Friday, October 03, 2003
FILE THAT UNDER "SAY WHAT?"
Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay today released his report that flatly states no weapons of mass destruction have been found.
In response, George W. Bush released a statement that said Kay's investigation clearly showed that Saddam was violating U.N. resolutions demanding that he disarm.
I suppose that in the strictest technical sense, he's right - Saddam was not complying with disarmament demands. Because he had nothing to disarm, but let's not get confused by facts here.
This one is right up there with former White House Press secretary (BushCo mouthpiece) Ari Fleischer's famous obfuscatory remark that it was "incumbent on those who claim there are no weapons of mass destruction to tell us where they are."
Huh?
Friday, October 03, 2003
THE PLAME GAME
What is (finally) being picked up by the media is the incredible saga of top-down treason, the outing of CIA analyst Valerie Plame by top White House officials. I've been jabbering about this on forums for weeks now, so I'm kinda burnt out, but Howard Fineman provides a decent summary of the facts of this case.
I hope this one does not get 'disappeared' by BushCo misdirection tactics, because this is a big fat TREASONOUS scandal, not to mention a federal crime. Karl Rove disclosed the identity of a CIA operative (one of the top CIA analysts on WMD in the Middle East), as a way of silencing her husband (and other whistleblowers), former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, from exposing the fact that there are no WMD in Iraq and the whole BushCo war justification was a pack of lies start to finish.
The only thing I take great issue with in Fineman's summary is his assertion that this is not about the law. Beg to differ, mister smug jackass, this is very much about the law. It is a federal felony to expose the identity of an agent. It is, in fact, TREASON by both legal definition and BushCo hyperbole. Karl Rove outed Valerie Plame in order to shut Joseph Wilson up and send a message to other whistleblowers, plain and simple.
Joseph Wilson fingers Karl Rove
John Ashcroft is in a total conflict of interest investigating this one. A fox in the henhouse - there needs to be an independent counsel, otherwise this will be just another White House White Wash.
If we can spend $42 million to investigate a blowjob...Thursday, October 02, 2003
THERE'S A REASON HIS NAME IS "RUSH"
So much for Mr. Clean Upright UberAmerican - Rush Limbaugh not only outed himself to mainstream America as a racist asshole on ESPN (yo, Einstein - did it occur to you that a) 70% of the league is black, and b) you were sitting in the booth with two big badass black guys?), but his years-long secret drug addiction has finally come to light.
The National Enquirer (who now triple-dipple chickety-checks everything since Carol Burnett successfully sued the crap outta them) and the New York Daily News are today both running stories about Rush's years of hardcore pillpopping. OxyContin, anyone? That hillbilly heroin make you fly, mon...
Back in 1995, Limbaugh told his audience on the syndicated Rush Limbaugh, The Television Show that people who are obtaining drugs illegally should be held responsible.
"Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up," he said to his audience during the broadcast.
Nothing like having a big fat hypocrite's own words and actions bite him in the ass...
Put that in your cigar and smoke it, Rush!
Thursday, October 02, 2003
FROM THE HILBILLY FILES
A Kentucky family is suing a Florida county because their kid got nipped by a shark while she was swimming in the ocean.
Seems the teen's family believes that the entire county is financially responsible for a wild animal, in its natural habitat, doing what it normally does when presented with a juicy-looking hamhock. The kid was quickly treated for the scratch and released. It's unclear what ill effects the shark might have suffered.
Now, I KNOW they get PBS and the Discovery channel in Kentucky, and I'm positive that by now, even wild-eyed hermits in caves have heard of the movie "Jaws" and know that sharks live in the ocean. How is it that a family well-heeled enough to afford a vacation in Florida can't figure out that when you go to wild places, you may encounter the wild things that live there?
This incident is unfortunate, but to sue is frivolous and just adds to the loads of garbage clogging up the courts. If you are camping in the woods and a bear bites you in the ass, is the state liable? Lawyers for the family are arguing that "they should have been warned of potential shark attacks". Florida also leads the US in numbers of lightning strikes each year - do folks that get hit by a bolt (more each year than get bit by sharks) have the right to sue the state for not warning them they could get hit? Florida has more ugly old fat men in Speedos out in public than any other state, can I sue when my eyeballs explode?
Watch out, Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl, the wilds are full of lawyers...Tuesday, September 30, 2003
BUSH FUNDRAISER FAQs
The Bush-Cheney '04 campaign has just issued a helpful "Frequently Asked Questions" memo to its New York fund-raisers:
Question: "Can I use my personal aircraft for campaign business?"
Answer: "No, you may not use your personal aircraft for campaign business. Corporate aircraft may be used, but only if each person boarding the plane pays the equivalent of a first-class airplane ticket."
Q: "Can I have a fund-raising cocktail party for my friends at a private club or hotel and pay for the party?"
A: "No. You may have them come to your house and treat them up to $1,000 in expenses per adult in the household without it counting against your $2,000 contribution limit."
Q: "Can I use my executive assistant to help with my fund-raising activities?"
A: "Any person can volunteer to help. Employees may volunteer a maximum of 1 (one) hour per week during working hours and an unlimited amount outside of the office."
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Dude. Good thing the folks that fly on my personal aircraft and pay for a 1st class ticket can write it off as a business expense. Let's get this party started! You can buy lots of caviar and champagne for a grand, my executive assistant has been volunteered to mill amongst the crowd with a platter of those little fancy cocktail wieners (how apropos at a cocktail party full of little wieners), and there will be valet parking for Hummers... come on down and be a 'Pioneer' for Bush!
Meanwhile, as of this post, the Dean campaign is shattering fundraising records, with over $14 million raised this quarter from over 177,000 contributors each kicking in an average of $65 or so bucks apiece, and over 450,000 individuals signed up to volunteer for the campaign. All this, more than a year out from the elections. Those are extraordinary numbers, this is REAL democracy and "we the people" at work. As Dick Morris from the New York Post observes, "it's the end of the big money era in our politics".
WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK!Tuesday, September 30, 2003
IS IT HALLOWEEN ALREADY?
Here's something truly scary. I had no idea how much George Bush and Wesley Clark resemble each other. Since first having had the similarity brought to my attention, however, I have noticed that vocally, they sound almost identical, and that Wes became a registered democrat less than a month ago. In fact, he's even been outed in the media as being a republican cheerleader, with videotape of him praising Dubya and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice etc as the slickest thing since goose grease.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN TROUBLE WHEN THE MORMONS START SLAMMING YOU
The Salt Lake Tribune published a very sober, factual slam on the BushCo treatment of the military.
I totally agree with this take. BushCo has long thought of the military as their personal toy soldiers. Daddy Bush used to call regular folks "CFUs", for "cannon fodder units" (I read that in "Fortunate Son" by J H Hatfield). It's clear his snobbish contempt was firmly stamped onto Prince Dubya growing up, because this attitude is clearly present in the way he has, and continues to, treat our troops.
You don't throw them into a war for personal gain and lie about the reasons
You don't put them into a guerrilla war scenario and expect them to behave like policemen
You don't put them in the line of fire for a year plus
You don't send them into a hellish climate with improper supplies
You don't cut their hazardous duty pay
You don't cut child care support for their families back home
You don't pretend to land on an aircraft carrier just so you can grab your pecker and wave to Daddy
You don't piss off literally every single friend we have on Earth, so we can't get anyone to share the burden
You don't ask soldiers and their families to subsidize your giant fuckup to the tune of hundreds of BILLIONS of their tax dollars (see items 5 & 6 above)
I feel really really bad for these troops, their eventual homecoming is gonna be as sucky as it was for the 'Nam guys. Only people will not be reviling them for being "establishment pigs", people will shake their heads with silent pity for the fool who got "suckered in" to the blood for oil lie, and no one will want to hear about their experience or in any way be reminded that they, too, got "suckered in" by BushCo lies. They will simply look away in embarrassment at the missing limbs, not make a connection to the strange new cancer, not talk about the nightmares, not walk with them through the depression and suicidal thoughts. There will be no parades for these boys and girls.
Mark my words. These vets will be the forgotten ones, the invisible vets. They won't be monsters, but they won't be heroes, either. This will be, like the crazy aunt in the attic, the one "we don't talk about".
Here is the very root of the whole mess:
"The problem is not what happened in Iraq. Nobody is sorry to see Saddam go. The problem is the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive action, the idea that the United States can attack whomever it wants, whenever it wishes, no matter what the rest of the world thinks. That is what causes other nations, particularly the democracies that would otherwise be our natural allies, to see the United States not as the keeper of the world's security, but as a primary threat to it."
BushCo MUST be removed from power. If lying about a blowjob is an impeachable offense, then what these people have done deserves a firing squad.
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From the front lines, in their own words:
(Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq. A 1985 Richwoods High School graduate and native Peorian, he has been in Iraq since March and in the military for about five years.)
"Shock and Awe" were the words used to describe the awesome display of power the world was to view upon the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was to be an up-close, dramatic display of military strength and advanced technology within the arsenal of the United States and the United Kingdom's military.
But as a soldier preparing for the invasion of Iraq, the words "shock and awe" rang deeper within my psyche. These two great superpowers were about to break the very rules they demand of others. Without the consent of the United Nations, and ignoring the pleas of their own citizens, the United States and Britain invaded Iraq.
"Shock and Awe"? Yes, the words correctly described the emotional impact I felt as we prepared to participate in what I believed not to be an act of justice but of hypocrisy.
From the moment the first shot was fired in this so-called war of liberation and freedom, hypocrisy reigned. Following the broadcasting of recorded images of captured and dead U.S. soldiers over Arab television, American and British leaders vowed revenge while verbally assaulting the networks for displaying such vivid images. Yet within hours of the deaths of Saddam's two sons, the American government released horrific photos of the two dead brothers for the entire world to view. Again, a "do as we say and not as we do" scenario.
As soldiers serving in Iraq, we have been told that our purpose here is to help the people of Iraq by providing them the necessary assistance militarily as well as in humanitarian efforts. Then tell me where the humanity was in the recent Stars and Stripes account of two young children brought to a U.S. military camp by their mother, in search of medical care? The two children had been, unbeknown to them, playing with explosive ordinance they had found and as a result were severely burned. The account tells how the two children, following an hour-long wait, were denied care by two U.S. military doctors. The soldier described the incident as one of many "atrocities" he has witnessed on the part of the U.S. military.
So then, what is our purpose here? Was this invasion due to weapons of mass destruction as we so often heard? If so, where are they? Did we invade to dispose of a leader and his regime on the account of close association with Osama bin Laden? If so, where is the proof? Or is it that our incursion is a result of our own economic advantage? Iraq's oil can be refined at the lowest cost of any in the world. Coincidence?
This looks like a modern-day crusade not to free an oppressed people or to rid the world of a demonic dictator relentless in his pursuit of conquest and domination but a crusade to control another nation's natural resource. At least for us here, oil seems to be the reason for our presence.
There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are an estimated 10- to 14-attacks on our servicemen and women daily in Iraq. As the body count continues to grow, it would appear that there is no immediate end in sight.
I once believed that I served for a cause: "to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now, I no longer believe; I have lost my conviction, my determination. I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies. My time is done as well as that of many others with whom I serve. We have all faced death here without reason or justification.
How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before America awakens and demands the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them rather than their leader's interest?
- Tim Predmore
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I am a National Guardsman of the 105th Personnel Services Detachment out of Lincoln, Neb. My unit and I are stationed in Kuwait at Camp Wolf. We were deployed Feb. 2. We arrived in Jordan in April and half of us were moved a week later to Kuwait to throw mail.
When our unit came back together in June we had an order to go home but it was revoked and we ended up replacing an active Army unit. When replacing the active unit we were told our date to go home was Dec. 1.
We now hear that we will be here for a full year. We are under 3rd Personnel Command. They say that when they decide who stays and who goes, it's not by how long soldiers have been deployed, just by unit necessity.
My unit processes incoming soldiers and helps soldiers redeploy for theater. We are doing a great job and are working hard to treat each soldier with care and consideration as they come past our desks. They have spread our 44 soldiers out to replace an active unit that had over 50 and to replace a National Guard unit that had over 60 soldiers. Not only are we running 24-hour operations seven days a week for these two units, but we have four of our soldiers on the redeployment side working validation for another unit! We are spread so thin and are working so hard that these knocks on our morale are devastating.
Yes, we are physically able to finish our mission, but mentally and spiritually we are dying.
If retention for the Army National Guard is of any importance, current members need to have faith in our government and our leaders. Right now, where we are, we can't see anyone taking a stand for the soldiers (as it isn't just us being treated this way but many, many soldiers).
This isn't a simple board game of Axis and Allies, this is a game people are playing with real people - people with families, not robots. You have college students out here (like me) missing over a year of college to sit and get yanked around without explanation. It has been told to the officers I have spoken to that 3rd PERSCOM refers to moving soldiers as "drug deals." You do this for me and I'll make sure your soldiers go home, etc.
Yes, without a doubt my duty is to serve my country despite her faults. I have learned I will not be able to get education and training services while I am here and I am accepting that. I am here to serve out of obligation and duty. What I'm wondering is if there are any checks and balances for those who are making decisions here?
Everyone keeps saying it is up in the air, including the personnel responsible for deciding who is going where. It feels as if every decision is off the cuff. In this situation there should be plans in place and decisions made before the rubber hits the road.
We are slowly becoming frantic. I hear people saying they are going to begin hurting themselves or others if they can't go home. The helplessness our soldiers are feeling is indescribable, it is past the point of "suck it up and drive on." We just want somewhere to drive on to.
Thank you for allowing me to bend your ear.
- Sgt. Leanne Duffy
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Finally, a very disturbing news item concerning our buddies in power over in Israel, whom most people naively pick as the "good guys" in the Israel/Palestine debacle (there's no good or bad there anymore, there is only madness and madmen and carnage and evil and it all must STOP so the children can breathe). The guys getting censured are true heroes, good men. Their boss sounds exactly like the Nazi high command did when their troops objected in the same way:
Israeli defense chief calls pilots traitors, Dissenters berated in parliament
By MARGARET COKER and CRAIG NELSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
JERUSALEM -- Israel's defense minister rebuked 27 air force pilots Monday, accusing them of aiding the enemy after they declared in a petition last week they no longer would carry out what they called "immoral and illegal" combat operations in Palestinian territories.
The petition was the first time in Israel's history that a group of air force pilots, traditionally considered the nation's most elite warriors, announced they would refuse to carry out orders.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told Israel's parliament, the Knesset, on Monday that the petition amounted to no more than "pretentious sniveling," adding, "Providing terrorists with immunity makes peace harder to attain."
During the following debate, lawmakers of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud Party called the pilots traitors and said their dissent was tantamount to treason.
Sharon's government has sought to curb political fallout from the petition, a major embarrassment to the government. The list of petitioners includes a brigadier general, two lieutenant colonels and nine colonels. Nine are active-duty; the rest are reservists.
In their petition, the pilots, who fly F-15 jet fighters and Apache, Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters, said they would refuse to "continue to harm innocent civilians" through so-called "targeted killings" of terrorists and their political leaders, and would no longer conduct other "immoral and illegal" operations that are "part of the occupation."
Since a bus bombing in Jerusalem in mid-August killed 23 people, Israeli forces have stepped up aerial attacks against Palestinian militants. The military's policy of pre-empting attacks by eliminating what it calls "ticking bombs" has led to the killings of at least 13 militants. But the scores of civilian casualties caused by such attacks have aroused sharp criticism, and Israeli military officials have been put on the defensive.
The air force chief, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, said in an interview last month with a local newspaper that "there is no more moral army" than Israel's.
The Knesset's defense and foreign affairs committee set a meeting today to discuss the pilots, Army Radio reported. The panel will decide whether to take punitive action.
In his remarks Monday to the Knesset, Mofaz said each pilot who signed the letter would be called in for questioning and those who showed contrition would be forgiven. Any pilot "who fails to recognize that he is mistaken" will be forced to carry out other tasks in the air force, he said.
"A soldier has no right to refuse a legal order, and the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] issues only legal orders," the defense minister added.
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Right. We are never wrong, therefore, you are a traitor for saying we are wrong. I'd like 5 minutes alone with that asshole... or better yet, let him sit in his living room while his house gets bombed by self-righteous freaks in the name of peace.
Monday, September 29, 2003
CALLING DR. HOWARD, DR. FINE, DR. HOWARD
The morning BushCo news roundup:
George W. Bush reminds everyone: "I'm the KING, dude! - I don't need no stinkin' reality!"
From an undisclosed location, Dick Cheney confirms the actual size of Dubya's penis.
Condi Rice says "I'm sorry I ever hooked up with that crazy honky!"
Get ready for Bushit Fest '04: "As is his habit, Karl Rove, Bush’s meticulous political mastermind, has a carefully assembled, long-term ’04 plan. In sum, it is: a state-of-the-art, precinct-by-precinct ground game to get out the base; a flag-waving defense of Bush’s “doctrine of pre-emption” and the Patriot Act; an equally stout defense of tax cuts, with the parallel dare to Democrats to “raise” taxes; finally, a depiction of Bush as a decent, resolute man of faith—a rock in perilous times."