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Keep Your Eye on the Flag
Today’s installment in our series to heal the politically lame features this note from a deeply troubled reader... Naturally, I feel her pain.
Dear Polly:
I think this last week was really depressing.... even in the context of the last 5 years, which have been pretty dismal. I guess I really don’t know why I’m writing, except that I hoped that you could somehow restore my faith, my belief in the America that I remember. I mean, now the President’s chief political guy, that Rove character, is telling the names of our undercover agents... What is that? Isn’t that treason? And then the London bombings, which just made me feel awful, and the whole terrorism thing seems to be getting worse, not better... Please tell me something good, Polly. Anything. I don’t know where else to turn.
Sincerely,
Depressed Over America
Dear DOA:
I understand your feelings completely. Even I, keeper of the white light and possessed of tremendous spiritual strength, can fall prey to the occasional feelings of hopelessness.
But alas, we cannot dwell in such a negative place. As patriots, we must do whatever it takes to heal ourselves, and commit anew to the struggles that lie ahead. And there will be struggles, to be sure.
My advice to you, DOA, is to take the day off. Yes, the whole day. Lock the children in their cages if you must, but find a way to regain your spiritual center. Hear some music, take a long walk, work in the garden, become wildly intoxicated – whatever it takes to release the negativity that weighs you down. Then return to the fray with all your newly found energy. It works. Trust me.
You know, when I was a child growing up in Andersonia, we had one dentist in our town. Everyone went to him. His office was upstairs of the bank and across the street from the newsstand. He was unique among dentists in that he did not believe in the use of novacaine during dental work. He gave this advice just before turning on the drill:
“Look out the window at that flag across the street, and remember all the people that gave their lives for you, and how lucky you are to be an American. Just keep looking at the flag, you’ll be fine.”
Well, I took him at his word, as children are wont to do. I looked at the flag as he drilled into my teeth. And the amazing thing looking back on it, is that I don’t remember feeling any pain.
Such is the power of the heart and the mind.
We must always work to create that flag in our minds eye every day. When we are tired, and don’t think we can go on, we pause, but we always return. We bend, but never break. We take a breath, but we never stop.
This is the work of a patriot. So, my advice to you today is the same as that given to me by my dentist those many years ago...
Just keep looking at the flag, you’ll be fine.
And don’t forget Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
I’ll be here if you need me.
Your friend,
Polly
Polly honey, the dentist was a psycho. Karl Rove, also a psycho.
Can we send Karl Rove to the dentist? Or in the alternate, can I get some nitrous oxide with my morning newspaper?
Comfortably Numb
Pink Floyd
Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?
Come on, now.
I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,
Get you on your feet again.
Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts,
Can you show me where it hurts?
There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're sayin'.
When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.
I can't explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.
Ok.
Just a little pinprick.
There'll be no more ...Aaaaaahhhhh!
But you may feel a little sick.
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working. Good.
That'll keep you going for the show.
Come on it's time to go.
There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're sayin'.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
Spin --
Yes, he was perhaps a tad on the odd side, but then again, that which does not kill us makes us stronger.
I do like the idea of mind altering drugs with the morning paper. Let's look into that.
Senator expects Bolton action
Voinovich predicts recess appointment to be used
By Jim Bebbington
Dayton Daily News
DAYTON | The most vocal Republican opponent to John Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations said there is a "55/45" chance the Bush administration will name Bolton to the job while Congress is in recess
But Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, also said, "I have a gut feeling that logic will prevail" against appointing Bolton.
"It's like the children's story, the Emperor's Clothes: Everybody knows he's in his underwear and nobody will say it," Voinovich said Friday in an interview with the Dayton Daily News editorial board.
Voinovich's outspoken opposition to Bolton's appointment has attracted national attention.
He allowed Bolton's name to be sent from the Foreign Relations Committee to the full Senate for an up-or-down vote, but has railed on the Senate floor against Bolton.
"The record before the Senate documents the allegations related to Mr. Bolton's lack of interpersonal skills and management style, the pattern of intimidation with intelligence analysts, and the allegations that Mr. Bolton had a habit of cherry-picking intelligence to suit his perception of the world and his ideology," Voinovich said in a Senate-floor speech last week.
Bolton needs Senate confirmation to become U.N. ambassador, but Bush can appoint him temporarily, until January 2007, using a recess appointment.
Voinovich said Friday he has had second thoughts about not voting Bolton down in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this spring. Instead, Voinovich urged the committee to send the nomination to the Senate without a recommendation — which it did.
Senate Democrats also oppose the nomination. The Bush administration has called for a Senate vote and blame Democrats, not Voinovich, for blocking one.
"You're talking about one individual (Voinovich) who has expressed his opposition to his nomination," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan in June. "But it is a minority Senate Democratic leadership that is preventing this nomination from moving forward and that is preventing John Bolton getting about doing the important work of reform at the United Nations."
http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0709voinovich.html
Fox News slammed over 'callous' line
Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday July 9, 2005
The Guardian
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel was under fire yesterday for comments by some of its leading journalists in response to the London bombs.
Speaking about the reaction of the financial markets, Brit Hume, the channel's Washington managing editor, said: "Just on a personal basis ... I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought 'hmm, time to buy'."
The host of a Fox News programme, Brian Kilmeade, said the attacks had the effect of putting terrorism back on the top of the G8's agenda, in place of global warming and African aid. "I think that works to our advantage, in the western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened."
Another Fox News host, John Gibson, said before the blasts that the International Olympic Committee "missed a golden opportunity" by not awarding the 2012 games to France. "If they had picked France instead of London to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn't worry about terrorism. They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?" He added: "This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics - let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while."
Media Matters for America, a watchdog and frequent critic of Fox, criticised the comments on its website. "I think it's absolutely sickening three Fox anchors had such callous reactions to the bombings that took dozens of lives," said the Jamison Foser, of the group.
The Fox News media relations office had not responded by the time the Guardian went to press yesterday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1524856,00.html
I do like the idea of mind altering drugs with the morning paper. Let's look into that.
Posted by: PollySigh at July 9, 2005 08:23 PM
I think I could use some lately upon arising out of bed, judging from last week.
Or a double, no rocks.
Don't forget to share.
Posted by: monkey at July 9, 2005 09:10 PM
Faux = Totally Tasteless and Très Tacky!!!
July 10, 2005
India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor
By SALMAN RUSHDIE
IN honor-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honor resides in the sexual probity of women, and the "shaming" of women dishonors all men. So it is that five men of Pakistan's powerful Mastoi tribe were disgracefully acquitted of raping a villager named Mukhtar Mai three years ago. Theirs was an "honor rape," intended to punish a relative of Ms. Mukhtar for having been seen with a Matsoi woman. The acquittals have now been suspended by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and there is finally a chance that this courageous woman may gain some measure of redress for her violation.
Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman's best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.
For every Mukhtar Mai there are dozens of such suicides. Nor is courage any guarantee of getting justice, as the case of Shazia Khalid shows. Dr. Khalid was raped last year in the province of Baluchistan by security personnel at the hospital where she worked. A Pakistani tribunal failed to convict anyone of the crime.
Dr. Khalid says that she was subsequently "threatened so many times" that she was forced to flee Pakistan. "I was hounded out," she says, expressing dissatisfaction that the government neither brought her attackers to justice nor protected her from the threats that followed.
That is the same government, led by President Pervez Musharraf, that confiscated Mukhtar Mai's passport because it feared she would go abroad and say things that would bring Pakistan into disrepute; and it is the same government that has allied with the West in the war on terrorism, but seems quite prepared to allow a war of sexual terror to be waged against its female citizens.
Now comes even worse news. Whatever Pakistan can do, India, it seems, can trump. The so-called Imrana case, in which a Muslim woman from a village in northern India says she was raped by her father-in-law, has brought forth a ruling from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom ordering her to leave her husband because as a result of the rape she has become "haram" (unclean) for him. "It does not matter," a Deobandi cleric has stated, "if it was consensual or forced."
Darul-Uloom, in the village of Deoband 90 miles north of Delhi, is the birthplace of the ultra-conservative Deobandi cult, in whose madrassas the Taliban were trained. It teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of Islam that exists anywhere in the world today. In one fatwa it suggested that Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Not only the Taliban but also the assassins of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were followers of Deobandi teachings.
Darul-Uloom's rigid interpretations of Shariah law are notorious, and immensely influential - so much so that the victim, Imrana, a woman under unimaginable pressure, has said she will abide by the seminary's decision in spite of the widespread outcry in India against it. An innocent woman, she will leave her husband because of his father's crime.
Why does a mere seminary have the power to issue such judgments? The answer lies in the strange anomaly that is the Muslim personal law system - a parallel legal system for Indian Muslims, which leaves women like Imrana at the mercy of the mullahs. Such is the historical confusion on this vexed subject that anyone who suggests that a democratic country should have a single, unified legal system is accused of being anti-Muslim and in favor of the hardline Hindu nationalists.
In the 1980's, a divorced woman named Shah Bano was granted "maintenance money" by the Indian Supreme Court. But there is no alimony under Islamic law, so orthodox Indian Islamists like those at Darul-Uloom protested that this ruling infringed the Muslim Personal Law, and they founded the All-India Muslim Law Board to mount protests. The government caved in, passing a bill denying alimony to divorced Muslim women. Ever since Shah Bano, Indian politicians have not dared to challenge the power of Islamist clerical grandees.
In the Imrana case, the All-India Muslim Law Board has unsurprisingly backed the Darul-Uloom decision, though many other Muslim and non-Muslim organizations and individuals have denounced it. Shockingly, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has also backed the Darul-Uloom fatwa. "The decision of the Muslim religious leaders in the Imrana case must have been taken after a lot of thought," he told reporters in Lucknow. "The religious leaders are all very learned and they understand the Muslim community and its sentiments."
This is a craven statement. The "culture" of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame. Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that. Meanwhile, the law must do what it can.
In Pakistan, the Supreme Court has taken one small but significant step in the matter of Mukhtar Mai; now it is for the police and politicians to start pursuing rapists instead of hounding their victims. As for India, at the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom.
Salman Rushdie is the author of "The Satanic Verses" and the forthcoming "Shalimar the Clown."
More Compassionate Conservatism...
Moral ties attached to US Aids cash
Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday July 9, 2005
The Guardian
American aid agencies expressed concern yesterday over new rules imposed by the Bush administration making funding for the fight against Aids dependent on a pledge to combat prostitution.
Charities seeking federal funding for anti-Aids programmes abroad will have to sign a form expressing opposition to prostitution and sex trafficking. They will also have to inform aid recipients of condom failure rates.
The conditions reflect a push by conservative Christian groups for emphasis on sexual abstinence rather than precautions in the Bush administration's anti-Aids campaign.
________________________________________SNIP______________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0%2C12271%2C1524709%2C00.html
UK-based dissident denies link to website that carried al-Qaida claim :
It was posted on an Arabic website, al-qal3ah.com, which is registered by Qalaah Qalaah in Abu Dhabi and hosted by a server in Houston, Texas.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9429.htm
[Check out the Houston web server owner's "friends"....!!! Four letters in the surname....]
Tariq Ali | The Price of Occupation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/070905E.shtml
Excerpt:
At the beginning of the G8, Blair suggested that "poverty was the cause of terrorism". It is not so. The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognized, the horrors will continue.
Civil Rights Groups Urge Justice Department to Block Georgia Photo ID Law :
More than two dozen civil rights, religious, labor and advocacy groups urged the Department of Justice to block implementation of a new Georgia law which they say will have a substantially negative "racial impact" on minority voters.
http://www.aclu.org/VotingRights/VotingRights.cfm?ID=18653&c=168
We Were Right, They Lied:
Flash presentation.
http://www.ericblumrich.com/right.html
I am seeing red with the Fox comments about Paris. I can't write much because I had like 2 hours of sleep and have been running on adrenalin all day, photographing graffiti artists at work in Brooklyn & visiting a museum (with party) that was made from an old public high school and belongs to MOMA.
I am having an absolutely incredible time with my friends from Paris. The house swap is an absolute success. The New Yorkers are staying in their flat in Paris. I can see from the bookshelves that the owners of this apartment are sympatico (Al Franken, Richard Clarke etc.) as is this city.
When I read about Fox news making inflammatory comments about Paris, I have to think of all the viewers who will take it dead seriously. I have a bunch of email I can't read because I'm on a slow dial-up modem, but one TruthOut story is about the burning of black churches in Tennessee. What next? Fox News will come on and joke about it? Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
It sickens me that Fox News has bookstores in the Minneapolis airport and I'm going to start flying Jet Blue instead of NW Airlines when I can just because of it (because NW dominates the Mpls airport). Jet Blue has new planes, they sell healthy food to take on & at reasonable prices, they are opening up service to more "blue" cities, & they recycle.
I love NYC. It's so multicultural, colorful, vibrant and best of all, politically progressive.
Oh - and my uncle just sent me this article by a liberal-hating author, in which my hero Congressman Jim McDermott is demonized and on top of that, this jerk insults my city (Seattle)! It's too progressive and he says it's ruining America. & he insults Al Franken. This is infuriating. Why do I have to run into crap like this on one of the best days of my life so far?!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002357581_mcdermott05m.html
Please a) email this creep, b) commend the paper for bringing this to light.
Kennedy: Fascist America
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
01/23/05 -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wants to run for Attorney General of New York State.
He might announce his candidacy within the next two weeks.
He's the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the former Attorney General under his brother, John F. Kennedy.
In 2001, President Bush named the Justice Department building after RFK.
The young Kennedy attended the ceremony.
We asked him what he thought of President Bush naming the building after his dad.
He said he wouldn't comment on the record.
But he did call President Bush "the most corrupt and immoral President that we have had in American history."
-----------------snip------------------------
He speaks about the corporate attack on the country.
"There is no difference between the reaction I get from Republicans and Democrats, because Americans share the same values," Kennedy told us. "If you talk about these issues in terms of our national values, everybody understands it."
In the book, Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House has learned key lessons from the Nazis.
"While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business," he writes. "My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as 'a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.' Sound familiar?"
He quotes Hitler's propaganda chief Herman Goerring: "It is always simply a matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Kennedy then adds: "The White House has clearly grasped the lesson."
Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini's insight that "fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
-----------------------------snip------------------
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7804.htm
Totally OT, but wonderful Aw-w-w-w factor for this stressful time (we need a few moments to celebrate new life to keep hope alive) - a baby panda was just born at the zoo in WA DC. Maybe when mommy and baby are ready to make their debut in a few months, Karen and Dick and family can go take pictures and show us...? OK, I admit it: I just love pandas, never miss any nature shows about them.... and this story made my heart melt and put a smile on my face for a while....
There's a link to a live web cam for the new baby and mommy below, too....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/panda_cub;_ylt=AtIvWfCsHDom9GiI.RZdHYqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-
Giant Panda Mei Xiang Gives Birth at Zoo By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer
Excerpts:
WASHINGTON - Mei Xiang looked surprised, perhaps a bit put off by the shrill cries from the first giant panda cub born at the National Zoo in 16 years.
Cubs typically weigh only 3 ounces to 5 ounces and are about the size of a stick of butter.
The public will have to wait at least three months to see mother and cub, who will remain indoors at the panda exhibit area.
Until then the zoo's Web cam — expected to be accessible online at http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas beginning Sunday morning - will provide the only public view of the two.
~~~~~~~~
There's a web cam still photo on the link.
Posted by: DiAnne at July 9, 2005 11:36 PM
Enjoy, DiAnne! NYC is grand. Be sure to take lots of pics (are you keeping a journal?) so you can share your experiences. I'll be living vicariously through you as you tell us about it! I was there this past November and I loved everything about it too. It was extra special because my son took me, and we laughed until we cried when I almost slid off my seat in the subway as it took a curve fast. We went to a bar that reminded me of the bars and pubs I visited in London - a beautiful wood bar with paneling. My son said "Mom, you're kind of quiet. Are you having fun?" I said "Yes, I am just in awe of everything, and trying to soak it all in."
Have FUN!!!
He's the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the former Attorney General under his brother, John F. Kennedy.
Posted by: Indy at July 9, 2005 11:44 PM
He might be one to watch. Gotta love the Kennedys. John F. and Robert F. Kennedy would be aghast at the corruption and immorality present in the regime today.
More, much more on Operation Yellow Elephant -
Operation Yellow Elephant
It's their war. Why aren't they fighting it?
It involves the College Republicans - that fine group of patriots who clamored so loudly for the beginning of the War on Terrah. Those nicely-dressed young boys and girls with names like Chip and Chuck and Charlotte who turn out in droves for Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and David Horowitz. Those mostly white, mostly well-off kids going to school on a trust fund who are more than eager to support the Administration's aims of letting poorer kids die in the name of securing our oil.
It's time for them to put up or shut up. Military recruitment is at an all-time low. Young healthy kids between the ages of 18-25 are desperately needed to continue the mission the College Republicans believe in so much.
Web Graphics for Operation Yellow Elephant
http://operationyellowelephant.blogspot.com/
Anybody else feel a draft?
http://www.enjoythedraft.com/faqreal.htm
So Much For A Coalition...
Pre-mature Evacuation?
Leaked memo shows Iraq pull-out plans
By Andy McSmith, Political Editor
Published: 10 July 2005
Almost two thirds of the 8,500 British troops in Iraq will have been pulled out by the end of next year, under plans drawn up in Whitehall to hand over two provinces to Iraqi control.
The plan set out in a leaked memo written by the Defence Secretary John Reid, hints that the Government is keen to cut the heavy cost of patrolling southern Iraq.
The memo calculates that the current cost of the British presence in Iraq, around £1bn a year, could be halved if the number of troops were reduced to 3,000 during 2006. The memo implies that the British would formally hand over control to the Iraqis of the four provinces currently under British control by April 2006, but that it take another eight months before what the memo calls the "UK military drawdown" has been completed - and 18 months before the money comes through.
Revealingly, it hints at tension between the Pentagon and US Central Command, which want a rapid troop reduction, and commanders on the ground in Iraq.
The memo also warns that Japan may insist on pulling out the 550 Japanese engineers if they left with the only the Iraq army to protect them from insurgents. There will be a question mark, too, over the 1,400 Australian soldiers in Iraq.
The memo, entitled Options for future UK force posture in Iraq and headed "Secret - UK eyes only", was leaked to The Mail on Sunday, apparently by someone connected with the Defence department who suspected that Britain was preparing to get out quick as an economy measure, leaving the Iraqis to fend for themselves.
The defence department said it that various options were being considered for reducing the British presence in Iraq, and stressed that nothing has been finally decided.
---------------------------snip----------------
http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article298143.ece
Let's see the Administration explain this away...
Plausible Deniability?
Memo: US, UK plan to reduce troops in Iraq - paper
Sun Jul 10, 2005 12:08 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - A leaked document from Britain's Defense Ministry says the British and U.S. governments are planning to reduce their troop levels in Iraq by more than half by mid-2006, the Mail on Sunday reported.
The memo, reported to have been written by Defense Minister John Reid, said Britain would reduce its troop numbers to 3,000 from 8,500 by the middle of next year.
"We have a commitment to hand over to Iraqi control in Al Muthanna and Maysan provinces (two of the four provinces under British control in southern Iraq) in October 2005 and in the other two, Dhi Qar and Basra, in April 2006," the memo was reported to have said.
The memo said Washington planned to cut its forces to 66,000 from about 140,000 by early 2006.
"Emerging U.S. plans assume 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," the memo said.
The United States is training Iraqi forces to take over the country's defense in the face of an insurgency involving allies of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and foreign militants allied to al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
But critics say Iraqi troops are not ready to take charge of security in their country.
--------------------snip------------------------
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-10T040738Z_01_N10395599_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-IRAQ-BRITAIN-TROOPS-DC.XML
Out of the Quagmire into the fires of Hell...
July 10, 2005
Allawi: this is the start of civil war
by: Hala Jaber, Amman
IRAQ’S former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has warned that his country is facing civil war and has predicted dire consequences for Europe and America as well as the Middle East if the crisis is not resolved.
“The problem is that the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq,” said Allawi, a long-time ally of Washington.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last week as he visited Amman, the Jordanian capital, he said: “The policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak.”
---------------------------------------snip-------------------
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1687910,00.html
The Sunday Times - World
July 10, 2005
Allawi: this is the start of civil war
by Hala Jaber, Amman
IRAQ’S former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has warned that his country is facing civil war and has predicted dire consequences for Europe and America as well as the Middle East if the crisis is not resolved.
“The problem is that the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq,” said Allawi, a long-time ally of Washington.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last week as he visited Amman, the Jordanian capital, he said: “The policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak.”
Allawi, a secular Shi’ite, said that Iraq had collapsed as a state and needed to be rebuilt. The only way forward, he said, was through “national unity, the building of institutions, the economy and a firm but peaceful foreign relation policy”. Unless these criteria were satisfied, “the country will deteriorate”.
Allawi’s concern comes amid signs of growing violence between Shi’ites, who make up 60% of Iraq’s estimated 26m people, and the Sunni minority who dominated the upper reaches of the civilian bureaucracy and officer corps under Saddam Hussein.
The Shi’ites, who endured decades of oppression, are threatening to purge members of Saddam’s former Ba’ath party from the army and the intelligence services, a move that would provoke fierce retaliation from the Sunnis.
Since the execution-style killings of 34 men whose bound and blindfolded bodies were found in three predominantly Shi’ite areas of Baghdad in May, other tit-for-tat murders have followed, with clerics among the targets.
Tension has increased in the past two weeks following the return of Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi left the country in May to seek medical treatment for a chest wound suffered in an American airstrike, but has now recovered sufficiently to resume his activities.
Earlier this month he claimed that his supporters had killed Sheikh Kamaleddin al-Ghuraifi, a senior aide to Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Zarqawi has now released an audiotape in which he announces the formation of a new militant unit, the Omar Corps. Its avowed aim is to “eradicate” the Badr brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country’s largest Shi’ite political party, which has targeted Sunnis.
Allawi, who became head of the interim government council created after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said it was imperative that the security services and military be rebuilt. He has been a staunch critic of the policy followed by Paul Bremer, the American former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, of removing former Ba’athists from positions of power and disbanding Saddam’s army without putting anything else in place.
Allawi said that he had discussed the urgency of rebuilding Iraq’s military with President George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, last year. “Bush earmarked $5.7 billion (£3.2 billion) . . . but I did not receive the money,” Allawi said.
Read more... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1687910,00.html
Downed US Seals may have got too close to Bin Laden
July 10, 2005
by Tony Allen-Mills, Washington and Andrew North, Kabul
The first sign of trouble was a radio message requesting immediate extraction. A four-man team of US Navy Seal commandos had run into heavy enemy fire on a remote, thickly forested trail in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
Trouble turned to disaster when a US special forces helicopter carrying 16 men was shot down as it landed at the scene, killing all on board. Almost two weeks later, a mission that led to the worst US combat losses in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001 has turned into an extraordinary manhunt. It has also opened an intriguing new front in the coalition’s battle against terrorism.
The story of Operation Red Wing, a US-led search for Taliban and Al-Qaeda guerrillas in the mountain wilderness of Kunar province, contains remarkable human drama and an unresolved military mystery.
For five days amid the hostile peaks and ravines along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, a lone American commando eluded the guerrillas who had killed at least two of his colleagues and destroyed the Chinook helicopter.
When the unnamed Seal finally collapsed from exhaustion he was found by a friendly Afghan villager who summoned US forces. The subsequent search for his colleagues turned up two bodies and the manhunt for the fourth commando continues this weekend despite claims by Taliban guerrillas yesterday that he had been captured and beheaded.
“We killed him at 11 o’clock today; we killed him using a knife and chopped off his head,” declared Abdul Latif Hakimi, a Taliban spokesman who has made several false claims in the past.
Yet whatever the final death toll from the worst incident in the history of the Seals — the Sea Air Land Commandos — there were tantalising hints that the original mission had been far from routine.
-snip-
Coalition commanders acknowledge that for all their superior weaponry and communications, US forces are at a disadvantage in fighting in the Afghan mountains.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1688012,00.html
At the Vatican today, Pope Benedict told the London bombers to stop their killings and prayed that God would change their hearts.
"We pray for the people killed, for those injured and for their loved ones. But we even pray for the attackers: Lord, touch their hearts," Reuters quoted Benedict as telling the crowds in St. Peter's Square.
"To those who foment feelings of hate and carry out such revolting terrorist acts, I say: God loves life, which he created, not death. And I say, stop, in the name of God."
P.S. That goes for you TOO, the Bush Administration and ALL it's Bible Thumping, hyprocritical supporters!
Posted by: Indy at July 10, 2005 02:17 AM
Troop pullout just before the mid-term elections in '06??? Gee, I wonder how they'll spin that during the '06 campaign??? (Wish I could put the animated Sarcasm graphic here!) :-)
Posted by: monkey at July 10, 2005 08:18 AM
Monkey see Monkey do?
Look at the post just above your post! LOL!
Indy... same brain, mines just on monkey standard time.
Sorry for the repost... so much for evolution.
Clues Emerging in London blasts
July 9, 2005
BY PAISLEY DODDS ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON-- Police issued a stunning revision Sunday, shrinking the time between deadly explosions in the London Underground to just seconds, not 26 minutes as first reported, and saying the blasts were so powerful that none of the 49 known dead has yet been identified.
Many bodies still lay buried in a rat-infested subway tunnel and frantic relatives begged for word about others still missing in the worst attack on London since World War II.
Investigators also said the bombs that brought the British capital to a standstill Thursday were made of sophisticated high explosives. While it was possible the explosives were industrial or military materials obtained on the black market, investigators said it was too early to pinpoint where the terrorist bombers got the ingredients.
Investigators declined to say if they were looking for specific suspects, but repeated their assertion that the bombings bore the signature of al-Qaida, the terror network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The organization, headed by Osama bin Laden, has gained a reputation for sophisticated timing in its terror strikes.
"It will be some time before this job is completed and it will be done with all the necessary dignity to the deceased," said Andy Trotter of the British Transport Police.
-------------------snip------------------------
As sobbing relatives held pictures and searched for missing loved ones at subway stations around the city, crews looked into reports of more than 1,000 people missing. While police said they expected the death toll to rise, a significant increase was not expected. Most of the missing-persons reports were not believed connected to the bombings.
-------------------snip--------------------------
A group of Muslims held a peaceful vigil outside St. Mary's Hospital on Saturday in solidarity with victims. About 20 people left bouquets for five patients being treated at the hospital, just yards away from the Edgeware Road subway station where one of the bombs exploded.
"We must remember that terror is all around us these days, that terror has no homeland or nationality and no religion and that we all face the same problems together," said Iman Hassan Ali, from the Dar Al Islam Foundation.
"We all want to understand these incidents and today we are here to give our support to the victims and say that we will stand together despite terrorism."
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-blasts09.html
A Powerful Statement from The Article Above:
"We must remember that terror is all around us these days, that terror has no homeland or nationality and no religion and that we all face the same problems together," said Iman Hassan Ali, from the Dar Al Islam Foundation.
"We all want to understand these incidents and today we are here to give our support to the victims and say that we will stand together despite terrorism."
As in Matthew's thread...the meaning for all is crystal clear in Iman Hassan Ali's words...
Namaste.
Interesting Perspective...
False flag over London
By John Leonard
Online Journal Contributing Writer
July 8, 2005—Yesterday we saw a classic false flag attack in London, organized by western secret services to distract attention from the deepening political troubles of Bush and Blair, and perhaps even to create the pretext for war on Iran. Of course, Bush and his poll ratings have been sinking under scandals and rumblings of impeachment. Blair too has been badly hurt by the Downing Street memo.
For giving the lowdown on the London underground, I was roundly rebuked today, accused of disgracing the dead. Yet I was the one speaking out to avenge their honor, defending their memory from the bloodstain of abuse by the vultures of war. But no, the shocked sheeple flocked to march in ever tighter lockstep for their Vaterland, with each new Reichstag Firemeisterwerk casting a stronger spell. . . .
The G-8 conference was an ideal, high-profile venue to mobilize the sympathy of world leaders behind their flagging amateur B&B show. Today's Guy Fawkeses, home-team self-terrorists in the heart of empire, thumbed their noses at mortal fools while they played their favorite base-eleven numerology game, on this 7/7 date—following on Madrid 3/11 and New York 9/11, with its Flights 11 and 77.
Cui bono. Wall Street closed on an uptick.
So how can I be so sure? The war-profiteer clique are not all that inventive. False terror is the only trick they know. If they had any idea of governance or statecraft, they wouldn't need to stoop to these toxic tactics.
One of the classic trademarks of false flag terror was on display yesterday: the "previously unknown" organization posting anonymously on a website. Of course, western intelligence, using Echelon and such tools, could track any web posting back to its source. If it wanted to.
"Real" terrorists are known groups that make concrete demands. They are an endangered species, if not extinct.
Fake terrorists—covert psy-war units of western intelligence—always invent a name of an "unknown" group. They have to do this, of course. If they claimed, say, that the PLO did it, the accused would energetically deny it, spoiling the show. So they use fictitious identities, which they can mold to suit the target of convenience.
Yesterday's fiction was a "secret" group affiliated—oh how wonderfully convenient—with Al Qaeda and Al Zarqawi. Yet the state-owned BBC itself has established that Al Qaeda does not even exist, in its documentary film, "The Terror Myth." And just this week Dahr Jamail wrote of his trip to the town of Zarqa, on the trail of the fabled Zarqawi. The man's family believe he died years ago—no recent photos exist. Certain is only that the mythical Zarqawi's base of operations always pops up wherever the Americans want to attack—Fallujah, Samarra, where do you want to go tomorrow?
Read More >>>
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/070805Leonard/070805leonard.html
Hey, my koolaid drinking, neocon zombie brother-in-law picked himself up a new Hummer yesterday, we are going to have brunch with the family, can't wait for him to show it to me, so I can tell him "My, how utterly environmentally irresponsible of you".
Things that make you go, "Hummmmmm".
Posted by: Indy at July 10, 2005 11:24 AM
Indy, thanks so much for the article. It is a very interesting perspective, indeed.
Posted by: monkey at July 10, 2005 11:46 AM
Looks like you get to be the bearer of truth in your family and social circle. It is exciting to see you rise to the challenge.