Some of us knew that the 2000 election was stolen, and despite all the poof no one listened, in 2004 once again we saw improprieties and no one did a thing and now with all of this information coming out will anyone listen, no, will anything be done to rectify the wrongs that have been to the American people. And to those who follow blindly, without question how can you continue to tell yourself the same old lie, that W's doing the right thing? Wakeup America before the day comes and we fine that we are the insurgents.




Dec. 2, 2005, 10:42PM
Gonzales defends ignoring redistricting concerns Justice staff called GOP remapping plan illegal, memo says

By SUZANNE GAMBOAAssociated Press
WASHINGTON Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the Justice Department's decision to ignore staff lawyers' concerns that a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay would dilute minority voting rights.
A Justice Department memo released Friday showed that agency staffers unanimously objected to the Texas plan, which DeLay pushed through the Legislature to help elect more Republicans to the U.S. House.
Senior agency officials, appointed by President Bush, brushed aside concerns about the possible impact on minority voting and approved the new districts for the 2004 elections.
Gonzales said the plan was approved by people "confirmed by the Senate to exercise their own independent judgment" and their disagreement with other agency employees doesn't mean the final decision was wrong.
The decision appears to have been correct, Gonzales said, because a three-judge federal panel upheld the plan and Texas has since elected one additional black congressman.
Of the state's 32 House seats, Republicans held 15 before the 2004 elections. Under the DeLay-backed plan, Republicans were elected to 22 of the state's seats in the House.
The redistricting plan has been challenged in court by Democrats and minority voting groups claiming it was unconstitutional and that district boundaries had been illegally manipulated to give one party an unfair advantage. The Supreme Court is expected to announce soon whether it will consider the case.
"The Supreme Court is our last hope for rectifying this gross injustice. We couldn't count on the (lower) court. We couldn't count on the state, and we obviously couldn't count on the politically corrupt Justice Department," said Gerry Hebert, an attorney representing the challengers.
The plan was approved by the Republican-controlled state Legislature in special sessions after Democratic lawmakers fled the state capital in an effort to block votes on the new congressional boundaries.
An effort by DeLay to use federal resources to help track down missing Texas lawmakers led to a rebuke by the House ethics committee.
Because of historic discrimination against minority voters, Texas is required under provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to get Justice Department approval for any voting changes it makes to ensure the changes don't undercut minority voting.
"The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," Justice Department officials said in the memo made public by the Lone Star Project, a Democratic group.
Eight department staffers, including the heads of the Voting Rights Division, objected to the redistricting map, according to the memo which was first reported in Friday editions of The Washington Post.
Hebert said when a case is a close call staff lawyers usually include counterpoints to their conclusions in their memo. But he said there is nothing in the 73-page memo suggesting a plausible reason for approving the map. "So that raises a lot of suspicions about the motives" of the senior officials who are political appointees, he said.
Texas Democrats, some who had been told years ago that agency staff had objected to the plan, were outraged.
"The fact that the White House has covered up this document for so long provides a smoking gun pointing out efforts, led by Bush political appointees and Tom DeLay, to systematically cripple the voting rights of minorities," said Texas Sen. Leticia Van De Putte, one of the Democratic lawmakers who fled to New Mexico to thwart passage of the redistricting plan.
DeLay is awaiting a Texas state judge's ruling on whether he must stand trial on charges of conspiracy and money laundering in connection with the 2002 elections. The charges forced DeLay to relinquish his House majority leader post in late September.
DeLay and two people who oversaw his fund-raising activities are accused of funneling prohibited corporate political money through the national Republican Party to state GOP legislative candidates. Texas law prohibits spending corporate money on the election or defeat of a candidate.
Several of the DeLay-backed candidates won election, giving Republicans a majority in the state House in 2001, when the congressional redistricting process began.

Can Diebold machines pass the test
Reputation, sales riding on e-voting devices' ability to withstand new experiment
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Back in May, voting activists went on the Internet and for $300 apiece purchased two devices used to record moisture levels in corn.
Certain corn scanners use the same memory cards as Diebold Election Systems' optical-scanning machines for ballots and can easily modify them. That makes corn scanners into a tool for vote hacking.
Sitting by a hotel pool last spring in Florida, Finnish computer expert Harri Hursti wrote his own program onto a memory card so it could alter poll results on a Diebold machine in Leon County and flash a screen message "Are we having fun yet?" that shocked the local elections supervisor.
Prodded by activists with nonprofit Black Box Voting, California elections officials have agreed to a test hack of the Diebold voting machines running in 17 of its counties, from San Diego to Los Angeles and Alameda to Humboldt.
The test, first reported by the Oakland Tribune last week, originally was scheduled for Wednesday but is likely to be delayed until mid-December.
At risk for Diebold is reputation, millions of dollars in sales and possibly its mantle as the nation's largest supplier of electronic voting equipment.
If Hursti or another computer expert succeed in hacking Diebold's voting machinery, the McKinney, Texas, firm could be forced to redesign software fundamental to each major component of its voting system. Securing new state and federal approvals would bring delay and loss of sales the company is counting on prior to the June 2006 primary.
Counties face Jan. 1 state and federal deadlines for acquiring new, handicapped-accessible voting systems that also offer some form of paper record. Those counties relying on Diebold might turn to other voting-system makers.
As a result, there have been extensive, ongoing negotiations between Black Box Voting and the California Secretary of State's office, which also is talking to Diebold, over conditions of the test, confidentiality of the results and measures of success. Those talks continued this weekend, but state officials said they remain committed to performing the test.
"Secretary (Bruce) McPherson takes testing these systems very seriously," said his spokeswoman Nghia Nguyen Demovic. "He wants safeguards in place so that every vote cast is secured. He's doing his due diligence to assure voter confidence."
Last week, state officials said they instead will select the voting equipmentat random from a California county using Diebold.
The hacks there are two are almost elegantly simple.
Before every election, Diebold optical-scanning machines used in polling places are programmed for ballot and report details using memory cards. Touchscreen machines, as Alameda County uses, are programmed with PC cards.
Hursti realized this was a way into the voting system after looking at some of the Diebold software that Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris downloaded from an unsecure company Web site.
"Within 24 hours, he said I have found the Holy Grail," Harris recalled.
Hursti taught himself the rudiments of Diebold's programming language, AccuBasic. Using the crop scanner, he then wrote his own Diebold programs onto the memory cards.
Touchscreens apparently can be reprogrammed the same way, but more easily because PC cards can be written with a laptop computer.
The optical-scanning machines and the touchscreens are accessible to thousands of volunteer pollworkers on Election Day and often for several days before.
The AccuBasic files themselves are generated by the core of the Diebold voting system, a central vote-tabulating computer known as GEMS.
Another expert, Herbert Thompson, chief security strategist for Security Innovations, a Wilmington, Mass., computer-security firm, found that inserting no more than 60 lines of software into the computer's database program could change vote totals.
Getting the hack into GEMS requires access to the machine, typically kept in a locked room. But for an insider with that access, the rest of the task is as simple as sliding in a compact disc.
Both hacking strategies can be caught by recounting the ballots. California law requires a recount in 1 percent of precincts after every election.
But in Los Angeles County and other jurisdictions, elections officials do not recount absentee ballots, which are mailed in and scanned at election offices. Absentee ballots are more than a third of the vote in California and in several counties more than half of the vote.
"You just tamper with the GEMS database for the absentee vote, and then if you exclude the absentees from the one percent recount then you completely own the process," said Jim March, a board member of Black Box Voting.
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.


N.C. Judge Declines Protection for DieboldAP Online,
Monday, November 28, 2005 at 20:50
By GARY D. ROBERTSON Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- One of the nation's leading suppliers of electronic voting machines may decide against selling new equipment in North Carolina after a judge declined Monday to protect it from criminal prosecution should it fail to disclose software code as required by state law.
Diebold Inc., which makes automated teller machines and security and voting equipment, is worried it could be charged with a felony if officials determine the company failed to make all of its code _ some of which is owned by third-party software firms, including Microsoft Corp. _ available for examination by election officials in case of a voting mishap.
The requirement is part of the minimum voting equipment standards approved by state lawmakers earlier this year following the loss of more than 4,400 electronic ballots in Carteret County during the November 2004 election. The lost votes threw at least one close statewide race into uncertainty for more than two months.
About 20 North Carolina counties already use Diebold voting machines, and the State Board of Elections plans to announce Thursday the suppliers that meet the new standards. Local elections boards will be allowed to purchase voting machines from the approved vendors.
"We will obviously have no alternative but withdraw from the process," said Doug Hanna, a Raleigh-based lawyer representing North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold.
David Bear, a Diebold spokesman, said the company was reviewing several options after Monday's ruling. "We're going to do what is necessary to provide what is best for our existing clients" in North Carolina, he said.
The dispute centers on the state's requirement that suppliers place in escrow "all software that is relevant to functionality, setup, configuration, and operation of the voting system," as well as a list of programmers responsible for creating the software.
That's not possible for Diebold's machines, which use Microsoft Windows, Hanna said. The company does not have the right to provide Microsoft's code, he said, adding it would be impossible to provide the names of every programmer who worked on Windows.
The State Board of Elections has told potential suppliers to provide code for all available software and explain why some is unavailable. That's not enough of an assurance for Diebold, which remains concerned about breaking a law that's punishable by a low-grade felony and a civil penalty of up to $100,000 per violation.
"You cannot have a statute that imposes a criminal violation ... without being clear about what conduct will submit you to a criminal violation," Hanna said.
But because no one has yet to accuse Diebold of breaking the law, Wake County Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell declined to issue an injunction that would have protected the company from prosecution. Cashwell also declined to offer an interpretation of the law that would have allayed Diebold's concerns.
"We need to comply with the literal language and the statute," Cashwell said. "I don't think we have an issue here yet."
Diebold machines were blamed for voting disruptions in a California primary election last year. California has refused to certify some machines because of their malfunction rate. California officials have agreed to let a computer expert attempt to hack into Diebold machines to examine how secure they are.
Diebold shares fell 71 cents, or 1.8 percent, to close at $38.93 Monday on the New York Stock Exchange.



Black Box Voting has posted the prison records of embezzler and voting machine programmer Jeffrey Dean, and narcotics trafficker/ballot printer John Elder. Here is an update, including new information from what we will refer to as our "Dieb-Throat Choir" -- multiple inside sources in four separate Diebold Election Systems locations -- with what we have learned in follow up investigations on Diebold felons: First, give a shout out to BBV member John Howard, who contributed the following piece of information after looking into some of the information on the prison records we posted. "Tonight I saw something ..." John Howard writes. "When John Elder was released from prison he went to work for PSI Inc., 1915 S. Corgiat Drive, Seattle. 206-768-0415 (see http://www.bbvdocs.org/elder.pdf p12 of 24)




On Dec. 16, 2004 Judge William A. McKinstry issued a court order on case RG03 128466 forcing Diebold Elections Systems Inc. to honor certain security protocols.

Black Box Voting has learned that Diebold has been violating that court order. Black Box Voting investigator Jim March and Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris, lead plaintiffs in Alameda Superior Court Case RG03 128466, filed a claim against Diebold for making false claims to the state of California. Diebold entered into a settlement of this case, agreeing to a penalty of $2.6 million to reimburse California taxpayers, and also agreeing to court ordered procedures. Among the terms of the court settlement: Diebold agreed not to cross-connect a Diebold central tabulator to the Internet, and a requirement that Diebold strip the Windows operating system of any Internet connectivity programs/drivers/etc from use unless doing so would cripple system functionality. On Nov. 21, 2005, Jim March filed a declaration at the Diebold certification hearing in Sacramento, attesting to personally witnessing evidence that both these provisions were violated by Diebold. In San Diego, Internet connectivity was enabled both physically and by software so as to auto-update the countys Web server with election results. March obtained this information from county officials while in San Diego on July 26, 2005, shortly before he was arrested for attempting to view the vote tallying. California Election Code 15204 expressly requires election officials to allow the public to view all aspects of vote tallying. In Los Angeles, Bev Harris was prohibited from watching the vote tallying on Nov. 8, 2005. She interviewed tally center officials, who stated that the tallying was transferred through a private network to the Web and elsewhere, including a mainframe computer in the neighboring town of Downey, a location on the sixth floor of the Los Angeles division of elections in Norwalk, and from computers on the sixth floor into the secretary of states office, the Internet, and elsewhere. Little else could be learned in Los Angeles, because no viewing of crucial tally locations was permitted, and Los Angeles also stonewalled the Libertarian Party's request under Election Code 15004 to examine the voting machines before the election. (Los Angeles simply sent a nonresponsive response to the request, claiming that inviting the Libertarians to a Logic and Accuracy test should suffice.) In San Diego, Internet connectivity was enabled both physically and by software so as to auto-update the countys Web server with election results. March was told this happened through a firewall by Nokia and configured by SAIC with Diebolds cooperation. While a properly configured firewall helps prevent outside interference, it can be beaten in one of two fashions: by outside hacking inward, or even more easily by inserting a call-out program within the central tabulator to phone home, establishing a two-way connection from behind the firewall. It is precisely because of these risks that Judge McKinstry issued orders banning Diebold from Internet connectivity. Not only is Internet connectivity banned by the Agreement, but such connectivity is also banned by Diebolds certified procedures manual for the system, which can be found here: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/procedure_items_5c.pdf (see item 7.4.7) The second violation of the court settlement was found in San Joaquin, Calif. During the course of an examination performed for the Libertarian Party of San Joaquin, March obtained printouts of installed drivers and connectivity programs, and found that no extraneous networking bits were removed. San Joaquin appears to be using a standard Windows 2000 installation. This should immediately be investigated further to confirm configurations in all California counties. If true, this would be a violation of the court settlement of some gravity. Diebolds continuing penchant for making misleading statements to public officials and violating court orders and violating regulations should result in this companys removal from the elections industry. If the state of California continues to certify Diebold Voting Systems, those public officials responsible for such failure to act must be considered as participants in a series of corrupt actions.


Bush in Iraq, Slouching Toward Genocide
By Robert ParryDecember 1, 2005

Despite pretty words about democracy and freedom, George W. Bushs victory plan in Iraq is starting to look increasingly like an invitation to genocide, the systematic destruction of the Sunni minority for resisting its U.S.-induced transformation from the nations ruling elite into second-class citizenship.
The Sunnis, an Islamic sect that makes up about 35 percent of Iraqs 26 million people, are being confronted with a stark choice, either accept subordination to the less-educated Shiite majority or face the devastation of Sunni neighborhoods, the imprisonment of many Sunni males and the deaths of large numbers of the Sunni population.
In referring to this possibility, many in Washington object to the word genocide which is defined in international law as the destruction of in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group but already there are troubling signs that Iraqs incipient civil war could slide into something close to that.
Retaliating against Sunni bombings and other attacks on Shiite targets over the past two years, Iraqs Shiite-controlled security forces have begun rounding up, torturing and executing Sunni men.
Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation, New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad.
Some Sunni males have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills, Filkins wrote. Many have simply vanished. [NYT, Nov. 29, 2005]
In November, a secret bunker where Sunni captives were mistreated and apparently tortured was discovered in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. The Shiite-dominated government has denied responsibility for the abuses and the murders.
But human rights groups and other investigators have blamed many of the Sunni killings on the Badr Brigade, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia associated with a leading element of the Iraqi government, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The Council has close ties to the fundamentalist Shiite government of Iran.
Death Squads
U.S. officials also acknowledge that hard-line Shiite militiamen, who have penetrated the governments security forces, are operating death squads to terrorize Sunnis.
The killings and disappearances are reminiscent of the bloodshed in Central America in the 1980s when right-wing regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador unleashed security forces to round up, torture and kill suspected leftists.
That violence, however, was primarily defined by political ideology, rather than race, religion or ethnicity. An exception was the slaughtering of a Mayan Indian tribe in the Guatemalan highlands as part of a military scorched-earth campaign that later was investigated by a truth commission and denounced as genocide. [For details about Ronald Reagan's tolerance of these atrocities, see Robert Parrys Lost History.]
In Iraq, the religious component of the nations incipient civil war is already apparent, although Bush often has presented the Iraqi conflict to the American people as a war largely between foreign Islamic terrorists and freedom-loving Iraqis.
Bush finally dropped that distorted analysis in his Nov. 30 speech about his plan for victory in Iraq. He divided the enemy in Iraq into three groups the Sunni rejectionists, who resent having lost their privileged status; the Sunni Saddamists, who retain loyalty to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein; and the foreign terrorists, who have entered Iraq to fight the American invaders and generally spread chaos.
U.S. military analysts estimate that more than 90 percent of the forces battling American troops come from the first two Sunni categories, with the foreign jihadists representing only from 5 to 10 percent of the armed opposition. Though Bush didn't give percentages, he did list the groups in declining order by size, with the terrorists the smallest.
Yet what is problematic about Bushs analysis in terms of the genocide issue is that he identifies the vast majority of the enemy as Sunnis. That means both Iraqs Shiite-dominated government and U.S. forces in Iraq are already targeting a religious minority for defeat, establishing one of the first conditions for the definition of genocide.
Complete Victory
The next element in the equation will be how far the war against the Sunnis goes or put differently, how stubbornly the Sunnis resist.
For his part, Bush reiterated that he will only be satisfied with complete victory, which suggests he is resolved to break the back of the Sunni resistance at whatever cost.
The Bush administration also wants to keep a tight hold on information that might put the U.S. war effort in a negative light. That means the American people can expect to be shielded from many of the worst secrets in Iraq, much as the White House has continued to fight release of video showing abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
According to U.S. military experts I've interviewed, a great deal of emphasis in the future will be on perception management, the concept of shaping how both Iraqis and the American people perceive the events in Iraq.
This media manipulation, combined with secretive death squads, adds even more to the recipe necessary for war-time atrocities that might cross over into genocide.
Other warning flags were raised in a New Yorker article by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, whose sources cited both Bushs messianic commitment to stay the course in Iraq and to a shift toward a reliance on aerial bombardment of enemy targets, as U.S. troop levels begin to decline.
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the Presidents public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower, Hersh wrote. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units.
The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the overall level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.
One of the risks is that the power to target U.S. air attacks would be put in the hands of Iraqs Shiite-controlled government, which could then rain down American death and destruction from the air on Sunnis and other rivals.
An example of this kind of horror occurred in the early days of the war in March 2003 when the U.S. military relied on a false report from a supposed informant that Saddam Hussein was eating at a Baghdad restaurant. The restaurant was bombed, killing 14 civilians, including seven children, though Hussein was not there.
The Sunnis also got a taste of U.S. destruction from the air during the assault on Fallujah in April 2004. With U.S. warplanes shattering the city with 500-pound bombs, hundreds of Iraqis many of them civilians died. There were so many dead that the city's soccer field was turned into a mass grave.
Gods Man
Hershs sources said, too, that Bushs fundamentalist Christianity has added another complication to the U.S. pursuit of a realistic strategy in Iraq.
Bushs closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments, Hersh wrote. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bushs first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the Presidents religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that God put me here to deal with the war on terror. The Presidents belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that he's the man, the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection (in 2004) as a referendum on the war; privately he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose. [New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2005]
Caught up in his divine mission, Bush has repeatedly rejected cautionary advice about Iraq, dating back to pre-invasion warnings from the likes of Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under President George H.W. Bush. Even now, military advisers say Bush gets angry when they bring him negative news about Iraq.
This mix of Bushs religious zeal and his refusal to accept reality adds another layer of danger as the United States slouches toward potential genocide in Iraq.
But some in Washington say it's outrageous even to suggest the possibility of the U.S. government engaging in a crime against humanity as severe as genocide. Despite the historical fact that much of the American continent was settled after genocide against Native Americans, the notion of such a present-day crime is considered unthinkable.
The Bush administration, however, already has crossed other bright lines of international law, including the invasion of a non-threatening foreign nation and complicity in torture, such as subjecting captives to simulated drowning in a process called water-boarding.
So, how unthinkable is it really that the Bush administration might venture across another boundary of civilized behavior?
What if Iraqs Sunnis dig in their heels because they suspect that their historic Shiite rivals plan to deny the Sunni population a significant share of Iraqs oil reserves, which are located mostly in Shiite and Kurdish territories?
With little choice besides living in poverty in Iraqs central desert, the Sunnis might decide that their best option is to continue fighting until the Shiites make far bigger concessions, such as giving a strong central government control of the oil riches.
If thats the choice the Sunnis make and if Bush sees his commitment to a complete victory as part of Gods plan might the Shiites then exploit U.S. air power to inflict a final crushing blow against their ancient enemies?
Perhaps cooler heads will prevail and excessive bloodshed will be averted. But if too many more lines get crossed, the rest of the world may extend the list of crimes already blamed on the Bush administration to include genocide.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin









What's wrong with us?, are we blind, deaf or just plain dumb.


Lt. Gen. William Odom, director of the National Security Agency during President Reagan's second term, a scholar with a distinguished career in military intelligence, declared Bush's invasion of Iraq to be the "greatest strategic disaster in United States history."



Why John Murtha is Right!
By Larry Johnson bio
From: Foreign Affairs
John Murtha's courageous call for American troops to leave Iraq is the right policy at the right time. The Bush chickenhawks already are impugning Murtha's patriotism, but when you have a purple heart and a silver star compared to a President with a spotty attendance record with the National Guard and a Vice President with five deferments, that dog don't hunt.
The situation in Iraq is clear. The United States does not have enough troops on the ground to contain and destroy the insurgency. The Iraqi insurgency consists of at least 26 different groups and draws upon as many as 250,000 supporters. These groups represent a spectrum of beliefs ranging from secular nationalists to hard core jihadists. The only thing they agree on is that they hate the invader; which is us.

To defeat the insurgency we will need at least 400,000 troops on the ground. At the present time, the United States does not have sufficient troop strength to ramp up to that level. Our choice is simple--either we come up with the additional forces and commit ourselves to an effort that will stretch on for at least five years with 400,000 plus soldiers and marines in theatre or we withdraw.
How do we get 400,000 troops on the ground? That will require a draft or a commitment by NATO forces and other countries to provide forces. Even if we start a draft tomorrow, we will not be able to field combat capable divisions for at least two years. Basic training requires 10 weeks. Advance infantry training adds an additional six months. Once the troops are trained they need to train as units. The unit training, starting with companies and working up to division level exercises, will require at least 18 months (and that is an optomistic scenario).
In the interim we would need to call upon NATO forces to deploy to Iraq and conduct a coordinated counter insurgency effort. This effort, over the next two years, will likely produce at least 10,000 fatalities and 80,000 wounded. Are we willing as a country to pay that price? I don't think so.
Meanwhile, our efforts on the ground are succeeding in killing and capturing a large number of suspected insurgents. But our kill capture effort is producing a blowback--Iraqis who are incarcerated and the surviving relatives of those killed respond to our effort by joining the insurgents. Instead of reducing the insurgency our efforts are providing a catalyst that recruits new insurgents faster than we can kill them.
There also is no doubt that our efforts are providing a recruiting poster for jihadists. Last year, for example, the number of terrorist attacks that resulted in people being killed and wounded was the highest number ever recorded since the CIA started keeping statistics in 1968. The Al Qaeda groups have reduced the planning time required for mass casualty attacks. Prior to 9-11, Al Qaeda carried out such attacks every 18 months. Now, they are able to mount operations in only three or four months. The trend line is going in the wrong direction
I see no political will on the part of the American public to accept a draft and to accept 90,000 casualties during the next four years. The elections in December will not produce a political outcome that will persuade the various insurgents to lay down their weapons and focus their energies on political debate in a legislature and in newspapers.
Our best alternative is to withdraw from Iraq and establish covert relations with the secular insurgents. Over the long run our interest as a nation is to prevent the religious jihadists from consolidating their control over Iraq and forging a closer relationship with Iran. The question is not, will there be a civil war? A civil war is already underway. Rather, the proper question is what can we do as a nation to protect our longterm interests?
We have two key long term strategic interests. First, we want to promote a secular society. The current Iraqi constiturion enshrines the Quran as the law of the land and encourages sectarian strife. Second, we must enlist the support of Russia, China, Europe, and the Muslim nations in rooting out and destroying the jihadists. Most of that effort can be handled with intelligence and law enforcement work rather than military operations. The Beatles had it right--we can get by with some help from our friends.
Given these facts, John Murtha is right. We must withdraw, sooner rather than later, from Iraq. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in a quagmire reminiscent of Vietnam. Only this time, the jihadists who are carrying out urban combat operations will be equipped and trained through their experience to carry out future attacks against our interests around the world. John Murtha and Chuck Hagel are patriots who understand this dilemma. We have lit a fuze on the next generation of jihadist terrorism. We must douse the fuze with water, and put it out sooner rather than later.



what the senators said pre-war
By jaybee
From: Democrats Table
This is a small sample of what 3 Democratic senators said on the senate floor announcing their vote in favor of the use of force against Iraq. Every time Bush says that Dems are politicizing the issue now and rewriting history, someone in the Dem machine should bring these speeches up as an example of what was said at the time. The lack of effective spin/message on the part of the Dems is unconscionable given what is at stake. The country deserves much better than it is getting from this too often cowardly bunch. Thank god for Murtha for speaking from his heart and telling it like it is.
Senator Herb Kohl (D) WI... 10/10/2002 I cast my vote today with the great hope that this show of unity from the American government and from the American people, along with the actions of the international community, will achieve our stated goal of disarming Iraq without war. ... I will vote for this authorization because, after great consideration, I believe Saddam Hussein's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is a great threat. I believe disarming Saddam Hussein is a great cause. And I believe that moving to disarm Saddam Hussein -- in concert with the international community -- is the President's great goal Senator Bill Nelson (D) Florida... 10/08/2002 We must, of course, use force as a last resort. ... But I remain convinced that the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq poses a clear and increasing danger to the national security interests of the United States. We must disarm its arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and halt the development of nuclear weapons. Ultimately - one way or another - Saddam must be removed. ... Our hope is that this threat can be dismantled by means less than the use of force. And discussions at the United Nations continue toward that goal. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) California... 10/10/2002 Disarming Iraq under Saddam Hussein is necessary and vital to the safety and security of America, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East - let there be no doubt about this.... But the decision to cast this vote does not come lightly. I continue to have serious concerns that there are those in the Administration who would seek to use this authorization for a unilateral, pre-emptive attack against Iraq. ... I believe this would be a terrible mistake. ... But I am reassured by statements made by the President in his address to the United Nations on September 12, which conveyed a major shift in the Administration's approach - turning away from a pre-emptive strategy and, instead, engaging and challenging the U.N. Security Council to compel Iraq's disarmament and back this with force.


Bush's Approval Rating Falls Again, Poll Shows
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINENovember 17, 2005

President Bush's positive job rating continues to fall, touching another new low for his presidency, the latest Harris Interactive poll finds.
Bush's current job approval rating stands at 34%, compared with a positive rating of 88% soon after 9/11, 50% at this time last year, and 40% in August.
And he's not alone. Cabinet members, Congressional leaders and both parties in Congress have also seen their ratings slip, with Democrats seeing one of the biggest dips in approval, the telephone poll of 1,011 U.S. adults shows.
Vice President Dick Cheney's approval ratings slipped to 30% this month from 35% in August, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's approval ratings dropped to 34% from 40% and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's approval ratings fell to 52% from 57%, according to the poll.
At the same time, only a quarter of Americans polled give Democrats a positive rating in the latest poll, compared with 31% in August, while Republicans' approval ratings fell to 27% from 32%.
Mr. Bush's current ratings don't compare favorably with those of three of the last four two-term presidents at a comparable time in their fifth year in office. In November or October of their fifth year, Presidents Johnson (67%), Reagan (66%) and Clinton (58%) all enjoyed the support of majorities, while President Nixon (29%) was less popular than Mr. Bush is now. (See related chart)
In the most recent poll, Americans were also asked to name the two most important issues that the U.S. government needs to address. When considering the most important issues, 34% of those polled say the war is most important, 13% said the economy and 13% said Iraq. Other issues mentioned were health care (11%), education (10%) and taxes (9%).
See the full results of the Harris poll:



Tax-Cut Measure Faces Bush Veto Threat
By MARY DALRYMPLE,
AP Tax Writer Fri Nov 18,10:52 AM ET

WASHINGTON - A $60 billion bill the Senate passed to continue expiring tax cuts and shelter 14 million families from higher taxes faces a White House veto threat because it also includes a hefty tax increase for oil companies
The legislation passed by senators early Friday would spare millions of families from paying increased taxes through the alternative minimum tax. Much of the bill, passed 64-33, preserves tax cuts approved in previous years that are set to expire unless lawmakers keep them alive.
But unlike a bill assembled by the House tax writing committee, it does not preserve lower tax rates for capital gains and dividends scheduled to disappear at the end of 2008. Congress lowered the maximum tax rate on that investment income to 15 percent in 2003, and many Republicans want to act this year to keep those rates in place in 2009 and 2010.
It was doubtful whether the House would vote on its bill before leaving for the Thanksgiving holiday. "It's a possibility that we'll move it if we're ready to move it," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said early Friday. "We'll have to see where the votes are." Most Democrats oppose the tax cuts for investment income. Senate leaders dropped an extension from their bill because a key moderate Republican balked at its inclusion. GOP leaders vow it will reappear before the final tax bill reaches President Bush's desk. The White House wants to see another change in the Senate bill: elimination of a $4.3 billion tax increase on oil companies.
"This provision would result in a retroactive tax increase by changing a long-accepted accounting practice," the White House said in a statement warning that senior advisers would recommend that President Bush veto the legislation if it's not removed.
The House omitted a major provision in the Senate bill, a change preventing a tax hit on millions of families caused by the alternative minimum tax. Originally intended as a levy to prevent the wealthy from avoiding taxation, the alternative minimum tax must be tweaked every year to keep it from applying to additional millions more families.
The House and Senate bills reduce taxes roughly $60 billion over five years. Both preserve tax breaks scheduled to expire, including a business research and development credit, a low-income saver's credit, investment incentives for small businesses and a deduction for state and local sales taxes.
Both are versions of a $70 billion tax cut outlined in a budget drafted earlier this year.
The Senate's bill would offer $7 billion in assistance to businesses and individuals hit by Hurricane Katrina and other storms, filling in details of President Bush's proposed Gulf Opportunity Zone. Taxpayers also would get new incentives to make charitable contributions at the same time that tax-writers put new curbs on charitable deductions deemed excessive.
A last minute change to the Senate tax bill would require corporate executives to count as income the value of personal use of corporate aircraft.
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The bill is S. 2020
Congressional information on the Net

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities
- Voltaire



TOO BAD DUBYA DOESN’T READ
In his memoir A World transformed (1998),
George Bush, Senior, wrote the following:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable
human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…
We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.
There was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our
principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for
handling aggression in the post Cold War world. Going in and occupying
Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the UN’s mandate, would have destroyed
the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to
establish. Had we gone the invasion route, (we) could conceivably still be
an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."



Iraq on the Record

About Iraq on the RecordPresented by Rep. Henry A. Waxman
On March 19, 2003, U.S. forces began military operations in Iraq. Addressing the nation about the purpose of the war on the day the bombing began, President Bush stated: “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” Two years later, many doubts have been raised regarding the Administration’s assertions about the threat posed by Iraq.
Prepared at the direction of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Iraq on the Record is a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq. It contains statements that were misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time the statements were made. It does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, it was excluded even if it now appears erroneous. For more information on how the statements were selected, see the full methodology. The Iraq on the Record Report is a comprehensive examination of these statements. Iraq on the Record is searchable by the the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq:

on the Record is searchable by the the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq:



President George W. Bush Vice President Dick Cheney Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
It is also searchable by issue area:
Iraq's Nuclear Capabilities Chemical and Biological Weapons Iraq and Al-Qaeda Iraq as an Urgent Threat
It is also searchable by keyword, such as "mushroom cloud", "uranium", or "bin Laden."




Rediscovered testimony given by CIA director in 2001 suggests manipulation of pre-war intelligence
11/14/2005 @ 12:09 pm
Jason Leopold


President George W. Bush’s attempt Friday to silence critics who say his administration manipulated prewar intelligence on Iraq is undercut by congressional testimony given in February 2001 by former CIA Director George Tenet, who said that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United States or other countries in the Middle East, RAW STORY has found.
Details of Tenet’s testimony have not been reported before.
Since a criminal indictment was handed up last month against Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for his role in allegedly leaking the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to reporters in an attempt to muzzle criticism of the administration’s rationale for war, questions have resurfaced in the halls of Congress about whether the president and his close advisers manipulated intelligence in an effort to dupe lawmakers and the American public into believing Saddam Hussein was a grave threat

The White House insists that such a suggestion is ludicrous and wholly political. It has launched a full-scale public relations effort to restate its case for war by saying Democrats saw the same intelligence as their Republican counterparts prior to the March 2003 invasion.
But as a bipartisan investigation into prewar intelligence heats up, some key Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), have unearthed unreported evidence that indicates Congress was misled. This evidence includes Tenet’s testimony before Congress, dissenting views from the scientific community and statements made by members of the administration in early 2001.
Tenet told Congress in February 2001 that Iraq was “probably” pursuing chemical and biological weapons programs but that the CIA had no direct evidence that Iraq had actually obtained such weapons. However, such caveats as “may” and “probably” were removed from intelligence reports by key members of the Bush administration immediately after 9/11 when discussing Iraq.
“We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since (Operation) Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs,” Tenet said in an agency report to Congress Feb. 7, 2001. “Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating… Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the U.S. to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.”
In fact, more than two dozen pieces of testimony and interviews of top officials in the Bush administration, including those given by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz prior to 9-11, show that the U.S. never believed Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to anyone other than his own people.
Powell said the U.S. had successfully “contained” Iraq in the years since the first Gulf War. Further, he said that because of economic sanctions, Iraq was unable to obtain WMD.
“We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq,” Powell said during a Feb. 11, 2001 interview with “Face the Nation.” “We have been able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might support weapons of mass destruction development have had some controls.”
“It's been quite a success for ten years,” he added.
During a meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in February 2001, Powell said the UN, the U.S. and its allies “have succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and his ambitions.”
Saddam’s “forces are about one-third their original size. They don't really possess the capability to attack their neighbors the way they did ten years ago,” Powell said.
Powell added that Iraq was “not threatening America.”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to agree with Powell’s assessment. In a Feb. 12, 2001 interview with the Fox News Channel, Rumsfeld said, “Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time.”
Ironically, just five days before Rumsfeld’s Fox News interview, Tenet told Congress that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa’ida terrorist network remained the single greatest threat to U.S. interests. Tenet eerily describes in the report a scenario that six months later would become a grim reality.
“Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order to defeat counter-terrorism measures,” the former CIA director said. “For example, as we have increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out "softer" targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties.”
“Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat,” he added.
Between 1998 and early 2002, the CIA’s reports on the so-called terror threat offered no details on what types of chemical and biological weapons Iraq had obtained. After 9/11, however, these reports radically changed. In October 2002, the agency issued another report, this time alleging Iraq had vast supply of chemical and biological weapons. Much of that information turned out to be based on forged documents and unreliable Iraqi exiles.
The October 2002 CIA report stated that Iraq had been stockpiling sarin, mustard gas, VX and numerous other chemical weapons. This was in stark contrast to Tenet’s earlier reports which said the agency had no evidence to support such claims. And unlike testimony Tenet gave a year earlier, in which he said the CIA had no direct evidence of Iraq’s WMD programs, Tenet said the intelligence information in the 2002 report was rock solid.
“It comes to us from credible and reliable sources,” Tenet said during a 2003 CIA briefing. “Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources.”
The intelligence sources turned out to be Iraqi exiles supplied by then-head of the Iraqi National Congress Ahmed Chalabi, who was paid $330,000 a month by the Pentagon to provide intelligence on Iraq. The exiles’ credibility and the veracity of their reports came under scrutiny by the CIA but these reports were championed as smoking gun proof by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush administration.
Unanswered questions remain. Democrats are increasingly suggesting that the Administration may have known their intelligence was bad.
Sen. Levin’s office directed RAW STORY to a statement the senator released Friday, claiming that the administration’s assertion that al-Qaeda was providing Iraq with chemical and biological weapons training was based on bogus evidence and a source who knowingly lied about al-Qaeda’s ties to Iraq. The Michigan Democrat also released a newly declassified report from the Defense Intelligence Agency to back up his allegations that the Bush administration misled the public.
“The CIA’s unclassified statement at the time was that the reporting was ‘credible,’ a statement the Administration used repeatedly,” he said. “What the Administration omitted was the second half of the CIA statement: that the source was not in a position to know whether any training had taken place.”
That issue, along with other reports, is now the cornerstone of the bipartisan investigation into prewar intelligence.
Levin’s office said the senator is going to provide the committee investigating prewar intelligence with reports from experts who warned officials in the Bush administration before the Iraq war that intelligence reports showing Iraq was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons were unreliable.



GOP senator hits Bush for attacking war critics; Hints Congress endorsing another Vietnam by staying silent

"U.S. Foreign Policy and the Middle East" by U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel

November 15th, 2005 - Delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC - Last year, I wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that "a wise foreign policy recognizes that U.S. leadership is determined as much by our commitment to principle as by our exercise of power." For decades, the strength of U.S. leadership has brought together allies in common cause, addressing common challenges with common action. In February 2003, three weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq, I said in a speech at Kansas State University: "America must approach the world with a sense of purpose in world affairs that is anchored by our ideals, a principled realism that seeks not to re-make the world in our image, but to help make a better world. We must avoid the traps of hubris and imperial temptation that come with great power. Our foreign policy should reflect the hope and promise of America tempered with a mature wisdom that is the mark of our national character. In this new era of possibilities and responsibilities, America will require a wider lens view of how the world sees us, so that we can better understand the world, and our role in it." Trust and confidence in America is about more than our military might or economic power. Power alone will not build coalitions, will not inspire trust, will not demonstrate confident leadership, will not resolve complicated problems, and will not defeat the threats that the United States will confront in the 21st century. After World War II, America used its leadership and power to help forge a consensus on vital international issues. We built relationships, alliances and international organizations. By doing so, we enhanced our power, our ability to influence, and our ability to protect our national interests. These institutions are as vital today as when they were formed. They need constant adjustment to reflect the realities of today and tomorrow...but what remains unchanged is the critical importance of these alliances to achieve global stability. America’s past leaders recognized that the United States, alone, was incapable of confronting global threats and challenges. We must maintain a clear-eyed focus on our vital interests and understand regional complexities and dynamics as we pursue our strategic objectives. The recent violence during President Bush’s trip to South America and the reluctance of some of our regional neighbors to pursue a regional free trade agreement underscore this point. Nowhere is this perspective more important than in the Middle East. Ethnic currents, nationalist and religious ideologies, historical tensions, and long-running conflicts intersect to create a complex regional dynamic. For there to be any hope of peace and stability in the Middle East, American policies must be based on regional perspectives and relationships. A close friend and ally, Israel, remains threatened by some of its neighbors. Violent Islamic extremism finds refuge in Iraq, Iran, and Syria and seeks to make inroads elsewhere in the region. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction remains a threat. Political and economic reform is limited and incomplete. And, the United States has nearly 160,000 soldiers in Iraq in support of Iraq’s uncertain future. As President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, wrote in November 2004 in the Washington Post, "...we no longer have the luxury of treating Middle East policy as a series of unrelated events running on separate calendars. We face the need for simultaneous actions to avoid failed states while reducing the incentives to violence and instability that threaten American and friendly states throughout the region. Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran and terrorism are parts of a whole and can only be satisfactorily engaged as such. To cut through this Gordian knot will require not only a new approach but the deep, sustained commitment of the United States and a significant investment of the President’s attention." The challenges that we face in the Middle East are more real today than a year ago. The unity of Iraq is not assured and its insurgency risks further destabilization of its neighbors. The shakiness of the Assad regime in Syria, the recent terrorist bombings in Jordan, and Islamic extremism in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region continue to pose dangerous threats to regional stability. Many Arab states are concerned that Iran is emerging as the big regional winner. Trust and confidence in the United States has been seriously eroded. We are seen by many in the Middle East as an obstacle to peace, an aggressor and an occupier. Our policies are a source of significant friction not only in the region but in the wider international community. Our purpose and power are questioned. We are at the same time both a stabilizing and a destabilizing force in the Middle East. We face the possibility of a much more dangerous and destabilized Middle East, with consequences that would extend far beyond the region’s borders. There have been positive, recent developments in Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. To maximize the potential of these developments, the United States must demonstrate diplomatic agility to adjust and respond to the uncertainties, nuances and uncontrollables that the region will continue to face. Iraq held a successful constitutional referendum on October 15. Iraqi political parties are now preparing for parliamentary elections on December 15 leading to the formation of a constitutionally-based, freely-elected government. As Iraq moves toward achieving a formal political transition, the United States should recognize that we must act to help build an international consensus on Iraq and address the regional complexities of the Middle East. We have few good options. Our strategic goal should be to get out of Iraq under conditions that offer Iraq the best possible opportunity for success – Iraqi success being defined as a free and self-governing country. This is not about setting a timeline. This is about pursuing policies designed to gradually pull the United States further away from the day to day responsibilities of defending Iraq and de facto governance of Iraq, and encouraging and demanding more responsibility from the Iraqis. The future of Iraq will be determined by the Iraqi people and its leaders. The new Iraqi government will have the potential for a wider vision and a longer horizon, establishing more stability and more confidence to engage the challenges that lie ahead. The recent decision by the UN Security Council to extend the mandate for the multinational forces in Iraq until the end of 2006 helps the next Iraqi government develop its capabilities to govern, defend and support itself, while continuing to limit America’s role as the only real "enforcer" in Iraq. As the Iraqi government assumes more responsibility for governing Iraq, so too must Iraq’s forces continue to take on more responsibility to defend their country. The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, underscored this point on October 25 when he told Gwen Ifill on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer that he believes that the United States is, "on the right track to start significant reductions [of U.S. military forces] in the coming year." I believe the United States should begin drawing down forces in Iraq next year. U.S. military power is not a surrogate force upon which Iraq can indefinitely depend. The current Iraqi government’s announcement on November 2 to accept the return of junior officers of the former Iraqi army – reversing U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer’s decision to disband Hussein’s armed forces – was a critically important development. Political confidence and military capability will reinforce and strengthen Iraq’s ability to govern and defend itself and sustain that confidence. We should not obstruct this development. The United States must encourage and expect demonstrations of new Iraqi independence and decision-making. Secretary Rice acknowledged before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 19, "there is no doubt the international community needs to be more involved with the Iraqis – there’s no doubt about it – especially the neighbors." But, today there is no standing mechanism for regional partners, with support from the international community, to develop consensus on building relationships around common security, political and economic interests. Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post in August 2005 that we need: "a political initiative inviting an international framework for Iraq’s future. Some of our allies may prefer to act as bystanders, but reality will not permit this for their own safety. Their cooperation is needed, not so much for the military as for the political task, which will test, above all, the West’s statesmanship in shaping a global system relevant to its necessities." Once the newly elected Iraqi government is in place after the December 15 elections, the United States, along with its allies, should propose a ministerial-level regional security conference on Iraq. This conference should be held in the region – perhaps with Egypt as the host – and should be endorsed by a new UN Security Council resolution. The conference would bring together Iraq and its regional neighbors – Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The G-8 countries and international institutions – the UN, the EU, NATO and the World Bank – should also be involved in this effort. The conference agenda should focus on the three pillars for Mideast stability – security, political, and economic. The conference would be broader, both in its agenda and participation, than the upcoming meeting in Cairo on Iraqi reconciliation that the Arab League has proposed. Unlike last weekend’s "Forum for the Future" meeting in Bahrain, which emphasized reform and economic growth, this conference would be focused on building regional cohesion based, at least initially, on Iraq. And, unlike past international conferences on Iraq – Sharm el-Sheikh in November 2004 and Brussels in June 2005 – this conference would not be a one-time event. The conference must produce agreement to maintain and regularly convene a sub-ministerial forum structured to effectively address Iraq’s ongoing challenges. Most important, it cannot be seen as a U.S.-imposed event to further U.S. interests and influence in the Middle East. Creating a formalized regional mechanism is vital for security in the Middle East. Iraq’s neighbors will be the countries most impacted by the outcome there. Although a regional mechanism does not assure Iraq’s success, the active involvement of the countries in the region allows a more promising future of stability for Iraq and lessens the chances for civil war and sectarian violence. It also lessens the possibilities that further instability and violence in Iraq will spread like a raging inferno throughout the region. Establishing a regional and international umbrella for Iraq would mean that the United States take a shared role in a regional security conference in Iraq. This does not mean that America would withdraw abruptly from Iraq. The United States should continue to leverage its influence, urging all Iraqi parties to use the political process to address the deep fractures of their society. We must also remain focused on the mission of standing up capable Iraqi Security Forces. The international community must now recognize the changed circumstances of a constitutionally-based Iraqi government and join Iraq’s neighbors by investing in Iraq’s future success. The role for international institutions will grow in importance as Iraq becomes more self-assured and able to govern. The World Bank, the United Nations and NATO all need to be more actively engaged in Iraq. The Oil-for-Food debacle is a stain on the UN’s reputation in Iraq. But that is not the UN’s role in Iraq today. The United Nations can help provide Iraq both a broader political umbrella, and greater support and expertise to help build and coordinate government institutions, programs and structures. Last weekend’s visit by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to Iraq – his first visit since the war – should help lead to this expanded role for the UN. The Iraq war should not be debated in the United States on a partisan political platform. This debases our country, trivializes the seriousness of war and cheapens the service and sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. War is not a Republican or Democrat issue. The casualties of war are from both parties. The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years. The Democrats have an obligation to challenge in a serious and responsible manner, offering solutions and alternatives to the Administration’s policies. Vietnam was a national tragedy partly because Members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the Administrations in power until it was too late. Some of us who went through that nightmare have an obligation to the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam to not let that happen again. To question your government is not unpatriotic – to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices. Today, the Senate engaged in a legitimate debate over exit strategy in Iraq as the Senate considered and voted on two Senate resolutions. This is a significant step toward the Congress exercising its Constitutional responsibilities over matters of war. As we consider the regional context of stability and security in Iraq, there is another issue that we must deal with – a relationship between the United States and Iran. The fact that our two governments cannot – or will not – sit down to exchange views must end. Iran is a regional power; it has major influence in Iraq and throughout the Gulf region. Its support of terrorist organizations and the threat it poses to Israel is all the more reason that the U.S. must engage Iran. Any lasting solution to Iran’s nuclear weapons program will also require the United States’ direct discussions with Iran. The United States is capable of engaging Iran in direct dialogue without sacrificing any of its interests or objectives. As a start, we should have direct discussions with Iran on the margins of any regional security conference on Iraq, as we did with Iran in the case of Afghanistan. As Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford, Co-Director of the Hoover Institution’s Iran Democracy Project, and former professor at Tehran University, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on October 31: "The time for a new grand bargain with Iran’s people has arrived. Instead of saber-rattling, the U.S. must encourage the unfolding discussions in Iran...Every element of this new bargain – ending the embargo and replacing it with smart sanctions; lifting the bans on airplane spare parts and offering earthquake warning systems; and even direct discussions with the regime – must be seen as part of a grand strategy to help the Iranian people achieve their dream of democracy." America and the West need to pursue a wise course in considering the impact of our actions on those in Iran who would welcome a new openness in their country. Engagement, backed by confident and strong U.S. leadership, would re-frame our relationship. More unilateral U.S. sanctions – particularly third country sanctions – are exactly the wrong approach. Why would the United States want to give the Iranian regime more reasons to point to a foreign threat and alienate our friends and allies who share our concerns about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, its threat to Israel, and its support for terrorism? That course is dangerous and self-defeating. Central to peace in the Middle East is resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Earlier this year, we witnessed the election of a new Palestinian President and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. The President’s announcement on October 20 to extend former World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn’s economic mission in the region and Secretary Rice’s announcement last night to appoint Major General Keith Dayton to succeed Lieutenant General William "Kip" Ward as the U.S. security coordinator are very important and need more attention and support. Developments since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, however, risk dragging us back into cycles of despair and violence. Palestinian terrorists have struck Israel. Israel continues to expand settlements in the West Bank. Gazans have not yet seen a difference in their lives as borders remain closed with only a trickle of goods and people from Gaza to either Israel or Egypt. These uncertain conditions in Gaza create a disastrous investment climate. Gaza cannot remain a prison to its own citizens. Last night, Secretary Rice, Mr. Wolfensohn, and General Ward helped Israelis and Palestinians reach an agreement that begins to re-open Gaza, in particular the Rafah crossing with Egypt that is Gaza’s primary link to the world. As Secretary Rice has noted, this significant development will help create "patterns of cooperation" that will be critical to achieve greater progress toward peace in the Middle East. Secretary Rice, Mr. Wolfensohn, and General Ward deserve credit for this achievement. But as all three clearly understand, major challenges remain. Both Israelis and Palestinians have unmet obligations, neither side can justify further inaction. American leadership can push and prod but we cannot force Israelis or Palestinians to negotiate. We must also be prepared to identify and act on strategic regional opportunities to help achieve broader Arab-Israeli peace. The progress in ending Syria’s corrosive influence in Lebanon should help create opportunities to undermine Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist groups that have operated out of Lebanon, and thereby help to support Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The course of diplomatic events on Syria may also eventually help create opportunities to reinvigorate Israeli-Syrian negotiations, including the future status of the Golan Heights. The United States should be very cautious about supporting the collapse of the Assad regime. That would be a dangerous event, with the potential to trigger wider regional instability at a time when our capacity to help shape a desired regional outcome is very limited. Our objective should be a strategic shift in Syria’s perspective and actions that would open the way to greater common interests for the countries of the region. Terrorism is a real threat and a present danger that we must confront and defeat. But we must not sacrifice the strengths and ideals of America that the world has come to respect and trust, and that define us. That is why I co-sponsored Senator McCain’s amendment to prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment of any detainee under the custody of any branch of the U.S. Government. I strongly oppose any exception to this prohibition. As General Colin Powell wrote to Senator McCain in support of this amendment, "Our troops need to hear from the Congress, which has an obligation to speak to such matters under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution." The recent media reports of a worldwide American system of secret, black-hole jails, run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and developed explicitly to circumvent our obligations under the Geneva Convention, sullies everything that America represents. It further erodes the world’s confidence in America’s word and our purpose. As columnist Jim Hoagland wrote last weekend in the Washington Post: "Policies and attitudes have to change, too. Lifting the legal fog that intentionally envelops Guantanamo detainees is an urgent need, to reaffirm Americans’ commitment to the rule of law as well as to stabilize the country’s standing abroad. So is establishing with Congress accountability and some form of transparency for prisoners held abroad for U.S. purposes." The Constitution also establishes Congress’ authority and responsibility regarding decisions to go to war. The course of events in Iraq has laid bare the failure to prepare for, plan for, and understand the broad consequences and implications of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq. Where is the accountability? In the November 8 Washington Post, Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, wrote, "Our Founding Fathers wanted the declaration of war to concentrate the minds. Returning to the Constitution’s text and making it work through legislation requiring joint deliberate action may be the only way to give the decision to make war the care it deserves." The American people should demand that the President request a Declaration of War and the Congress formally declare war, if and when the President believes that committing American troops is in the vital national security interests of this country. This would make the President and Congress, together, accountable for their actions – just as the Founders of our country intended. One of America’s greatest 21st century challenges is not to lose the next generation of the world...especially the next generation of Muslims. This is a generation that yearns for the opportunity and possibilities of globalization and reform. This is a generation that is prepared to embrace the politics of change and reform. We cannot afford to lose this generation – in the Middle East and around the world. If we do, my children and your children will inherit a very dangerous and complicated world. The choices that America makes today; the policies we pursue; the actions we take; the friends and allies we make; and our preparation for the future will define the global frame of reference, and our role in the world, for decades to come. I have spoken today about the regional interconnects of the Middle East and the need for new strategic U.S. thinking. This is not unique to this region. Regional dynamics infuse the challenges we face around the world...Asia, Africa, the Eurasian landmass, the Western Hemisphere. What the United States must help prevent is the possibility of several destabilizing events across regions. The complexities of the 21st century demand strategic, over-the-horizon American thinking, diplomacy and leadership. That will require creative diplomacy and a recognition of the varied perspectives and values of other countries. We can help countries reach their destination but it must be on their terms and their way, or it will fail and create a deep and dangerous anti-Americanism throughout the world. A few weeks ago, I was looking through some old photographs and letters that my father wrote to his parents and sister when he was in the South Pacific during World War II. I found a picture of my father when he was the Commander of American Legion Post 84 in Ainsworth, Nebraska and my mother when she was President of the Legion Auxiliary back in the early 50's. I started thinking about how my family’s life revolved around the American Legion and this country...what it meant to my family. That spirit of helping others, service, patriotism, is who we are as Americans. When America’s actions abroad have reflected these core values, we have inspired trust and confidence in the world. Demonstrating America’s purpose is at the heart of America’s strength. Nations, like individuals, must earn respect, confidence and the right to lead. As I said at Kansas State three weeks before we invaded Iraq: "What distinguishes America is not our power, for the world has known great power. It is America’s purpose and our commitment to making a better life for all people. That is the America the world needs to see. A wise, thoughtful and steady nation, worthy of its power, generous of spirit, and humble in its purpose."

Do you ever wonder just where your gas money goes?



Would you like to see where your gas money is going?





This is unbelievable.

This is one house.

















This must be the servents entrance




































I guess this is where W sleeps when he comes to town.















Nice bath
















Want to take a dip


















Solid silver, not plated, silver






Must be nice to truly be large and in charge.

When will the real bad guys stand trial?
They lied to go to war, now I do believe that when you lie to congress to go to war that in itself is treason. But wait there's more, old pals and colleagues are making big cake( Green not Yellow) on the backs of our military and the worse part is how they pull this call to arms crap but when it was there time to stand up for their country to fight for freedom, they had better things to do.



Time Reporter Says He Learned Agent's Identity From Rove
Matthew Cooper Says I. Lewis Libby Confirmed Information
Oct. 31 2005 One of the reporters at the center of the investigation into the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, says he first learned the agent's name from President Bush's top political advisor, Karl Rove.
Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper also said today in an interview with "Good Morning America," that the vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, confirmed to him that Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
A grand jury charged Libby on Friday with five felonies alleging obstruction of justice, perjury to a grand jury and making false statements to FBI agents. If convicted, he could face a maximum of 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines. Libby was not charged with the crime that the grand jury was created to investigate -- specifically, who leaked the name of Plame to reporters in 2003. Rove has not been charged.
Wilson, who went to Niger in 2002 to investigate whether or not the country was supplying Iraq with uranium to make weapons of mass destruction, opposed the war. He said he found no evidence of such an exchange in an op-ed in The New York Times. Wilson has argued that the Bush administration revealed his wife's identity in order to silence his opposition to the war.
"There is no question. I first learned about Valerie Plame working at the CIA from Karl Rove," Cooper said.
Libby has since claimed that he heard the Plame rumors from other reporters. Cooper disputed that version of events. "I don't remember it happening that way," he said. "I was taking notes at the time and I feel confident."
If a trial goes ahead, Cooper said he would name Rove as his source of the information.
"Before I spoke to Karl Rove I didn't know Mr. Wilson had a wife and that she had been involved in sending him to Africa."
This update corrects two errors in an earlier version of the story, which referred to Nigeria instead of Niger, and stated that Libby in his conversations with a Time reporter referred to Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative. ABC News regrets the error.
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Forging the Case for War
Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?
by Philip Giraldi
From the beginning, there has been little doubt in the intelligence community that the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame was part of a bigger story. That she was exposed in an attempt to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is clear, but the drive to demonize Wilson cannot reasonably be attributed only to revenge. Rather, her identification likely grew out of an attempt to cover up the forging of documents alleging that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.
What took place and why will not be known with any certainty until the details of the Fitzgerald investigation are revealed. (As we go to press, Fitzgerald has made no public statement.) But recent revelations in the Italian press, most notably in the pages of La Repubblica, along with information already on the public record, suggest a plausible scenario for the evolution of Plamegate.
Information developed by Italian investigators indicates that the documents were produced in Italy with the connivance of the Italian intelligence service. It also reveals that the introduction of the documents into the American intelligence stream was facilitated by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feiths Office of Special Plans (OSP), a parallel intelligence center set up in the Pentagon to develop alternative sources of information in support of war against Iraq.
The first suggestion that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium to construct a nuclear weapon came on Oct. 15, 2001, shortly after 9/11, when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his newly appointed chief of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, made an official visit to Washington. Berlusconi was eager to make a good impression and signaled his willingness to support the American effort to implicate Saddam Hussein in 9/11. Pollari, in his position for less than three weeks, was likewise keen to establish himself with his American counterparts and was under pressure from Berlusconi to present the U.S. with information that would be vital to the rapidly accelerating War on Terror. Well aware of the Bush administrations obsession with Iraq, Pollari used his meeting with top CIA officials to provide a SISMI dossier indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The same intelligence was passed simultaneously to Britains MI-6.
But the Italian information was inconclusive and old, some of it dating from the 1980s. The British, the CIA, and the State Departments Bureau of Intelligence and Research analyzed the intelligence and declared that it was lacking in detail and very limited in scope.
In February 2002, Pollari and Berlusconi resubmitted their report to Washington with some embellishments, resulting in Joe Wilsons trip to Niger. Wilson visited Niamey in February 2002 and subsequently reported to the CIA that the information could not be confirmed.
Enter Michael Ledeen, the Office of Special Plans man in Rome. Ledeen was paid $30,000 by the Italian Ministry of the Interior in 1978 for a report on terrorism and was well known to senior SISMI officials. Italian sources indicate that Pollari was eager to engage with the Pentagon hardliners, knowing they were at odds with the CIA and the State Department officials who had slighted him. He turned to Ledeen, who quickly established himself as the liaison between SISMI and Feiths OSP, where he was a consultant. Ledeen, who had personal access to the National Security Councils Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley and was also a confidant of Vice President Cheney, was well placed to circumvent the obstruction coming from the CIA and State.
The timing, August 2002, was also propitious as the administration was intensifying its efforts to make the case for war. In the same month, the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was set up to market the war by providing information to friends in the media. It has subsequently been alleged that false information generated by Ahmad Chalabis Iraqi National Congress was given to Judith Miller and other journalists through WHIG.
On Sept. 9, 2002, Ledeen set up a secret meeting between Pollari and Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley. Two weeks before the meeting, a group of documents had been offered to journalist Elisabetta Burba of the Italian magazine Panorama for $10,000, but the demand for money was soon dropped and the papers were handed over. The man offering the documents was Rocco Martino, a former SISMI officer who delivered the first WMD dossier to London in October 2002. That Martino quickly dropped his request for money suggests that the approach was a set-up primarily intended to surface the documents.
Panorama, perhaps not coincidentally, is owned by Prime Minister Berlusconi. On Oct. 9, the documents were taken from the magazine to the U.S. Embassy, where they were apparently expected. Instead of going to the CIA Station, which would have been the normal procedure, they were sent straight to Washington where they bypassed the agencys analysts and went directly to the NSC and the Vice Presidents Office.
On Jan. 28, 2003, over the objections of the CIA and State, the famous 16 words about Nigers uranium were used in President Bushs State of the Union address justifying an attack on Iraq: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Both the British and American governments had actually obtained the report from the Italians, who had asked that they not be identified as the source. The UNs International Atomic Energy Agency also looked at the documents shortly after Bush spoke and pronounced them crude forgeries.
President Bush soon stopped referring to the Niger uranium, but Vice President Cheney continued to insist that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons.
The question remains: who forged the documents? The available evidence suggests that two candidates had access and motive: SISMI and the Pentagons Office of Special Plans.
In January 2001, there was a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome. Documents were stolen but no valuables. The break-in was subsequently connected to, among others, Rocco Martino, who later provided the dossier to Panorama. Italian investigators now believe that Martino, with SISMI acquiescence, originally created a Niger dossier in an attempt to sell it to the French, who were managing the uranium concession in Niger and were concerned about unauthorized mining. Martino has since admitted to the Financial Times that both the Italian and American governments were behind the eventual forgery of the full Niger dossier as part of a disinformation operation. The authentic documents that were stolen were bunched with the Niger uranium forgeries, using authentic letterhead and Niger Embassy stamps. By mixing the papers, the stolen documents were intended to establish the authenticity of the forgeries.
At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.
It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable foreign intelligence source to confirm the Iraqi worst-case.
The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.


Source of Forged Niger-Iraq Uranium Documents Identified
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
ROME, Nov. 3 - Italy's spymaster identified an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino on Thursday as the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program, three lawmakers said Thursday.
The spymaster, Gen. Nicol Pollari, director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi, disclosed that Mr. Martino was the source of the forged documents in closed-door testimony to a parliamentary committee that oversees secret services, the lawmakers said.
Senator Massimo Brutti, a member of the committee, told reporters that General Pollari had identified Mr. Martino as a former intelligence informer who had been "kicked out of the agency." He did not say Mr. Martino was the forger.
The revelation came on a day when the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it had shut down its two-year investigation into the origin of the forged documents.
The information about Iraq's desire to acquire the ore, known as yellowcake, was used by the Bush administration to help justify the invasion of Iraq, notably by President Bush in his State of the Union address in January 2003. But the information was later revealed to have been based on forgeries.
The documents were the basis for sending a former diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson IV, on a fact-finding mission to Niger that eventually exploded into an inquiry that led to the indictment and resignation last week of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.
Mr. Martino has long been suspected of being responsible for peddling the false documents. News reports have quoted him as saying he obtained them through a contact at the Niger Embassy here. But this was the first time his role was formally disclosed by the intelligence agency.
Neither Mr. Martino nor his lawyer, Giuseppe Placidi, were available for comment.
Senator Brutti also told reporters that Italian intelligence had warned Washington in early 2003 that the Niger-Iraq documents were false.
"At about the same time as the State of the Union address, they said that the dossier doesn't correspond to the truth," Senator Brutti said. He said he did not know whether the warning was given before or after President Bush's address.
He made the claim more than once, but gave no supporting evidence. Amid confusing statements by various lawmakers, he later appeared to backtrack in conversations with both The Associated Press and Reuters, saying that because Sismi never had the documents, it could not comment on their merit.
There had long been doubts within the United States intelligence community about the authenticity of the yellowcake documents, and references to it had been deleted from other presentations given at the time.
Senator Luigi Malabarba, who also attended Thursday's hearing, said in a telephone interview that General Pollari had told the committee that Mr. Martino was "offering the documents not on behalf of Sismi but on behalf of the French" and that Mr. Martino had told prosecutors in Rome that he was in the service of French intelligence.
A senior French intelligence official interviewed Wednesday in Paris declined to say whether Mr. Martino had been a paid agent of France, but he called General Pollari's assertions about France's responsibility "scandalous."
General Pollari also said that no Italian intelligence agency officials were involved in either forging or distributing the documents, according to both Senator Brutti and the committee chairman, Enzo Bianco.
Committee members said they were shown documents defending General Pollari, including a copy of a classified letter from Robert S. Muller III, the director of the F.B.I., dated July 20, which praised Italy's cooperation with the bureau.
In Washington, an official at the bureau confirmed the substance of the letter, whose contents were first reported Tuesday in the leftist newspaper L'Unit. The letter stated that Italy's cooperation proved the bureau's theory that the false documents were produced and disseminated by one or more people for personal profit, and ruled out the possibility that the Italian service had intended to influence American policy, the newspaper said.
As a result, the letter said, according to both the F.B.I. official and L'Unit , the bureau had closed its investigation into the origin of the documents.
The F.B.I. official declined to be identified by name.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Italy's military intelligence service sent reports to the United States and Britain claiming that Iraq was actively trying to acquire uranium, according to current and former intelligence officials.
Senator Brutti told reporters on Thursday that indeed Sismi had provided information about Iraq's desire to acquire uranium from Niger as early as the 1990's, but that it had never said the information was credible.
Thursday's hearing followed a three-part series in La Repubblica, which said General Pollari had knowingly provided the United States and Britain with forged documents. The newspaper, a staunch opponent of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, also reported that General Pollari had acted at the behest of Mr. Berlusconi, who was said to be eager to help President Bush in the search for weapons in Iraq.
Mr. Berlusconi has denied such accounts.
La Repubblica said General Pollari had held a meeting on Sept. 9, 2002, with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. Mr. Hadley, now the national security adviser, has said that he met General Pollari on that date, but that they did not discuss the Niger-Iraq issue.
"Nobody participating in that meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed," Mr. Hadley told a briefing on Wednesday in Washington. "And that's also my recollection."
At the time, Mr. Hadley took responsibility for including the faulty information in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address.
David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington for this article.