In the news
False Alarm?
Terror Alert Partly Based on Fabricated Information
By Brian Ross, Len Tepper and Jill Rackmill
Feb. 13 — A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.
The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.
The informant described a detailed plan that an al Qaeda cell operating in either Virginia or Detroit had developed a way to slip past airport scanners with dirty bombs encased in shoes, suitcases, or laptops, sources told ABCNEWS. The informant reportedly cited specific targets of government buildings and Christian or clerical centers.
"This piece of that puzzle turns out to be fabricated and therefore the reason for a lot of the alarm, particularly in Washington this week, has been dissipated after they found out that this information was not true," said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism chief and ABCNEWS consultant.
It seems that our government has been using terror alerts as a method of distraction. For many this has worked.
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Consequences and Reality
by Kirwan February 14, 2003
This is obviously a very complex time in the world. And one of the most conflicted players on the stage is George Bush. Much has happened since this man first appeared in the Office of the Presidency of the United States, and neither the US nor the world seems to be able to deal with his dysfunctional style of leadership.
Part of the problem seems to be that Bush II has never had to live in reality. This is someone who has led a sheltered and extremely protected life. Where most leaders can cite a long list of successes that impelled them to high office - Dubya can only give excuses for his list of failures and exemptions from personal responsibility.
Consequently, having experienced neither privation nor any real accomplishments by his efforts - Bush comes to the job as irredeemably damaged goods. A leader in name only who lacks compassion, understanding, and even the ability to clearly speak about ideas. In an effort to come to grips with the dimensions of this dilemma - perhaps an overview of some flashpoints may offer a glimpse into how we came to be where we are now - and why this president and his cabinet needs to be impeached now.
Much more here
The above is a must read!!!!
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The Rush to War
Crisis Papers.org's excellent overview of the current situation with Iraq, replete with links to many good Op-Eds and articles.
A day's worth of reading here...enjoy
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I know this is going to be difficult to believe, but Resident Bush believes Alan Alda, yes that Alan Alda to be a scientist. Sure, he can seen on Sci-Am Frontiers on PBS, and is a nice chap, but he's an actor. :) He's hardly a prudent pick as National Science Adviser..at least to me.
Alda writes:
Dear Mr. President,
I think there may have been a terrible mistake. I'm not a scientist.
Worse than that, I'm an actor. So, I don't know how I got recommended to you as a candidate for science advisor. Possibly, someone felt that if we could let an actor be president without major damage beyond a trillion or two, why not science advisor? But, I'm also a writer who has a lifelong interest in science, and I host the PBS program Scientific American Frontiers, and I have played Richard Feynman on the stage, so I can see where the confusion might have arisen.
If you choose to name me as your advisor on scientific matters, I would consider it my duty not to turn you down, but I think it only fair to let you know the kind of advice I'm liable to give you.
The Edge.org has the rest of the letter
I'm as puzzled by this as anyone, but Alda's letter is a gem. Go read it. Now!!! :)
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Global Eye -- Cold Fronts
By Chris Floyd
The opening of a long-delayed civil suit in a London courtroom; a brief, buried article on a judicial nomination; a fluctuation in the commodities market: three mundane, seemingly-unrelated items in the news last week that combined to give a fleeting glimpse of the ugly reality behind the frantic, diversionary facade of the "civilized world."
The London case involves our old friends, BCCI, the international bank that served as the front for a global crime ring involving top officials and Establishment worthies in dozens of "civilized" nations. BCCI ran guns to Saddam and other heavies, funded Pakistan's illegal nuclear weapons program, laundered drug profits, peddled prostitutes, doled out bribes, served as a conduit for covert CIA operations -- and, through its connections to the bin Laden family, gave George W. Bush a sweetheart loan of $25 million to bail out one of his many business failures.
One of the respectable organizations tainted by the ring was the Bank of England, which was the financial regulator for BCCI when the front finally collapsed in 1991 -- leaving its legitimate creditors some $11 billion in the hole. Not surprisingly, some of these victims filed suit against ye olde B of E, claiming that its oversight of BCCI left something to be desired. But successive British governments -- including the plagiaristic poodle-led pack currently in power -- have fought for years to quash the lawsuit, the Observer reports.
That's because the trial could open a can of particularly grubby worms concerning the British government's extensive canoodling with BCCI. A host of worthies are expected to be grilled in the dock, including John Major, former British prime minister and current business partner of George Bush I in yet another secretive international front that profits from war, weapons, violence, repression and the greasing of highly-placed palms: the Carlyle Group.
Truly an interesting case. If you really want to dig, try the always popular Project for a New American Century and Carlyle Group's websites. Entertaining in the same way that horror films are.
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Dumb nukes make good policy!! Gee!!!
GOP plan would revive use of nuclear arms
Policy paper urges new generation of warheads
A group of House Republicans proposed a fundamental shift in America's nuclear weapons strategy on Thursday, saying the GOP would push for the design and manufacture of a new generation of warheads, a more aggressive policy on their use and steps that would make it easier to resume nuclear testing.
The group of 23 lawmakers, as members of the policy committee that helps set the House legislative agenda, specifically called for the repeal of a decade-old law that prohibits the development of smaller, low-yield weapons of less than 5 kilotons.
The panel, known as the House Policy Committee, also urged that the U.S. government be allowed to initiate pre-emptive nuclear attacks against hostile nations with caches of biological or chemical weapons. It called upon the government to rebuild industrial sites for manufacturing key nuclear components and to speed up preparations for a resumption of underground testing after a 10-year moratorium.
Read more about this brilliant strategy here..
Micro-nukes, they're not just for tactical strikes, order yours today!!!! This is just the kind of weapon that must make terrorists salivate...Hey, let's make 'em!!!!
I dunno.
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Make Them Accountable
Did someone say "impeachment?"
The Republican mantra, when it comes to public education, is "make them accountable." By "them" they mean the teachers, administrators, even the test-tormented youngsters. They are not concerned with private education -- aside from handing out vouchers thereto -- because that's where their wealthy donors send their kids. They only care about public education, at least long enough to break its back.
The scrutiny that the Bush administration has focused on this single segment of public governance is obsessive, perhaps the only aspect of actual governing over which the president has any interest in breaking a sweat. I propose, then, that we use that same mantra to "grade" this Republican administration. Let's "make them accountable."
Let's make them accountable on the economy. We can use statistics provided by those two radical bastions, MSNBC and the Associated Press.
· U.S. stocks have lost almost $5 trillion of their value since Bush took office two years ago. The market has fallen more (in percentage terms) during Bush's first two years than in the first two years of any modern president, including Herbert Hoover. Stocks fell at a much faster rate from Bush's inauguration through Sept. 10, 2001, than they have since.
Accountability..hmmm I guess it's a somewhat ambiguous term. Maybe someone can lend the Administration a Webster's Unabridged. I'm certain they'll be able to find an antry that suits their position :)
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Impending War on Iraq
George Bush's faith-based foreign policy
In public statements, President Bush has often avowed his personal religious faith, and from the beginning of his administration, he has sought to draw churches and other religious organizations into the orbit of the government's provision of goods and services -- the so-called faith-based initiatives. Bush insists that such religious providers have an excellent record in helping drug addicts and others who have gone astray to get their lives back on track.
Although the president has yet to announce formally that his foreign policy also relies heavily on faith, this reality has become increasingly clear as his term in office has unfolded.
When the administration released its "National Security Strategy" to Congress last summer, the grandiosity of the intentions expressed in the document stunned many observers -- as Mises Institute historian Joseph Stromberg noted, "it must be read to be believed." The strategy amounts to an enormously presumptuous agenda for domination of the entire world, not only overweening in the vast scope of the specific ambitions enumerated but also brazen in the implicit assumption that the president of the United States and his lieutenants are morally entitled to run the planet.
Learn more about Christian warfare here...
Ya know, we hear a LOT about Bush's faith, I wonder if he has faith in the American people to know what a 'just' cause, for war might be? Who should hold the rights to determine casus belli, one man and his group of advisers, or the other 280+ million people living in this country? I don't know, I'm only asking.
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It's the Oil, Stupid
Markets of Mass Destruction
By JASON LEOPOLD
Why is it so difficult to accept the fact that America's thirst for oil is the primary reason for waging a war against Iraq? For months, foreign journalists have reported that the United States has been running low on oil--a fact--and only by using military force in Iraq would the U.S. be able tap into the region's oil wells to meet the threat of supply shortages here.
But to try and argue in the mainstream media that the U.S. is only interested in starting a war with Iraq because of its vast oil supplies and you're immediately branded a conspiracy theorist. That's why most U.S. journalists don't even bother to explore the possibility, according to media experts.
"The media doesn't want to cross the president," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a media expert and senior scholar at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development. "I've only seen one or two articles in the mainstream media about oil being the reason for a war against Iraq. There is not real investigative reporting in the mainstream media here because reporters don't care or have the kind of energy necessary to investigate thoroughly that oil could be behind a war with Iraq. But it's appropriate to ask that question and debate it."
The balance of the article here..
I'm not so naive as to think that Iraq is about oil. It is too a degree, but it is not, in my estimation a primary motivation. It is about Israel, a more stable region and a myraid other things. I'm working on a paper that makes the most sense to me. The above is a good read for other reasons, but the oil angle is a distraction.
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Gwynne Dyer: Don't forget dry-cleaning Mr Rumsfeld
If we could sneak a look at United States Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld's agenda for the next month or so, it would probably go a bit like this:
March 16 - Attack Iraq. Special Forces to seize oilfields. Drop off dry-cleaning.
March 19 - 10th Mountain Division enters Baghdad. NSC meeting. pm. Condi's b/day: flowers?
March 21 - Victory press conf. @ Pentagon. Regrets re Saddam shot while trying to escape. Collect dry-cleaning on way home.
It could happen exactly like that, too - if all the US technology works perfectly, and nobody in Iraq fights back, and everybody else in the Middle East behaves. (Except the dry-cleaning, of course - you know that won't be ready on time.)
But there is another possible timetable, not to be found in Rumsfeld's agenda but possibly lurking at the back of his mind, which goes like this.
March 16 - US attacks Iraq. Saddam blows oil-fields. Anti-American riots in Jordan, Egypt, and Pakistan. Iraq fires Scud missiles at Israel.
March 17 - Israel fires 100 missiles at Iraq. Riots intensify throughout Muslim world. Hizbollah launches 100 Katyushas into northern Israel from southern Lebanon.
March 18 - Israel invades southern Lebanon. Coup in Pakistan; new government orders US forces out. Islamist Palestinians overthrow king of Jordan and cancel peace treaty with Israel.
March 19 - 10th Mountain Division enters suburbs of Baghdad; severe street-fighting. Israeli forces start to push Palestinians out of West Bank into Jordan; fighting at Allenby Bridge.
March 20 - Saudi Arabian National Guard rebels; civil war in Arabia. New Pakistan Government declares it will make nuclear weapons available to Arab states confronting Israel. US casualties in Battle of Baghdad pass 200; first use of chemical weapons; spot oil price reaches $85 a barrel.
March 21 - Don Rumsfeld resigns; forgets to pick up dry-cleaning.
more dry cleaning humor here..
It's interesting to get a smple as to how the Iraq issue is playing on the world stage. The above Op-Ed does get into some interesting territory, but you'll have to open the link to find out more :)
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Here's a shocker from the UK!!!
CIA 'sabotaged inspections and hid weapons details'
14 February 2003
Senior democrats have accused the CIA of sabotaging weapons inspections in Iraq by refusing to co-operate fully with the UN and withholding crucial information about Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
Led by Senator Carl Levin, the Democrats accused the CIA of making an assessment that the inspections were unlikely to be a success and then ensuring they would not be. They have accused the CIA director of lying about what information on the suspected location of weapons of mass destruction had been passed on.
The row is of heightened significance given the Bush administration's preparations to argue later today before the UN Security Council that the inspections have run their course and it is now time to move to military action.
Must reading..you know the drill!!
This story is very credible. What happened in the Senate is beyond dispute. The CIA, being the spook service of the executive branch, has done, and will continue to do, things of this very nature. Either the US isn't giving thr intel to Hans Blix and Co., or they are simply lying. No gray area here.
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In bin Laden's Mind, a Good Start on Goals
February 13, 2003
My plan is working well. When I, Osama bin Laden, ordered the blessed events of Sept. 11, I hoped to provoke an apocalyptic conflict between the faithful and the infidels. And not only is that happening, but also the Americans and Europeans are breaking up their alliance.
Indeed, the Americans are so desperate to destroy Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with the righteous destruction of the World Trade Center - that they don't care if they antagonize the major countries of all Eurasia. Happy is the man who watches his enemies fight each other.
My audiotape, released Tuesday, has sealed the fate of that socialist apostate, Saddam Hussein. I see Colin Powell on CNN saying it proves a "nexus" between my al-Qaida and his Iraq. Hah. As I said on that tape, the only connection between me and my enemies is my swordpoint hitting their neck.
I don't know who James Pinkerton, the author is, and I'm too lazy to read his bio., but this is an almost witty bit of black humor. I would have enjoyed it more, if it wasn't so close to the truth. Blah..I'm fading quickly.
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Tangled Up In Duct Tape
Hey, you mdidn't think I could leave out the now obligatory duct tape piece, did you? :) Anyway, onward.
February 14, 2003
I left the house yesterday morning, meaning to stop at the hardware store for some duct tape.
We're in Code Orange now. I knew that much. And for the first few days of Code Orange, no one in Washington could say what exactly we were supposed to do here in Code Orange, other than remain vigilant and go about our normal business. Which was precisely what we were supposed to do in Code Yellow, Code Green, Code Blue or any other color you want.
But Tom Ridge, secretary for the Bush administration's new Department of Homeland Security, finally stepped forward and explained. We must all buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect ourselves from the terrorists.
Like a panicked husband boiling water as his wife goes into labor - hey, it can't hurt, right? - no one was mentioning any better ideas.
The point, I guess, is that when the terrorists attack us with chemical and biological weapons, we will - what? Cover the windows with plastic sheets and duct tape and hope for the best?
The piece is quite good. There is an internal dialogue about troop losses IF we invade Iraq, etc.
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Brand America
Hint: It aint Wal-Mart
Despite efforts at ‘branding’ the US worldwide, the Bush administration’s foreign policy has found few buyers in the Muslim world
BY RICHARD BYRNE
AT THE DAWN of the 21st century, US foreign policy is conducted on a giant global stage where any open diplomatic foray — such as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s public indictment of Saddam Hussein at the United Nations — has colossal and nearly instantaneous ramifications. The US’s argument for war, made by the nation’s top diplomat, can be beamed worldwide and shape global opinion from Pyongyang to Paris to Phoenix in an instant.
Yet when it comes to winning the battle for hearts and minds across the globe (better known as "public diplomacy"), a single sharp incident can prove to be a thorn in the paw of the United States.
Take what happened to Ejaz Haider, an editor at an English-language weekly newspaper, the Friday Times, published in Lahore, Pakistan. Pakistan is a crucial yet erratic US ally with immense geographic importance in the war on terrorism, so Haider is exactly the sort of figure at which smart US public diplomacy should be aimed. Until last week, America’s aim was true. Haider (who had visited the US on multiple occasions) was visiting again as a research scholar at the Brookings Institution. He was participating in the dialogue about American values and policy that public diplomacy aims to encourage.
This is a good look at the shifting sentiments surrounding US foreign policy around the world. Plus, it's in The Phoenix!!! That commie pinko Boston rag!!!! All kidding aside, a good read.
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Bush's faith and swagger raise doubts
Just before the Gulf War - the last Gulf War, that is - I was in Baghdad, staying at the Al-Rashid Hotel, when a family moved in across the hall. I remember the children, two boys who played boisterously in the hallway. I wondered what would happen to them when war came.
I suppose such thoughts would make me a bad President. I know that such thoughts were sometimes held against President Bill Clinton. He actually knew the name of a civilian killed by a wayward cruise missile in Baghdad: Layla al-Attar. She was a painter. To some, this made Clinton a softie.
This is not the case with President Bush - and that he seems so untroubled is, in itself, troubling. It's not that I don't think he is right about Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein and, if need be, the necessity to deal with him through war. It's rather that I see America going to war; he sees us embarking on a crusade.
Ahh, life in the 750 word editorial world..
Another Bush crusade bash. If you like that tack, you'll like the above. Me, it's a bit simplistic..or, I could be..umm what's the word? Oh yeah, wrong.
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