The Best Kept Secret of Last Week

LT - thus the disturbing conclusion of the other day that like Sharon and Arafat...the Neocons and OBL actually feed off each other and need each other to stay in power.

Were there no War on Terror...there would be no excuse for wiretappings, endless detention of US citizens on foreign soil, torture of prisoners, porking out the defense industry, warrantless searches and seizures happening daily at our airports, curtailing of free speech & expression...you name it.

I return to my earlier premise: the current admin is too skilled at the use of 4GW over the past 30+ years in the context of political takeover in the US to be completely ignorant of its application and use in the fighting in Iraq and elsewhere.

It is at our peril that we take the current administration's actions or intentions either lightly or at face value.

Thanks for the story.
I'll get it out to Mpls & Seattle Vets for Peace chapters, assuming they don't have.

Posted by: Veritas at February 20, 2006 12:06 PM

Exactly what I meant to say, but you said it first. :)

I've always believed that W could've stopped 9/11, but didn't, because allowing it to happen would allow him to expand his power, as he ended up doing.

You are absolutely right that neocons and bin Laden need, and feed, each other.

Democrats need 6 seats, to control the Senate.
Santorum needs to go down. (PA)
Let's get the open seat in MO, Frist in TN, Dewine in Ohio, Chafee (RI) and Burns (MT).
MN - fight like hell, ditto NJ and MD.

In the House Dems need 15 seats.
There are 15 vulnerable R's, 2 vulnerable D's.
8% more Americans said they favor Democrats than Republicans for Congress.

Dems could gain 10 governorsips - try NY, Florida, Alaska, California, Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada & Ohio, with vulnerability only in Iowa (maybe).

(from local think tank of 4)

Let's get to work!

We still don't know the truth about previous attacks, assassinations or even Elvis.

Yesterday I posted comments & link to Meet the Press where "Lady MacCheney squares off with Gregory and Dowd" ( http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/19.html#a7220 )

Read what Arianna has to say about it today...and enjoy the photo of Lady MacCheney & her sister...

Russert Watch: The Mary Matalin Horror Show
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/russert-watch-the-mary-m_b_15990.html

Posted by Ann Dietz at February 20, 2006 12:00 PM

Excellent Post.

The interests that promote and support the Bush / Cheney team; the Defense industry and the Oil industry, are raking in record profits.
The Intelligence gathering community has become very powerfull at the same time their independance has been squashed.
In the middle of this National Security is being sold off piecemeal while individual freedoms are being restricted.

And we create terrorists in Iraq on a wholesale level. Each person tortured has brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. Each person hit by Phosphorous has sons and daughters, mother and father.
The United States military Invaded a Nation that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack in New York...what will the sons and daughters of iraqi victims do?

Toolmaker - why can't people GET this????

All these people who think BushCo is protecting us....

The administration has filled them with fear, but they are afraid of the wrong thing. They should be VERY afraid of what their leaders are setting them up for. Instead, they're afraid that terra will come into their living room.

Meanwhile, their protectors have opened our ports to a country that has close ties to terrorists - setting up the perfect entrance point for the next attack. Just the excuse for an invasion of Iran.

It is terrifying to watch this unfold. It feels like a (REALLY) bad dream.

Yesterday as I gave this report a closer read I found this footnote.. bottom of page 20....

** The following statement from Karen Hughes, the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy
and Public Affairs, was cited recently on a jihadi website as proof that the U.S.’s new
diplomatic efforts in the region are sinister and meant to pave the way for further military
occupation: “And we plan to forward�deploy regional SWAT teams who can look at the
big picture and formulate a more strategic and focused approach to all our public
diplomacy assets; not just country by country, but within a region of the world…� (Loy
Henderson Auditorium, Washington, DC, September 8, 2005).

I may be shot for treason on this.. but just for a moment put yourself in the place of a citizen of Iraq or Iran. You are noteable well imformed on
who's who in America... and you read this.. What would you think??

Ridge: White House should explain port deal
Homeland Security ex-chief says lawmakers' concerns legitimate

Monday, February 20, 2006; Posted: 9:55 a.m. EST (14:55 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration needs to show Congress why national security won't be hurt by a deal that gives a company based in the United Arab Emirates management of six major U.S. ports, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Monday.

Ridge, appearing on CNN's "American Morning," said, "I think the anxiety and the concern [over the deal] that has been expressed by congressmen and senators and elsewhere is legitimate."

Ridge said that during his tenure as secretary of homeland security from October 2001 to February 2005, he sat in on deals with similar national security concerns and officials would not jeopardize national security.

"The bottom line is I think we need a little more transparency here," he said. "There are legitimate concerns about who would be in charge of hiring and firing and security measures -- added technology in these ports that we need to upgrade our security." (Watch lawmakers call for deal to be stopped -- 2:55)

Ridge recommended that the Bush administration go to Capitol Hill to show how America's security will be enhanced by the deal.

"I suspect they can do that," he said.

more... http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/20/port.security/index.html

Posted by: Ladytechie at February 20, 2006 03:36 PM

LT...just what the Bush admin wants those citizens to think.

The pretext for invading Iran, like Iraq, will rest on a MacGuffin. Which is why it won't matter whether the MacGuffin is ultimately proved true, false, or contrived.

This is idea warfare.

Watched John Fogarty on Austin City Limits the other night. Perfect timing for this classic:

DEJA VU (ALL OVER AGAIN)

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio
Did you try to read the writing on the wall
Did that voice inside you say I've heard it all before
It's like Deja Vu all over again

Day by day I hear the voices rising
Started with a whisper like it did before
Day by day we count the dead and dying
Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio
Could your eyes believe the writing on the wall
Did that voice inside you say I've heard it all before
It's like Deja Vu all over again

One by one I see the old ghosts rising
Stumblin' 'cross Big Muddy
Where the light gets dim
Day after day another Momma's crying
She's lost her precious child
To a war that has no end

Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio
Did you stop to read the writing at The Wall
Did that voice inside you say
I've seen this all before
It's like Deja Vu all over again
It's like Deja Vu all over again

John Fogerty
©2004 Cody River Music / ASCAP

Memo that warned about detainee abuse, torture was thwarted

Two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal, the general counsel of the U.S. Navy wrote a memo which tried to halt the "disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects," according to an article to be published in The New Yorker magazine.

Alberto J. Mora was informed of detainee abuse at Guantбnamo back in December of 2002 by the head of the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, David Brant, who said that nobody else seemed to care, because after 9/11, the "gloves had to come off" and the United States "had to get tougher."

Excerpts from the article written by Jane Mayer:

The memo is a chronological account, submitted on July 7, 2004, to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantбnamo Bay, Cuba. It reveals that Mora’s criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush’s decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as “unlawful,” “dangerous,” and “erroneous” novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution.

more... http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Memo_that_warned_about_detainee_abuse_0220.html

With thanks to monkey.. who reconnected me to a group from my youth....

Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war

I dreamed I saw a mighty room
Filled with women and men
And the paper they were signing said
They'd never fight again

And when the paper was all signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful pray'rs were prayed

And the people in the streets below
Were dancing 'round and 'round
While swords and guns and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground

Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd never dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war.

TRO-©1950,1951 & 1955 Almanac Music, Inc.
New York, N.Y. Copyrights renewed

The Monkey Speaks His Mind
as performed by
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

I said... Yeah! The Monkey Speaks His Mind!

Now three little monkeys sat on a coconut tree
Discussing things as they are said to be
Said one to the others, now listen you two
There is a certain rumor that cant be true
That man descended from our noble race
The funny idea is a big disgrace
No monkey ever deserted his wife
Nor left her baby and ruin her life

I said, Yeah! The Monkey speaks his mind!

And another thing you will never see
A monkey build a fence around a coconut tree
And let all the coconuts go to waste
Forbidding all other monkeys to come and taste
Now if I build a fence around this tree
Starvation will cause you to steal from me.

I said, Yeah!... The monkey speaks his mind!

Here is another thing a monkey won't do
Go out at night and get on a stew
Or use a gun, a club or a knife
To take another monkey's life

Yes man descended, the worthless bum
But my good brothers, from us he did not come!

Yeah! ... The monkey speaks his mind!!!

OUR BRILLIANT AMBASSADOR IN IRAQ:

US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was speaking after talks to form a new government faltered over divisions between Shias, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

"Sectarian and ethnic conflict is the fundamental problem in Iraq," he said.

@@@@@@@@@@@
There were bombings in Baghdad and Mosul today killing around 20 Iraqis

A good afternoon for music, apparently:

Jackson Browne 1986

FOR AMERICA

As if I really didn't understand
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It's in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn's early light
By all I know is right
We're going to reap what we have sown

As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you

The thing I wonder about the Dads and Moms
Who send their sons to the Vietnams
Will they really think their way of life
Has been protected as the next war comes?
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
Her shining dream plays in my mind
By the rockets red glare
A generation's blank stare
We better wake her up this time

The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
I can't let go till she comes around
Until the land of the free
Is awake and can see
And until her conscience has been found

More on the newly released Abu Ghraib photos:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
New images of apparent abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US troops at the Abu Ghraib jail in 2003 have been broadcast by an Australian TV channel.
The previously unpublished images include both video footage and photographs.

Some of the images are similar to those published in 2004 when news of the abuses first came out.

Some of the pictures show dead bodies and naked prisoners, as well as scenes of sexual humiliation.

Various images show men restrained in uncomfortable positions. One of the images shows a man tied between two stretchers, his hands by his sides, placed face down on the floor. His head is too far from the floor for him to rest it down.

Another shows a hooded man standing by a metal railing. His body is behind the railing and his arms are handcuffed up and over the side of the railing, so that he cannot sit down.

One image shows

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4717974.stm

It is the Swine Flu!!!

The virus known as the Swine Flu is morphing into a pandemic.

It is spread by politicians coming into close contact with lobbyists and accepting money from them. It is further spread by the consumation of pork.

A symptom is that they all eat out of the same trough.

The disease is incurable. Infected politicians must be quarantined.

Posted by: Carol at February 20, 2006 04:55 PM

Beautiful. Thanks, Carol.

This is idea warfare.

Posted by: Veritas at February 20, 2006 04:02 PM

We've known for a couple years that Iran was in the making.

I still wonder how much the Plame/Wilson case might have played into the Iran planning, and whether or not Plame and Wilson could have blown the cover off Iran - not just Iraq.

Posted by: DiAnne at February 20, 2006 12:35 PM

Just talked to my dad in Nevada. I read him the results of the poll that shows Bush only having a positive rating in ten states. Nevada is down 18 points I believe.

I told him Jimmy Carter's son is running for Senator there. He said that the Swiftboat slime machine is already smearing Carter around, saying they don't "need any carpetbaggers here".

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Saying the nation is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that would "startle" most Americans, President Bush on Monday outlined his energy proposals to help wean the country off foreign oil.

Less than half the crude oil used by refineries is produced in the United States, with 60 percent coming from foreign nations, Bush said during the first stop on a two-day trip to talk about energy.

Some of these foreign suppliers have "unstable" governments that have fundamental differences with America, he said.

"It creates a national security issue, and we're held hostage for energy by foreign nations that may not like us," Bush said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/20/bush.energy.ap/index.html

Amurkans will not be "STARTLED", you moron. They know what can be done, and what should have been done YEARS ago.

Then again, I'm pretty startled at how many people still believe a word that comes out of your mouth.

Toolmaker - why can't people GET this????
All these people who think BushCo is protecting us....
The administration has filled them with fear, but they are afraid of the wrong thing. They should be VERY afraid of what their leaders are setting them up for. Instead, they're afraid that terra will come into their living room"
Posted by: Carol at February 20, 2006 03:30 PM

Well Carol, hello, and nice to see you again.

People dont get it because we do a terrible job of presenting it to them. If i were a Democrat in Office, i would hold a Press conference and talk about the "mushroom clouds" about to explode in various locations on the Eastern Seaboard because the Bush Administration is selling out American National Security to clients in the United Arab Emerates.

I would describe in detail what biological wepaons aredoes, and how it will be spread in the United States by the ships visiting our ports under the supervision of the same nation that helped manage and finance al queda.

And then i would really put the fear of god in them.

Posted by: Toolmaker at February 20, 2006 06:47 PM

Absolutely...we have to counter the ideas and word/image meanings that the Neocons have been inserting in our minds for years.

Not by saying they're wrong or bad. That just reinforces them.

But as you so vividly describe, Toolmaker, by placing entirely other images, words, and meanings in the minds of the politicians and the public.

Idea warfare.

BTW, can someone please explain to me how selling ports to the United Arab Emirates makes us safer?

I plan to ask every Republican I know...

Democrats May Unite on Plan to Pull Troops
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006A.shtml
After months of trying unsuccessfully to develop a common message on the war in Iraq, Democratic party leaders are beginning to coalesce around a broad plan to begin a quick withdrawal of US troops and install them elsewhere in the region, where they could respond to emergencies in Iraq and help fight terrorism in other countries.
Excerpt:
The concept, dubbed "strategic redeployment," is outlined in a slim, nine-page report coauthored by a former Reagan administration assistant Defense secretary, Lawrence J. Korb, in the fall. It sets a goal of a phased troop withdrawal that would take nearly all US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2007, although many Democrats disagree on whether troop draw-downs should be tied to a timeline.

Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman, has endorsed Korb's paper and begun mentioning it in meetings with local Democratic groups. In addition, the study's concepts have been touted by the senator assigned to bring Democrats together on Iraq - Jack Reed of Rhode Island - and the report has been circulated among all senators by Senator Dianne Feinstein, an influential moderate Democrat from California.

The party remains divided on some points, including how much detail to include in a party-produced document, fearful of giving too much fodder for attacks by Republicans.

But in its broad outlines, many leading Democrats say the Korb plan represents an answer to Republicans' oft-repeated charge that Democrats aren't offering a way forward on Iraq - and to do so in a way that is neither defeatist nor blindly loyal to the president.

"We're not going to cut and run - that's just Republican propaganda," Dean said in a speech Feb. 10 in Boston. "But we are going to redeploy our troops so they don't have targets on their backs, and they're not breaking down doors and putting themselves in the line of fire all the time. . . . It's a sensible plan. It's a thoughtful plan. I think Democrats can coalesce around it."

Reed, an Army veteran and former paratrooper who has been charged with developing a party strategy on the war, said the plan is attractive to many Democrats because it rejects what he calls the "false dichotomy" suggested by President Bush: that the only options in Iraq are "stay the course" or "cut and run."

"It's important to note that it's not withdrawal - it's redeployment," Reed said. "We need to pursue a strategy that is going to accomplish the reasonable objectives, and allow us to have strategic flexibility. Not only is it a message, but it's a method to improve the security there and around the globe."

The idea of a phased deployment of troops out of Iraq recognizes that a huge US military presence in the country is straining the armed services as well as feeding the insurgency, Reed said. He added that many military commanders agree that the nation should be moving toward taking American troops out of Iraq, to better equip the military to respond to threats around the world and give the Iraqi government a greater incentive to handle its own security.

Under Korb's outline, all reservists and National Guard members would come home this year. Most of the other troops would be redeployed to other key areas - Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, and the Horn of Africa - with large, quick-strike forces placed in Kuwait, where they could respond to crises in neighboring Iraq.

[Click on link for more.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IMHO, this is pure Bull$---!!! (1) They've got a Republican writing the strategy. (2) They're only proposing sending some of the troops to neighboring countries (well, gee, they'd be close in an 'emergency'), NOT withdrawing the troops. I wondered what the ambiguous unexplained phrase 'strategic re-deployment' was going to entail when I heard it before, since re-deployment just means moving troops.... Timelines are still nonexistent, 2007 is mentioned, but that's just in time for the '08 presidential campaigns to heat up and favor Republicans.

The only thing I can support in this proposal is that it calls for bringing the reservists and guards home "this year." Hopefully that wouldn't be delayed until mid-Dec.... The sooner the guards and reserves come home, the better. IMHO, they should have never been sent overseas in the first place, since that leaves us vulnerable here!!! (And if that insane plan to sell six American ports to the UAE goes through, it looks like they'll be desperately needed at home anyway.)

Getting military personnel to Iraq didn't seem to be much of a problem. It was practically all televised live, remember? What's the big deal with bringing them home on the next available mode of transportation? Aside from neoCon name-calling? The whole war in Iraq was a debacle, destined for failure, in the first place. All this kerfluffle with conferences to talk about strategic withdrawal just delays the process, and it will get a lot of people killed while they sit around flapping their gums and blow a lot of hot air....

Posted by: monkey at February 20, 2006 06:45 PM

To The Cretin: OH, do, please "startle" us!!!

The only things that have "startled" any of us with an IQ higher than a rock is the fact you were installed as pResident by SCOTUS in 2000 and that there wasn't a big outcry when you stole the 2004 election with rigged voting machines!

So, do, please, TRY to "startle" us all!!! I dare you.... I double-dog dare you...!!!

Bwahahahahahahahahahhaaaaaaaaa......

European Diplomats Call for Guantanamo Closure
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006B.shtml
Three key European ambassadors stepped up pressure on US authorities over the weekend, after a report by UN human rights experts called for the camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be shut as soon as possible. The British, French and German ambassadors to Washington called for the US to close its Guantanamo "war on terror" prison camp, with the French envoy calling it "an embarrassment."

New Clerk for Alito Has a Long Paper Trail
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006G.shtml
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was so bland and self-effacing at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings last month, made a bold decision on arriving at the court. He hired Adam G. Ciongoli, a former top aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft and an architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy after the September 11, 2001, attacks, to be one of his law clerks.

At a Scientific Gathering, US Policies Are Lamented
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006F.shtml
David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and president of the California Institute of Technology, is used to the Bush administration misrepresenting scientific findings to support its policy aims, he told an audience of fellow researchers Saturday. "It's no accident that we are seeing such an extensive suppression of scientific freedom," he said. "It's part of the theory of government now, and it's a theory we need to vociferously oppose." Far from twisting science to suit its own goals, he said the government should be "the guardian of intellectual freedom."

The Other Failure in Iraq: the Economy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006H.shtml
Eric Le Boucher reminds us that the American "economic reconstruction" of Iraq has left that country economically worse-off than it was before: "The gap between the reconstruction objectives settled upon after Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003 and reality only continue to grow."

I'll tell ya something else that is really pissing me off since no one asked... everytime this Dog & Phony Show hits the road to sell something (aka diversion), they put the smirking chimp in front of a corporate logo for the sales pitch.

Todays Waste of Taxpayer Dollars was called a little program called

"Advanced Energy Initiative"...

(see pic, then spit, rinse thouroughly... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11465801/)

Ya know, the Bush administration demonstrating once again that they put things before the American public WAY after the it's so rediculously obvious that they've blown it, that they truly resport to live, staged infommercial events... kinda like that "Strategy for Victory" product introduction a few months ago that didn't sell either.

But hurry, if you act NOW, you may just get your country back... hurry, time is running out.

APATHY KILLS

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IMHO, this is pure Bull$---!!! (1) They've got a Republican writing the strategy. (2) They're only proposing sending some of the troops to neighboring countries (well, gee, they'd be close in an 'emergency'), NOT withdrawing the troops. I wondered what the ambiguous unexplained phrase 'strategic re-deployment' was going to entail when I heard it before, since re-deployment just means moving troops.... Timelines are still nonexistent, 2007 is mentioned, but that's just in time for the '08 presidential campaigns to heat up and favor Republicans.

The only thing I can support in this proposal is that it calls for bringing the reservists and guards home "this year." Hopefully that wouldn't be delayed until mid-Dec.... The sooner the guards and reserves come home, the better. IMHO, they should have never been sent overseas in the first place, since that leaves us vulnerable here!!! (And if that insane plan to sell six American ports to the UAE goes through, it looks like they'll be desperately needed at home anyway.)
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

1) It is better than "NO PLAN AT ALL" which is what the Democrats have now - nothing

2) It sounds a lot like the Murtha plan which would have kept some troops in the region - in Kuwait and on ships in the Gulf - but would have gotten the troops out of the tinderbox of Iraq which is an important step. Once they are out of Iraq, the next step would be to get them out of the region etc....

It will be interesting to see if Murtha backs this plan.

Posted by: ralpheh at February 20, 2006 09:40 PM

I do agree it is better than no plan at all....

BUT, it needs to be implimented to work. Talking about it accomplishes nothing. They must ACT on it.

Sending the troops to that misbegotten illegal war took practically no time at all, just a bare few weeks to get them in place. We watched the invasion on live TV for a few weeks after that.

I'm saying the troops could be brought home in the same time it took to send them to Iraq... IF someone will just DO it. Maybe not the regular enlisted troops immediately, but definitely the guard and reserve troops should be brought home immediately (they never should have been sent in the first place).

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060221/ap_on_go_co/port_security
GOP Governors Question Port Turnover
WASHINGTON - Two Republican governors on Monday questioned a Bush administration decision allowing an Arab-owned company to operate six major U. S. ports, saying they may try to cancel lease arrangements at ports in their states.

New York Gov. George Pataki and Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich voiced doubts about the acquisition of a British company that has been running the U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ensuring the security of New York's port operations is paramount and I am very concerned with the purchase of Peninsular & Oriental Steam by Dubai Ports World," Pataki said in a news release.
"I have directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to explore all legal options that may be available to them in regards to this transaction," said the New York governor, who is still in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy.

Ehrlich, concerned about security at the Port of Baltimore, said Monday he is "very troubled" that Maryland officials got no advance notice before the Bush administration approved an Arab company's takeover of the operations at the six ports.

"We needed to know before this was a done deal, given the state of where we are concerning security," Ehrlich told reporters in the State House rotunda in Annapolis.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
{{{Click on link for more details. Is it progress to know that two Republican governors who represent states with major ports are coming to grips with just how much of a monumental f-up The Cretin and his secret dealings and back room policies are and have added their voices of dissent to the others of both parties...? OK. I'm not holding my breath on that one, 'cuz I think that eventually The Cretin will talk them around to "trusting" him 'to do what's best for the country.' If they fall for The Cretin's line of BS again, they'll wake up sadder, but wiser....}}}

Caught a little of radio and tv while visiting a friend who had made a documentary (about how his Jewish family escaped death in the Ukraine by coming to US). Saw and heard enough of Bush and Condi to know which media campaigns are prominent. For some reason, they are making Bush out to be the sage of energy wisdom, yet he never mentioned this stuff the two times he was running for president. Then Condi is orchestrating the middle east into sides to the best of her abilities.

Well I have to pay taxes unless I withold them and some of them are used to fight their enemies (not mine). I don't have a single personal enemy in any of the countries they are fighting or sanctioning or whatever. I have no grudge. It is just such a strange concept.

Silence the War Drums
By Ron Paul
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this very dangerous legislation. My colleagues would do well to understand that this legislation is leading us toward war against Iran.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11995.htm

Marjorie Cohn | US Force-Feeding Prisoners in Torture Camp
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006J.shtml
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the US military at its Guantanamo prison camp amounts to torture. More than a third of the prisoners held there have refused food to protest being held incommunicado for years with no hope of release. They have concluded that death could not be worse than the living hell they are enduring.

Annals of the Pentagon: How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0220-03.htm

Toronto Star | Free US Captives or Charge Them
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0220-23.htm

Jay Bookman | Eyewitnesses Peel Back Lies on War Debate
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0220-21.htm

What if the Cassandras are right? :
Professor Krugman reminded us that last year America's imports were 57% larger than her exports, that her borrowing binge was unsustainable and that, since a "soft landing" was unlikely, there could be a 30% fall in the value of the dollar in order to eliminate the trade deficit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1713364,00.html

WHO'S COUNTING BUSH'S MISTAKES?
Stephen Pizzo, News for Real
Given how ambitious and wide-ranging the incompetence of this administration has been, it's high time we started
keeping track of its many failures.
http://www.alternet.org/story/32382/

YOUR tax dollars at work...

Jobs cut at energy lab restored before Bush visit

By Tom Doggett
Reuters
Monday, February 20, 2006; 11:10 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Energy Department said it has come up with $5 million to immediately restore jobs cut at a renewable energy laboratory President George W. Bush will visit on Tuesday, avoiding a potentially embarrassing moment as the president promotes his energy plan.

In his State of the Union speech last month, Bush called for the United States to use less Middle East oil and develop alternative energy sources, including renewable energy such as wind, solar power and biomass.

-snip-

Bush will visit the lab on Tuesday to tout his proposal for more renewable energy research funding.

"The role of the government, at this point, is to continue to spend research dollars to help push (renewable energy) technologies forward ... to get these technologies to be even more competitive in the marketplace," Bush said Monday during a tour of a solar panel plant in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

To ensure the Colorado laboratory will have the people to carry out that research, the Energy Department transferred $5 million over the weekend to the Midwest Research Institute, the contractor that operates the renewable energy lab, to restore all the jobs cut earlier this month due to budget shortfalls.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/20/AR2006022001717.html

Ralpheh posted this in the Action Alerts forum (for those of you who don't check the forums daily)

MOVE ON; PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY; ACLU ARE SPONSORING A NATIONWIDE DEMONSTRATION against the illegal NSA wiretaps

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22,

go to this webpage to find the demonstration nearest to you

http://political.moveon.org/event/events/i...ml?action_id=34

you can find ralph's post at...
http://www.democracycellproject.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=1025&view=findpost&p=3979

For those who don't get the Sunday NYTimes, the Magazine section has an interesting article about "After Neoconservatism" that you may want to check out. It's long, but worth it.

Think Progress has this short summary & comments:
Neoconservative academic Francis Fukuyama: “Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/02/20/the-death-of-neoconservatism/

Here's the link to the NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/neo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Someone sent me this news link - AFP Worldwide:
http://www.afp.com/english/home/

From AFP:
US Propaganda Aimed at Foreigners Reaches US Public: Pentagon Document

The Pentagon acknowledged in a newly declassified document that the US public is increasingly exposed to propaganda disseminated overseas in
psychological operations.

But the document suggests that the Pentagon believes that US law that prohibits exposing the US public to propaganda does not apply to the
unintended blowback from such operations.

"The increasing ability of people in most parts of the globe to access international information sources makes targeting particular audiences more difficult," said the document.

"Today the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences become more a question of USG (US government) intent rather than information
dissemination practices," it said.

Called the "Information Operations Roadmap," the document was approved by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003.

It was made public by the National Security Archives, a private non-profit research group which obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The document said that psychological operations, or "psyops," are restricted by Pentagon policy and executive order from targeting US audiences, US military personnel and news agencies and outlets.

"However, information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience
and vice-versa."

In a press release, the National Security Archives said the document "calls for 'boundaries' between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not 'targeted,' any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter."
(snip)

He said that the Pentagon has sought to erect "firewalls" between psychological operations that aim to "influence" foreign publics and public affairs, which "inform" the press and the US public. But he acknowledged that the distinction between the two has become blurred.
(snip)

Disclosures last month that US military psychological operations units were secretly planting paid-for stories with the Iraqi press through a contractor brought some of those issues to the surface.

General George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, is reviewing the results of an investigation into the case, but officials have said that the
disclosures have so far prompted no changes.

BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court takes case on partial-birth abortion ban. Details soon.

Here's some more about it...

Supreme Court to weigh late-term abortions
Newly constituted court plunges into contentious issue

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will consider the constitutionality of banning a type of late-term abortion, teeing up a contentious issue for a newly-constituted court already in a state of flux over privacy rights.

The Bush administration has pressed the high court to reinstate the federal law, passed in 2003 but never put in effect because it was struck down by judges in California, Nebraska and New York.

The outcome will likely rest with the two men that President Bush has recently installed on the court. Justices had been split 5-4 in 2000 in striking down a state law, barring what critics call partial birth abortion because it lacked an exception to protect the health of the mother.

But Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was the tie-breaking vote, retired late last month and was replaced by Samuel Alito. Abortion had been a major focus in the fight over Alito’s nomination because justices serve for life and he will surely help shape the court on abortion and other issues for the next generation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11475776 /

Hunting vs. the war

News reports said Vice President Dick Cheney "appeared shaken" as he described seeing his lawyer friend drop to the ground after being shot. It's tragic that Cheney appears to be far less affected when American service members, and Iraqi children and civilians, drop to the ground after they are shot in the war. The war that Cheney fabricated from what this administration now admits was based on "faulty intelligence" (read: lies). At least the millionaire Cheney shot will have top medical assistance. It's tragic that service members are not millionaires, and Iraqi children are penniless, and not deserving of Cheney's notice.

Hey DiAnne:

You left off Snowe/ME! IMHO!

Chuck in Doha

And Webb VI!!!! Go Commonwealth!

Chuck in Doha

from Media Matters Org:

Re; the Milbank column - big error, then a Washpost retraction

In her February 19 ombudsman column, The Washington Post's Deborah Howell claimed that liberals have complained that Post columnist and reporter Dana Milbank has "skewered Democrats," and pointed specifically to a January 31 Milbank column. Despite exploring in detail the validity of conservatives' objections to a recent appearance on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, in which Milbank wore a bright orange hunting outfit to discuss Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of a hunting companion, Howell said next to nothing about complaints liberals have registered about Milbank's work. Instead, she simply wrote that liberals have objected to Milbank's columns "skewer[ing] Democrats" and made no effort to consider the actual flaws in his January 31 column. In fact, as Media Matters for America noted at the time, that column contained at least one outright falsehood and one distortion, the latter undermining the column's entire premise.

In a column that purported to discuss whether Milbank inappropriately injects his opinion into his work, Howell missed a key point. Regardless of whether Milbank has license as a news columnist to inject his views into his work -- and whether he has license to appear on television making light of a serious matter -- he certainly does not have license to inject falsehoods into his work. This is a key distinction that appears to have escaped Howell in her February 19 column -- the difference between opinion and fact, negative opinion and factual falsehood. Columnists may or may not be allowed to express opinions, although Howell quotes Post editor Liz Spayd suggesting that even that is off limits for a news columnist like Milbank; what they can't do -- whether they are news or opinion columnists -- and what Howell failed utterly in her column to call Milbank on, is base those views on false information.

Readers would never know it from Howell's column, but in his January 31 column, Milbank falsely reported that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) "got only 25 of the 60 needed votes" to mount a filibuster against President Bush's nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. In fact, as Media Matters and numerous weblogs (see, for example, here) noted at the time, it was Alito's supporters who "needed" the 60 votes to invoke "cloture," or end debate on the nomination and proceed to a floor vote; filibuster supporters needed 41 votes. Recognizing the error, The Washington Post ran a correction, which, according to the Nexis database, appeared in the print version the next day.

DiAnne:

My above comments are with respect to yours of February 20, 2006 12:35 PM

Chuck in Doha

PS: Keep the Faity and GOTV 2006!

Ralpheh:

Way to hold their feet to the fire! Every moment counts now. We can't afford to make any mistakes. Accountabilitity over the period 2006-2008 hinges on one thing.

Chuck in Doha

Which is spelled (I think) SUBPEONA!

Chuck in Doha

Or maybe "subpoena"

Latin ....

Yech.

Don't have the energy for www.m-w.com tonight.

Chuck in Doha

New thread

Posted by: monkey at February 20, 2006 09:15 PM

Yes, my little homo-sapien friend.

Bush pulls out the "advanced energy initiative"
and it's cousins the dog and phoney Snake "oil" show and the "gonna come up with alternative "Fools" every campaign cycle. I heard him say it in '00, again in '02, again in '04, and now in WHAT??? "06"????

It's the same old song and dance routine. Either that or he's only inspired to speak about it on even years.