you hear Tom Cruise got squirted with water? EGads, that'll be at least 3 days of non-stop coverage! No time to send camera crews to Ohio to uncover the Republican Coingate Corruption!

However, NYT Paul Krugman had an excellent op/ed:

What's the Matter With Ohio?

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The Toledo Blade's reports on Coingate - the unfolding tale of how Ohio's Bureau of Workers' Compensation misused funds - deserve much more national attention than they have received so far. For one thing, it's an entertaining story that seems to get weirder by the week. More important, it's an object lesson in what happens when you have one-party rule untrammeled by any quaint notions of independent oversight.

entire article, worth reading:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/061805E.shtml

My Republican family member visitor his been repeating something I imagine that has been repeated lately on Rusch, i.e. that it was Republicans in Congress not Dems who were responsible for Civil Rights legislation and conservative Dems who opposed it. They point to the % of Republican of the 35-40 Senate Republicans in the 1960s that supported Civil Rights. My argument was that folks like Dirkson would not be welcome in today's Republican party and that it was conservative Dems in the 1960s who changed parties and became Republican like Shelby that had such a voting history of opposing Civil Rights. Does anyone know of any article out there that specifically rebuts this newest Revisionist History being spread by the right wing? Again this is why we need to be more informed of the right wing thought process to know what kind of disinformation they are out there spreading, like it was Republicans in Congress who were responsible for civil rights, of course except for folks like John Stennis and Jessie Helms. Yea the Hoover Institute and Ken Mehlman are really out there promoting such revisionism in hopes of misleading minorites into changing their party affiliation.

on to victory:

yes coin gate is an important story but I feel that it was the cover up of coin gate 3 weeks before the election that reeks of Nixonian coverup and will never be investigated by the Republican Ohio proscutor.

Mr. White, a former "Republican Lorain County prosecutor" who was appointed by Mr. Bush in 2003 as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said it was not possible to make that announcement before the Nov. 2, 2004, election.

At least Gov Taft should be investigated and eventually forced out of office. Perhaps Rep. Conyers needs to pursue this cover up and its consequential effect on the 2004 election.

sidestepping democracy:

White House does not rule out Bolton recess appointment
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-06-20T161439Z_01_N20528366_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-BUSH-BOLTON-DC.XML

The White House on Monday did not rule out the possibility of sidestepping the Senate by naming John Bolton as U.N. ambassador in a recess appointment, as it urged an up-or-down Senate vote on the nomination.

"It is critical that we get him in place," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of Bush's controversial nominee.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hinted on Sunday that President Bush could install Bolton to the U.N. post through a temporary recess appointment. "We'll see what happens this week," she told "Fox News Sunday."
&more

... Bush, who keeps a bust of Lincoln prominently displayed in the Oval Office, is making Civil War references a staple of his speeches promoting democracy overseas and policy changes at home. And a glossy, GOP-produced "2005 Republican Freedom Calendar," spotlighting key moments in the party's civil rights history, has been distributed to party officials nationwide.

"We started our party with the express intent of protecting the American people from the Democrats' pro-slavery policies that expressly made people inferior to the state," Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) wrote in a letter printed on the calendar.

Referring to the GOP's new efforts to promote its civil rights record, Yale University history professor David Blight said, "It's appalling to me as a historian and as an American citizen. It necessitates ignoring and avoiding at least 80 years of the history of the Republican Party, that the Republican Party became the bastion of white solidarity, white comfort."

Republicans, however, insist their true history has been obscured -- an argument encapsulated by a slogan on their new calendar.

"Celebrating a century and a half of civil rights achievement by the Party of Lincoln," proclaims its cover, which features a large image of the 16th president.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/145320/385

aimzz...

If they pull that shot, I say we go obstruction from here on out.

[~oil cartel laughing all the way to the bank, bu$h hand-holding with Saudi prince a success???]

Crude Oil Prices Soar Near $60 a Barrel
By BRAD FOSS, AP Business Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050620/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices_26

~~~~~~~~~~`
meanwhile
the "Question of the day" on both CNN & MSNBC:
Porter Goss, the CIA chief has 'excellent idea' where bin Laden is
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/20/goss.bin.laden/index.html

CNN:
If U.S. intelligence officials have an ‘excellent idea’ where Osama bin Laden is, should they go get him?
YES 93 % NO 7 %
http://www.cnn.com/

MSNBC:
Should the U.S. go after Osama bin Laden no matter what?
YES 83 % NO 17%
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080261/

[only its a rhetorical question because we can't go after OBL because bu$h has us quagmired in Iraq for a "generation", because democracy is on the march, so Osama bin forgotten]

monkey: your post confirms my exact concerns about GOP Revisionism and Civil Rights.
Again I see it as the next battle with Ken Mehlman and the GOP to rewrite history and ignore Jessie Helms and John Stennis wing of the Republican party and try to claim Dirkson as their role model which is insane. We need to map out the Dixicrats and their morpging from conservative Dems to becoming this century's right wing Republicans before the GOP does it for us.

morphing

Questions of hypocrisy in Republican attacks on senator who raised Nazis in Guantanamo comparison

by John Byrne

GOP has used Nazi, Hitler references on stem cells, abortion, taxes and the environment

An array of senior Republican officials and activists—including the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign—have invoked Hitler or Nazi references, raising questions of hypocrisy for recent attacks on Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) for referencing “Nazi” tactics at Guantanamo Bay.

Durbin’s remarks were quickly snapped up by conservatives and the media.

But senior Republicans—including Chairman of the Republican National Committee Ken Mehlman—have not apologized, and have in fact defended, comparisons of Democrats to Nazis in the past.

Last June, then-Bush campaign manager Mehlman defended an ad that contained footage of Adolf Hitler interspersed with images of Democratic leaders Al Gore, Dick Gephart and John Kerry. The campaign defended the images, saying they were taken from a video on MoveOn.org.

Mehlman said it was used "to show the depths to which these Kerry supporters will sink to win." The video was later removed.

Mehlman is not alone. A raft of Republicans in Congress have invoked Hitler and Nazism on issues from stem cell research, to abortion, to taxes and the environment.

White House confidante Grover Norquist, known for his blistering attacks on U.S. taxes, likened the estate tax to the “morality of the Holocaust” in October 2003.

"The argument that some who play to the politics of hate and envy and class division will say is, 'Well, that's only 2 percent -- or, as people get richer, 5 percent, in the near future -- of Americans likely to have to pay [the estate tax],” he told NPR. “I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust: 'Oh, it's only a small percentage. It's not you; it's somebody else.’”

After being criticized for his remarks, Norquist expanded them in 2004 to include Democrats.

"The Nazis were for gun control, the Nazis were for high marginal tax rates.... Do you want to talk about who's closer politically to national socialism, the Right or the Left?" he told the Jewish newspaper The Forward. He also "told the Forward that he would not hesitate to use Holocaust comparisons in the future."

A Republican senator invoked Nazism when criticizing stem cell research last year.

"We certainly have all seen the rejections of Nazi Germany's abuses of science,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) declared regarding his opposition to stem cell research last October. “As a society and a nation, there ought to be some limit on what we can allow or should allow."

In response to a ruling on abortion last September, Congressman Steve King said following law on reproductive rights equivalent to a Nazi guard saying he was following orders.

“That, Mr. Speaker, is a ‘modern-day’ equivalent of the Nazi prison guard saying 'I was just following orders,’” he said on the House floor Sept. 8, 2004. “It was all legal in Nazi Germany at the time.”

Another senator even compared the Kyoto climate treaty to Nazism, repeating a quotation from a Russian official.

Sen. James Inhofe said Oct. 11, 2004 that Kyoto "would deal a powerful blow on the whole humanity similar to the one humanity experienced when Nazism and communism flourished."

The Oklahoma Republican added, "The world has certainly turned on its head that we Americans must look to Russians for speaking out strongly against irrational authoritarian ideologies."

Sen. Tom Cole (R-OK) dragged out Hitler to hit Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

"Cole Claims a Vote Against Bush Is a Vote For Hitler," KTOK radio in Oklahoma blared last year.

"Republican Congressman Tom Cole claims a vote against the ‘re-election’ of President Bush is like supporting Adolph Hitler during World War Two,” the station reported. “It's what he said recently before a meeting of Canadian County Republicans."

Cole later codified his statement, saying through a spokesperson: "What do you think Hitler would have thought if Roosevelt would've lost the election in 1944?”

Others, too, have likened Democratic policy to Nazism. Former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) compared a Democratic tax plan to Nazi law in 2002.

"Now, forgive me, but that is right out of Nazi Germany,” Gramm said. “I don't understand ... why all of a sudden we are passing laws that sound as if they are right out of Nazi Germany."

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Questions_of_hypocrisy_in_Republican_attacks_on_senator_who_raised_Nazis_in_Guantanamo_c_0620.html

It was a strange weekend around here. We were painting a bedroom, and you know how you go into a project and everything else seems so far away? The house was a wreck, and the place smells like paint, and the weekend is over.........

But, this morning, I've been thinking about the war, and reading the links put up. The headers have been incredible. The comments have been spot-on. The war and how it started, and where we are now has begun to STOP being a 'rah rah on to victory' party. But, it's still going on. Just because many more people have signed on to the wrongness of it, doesn't make it go away.

I'm not satisfied with the media all jumping around now (a few years late and billions of dollars short)to say what they are now saying. Not even if they came right out with headlines saying "WE WAS WRONG AND YOU WAS ROBBED" would it be enough. They can't get back the lives that were lost. Some damage can never be repaired. I am trying to gird myself for the slow painful way the media will drag out this unpopular war, and Bushes declining poll numbers as a matter of their ratings and readership.

Even though the recruiting numbers are way down, and the military has lowered it's projections, there are still people signing up. Are these people hawks? Poor people with few prospects? Fundies who have heard 'the call?' With no timetable for withdrawal, and the back door draft, and the number of dead and wounded who are out of it forever, can anyone who signs up now really believe that they aren't headed for Iraq or Afghanistan? And what of Iran?

I've begun thinking that one thing we don't hear enough of, is the voice of someone who is going to speak a truth that Americans need to hear. We cannot dominate and bring 'freedom and democracy' to the whole world. We are not able to sustain the flood of money leaving this country. We may be a super power with all kinds of wonderful weaponry, but after we are done 'shocking and aweing' (sp) a country, the people on the ground that have to be encountered are NOT happy to have us around.

U.S. arrogance, in the face of the Bush regime is not helping any other country or our own. Bush delivered a message after 9-11, that we are hated for our freedom, and people bought that up with revenge in their minds. We were attacked, so we have to go attack back. But, ATTACK WHO? Everybody? Everybody who has a Muslim on their soil who has said the U.S. is the great Satan? Hate isn't fixed by bombing a country into oblivion so that we can build a green zone of non-Satan type helpers.

Honestly, I have begun to think that Bush and company have decided that the Middle East is ours for the taking. We deserve it, dontcha know? We were attacked, and in order to keep us safe, we have to go do regime change and spread freedom and democracy because God called on the hot line and said the promised land is now the United States. "Go unto the world and bomb it into fundementalist Christianity" (Somehow, I can't imagine that this is one call the Lord did NOT make)

Anyway, what occurs to me now, is that the voice of reason, many voices, need to open the dialogue that says there probably never will be a point where we say we have avenged 9-11. We aren't going to do away with every person who depises the U.S. We aren't going to make everyone like us and promise not to try to kill us. The big win promised by the Bush regime is a big myth. Iraq isn't going to cure what ails us. Neither will Iran or Palestine or Israel. Western democracy being shoved at people on the tip of a daisy cutter bomb is not the answer. Every person who blows themself up in a car bomb is immediatley raised to the side of Allah, and two more recruits are made to replace the dead hero.

Americans like to win, you know. Winning is the American style. Being the best, the biggest, the mostest is us all over. There are plenty of people who admire the 'if you aren't with us, you are with the terrorists' mindset. It suits their need for revenge, but of course to them, they have educated their minds to call it justice. Whatever we do, it's justice. Whatever they do, it's terrorism. That is going to be hard to take away from hard liners. Some of them are never going to give that ideal up. The fool sitting in the White House isn't giving it up. Hopefully, more of the 'rah rah' people will begin to see reality, but like I said, I expect it to be slowed down and stirred up nicely for the media to enjoy better ratings.

I don't think we've seen or heard the last awful thing that Bushco has planned to do. Iran? Please, no. Not that, not another foray into a war of choice, based on garbage fed to a vengeful public. No more 'rah rah' breaking news bulletins feeding a frezny of people out for revenge/justice. It has to be stopped. There has to be someplace where sane people pull up on the reins and shout "NO MORE" I know that is here at the DCP. Messaging that out has to be louder and more urgent.

Well, that pretty much sums it up. See what happens when you breathe paint fumes for two full days!!!

Monkey it inexcusable for either sides to inject Hitler into the debate and a complete distraction from the real issues at hand. I have warned and been shot down here numerous times when I have urged our side to just stay away from that comparison. Just say no, please.
Its like superman touching criptonite, its radioactive.
We have so many great arguments to throw at the right. Why do we inadvertantly step on our own messages about Gittmo etc?

Does anyone know how much the Kerry/Edwards team knew about the specifics of the coin gate cover up at the time of their concession the end of Nov. 2004?

Posted by: on.to.victory4Dems at June 20, 2005 12:46 PM

We will discover they "say" they KNOW where OBL is, but instead they will trick us into another quaqmire going the wrong direction without direction!

eek eek Ira...

That Durbin story is ALL OVER the mainstream media, and has been for days. While I DESPISE ever raising it, hypocrisy, in my humble opinion, must be met head on.

No offense intended, just let the record show that neocons in glass houses shouldn't get stoned... or something like that.

Your point is noted... moving on.

monkey:

you were 100% right to raise the issue of hypocrisy. Dubin is a good guy and most of us got we he was saying. what the media has done with his statement reminds me of the bs stories we heard daily during the campaign last fall.
it is these tactics which are the m.o. of the GOP. I believe it was Lackoff who said that a mistake progressives make in framing their argument is starting their response by repeating the primary attack line, thus giving the original attack line more credibility and more voice.
our response should be instead of saying we are more pure on the hitler agument we should say abuses are still going on at gittmo now lets talk about what we needs to be done to correct that abuse period.
not trying to lecture anyone but I am hoping these episodes will make us better prepared as political communicators for the next election battle in November.
the GOP is much better at this framing game but hopefully with this dcp site we are gaining on them.

Posted by: tutterfly at June 20, 2005 01:11 PM

tutter~
I've been thinking along the same lines. What is it about the American psyche, that we presume might is right and we're always right, and anyone who doesn't agree with US must be dominated, conquered, ridiculed, etc? Did it begin with the macho cowboy myth, the taming of the Wild West, always grabbing more land and resources, by brute force?
And what is it with the Reaganesque "shining city on the hill" mindset, where America believes the entire world is beneath US and looks up to US and envies US? And if you even question that belief, then you must be stomped, unpatriotic, called a traitor, love it or leave it, etc?
I'm beginning to think of bu$hINC's Republican version of America not like the "shining city on the hill" metaphor but more like the upscale gated communties they build in exurbia....pretending they're better than the rest of us and "safe" on their manicured lawns behind their wrought-iron fences, while they wall themselves off from the rest of humanity. They do not want to live among the "messiness of the masses" but they sure do want to tell the rest of us what to say & do, with their self-righteous, hypocritical indignation.
I am sad to say I have several Republican family members who honestly do not care what is going on in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world as long as "the news" does not pre-empt their nightly sit-com or "reality tv" programs or their golf games or the new shoe sale this weekend. They have adopted the Barbara Bu$h mindset, they refuse to let the thought of body bags disturb their beautiful minds. They don't personally know anyone within "their circle" with combat boots on the ground in Iraq, and their own children are definitely not going into the military, so war news from Iraq does not intrude into their lives.
And when asked, they still support Bu$h because::: "even though its taking longer in Iraq than we thought it would, he's a moral Christian who stands firm against terrorists and he means what he says and doesn't back down and that's what we need with all the terrorists who hate America and you know everything changed since 9-11..."
I'm thinking it won't be long now before they begin to tell me, that "the war in Iraq is the Democrats in Congress' fault anyway, because they're against everything positive bu$h tries to do"..
To those of you who are lucky enough to be surrounded by free thinking-liberal-progressive people, ya'll have no idea what its like to be immersed here in red state Americana. But I refuse to give up or give in...

Posted by: Ira at June 20, 2005 12:23 PM

Ira-

In the Democratic convention in 1948, keynote speaker Hubert Humphrey gave a speech in which he proclaimed that it was time for people to stop hanging in the shadow of "state's rights" and walk forward into the sunshine of HUMAN rights. He was speaking, of course, about civil rights for all. At this point in his speech, Strom Thurmond and other Democrats walked out of the convention-- never to be associated with the Democratic party again. Some first formed the Dixiecrat party, and then eventually moved in with modern day Republicans-- because the Republican party refused to support civil rights legislation. Those in the Republican party who did support it, switched over to the Democrats. JFK, RFK, LBJ, Ralph Yarborough... these were the people responsible for passing civil rights legislation. All Democrats. Those Democrats who opposed it either left the party and became Republicans-- or changed their views and now support civil rights.

The best example of this trend is Texas. The state voted straight Democrat-- UNTIL Democrats like LBJ, Ralph Yarborough, and Lloyd Benston started supporting civil rights. That changed it, and now, of course, Texas is all red.

Don't let ANYONE ever try and say that Republicans were responsible for civil rights legislation. When LBJ signed the civil rights bill in 1964 he turned to an advisor and said, "I have lost the south for a generation." Unfortunately, he was a little short.

nativeTexan: I too am a native Texan and fought for Yarborough over Bentsen in 1972 and saw all our conservative Dems turn Republican as all of the Harris Cty Judges.

I raised the issue b/c I sense from talking with conservatives and starting to read conservative sites that this is a new strategy of the right. To make Dirkson their symbol knowing full well that Thurman,Stennis and Helms are their symbols. I see and hear it coming from the right in Mehlman's strategy to try and peal off minority voters. I hope that I am wrong native Texan, curious if other have picked up on this. I know better but just feel we need to be prepared with ammunition. This may sound insane but I am trying to listen to Limbaugh at least 1 hour per week.

Ira-

It's vital that we are prepared. We've just got to keep spreading the truth, spreading the truth, and spreading the truth. And I thank you for listening to rush because SOMEONE has to and I sure as hell can't.

omigosh! a NYtimes op-ed by Mario Cuomo! I love him!

Not on Faith Alone
By MARIO M. CUOMO
Published: June 20, 2005

THERE is a way to get beyond the religious morass created by President Bush's position on embryonic stem cells

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/opinion/20cuomo.html?ex=1119931200&en=2ea1e794849f490c&ei=5070&emc=eta1

native:

politics is not pretty and I have decided to start educating myself on as much as I can absorb from the right to become a better framer of our position. I have asked for a reading list from my Republican relative of righty diatribe; Ann Coulter is where I draw the line. I hope others here are not offended or confused by my posting of conservative strategies. My motives are pure.What would be the top 5 progressive books to exchange with my Republican relative?

ira,
I listen to Limbaugh also...not directly, but most of my relatives quote Limbaugh & Hannity every time I'm around, so I have no choice....I only wish I could limit it to 1 hour per week...

..the Republican relatives will all be decked out in red, white & blue clothes for the annual July 4th family reunion/picnic. I've decided to wear this:
http://www.troopsribbon.com/pictures.html

UK/Guardian still coming out with more interesting whistle blowers, "no WMD" rationale for invading Iraq:

WMD claims were 'totally implausible'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday June 20, 2005
The Guardian

A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq's weapons programme were "totally implausible".
He tells the Guardian: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too".

continue~
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1510259,00.html

It is getting really ugly in the House. Rethugs accuse Democrats of attacking Christianity because they want to enter an amendment forbidding abusive proselytizing in the military academies! Rethug is being considered for disciplinary action for the rest of the day. CSPAN now.

Interesting article on DSM and its origin:

... Bush devotees argued that the word ’fixed’ means something different in England. This is what the TimesOnline.co.uk reporter who broke the story had to say re: ’fixed’ in a WaPo online chat:

Michael Smith, Sunday Times Reporter: There are a number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it. The intelligence was fixed and as for the reports that said this was one British official. Pleeeaaassee! This was the head of MI6. How much authority do you want the man to have? He has just been to Washington, he has just talked to George Tenet. He said the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. That translates in clearer terms as the intelligence was being cooked to match what the administration wanted it to say to justify invading Iraq.

"fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election"

Another reason given for Bush’s refusal to answer these allegations is that the memo is hearsay from an insignificant aide. Ray McGovern, 27yr CIA analyst (retired), stated at the Conyers’ Hearing that the Downing Street Minutes are in fact a primary source, not merely 2nd hand information.

The Memo is actually the minutes from a top secret meeting with Blair, his cabinet and the head of MI6. As UK reporter Mr. Smith stated, "Pleeeaaassee! This was the head of MI6. How much authority do you want the man to have?" Britain’s top spy told Blair what he learned in Washington, that war was "inevitable" and the "facts were being fixed" to convince the public.

Bush told US war was the last resort, but according to the Downing Street minutes, that was a bald-faced lie. They had planned the war from the start.

Sure it was an aide doing the writing, that’s how top level meetings work. Does the US press expect to disregard all meeting minutes unless Blair himself wrote them?

The telling proof is that the minutes were written on the day of the meeting, and sent to all participants immediately afterward- nobody objected. Blair and his cabinet did not reply with a differing account of the meeting- implicitly stating that the contents are true, the DSM does indeed reflect the assessment of Britain’s top Intelligence Officer upon returning from DC.

What more of a primary source is necessary to initiate a Senate Investigation? The answer is nothing- this does warrant a full investigation. If Bush has nothing to hide, he should be glad to clear this up by testifying as soon as possible.

Read more...

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6553

Great post and comments by all above. What tutterfly wrote sounds like the very thoughts in my head (except for the painting--boy do I ever need to do some house painting :-).

Denise, it is getting really ugly in the House and in the red media and all over.

I'm wishing for some good old-fashioned 1960's era-like love and positive truth-telling. We need a revival of the flower children or something! Oy, showing my age...

Bush speaking to the EU's this am:""ok,so who wants to go first? Oh,the old guy does,so let him."
That's the kind of diplomacy we get these days..nothing new for sure. What an embarrassment!

From looking over the posts from this thread and the weekend threads, it looks as though the media floodgates are just beginning to open. Could it be that the MSM is finally be getting some guts and starting to actually report the news?

Or maybe that's overly optimistic...

and...
coming up within the hour on CSPAN 2,
waiting to see which DEM Senators will be speaking:

U.S. Senate: CSPAN 2
Bolton Debate Resumes Today
On May 26, a cloture vote in the Senate failed to end debate on John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Debate resumes Monday at 5pm ET and is set to last one hour. At 6pm ET, Sen. Frist will try to move to another cloture vote, the passage of which would allow debate to come to an end.

http://www.cspan.org/homepage.asp

Lessons how to dodge answering a simple question:

Need some entertainment on a Monday morning? How about ABC chief White House correspondent Terry ("Bulldog") Moran, right, questioning White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan the other day? I don't know which to admire more, Moran's tenacity or his sense of humor. As reported by Editor & Publisher, here's how that went:

MORAN: Scott, is the insurgency in Iraq in its "last throes"?

McCLELLAN: Terry, you have a desperate group of terrorists in Iraq that are doing everything they can to try to derail the transition to democracy. The Iraqi people have made it clear that they want a free and democratic and peaceful future. And that's why we're doing everything we can, along with other countries, to support the Iraqi people as they move forward ...

MORAN: But the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: The Vice President talked about that the other day -- you have a desperate group of terrorists who recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq. A free Iraq will be a significant blow to their ambitions.

MORAN: But they're killing more Americans, they're killing more Iraqis. That's the last throes?

McCLELLAN: Innocent -- I say innocent civilians. And it doesn't take a lot of people to cause mass damage when you're willing to strap a bomb onto yourself, get in a car and go and attack innocent civilians. That's the kind of people that we're dealing with. That's what I say when we're talking about a determined enemy.

MORAN: Right. What is the evidence that the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: I think I just explained to you the desperation of terrorists and their tactics.

MORAN: What's the evidence on the ground that it's being extinguished?

McCLELLAN: Terry, we're making great progress to defeat the terrorist and regime elements. You're seeing Iraqis now playing more of a role in addressing the security threats that they face. They're working side by side with our coalition forces. They're working on their own. There are a lot of special forces in Iraq that are taking the battle to the enemy in Iraq. And so this is a period when they are in a desperate mode.

MORAN: Well, I'm just wondering what the metric is for measuring the defeat of the insurgency.

McCLELLAN: Well, you can go back and look at the Vice President's remarks. I think he talked about it.

MORAN: Yes. Is there any idea how long a "last throe" lasts for?

McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve.... [Uhhhh.... next question... I don't want to talk with this guy anymore]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000963211

Here's a timely video:

http://web.takebackthemedia.com/geeklog/public_html/article.php?story=20050620170447275

Thanks for signing the petition to save NPR and PBS. Tomorrow (Tuesday) at 1 PM, we'll present stacks and stacks of your signatures and comments at a press conference with members of Congress and the public TV and radio staff fighting for survival, including Clifford the Big Red Dog and Arthur (bring your kids!).

Since you live nearby, can you join us to show support? Congress needs to know this isn't a political game -- millions of real Americans count on public broadcasting and will fight to save it.

WHAT:
Save NPR and PBS petition delivery

WHEN:
Tuesday, June 21st, 1:00 PM

WHERE:
Cannon House Office Building Terrace

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

OK, here is the idea: email me messages from your kids: karen@democracycellproject.net. You can attach photographs of drawings they have made, or they can create messages in word docs; I will print them out and take them with me--My son and I will both be going to the rally.

We can do this by 10 am tomorrow or so, can't we?

An update from John Conyers
http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000140.htm

Blogged by JC on 06.16.05 @ 10:25 PM ET

What a Day!
Keep the Signatures Coming

I have four categories of things to tell you – three general and one detailed.

First, I could not have achieved the milestone of today’s hearing, letter delivery and other events without your help. DSM is a function of the blogosphere, and throughout the process I have benefitted immeasurably from your comments and support.

Second, today we made abundantly clear, that when rights are being trampled on by the Administration, Democrats will not sit idly by and watch. We can and will act, we can and will investigate, we can and will hold hearings, we can and will take these investigations wherever they lead us.

Third, in terms of my on-line letter, I welcome more signatures, and I will see that every last one is delivered to the president.

Fourth, in terms of the specifics of the day, see below:

• Our long awaited hearing on the Downing Street Minutes was scheduled to begin at 2:30 PM in HC-9 in the basement of the Capitol. This is one of the smallest meeting rooms in the Capitol complex, holding only about 50 people, but was the only room available to us as a result of the GOP’s refusal to make any normal hearing rooms available to us. I got to the hearing at 2PM, and witnessed a phalanx of about ten cameras in the room, with 4 or five more outside the room. There were an additional twenty or so print reporters. About 100 more people – including numerous live bloggers – showed up at our overflow room at the DNC.

• At approximately 2:15 PM, the Republicans scheduled 11 consecutive floor votes, lasting until approximately 4 PM. This is unprecedented in my memory, and if we had allowed it to, it could have ruined the hearing. But a hearty group of Democratic Members helped me carry on, and we were able to continue the hearings through the votes by essentially taking turns running back and forth to the House floor.

• The hearing itself was amazingly informative, moving and informational. Raw Story has my opening statement (along with much more). The witnesses were well informed and helped us create a tremendous record moving forward. Their basic testimony continued until approximately 3 PM, and was followed by a round of questions from most of the 30 members who joined us at one point or another. We also had a surprise guest in the form of Ann Wright, who resigned from the State Department before the start of the Iraq war due to her believe that the intelligence was being fixed and manipulated. At the very end of the hearing all of the family members of deceased soldiers stood up and spoke out. They showed tremendous courage. Bradblog has a great lowdown of the entire hearing, including an audio feed. C-SPAN broadcast live and simulcast and will rebroadcast over the next several days. Radio Pacifica broadcast audio live, and Air America and Randi Rhodes cut in frequently. There was quite a bit of talk among the Members that we had crossed the tipping point on the DSM, and that further disclosures and activism would have a commutative effect on the White House and public opinion. We finished the hearing about 5:30.

• Of course we were not done. About ten members and I proceeded to caravan over to the White House, where we delivered the letter signed by more than 560,000 Americans and 122 Members of Congress demanding answers. There were several hundred protestors at the White House along with least a dozen cameras.. In front of all of these witnesses, the White House staff refused to permit any of us to enter. They did take the petitions, but I would think that sitting Members of Congress deserve a bit more respect.

• There is more. We next proceeded to a rally in front of several hundred more people at LaFayette Park. Many of the witnesses spoke there, along with my friend Tom Hayden and the Members of Congress who had joined me at the White House delivery. Finally, we had to stop as the GOP had scheduled yet more votes on the House floor.

There is much, much more to come, the least of which is we will not stop with this hearing. But I’m exhausted now, so I’ll stop.

Had an e mail from a friend I don't hear from so much anymore. She was a kool-aider and we could no longer communicate. She sends me gretings today, and wonders if I am one of those crazies that think there is anything 'my people' can do about the 'best president this country has ever had.' Yep, she is that far gone. Has nothing to do with religion, and everthing to do with 9-11. Whatever we do, bombs, torture, rendition, it doesn't matter--these are bad bad bad guys. And, if there is a slip up and the guy isn't a bad bad bad guy, then why is he around places and people who are bad guys? It seems that even not so bad guys or perfectly innocent people that are picked up and held for years have terrorism done by 'their people' to blame. I am reminded here by that horrible saying 'you know they all look alike.' She didn't say that, but it was implied.

Which goes back to what I said, it's the revenge for 9-11 in a lot of people's minds. Some people need that show of power, the war on 'teevee' made them feel better. They watched 9-11 for days, and it made them feel darn good to see it in some other country. makes no difference that it was a lie and in the wrong country, it was geting 'them' meaning Muslims. To them, if we do this, and keep people locked up and tortured and threaten other places with our smart bobs, then no one will dare mess around here ever again.

My reply to my almost former friend---

Almost 3000 people died on 9-11. We are over 2000 dead Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many more thousands of 'them' including civilians and children are dead. When your president makes his point, will you let me know that we are the big winners? Somehow or other, I doubt I will feel like celebrating, but I still will be interested in knowing that you have found and feel vindication. However, you will have to forgive me for not finding this period in history the joyful place you seem to be. I cried too on 9-11, but no amount of dead Iraqi 'them' will be justice. What makes you think that dead babies make you safe?

Posted by: Carol at June 20, 2005 04:19 PM

Depends on what you mean by 'overly optimistic'.... Perhaps you mean 'guardedly optimistic'?

Personally, I won't believe MSM will speak the truth until I see one-hour news specials in prime time on all three major networks and PBS (Faux went to the dark side a long time ago and there is no hope they will ever change their neoCon stance, IMHO.)

PBS' NOW had a good show a week ago about religion and politics, and they presented two sides. Problem is, they ended with the skewed neoCon viewpoint, which left me feeling like that's the viewpoint they wanted me to adopt. Presentation is everything.

I just want MSM to print/air the facts, no spinmeisters "interpreting" the truth from any angle. I think if they just started with that one small baby step, it would be a step in the right direction to everyone hearing what we all know to be true about the Bu$hCo administration.

This story shows how valuable Bolton is to this country. Not.

By Peter Baker and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 20, 2005; Page A02

For years, a key U.S. program intended to keep Russian nuclear fuel out of terrorist hands has been frozen by an arcane legal dispute. As undersecretary of state, John R. Bolton was charged with fixing the problem, but critics complained he was the roadblock.

"Now with Bolton no longer in the job, U.S. negotiators report a breakthrough with the Russians and predict a resolution will be sealed by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin at an international summit in Scotland next month, clearing the way to eliminate enough plutonium to fuel 8,000 nuclear bombs."

Its sure reassuring to hear Orin Hatch tell us how wonderful and valuable Bolton is to the State Dept.

oops

We have our smart Bob's here and I love them--that typo shoud say smart boMbs.

sorry Bob's!!!

Bush Fights to Regain Confidence of Americans

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050620/pl_nm/bush_dc

*Note to self: Lying continuously for 5 years will erode people's confidence in you...

Bush Plans End-Run of Senate on Bolton
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062005X.shtml

We all know how good Georgie is at these 'recess appointments' and secret 'executive orders'....

We need to get back the checks and balances in government! The fact that Congress gave Georgie war powers after 9/11 abdicated their responsibility to the American people, and they need to take back the authority the Constitution gave them..... Too much power has given Georgie a big head, and he seems to think he can do whatever he pleases, browbeat and bully other countries to his will.... He's a prime example of the old axiom: Power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I agree with Hagel: he's divorced from reality...

LIVE on CSPAN 2
from the Senate
now speaking on the Bolton nomination
Sen. Barbara Boxer

Clinton Adds Voice to Criticism of Guantanamo
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062005C.shtml

At the bottom of the article is a transcript of what President Clinton said during an interview.

Engelhardt & Danner | The Media and Why the Memo Matters
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062005H.shtml

There are three pieces on that one link. The first one shows, quite dramatically, how MSM has let us all down.

Posted by: tutterfly at June 20, 2005 04:58 PM

Tutt, reminds me of a "friend" I know in my home state, who buys the spin hook, line, and sinker. This woman is highly educated, highly traveled, and recently said the following: "It doesn't matter whether we have social security or not, if the terrorists strike us again, we won't be here to worry about it." Well, I'm afraid THIS time I didn't just say "Aw shucks" and walk away. I told her nicely that she is an intelligent woman, and for the life of me I cannot understand why she doesn't see how the American people are being managed by applied fear tactics made through the media. AND.....this is a woman who has always made it a point to let everyone know how perceptive she is, and how bright. :/

I am tired of nursing the people in deception. I don't feel there is time for that. I could be wrong, but I am just laying it out there. If they ask, I tell. If they don't, I send factual information when I feel it is something that might wake them up. For every person that wants to think Bush is "The best president this country has ever known", there are thousands more who are suffering because his elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062005L.shtml
82 Iraqi MPs Demand Occupation Pullout
"We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw. Our request was ignored," read the latter, made public on Sunday, June 19.
There are currently about 160,000 foreign troops in Iraq, including 138,000 American forces.
There are also 15,000 mercenaries from private military firms operating in Iraq, the second largest force outnumbering even the US biggest ally Britain, according to the estimation of Peter Singer, author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/ Frontline "Private Warriors"
FRONTLINE returns to Iraq, this time to embed with Halliburton/KBR, and to take a hard look at private contractors, including Blackwater, Aegis, Erinys and Custer Battles, who play an increasingly critical role in running U.S. military supply lines, providing armed protection and operating U.S. military bases. These private warriors are targeted by insurgents and in turn have been criticized for their rough treatment of Iraqi civilians. Their dramatic story illuminates the Pentagon's new reliance on corporate outsourcing and raises tough questions about where they fit in the chain of command and the price we are paying for their role in the war.
(Frontline: Private Warriors is scheduled for Tue., June 21, 2005 - check your local listings for time in your area. Besides KBR, Dyn Corp is one of the names of a "private security firm" run by Halliburton. Likely there are others. I only know about DynCorp because someone in my state working for them was killed in Iraq, so I Googled it to find out who owned the "private security firm." Likely there are others besides these two.)

Why George Went To War:
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said,
'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.'
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php

British bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office Michael Smith - "The Times"
A SHARP increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war “to put pressure on the regime” was illegal under
international law, according to leaked Foreign Office legal advice.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9195.htm

Bush and Hawks Try Pre-Emptive Strike Vs. Iran Vote: A familiar clutch of hardline U.S. hawks who led the march to war against Iraq have tried to carry out yet another pre-emptive strike. But
this time it wasn't military.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9206.htm

The US war with Iran has already begun
By Scott Ritter
The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using
pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9199.htm

We've seen enough to impeach Bush :
Is America brave enough to confront this reality?
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=44161&ntpid=0
Excerpt:
"Lying presidents need to be impeached. That's what the Republicans in Congress told us only a few years ago.
So let's get on with it."

Dembloggers has all the videos:

Hardball DSM

Hardball Boxer on Bolton

Bill Moyers

and more...

http://www.dembloggers.com/section/Videos/1