How can Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, say that Osama bin Laden is “virtually impotent,” contrary to top intelligence experts, and when no one even knows where he is or what he has been doing?
The Bush administration would have us believe that Iraq is the “central” front in the global war on terror, and that bin Laden is on some permanent vacation in a cave – no longer a threat? Do these people ever think before they speak? “al-Qaida in Iraq” is only loosely affiliated with al-Qaida and did not even exist before we invaded Iraq. It has been widely reported that al-Qaida is back, in strength, in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
According to some, a debate over the various progress reports from Petraeus, other commanders, government agencies and diplomats is “moot” because Bush has already decided to carry his “new” strategy forward and Democrats lack the votes to stop him.
All I have heard from the war supporters is that the mainstream media is so liberally biased as to be unreliable. Yet, it almost seems forbidden that anybody should ask any hard questions. Why hasn’t Bush taken any steps to alleviate the strain on the military? In a country of 300 million “patriots,” why is it unreasonable to call for a draft? This ill-conceived war in Iraq has put this country in a very precarious position.
The surge was not a number deemed necessary by military experts but rather just a number they were able to scrounge up by extending to fifteen months the tours of the already overtaxed troops. General Petraeus, himself, wrote the army’s new counterinsurgency manual, which calls for as many troops in Baghdad, alone, as are in the entire country. His silence on this point brings into question anything he has to say in regards to the success of the surge or the strategy going forward.
At least it does for me. But, I am just one military family member, a minority, who is not blinded by “patriotism.” I am not willing to sacrifice my loved ones needlessly and recklessly. The military comprises not even 1% of our population and it speaks greatly to the character and honor, or lack thereof, of our “commander-in-chief” and the other 99.99% that the lives and well-being of those brave soldiers who have carried this entire burden does not even rate the slightest consideration.
Monday, September 10, 2007
"Bring It On" Again? - Osama bin Laden Deemed "Virtually Impotent"
Seemingly taunting Osama bin Laden, President Bush's homeland security adviser (Frances Fragos Townsend) said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaida leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.
The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.
...The consensus of the nation's top intelligence analysts is that bin Laden's terrorist network is anything but impotent.
Terrorism experts say the network is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says al-Qaida is growing in strength, intensifying its efforts to put operatives in the United States and plotting against U.S. targets that will cause massive casualties. The U.S. is in a "heightened threat environment" and al-Qaida is the most serious threat, the analysts found...
..."While he may be physically contained, his influence is not bounded by any physical barriers," said Thomas Sanderson, an authority on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Obviously, in a sense, it does not matter that we've got him trapped in a cave. He has sent forth enough messages to incite violence worldwide against us," he said in an interview Sunday...
...Taunting bin Laden as "virtually impotent" would likely not provoke him to respond, because his strategy of attacks involves lengthy planning that would not be derailed by a single comment, said Sanderson, a senior fellow at CSIS. But such a comment could prove incendiary to like-minded followers of bin Laden who see themselves as a "vanguard of a global assault on the United States," he said.
"A provocation like that," he said, "is not helpful."
The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.
...The consensus of the nation's top intelligence analysts is that bin Laden's terrorist network is anything but impotent.
Terrorism experts say the network is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says al-Qaida is growing in strength, intensifying its efforts to put operatives in the United States and plotting against U.S. targets that will cause massive casualties. The U.S. is in a "heightened threat environment" and al-Qaida is the most serious threat, the analysts found...
..."While he may be physically contained, his influence is not bounded by any physical barriers," said Thomas Sanderson, an authority on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Obviously, in a sense, it does not matter that we've got him trapped in a cave. He has sent forth enough messages to incite violence worldwide against us," he said in an interview Sunday...
...Taunting bin Laden as "virtually impotent" would likely not provoke him to respond, because his strategy of attacks involves lengthy planning that would not be derailed by a single comment, said Sanderson, a senior fellow at CSIS. But such a comment could prove incendiary to like-minded followers of bin Laden who see themselves as a "vanguard of a global assault on the United States," he said.
"A provocation like that," he said, "is not helpful."
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Patriot Day 2007
Last night one of those creeps drove by my house, you know who they are, they are the ones who would make you very nervous if caught in a dark alley at night. This is the kind of riffraff that I have had following me around for years. But, that's ok, this is how the ignorant hicks here in Kansas City have decided to run things. This is how they are going to take back "their" country. And all the "good" people will stand mute.
Do you ever take a good look at your neighbors, coworkers or some of these trashy people on the street and actually think about them as far as being a "patriot"? Are they somebody who is actually worth having someone else die for? Are you?
I am writing this, a work-in-progress, published as I go, in honor of "Patriot Day" here in America. This is about some little girl's hopes and dreams smashed, and being imprisoned in some kind of really bad sci-fi B-movie nightmare. Like Groundhog Day but instead you get this white trash, everyday, popping into your life. It is how they amuse themselves since not everybody was able to get on the Jerry Springer show.
It is not too much of a stretch, considering that a lot of young adults get their "news" from the Daily Show, the endless sleaze and hatefulness on the Internet, and the lack of people willing to enlist and fight this war they started, to say that ours is just a parody of a society...
...Here is what America means to me. I live in Kansas City, Mo, the "Heartland." This is a city that is still incensed that a rapist and murderer who snatched a young woman from her school bus stop many years ago is caught up in death row appeals. Recently, another young woman was snatched, in broad daylight, from a Target parking lot in a suburban neighborhood. She was also sexually assaulted and murdered. These same people think it is good sport to watch everything I do, follow me wherever I go, and drive by my house at all hours of the day and night.
They have interfered in every aspect of my life. They have meddled with my family and marriage. I have not been able to work for several years, I have struggled to get through every day and still, these Jerry Springer Clowns just keep coming. This is mostly of the generation that would have grown up on Jerry Springer, but no, there are old men, old women, everybody. An army of hateful, stupid, coddled, selfish, nasty clowns. This is America.
They are trash and they are supremacists.
They are dumber than a box of rocks. They have never had to think for themselves.
The Kansas City Star said in an editorial that the U.S. is a "known historical supporter of terrorism in Pinochet's Chile, Batista's Cuba and Rios Mont's Guatemala."
But that does not even register with these dolts. They just file it away in their memory hole and go back to taking credit for every accomplishment and acheivement made by other white people besides them. They are bumpkins who just fell off the turnip truck but they don't even know it. They do not have to apply anything they have learned to reality, the need does not exist. They are oblivious.
Ignorant bliss - that's what it is to be an American.
***********************************************
This all started at some outfit called Mo-Can Flooring run by a couple of fine, upstanding goons - Harry Himmelstein and Jeff K(?) - it's been a long time. What happened is not important - it's all BS. What is important is that I refused to back down and I actually had the nerve to tell these bozos what I thought of them. Their delicate, fragile, little white trash egos simply cannot handle it.
How else can you explain this? They had never had anyone with any class walk in their crummy carpet store before? These hateful, nasty freaks were dying to try out their newfound power. I didn't want to play their stupid games, charades? Nobody even had the decency to clue me in. I never had a chance to defend myself, I didn't even know what I was charged with, I was deemed guilty by a bunch of GD pretty rough and ragged carpetlayers and warehousemen.
Now, I should just accept this trade off - The Constitution, The Bill Of Rights, our justice system for some stupid system designed by so-called grown men who act like they are still on the elementary school bus. KMA. (That's blogspeak for Kiss My A#$!)
Do you ever take a good look at your neighbors, coworkers or some of these trashy people on the street and actually think about them as far as being a "patriot"? Are they somebody who is actually worth having someone else die for? Are you?
I am writing this, a work-in-progress, published as I go, in honor of "Patriot Day" here in America. This is about some little girl's hopes and dreams smashed, and being imprisoned in some kind of really bad sci-fi B-movie nightmare. Like Groundhog Day but instead you get this white trash, everyday, popping into your life. It is how they amuse themselves since not everybody was able to get on the Jerry Springer show.
It is not too much of a stretch, considering that a lot of young adults get their "news" from the Daily Show, the endless sleaze and hatefulness on the Internet, and the lack of people willing to enlist and fight this war they started, to say that ours is just a parody of a society...
...Here is what America means to me. I live in Kansas City, Mo, the "Heartland." This is a city that is still incensed that a rapist and murderer who snatched a young woman from her school bus stop many years ago is caught up in death row appeals. Recently, another young woman was snatched, in broad daylight, from a Target parking lot in a suburban neighborhood. She was also sexually assaulted and murdered. These same people think it is good sport to watch everything I do, follow me wherever I go, and drive by my house at all hours of the day and night.
They have interfered in every aspect of my life. They have meddled with my family and marriage. I have not been able to work for several years, I have struggled to get through every day and still, these Jerry Springer Clowns just keep coming. This is mostly of the generation that would have grown up on Jerry Springer, but no, there are old men, old women, everybody. An army of hateful, stupid, coddled, selfish, nasty clowns. This is America.
They are trash and they are supremacists.
They are dumber than a box of rocks. They have never had to think for themselves.
The Kansas City Star said in an editorial that the U.S. is a "known historical supporter of terrorism in Pinochet's Chile, Batista's Cuba and Rios Mont's Guatemala."
But that does not even register with these dolts. They just file it away in their memory hole and go back to taking credit for every accomplishment and acheivement made by other white people besides them. They are bumpkins who just fell off the turnip truck but they don't even know it. They do not have to apply anything they have learned to reality, the need does not exist. They are oblivious.
Ignorant bliss - that's what it is to be an American.
***********************************************
This all started at some outfit called Mo-Can Flooring run by a couple of fine, upstanding goons - Harry Himmelstein and Jeff K(?) - it's been a long time. What happened is not important - it's all BS. What is important is that I refused to back down and I actually had the nerve to tell these bozos what I thought of them. Their delicate, fragile, little white trash egos simply cannot handle it.
How else can you explain this? They had never had anyone with any class walk in their crummy carpet store before? These hateful, nasty freaks were dying to try out their newfound power. I didn't want to play their stupid games, charades? Nobody even had the decency to clue me in. I never had a chance to defend myself, I didn't even know what I was charged with, I was deemed guilty by a bunch of GD pretty rough and ragged carpetlayers and warehousemen.
Now, I should just accept this trade off - The Constitution, The Bill Of Rights, our justice system for some stupid system designed by so-called grown men who act like they are still on the elementary school bus. KMA. (That's blogspeak for Kiss My A#$!)
Setbacks Outweigh Successes - The Surge
This should come as no surprise considering that the so-called surge was not a number deemed necessary by military experts but rather just a number they were able to scrounge up by extending tours of duty to fifteen months. The cowardly president - who is not ashamed to ask for more and more from the same troops - and his desperate followers - followers who are not exactly running to enlist - are just hoping for enough "good news" to maneuver themselves into a better campaigning position.
Bush has not taken any steps to prolong the surge - calling for a draft, if necessary - in fact, he has not taken any steps, whatsoever, to relieve the strain on the military and to protect our position in the world which has been greatly weakened by his ill-conceived war in Iraq.
You don't have to look very hard or far to find the cowards who are holding Bush up. Go to Townhall.com - they don't care about facts, they don't care that there has never been enough troops. They don't even care that the Iraqi people are innocent of any wrongdoing in the attacks of 9/11.
No, all they care about is their bloodlust and hiding behind their blind patriotism, waving their little flags and singing their tearful anthems.
************************************************
Posted on Sat, Sep. 08, 2007
Setbacks outweigh successes in Iraq since surge began
By LEILA FADEL
McClatchy Newspapers
•Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs.
•Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors.
•Services have not improved across most of the capital. The international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003.
•Each month tens of thousands of Iraqis flee their homes in search of safety.
• Iraqi security forces remain heavily infiltrated by militias, and politicians continue to intervene in their activities.
•Civilian deaths have not decreased in any significant way across Iraq, according to statistics from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and numbers gathered by McClatchy Newspapers show no consistent downward trend even in Baghdad, despite military assertions to the contrary. The military has provided no hard numbers to back the claim.
...Baghdad
Taking control of Iraq’s capital was at the center of Bush’s surge strategy in January. At least half the U.S. troop surge is taking place in Baghdad and its suburbs, where the U.S. focused on establishing joint security outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods to be closer to areas where sectarian violence was claiming dozens of lives each day.
The military threw up concrete walls across the capital to foil car bombs and stop Shiite militia members or Sunni insurgents from entering targeted neighborhoods. One military official said U.S. troops were erecting walls as “fast as they could build them.” Most “hardened” neighborhoods, encircled with towering gray walls and with single entrances and exits, are Sunni enclaves, military officials said.
The result is a city now sharply divided into sectarian boroughs where the battle lines have only hardened. Some Baghdad residents say they feel somewhat safer in their neighborhoods, but they fear traveling anywhere else in the city.
Anbar province
No one disputes that Anbar province, once the heart of the Sunni insurgency, is far more secure now than it was this time last year.
But what credit American troops can claim for that and how likely it is to remain that way are hotly debated.
The tribal rebellion against al-Qaida in Iraq began last September, well before the surge was even contemplated. That was when tribal leaders, fed up with al-Qaida in Iraq’s attacks on moderate Sunnis and its efforts to impose strict Islamic fundamentalism, formed the Anbar Salvation Council to battle the group.
Tribal sheik Fassal Gaoud, a former Anbar governor, told McClatchy Newspapers in June that the tribes previously had asked for U.S. help in attacking the group but had been rebuffed. By the time U.S. troops began working with the tribes, the battle against al-Qaida in Iraq was well under way. Gaoud was killed in a bombing in July at a hotel in central Baghdad...
Elsewhere in Iraq
In other areas in Iraq, violence has increased and conditions are deteriorating.
Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the U.S. invasion. No Iraqi whom McClatchy spoke to for this report expressed confidence in the government.
Sunni militants remain openly active in the north. Three weeks ago, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq, a front organization for al-Qaida in Iraq, paraded through the streets of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, said tribal sheik Fawaz Mohammed al-Jarba.
In August, the largest attack since the war began killed at least 322 people in two impoverished villages in Nineveh province, one of a series of deadly bombings, each of which briefly held the title as the deadliest of the year.
A blast in March killed 152 people in Nineveh’s Tal Afar, and 150 people were killed in an explosion in July in Amerli in Salah ad Din province. A double suicide bombing in July left at least 85 people dead in the northern city of Kirkuk.
In the Shiite-dominated south, violence is rising as Shiite militias vie with one another for control.
At least 52 people were killed this month when fighting broke out between the Mahdi Army and the rival Badr Organization during a religious festival in Karbala.
In Basra, a strategic port city on the Persian Gulf, those militias and one from the Fadhila party have fought pitched battles for control, with the death toll rising throughout the year, from 59 in January to 134 in May. In August, 90 people died there.
Overall, civilian casualties in Iraq appear to have remained steady throughout the siege, though numbers are difficult to come by.
-----------------------------------------------------
Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Monday will warn Congress against making major changes to the war strategy, sources say.
Bush has not taken any steps to prolong the surge - calling for a draft, if necessary - in fact, he has not taken any steps, whatsoever, to relieve the strain on the military and to protect our position in the world which has been greatly weakened by his ill-conceived war in Iraq.
You don't have to look very hard or far to find the cowards who are holding Bush up. Go to Townhall.com - they don't care about facts, they don't care that there has never been enough troops. They don't even care that the Iraqi people are innocent of any wrongdoing in the attacks of 9/11.
No, all they care about is their bloodlust and hiding behind their blind patriotism, waving their little flags and singing their tearful anthems.
************************************************
Posted on Sat, Sep. 08, 2007
Setbacks outweigh successes in Iraq since surge began
By LEILA FADEL
McClatchy Newspapers
•Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs.
•Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors.
•Services have not improved across most of the capital. The international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003.
•Each month tens of thousands of Iraqis flee their homes in search of safety.
• Iraqi security forces remain heavily infiltrated by militias, and politicians continue to intervene in their activities.
•Civilian deaths have not decreased in any significant way across Iraq, according to statistics from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and numbers gathered by McClatchy Newspapers show no consistent downward trend even in Baghdad, despite military assertions to the contrary. The military has provided no hard numbers to back the claim.
...Baghdad
Taking control of Iraq’s capital was at the center of Bush’s surge strategy in January. At least half the U.S. troop surge is taking place in Baghdad and its suburbs, where the U.S. focused on establishing joint security outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods to be closer to areas where sectarian violence was claiming dozens of lives each day.
The military threw up concrete walls across the capital to foil car bombs and stop Shiite militia members or Sunni insurgents from entering targeted neighborhoods. One military official said U.S. troops were erecting walls as “fast as they could build them.” Most “hardened” neighborhoods, encircled with towering gray walls and with single entrances and exits, are Sunni enclaves, military officials said.
The result is a city now sharply divided into sectarian boroughs where the battle lines have only hardened. Some Baghdad residents say they feel somewhat safer in their neighborhoods, but they fear traveling anywhere else in the city.
Anbar province
No one disputes that Anbar province, once the heart of the Sunni insurgency, is far more secure now than it was this time last year.
But what credit American troops can claim for that and how likely it is to remain that way are hotly debated.
The tribal rebellion against al-Qaida in Iraq began last September, well before the surge was even contemplated. That was when tribal leaders, fed up with al-Qaida in Iraq’s attacks on moderate Sunnis and its efforts to impose strict Islamic fundamentalism, formed the Anbar Salvation Council to battle the group.
Tribal sheik Fassal Gaoud, a former Anbar governor, told McClatchy Newspapers in June that the tribes previously had asked for U.S. help in attacking the group but had been rebuffed. By the time U.S. troops began working with the tribes, the battle against al-Qaida in Iraq was well under way. Gaoud was killed in a bombing in July at a hotel in central Baghdad...
Elsewhere in Iraq
In other areas in Iraq, violence has increased and conditions are deteriorating.
Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the U.S. invasion. No Iraqi whom McClatchy spoke to for this report expressed confidence in the government.
Sunni militants remain openly active in the north. Three weeks ago, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq, a front organization for al-Qaida in Iraq, paraded through the streets of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, said tribal sheik Fawaz Mohammed al-Jarba.
In August, the largest attack since the war began killed at least 322 people in two impoverished villages in Nineveh province, one of a series of deadly bombings, each of which briefly held the title as the deadliest of the year.
A blast in March killed 152 people in Nineveh’s Tal Afar, and 150 people were killed in an explosion in July in Amerli in Salah ad Din province. A double suicide bombing in July left at least 85 people dead in the northern city of Kirkuk.
In the Shiite-dominated south, violence is rising as Shiite militias vie with one another for control.
At least 52 people were killed this month when fighting broke out between the Mahdi Army and the rival Badr Organization during a religious festival in Karbala.
In Basra, a strategic port city on the Persian Gulf, those militias and one from the Fadhila party have fought pitched battles for control, with the death toll rising throughout the year, from 59 in January to 134 in May. In August, 90 people died there.
Overall, civilian casualties in Iraq appear to have remained steady throughout the siege, though numbers are difficult to come by.
-----------------------------------------------------
Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Monday will warn Congress against making major changes to the war strategy, sources say.
Bush's "Parting Gift" To Coal Industry
Posted on Sat, Sep. 01, 2007
Satisfying U.S. energy needs should not involve defacing Appalachia
By C.W. GUSEWELLE
The Kansas City Star
In what the head of an environmental watchdog group terms “a parting gift to the coal industry,” the Bush administration has moved to give surface mining companies greater freedom to disfigure Appalachia.
The effect of the proposed new rule, drafted by the Interior Department, would be to extend and expand the ability of strip miners to dump debris from shattered and decapitated mountains into the streams and valleys of the region.
It is a practice whose consequences are horrific. According to the mandatory environmental impact statement, some 33 miles of waterways are being buried under mine rubble yearly — a rate that is certain to increase.
And that is only one aspect of the catastrophe.
In 1971, I spent a month in eastern Kentucky on a magazine assignment to write what was to have been a 3,000-word piece about the people and conditions of life in the all-but-moribund coal fields...
• • •
On a clear day, above the hamlet of Lookout, Ky., I’m standing at an overlook with a young man, Estil Bartley, not yet 21 but already a veteran of two years in his family’s underground mine.
He has parked his pickup truck at the very lip of a dizzying ravine and stares now across a gaping reach of distance.
“Lookit there,” Bartley says, and has to whistle to himself. “They’re tearing that mountain all to pieces!”
But it is not a mountain any longer. It is a mesa, its side remade in shelves and verticals, a step-pyramid with its top removed.
And down the side of that has come the mud, glacial in proportions — a flow of sterile muck not to be measured by the foot but by the quarter-section of frontage. So large that the gullies eroded in it are themselves considerable terrain features, carrying foul streams of a size almost to deserve naming.
Down all of that reaches — 800 feet, a thousand — down to the bed of Sycamore Creek, which vanishes entirely under the slide and comes out the lower side as a snaking, ochre ribbon.
Having ceased to be water and become some other substance, the stream would most certainly stop flowing if the valley were less steep. By gravity’s persuasion, it oozes on, mingling all the while with the ruins of other hillsides in torpid suspension.
There is about this a kind of magnificence, the grandeur of sheer scale — of blitzed cathedrals, of killing grounds after the battle has passed on, of nuclear clouds over coral atolls. It does not merely deface what is. It changes what is — creates new facts for eternity’s contemplation.
Estil Bartley’s pale eyes traverse the hideousness.
He whistles softly again, then climbs in and lets the truck roll on down in gear.
• • •
“Lookit there,” Bartley says, and has to whistle to himself. “They’re tearing that mountain all to pieces!”
- This is the same as the ignorant hick elected president of the U.S. - karennkc.
Satisfying U.S. energy needs should not involve defacing Appalachia
By C.W. GUSEWELLE
The Kansas City Star
In what the head of an environmental watchdog group terms “a parting gift to the coal industry,” the Bush administration has moved to give surface mining companies greater freedom to disfigure Appalachia.
The effect of the proposed new rule, drafted by the Interior Department, would be to extend and expand the ability of strip miners to dump debris from shattered and decapitated mountains into the streams and valleys of the region.
It is a practice whose consequences are horrific. According to the mandatory environmental impact statement, some 33 miles of waterways are being buried under mine rubble yearly — a rate that is certain to increase.
And that is only one aspect of the catastrophe.
In 1971, I spent a month in eastern Kentucky on a magazine assignment to write what was to have been a 3,000-word piece about the people and conditions of life in the all-but-moribund coal fields...
• • •
On a clear day, above the hamlet of Lookout, Ky., I’m standing at an overlook with a young man, Estil Bartley, not yet 21 but already a veteran of two years in his family’s underground mine.
He has parked his pickup truck at the very lip of a dizzying ravine and stares now across a gaping reach of distance.
“Lookit there,” Bartley says, and has to whistle to himself. “They’re tearing that mountain all to pieces!”
But it is not a mountain any longer. It is a mesa, its side remade in shelves and verticals, a step-pyramid with its top removed.
And down the side of that has come the mud, glacial in proportions — a flow of sterile muck not to be measured by the foot but by the quarter-section of frontage. So large that the gullies eroded in it are themselves considerable terrain features, carrying foul streams of a size almost to deserve naming.
Down all of that reaches — 800 feet, a thousand — down to the bed of Sycamore Creek, which vanishes entirely under the slide and comes out the lower side as a snaking, ochre ribbon.
Having ceased to be water and become some other substance, the stream would most certainly stop flowing if the valley were less steep. By gravity’s persuasion, it oozes on, mingling all the while with the ruins of other hillsides in torpid suspension.
There is about this a kind of magnificence, the grandeur of sheer scale — of blitzed cathedrals, of killing grounds after the battle has passed on, of nuclear clouds over coral atolls. It does not merely deface what is. It changes what is — creates new facts for eternity’s contemplation.
Estil Bartley’s pale eyes traverse the hideousness.
He whistles softly again, then climbs in and lets the truck roll on down in gear.
• • •
“Lookit there,” Bartley says, and has to whistle to himself. “They’re tearing that mountain all to pieces!”
- This is the same as the ignorant hick elected president of the U.S. - karennkc.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Whistleblowers Persecuted Under Bush Administration
Whistleblowers on Iraq reconstruction are punished, a NAVY VETERAN even imprisoned and tortured - that has typical Bush/Cheney, greed and malfeasance stamped all over it.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/24/ap4052736.html
Associated PressWhistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties
By DEBORAH HASTINGS 08.24.07, 3:16 PM ET
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said.
He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co."It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics "reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country's oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.
Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press."If you do it, you will be destroyed," said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
"Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, `Should I do this?' And my answer is no. If they're married, they'll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything," Weaver said.They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.
"The only way we can find out what is going on is for someone to come forward and let us know," said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates corruption. "But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on them. The message is, 'Don't blow the whistle or we'll make your life hell.'"It's heartbreaking," Daley said. "There is an even greater need for whistleblowers now. But they are made into public martyrs. It's a disgrace. Their lives get ruined.
"Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR .
Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.People she has known for years no longer speak to her.
"It's just amazing how we say we want to remove fraud from our government, then we gag people who are just trying to stand up and do the right thing," she says.In her demotion, her supervisors said she was performing poorly. "They just wanted to get rid of me," she says softly.
The Army Corps of Engineers denies her claims."You just don't have happy endings," said Weaver. "She was a wonderful example of a federal employee. They just completely creamed her. In the end, no one followed up, no one cared."But Greenhouse regrets nothing. "I have the courage to say what needs to be said. I paid the price," she says.
Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company - with which he was briefly associated - bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses.
Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.
"It's a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system," said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. "I tried to help the government, and the government didn't seem to care.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/24/ap4052736.html
Associated PressWhistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties
By DEBORAH HASTINGS 08.24.07, 3:16 PM ET
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said.
He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co."It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics "reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country's oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.
Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press."If you do it, you will be destroyed," said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
"Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, `Should I do this?' And my answer is no. If they're married, they'll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything," Weaver said.They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.
"The only way we can find out what is going on is for someone to come forward and let us know," said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates corruption. "But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on them. The message is, 'Don't blow the whistle or we'll make your life hell.'"It's heartbreaking," Daley said. "There is an even greater need for whistleblowers now. But they are made into public martyrs. It's a disgrace. Their lives get ruined.
"Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR .
Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.People she has known for years no longer speak to her.
"It's just amazing how we say we want to remove fraud from our government, then we gag people who are just trying to stand up and do the right thing," she says.In her demotion, her supervisors said she was performing poorly. "They just wanted to get rid of me," she says softly.
The Army Corps of Engineers denies her claims."You just don't have happy endings," said Weaver. "She was a wonderful example of a federal employee. They just completely creamed her. In the end, no one followed up, no one cared."But Greenhouse regrets nothing. "I have the courage to say what needs to be said. I paid the price," she says.
Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company - with which he was briefly associated - bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses.
Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.
"It's a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system," said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. "I tried to help the government, and the government didn't seem to care.
Violence In Iraq Doubled
Posted on Sat, Aug. 25, 2007
Data show no surge in safety in Iraq so far in 2007
The Associated Press
BAGHDAD | The U.S. troop buildup has brought violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks nationwide is running nearly double the year-ago pace.
*****
The surge is just a battle for Baghdad. Iraq may be like Afghanistan, "not looking good outside of Kabul." - karennkc.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/v-print/story/247449.html
Data show no surge in safety in Iraq so far in 2007
The Associated Press
BAGHDAD | The U.S. troop buildup has brought violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks nationwide is running nearly double the year-ago pace.
*****
The surge is just a battle for Baghdad. Iraq may be like Afghanistan, "not looking good outside of Kabul." - karennkc.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/v-print/story/247449.html
Giuliani's Loopy Foreign Policy - Only 7,000 New Recruits A Year
"The U.S. Army needs a minimum of ten new combat brigades" - Rudy Giulianni.
"Ten combat brigades translate to 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers. The Army has a hard time recruiting 7,000 new combat soldiers a year. Does Giuliani have any ideas on how to get more?" - Fred Kaplan
(Fred Kaplan - Giuliani's Loopy Foreign Policy Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172285/)
"Ten combat brigades translate to 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers. The Army has a hard time recruiting 7,000 new combat soldiers a year. Does Giuliani have any ideas on how to get more?" - Fred Kaplan
(Fred Kaplan - Giuliani's Loopy Foreign Policy Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172285/)
Friday, September 7, 2007
Bush And His Minions - Oblivious
It concerns me greatly to see the bold headline “American casualties plunge in Iraq” on the front page of the Sept. 2 (Kansas City) Star, with speculation that the troop surge may be working.
Taking the surge months June, July and August, records show 232 U.S. personnel died in combat compared with 158 for the same period last year, giving a higher death rate per 100,000 troops with the larger force.
Also, year-to-date numbers are 689 killed compared with 414 for the first eight months of 2006.
The only way to claim a dramatic improvement, such as the news writer contrived, is to compare an aberrational high May (123) with the slightly lower-than-usual month of August (59).
A broader evaluation of the www.icasualties.org records being used by Nancy Youssef would suggest that it is premature for McClatchy News Service to spread such optimism nationwide based on her selective data snapshot.
Robert K. Russell
Kansas City
The headline on the front page on Sunday was very misleading. It claimed a “plunge” in American combat causalities in Iraq and debated whether it was due to the “surge” in American soldiers or due to a tactical redeployment of insurgents. It was neither, because there has been no plunge in combat deaths.
The number of such deaths in August was virtually identical to the combat deaths in August 2006. And, in July, the number of combat deaths was 65 compared with only 40 in July 2006.
For every month in 2007, the number of American soldiers dying in Iraq was substantially greater than for the same month last year.
During the brutally hot summer, soldiers and insurgents alike move around a lot less in Iraq, and fewer die. Still, more Americans have died every month this year than last. There has been no plunge. Believing Americans are ignorant of the facts on the ground, President Bush continues to lie to the country in a desperate effort to keep this failed war going long enough to hand it to his successor, who can then be blamed for his failures.
Arthur Benson
Kansas City
http://blogs.kansascity.com/unfettered_letters/2007/09/casualties-in-i.html
Taking the surge months June, July and August, records show 232 U.S. personnel died in combat compared with 158 for the same period last year, giving a higher death rate per 100,000 troops with the larger force.
Also, year-to-date numbers are 689 killed compared with 414 for the first eight months of 2006.
The only way to claim a dramatic improvement, such as the news writer contrived, is to compare an aberrational high May (123) with the slightly lower-than-usual month of August (59).
A broader evaluation of the www.icasualties.org records being used by Nancy Youssef would suggest that it is premature for McClatchy News Service to spread such optimism nationwide based on her selective data snapshot.
Robert K. Russell
Kansas City
The headline on the front page on Sunday was very misleading. It claimed a “plunge” in American combat causalities in Iraq and debated whether it was due to the “surge” in American soldiers or due to a tactical redeployment of insurgents. It was neither, because there has been no plunge in combat deaths.
The number of such deaths in August was virtually identical to the combat deaths in August 2006. And, in July, the number of combat deaths was 65 compared with only 40 in July 2006.
For every month in 2007, the number of American soldiers dying in Iraq was substantially greater than for the same month last year.
During the brutally hot summer, soldiers and insurgents alike move around a lot less in Iraq, and fewer die. Still, more Americans have died every month this year than last. There has been no plunge. Believing Americans are ignorant of the facts on the ground, President Bush continues to lie to the country in a desperate effort to keep this failed war going long enough to hand it to his successor, who can then be blamed for his failures.
Arthur Benson
Kansas City
http://blogs.kansascity.com/unfettered_letters/2007/09/casualties-in-i.html
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Stick It To The Democrats
Now that an incompetent Attorney General, a political hack, has rightfully stepped down and Karl Rove has “cut-and-run” the Bush administration should “stick it” to the Democrats and demand that the tax cuts be made permanent, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Some of us actually have loved ones who are putting their lives on the line for this country, loved ones who have actually made real sacrifices, spending months at a time away from their homes and families. The day after it was reported that an alleged attack on a U.S. military base in Germany was thwarted, some people just go about their lives, oblivious, showing their true colors.
Some of us actually have loved ones who are putting their lives on the line for this country, loved ones who have actually made real sacrifices, spending months at a time away from their homes and families. The day after it was reported that an alleged attack on a U.S. military base in Germany was thwarted, some people just go about their lives, oblivious, showing their true colors.
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