DT1
Moderator
You know, it's not like I wanted to be right about all of this...
Posts: 428
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Post by DT1 on Jan 8, 2007 15:47:14 GMT 4
Surge is a sham; Forces that killed Sheehan's son now run Iraq rawstory.comPublished: Saturday January 6, 2007 In his latest Sunday column, New York Times columnist Frank Rich contrasts how President Ford and President Bush handled Vietnam and Iraq. Contrary to Bush who wants to keep "refighting a war that is finished," the late President Ford – "a consistent Vietnam hawk" – assumed power during "the final throes of the fiasco" and "recognized reality when he saw it." Rich also condemns the "awful power of the Saddam snuff film," calls the surge – which "the press should start calling by its rightful name, escalation" – a "sham," and argues that the forces that killed "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan's son now basically control Iraq. "His real mission," Rich writes of Bush, "is to float the 'we're not winning, we're not losing' status quo until Jan. 20, 2009." Excerpts from the article: # Actually, it's even worse than that. Perhaps the video's most chilling notes are the chants of "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" They are further confirmation, as if any were needed, that our principal achievement in Iraq over four years has been to empower a jihadist mini-Saddam in place of the secular original. The radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ally of Hezbollah and Hamas, is a thug responsible for the deaths of untold Iraqis and Americans alike. It was his forces, to take just one representative example, that killed Cindy Sheehan's son, among many others, in one of two Shiite uprisings in 2004. The day after Casey Sheehan's slaughter, Dan Senor, the spokesman for the American occupation, presided over a Green Zone news conference promising al-Sadr's woefully belated arrest on a months-old warrant for his likely role in the earlier assassination of Abdel Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite who had fiercely opposed Saddam. Today al-Sadr and his forces control 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament, four government ministries, and death squads (aka militias) more powerful than the nominal Iraqi army. He is the puppetmaster who really controls Nouri al-Maliki -- the Iraqi prime minister embraced by Bush -- even to the point of inducing al-Maliki to shut down a search for an American soldier kidnapped at gunpoint in Sadr City in the fall. (And, you might ask, whatever happened to Senor? He's a Fox News talking head calling for a "surge" of American troops to clean up the botch he and his cohort left behind.) Only Joseph Heller could find the gallows humor in a moral disaster of these proportions. .... The "surge," then, is a sham. It is not meant to achieve that undefined "victory" Bush keeps talking about but to serve his own political spin. His real mission is to float the 'we're not winning, we're not losing' status quo until Jan. 20, 2009. After that, as Joseph Biden put it last week, a new president will be "the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone,taking people off the roof..."
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jan 26, 2007 17:10:51 GMT 4
DAVOS-U.S. invasion was "idiot decision"-Iraq vice presidentMaybe I'm wrong, but does Mahdi's statement seem at all contradictive to you?...MichelleDAVOS-U.S. invasion was "idiot decision"-Iraq vice president25 Jan 2007 13:11:04 GMT By Stella Dawson DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was an "idiot decision" and Iraqi troops now need to secure Baghdad to ensure the country's future, Vice-President Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Thursday. "Iraq was put under occupation, which was an idiot decision," Mahdi said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Mahdi said the Iraqi government planned to bring troops in to Baghdad from surrounding areas and said it was "a technical question" for the United States to decide whether to deploy more soldiers. President George W. Bush plans to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq, a move widely criticised in the United States. On Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted against the decision, which is due to go before the Senate next week. "If we can win this war in Baghdad then I think we can change the course of events," Mahdi told a panel on the state of affairs in Iraq. "As Iraqis, we think we need more (Iraqi) troops in Baghdad, and we are calling for some regiments to come from other parts of the country," he said. Mahdi's party, the powerful Shi'ite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was one of the exiled opposition parties consulted by Washington as it planned the invasion.Its leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is a key figure behind the U.S.-backed national unity government.MORE CHAOS? Some commentators are concerned that without the support of U.S. troops in Iraq, the already boiling sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites could break out into ever greater killing sprees. Adnan Pachachi, a member of Iraq's parliament and a former acting speaker, said that if the United States could not stay in Iraq, other troops should be drafted in. "If because of domestic pressure in the United States, the U.S. feels it is not possible to continue undertaking this burden, then I think we should consider going to the United Nations and having an international force," said Pachachi. "This is a last resort really, otherwise there would be total chaos in the country." Bush, who this week pleaded for the United States to give his new Iraq plan a chance, does not have to abide by a Senate resolution if legislators vote against sending more troops. Source: www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25522748.htm
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Feb 1, 2007 10:10:54 GMT 4
Specter: Bush Not Sole 'Decision-Maker'Tuesday January 30, 2007 7:16 PM By LAURIE KELLMAN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate Republican on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush's declaration that ``I am the decision-maker'' on issues of war. ``I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider,'' Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said during a hearing on Congress' war powers amid an increasingly harsh debate over Iraq war policy. ``The decider is a shared and joint responsibility,'' Specter said. The question of whether to use its power over the government's purse strings to force an end to the war in Iraq, and under what conditions, is among the issues faced by the newly empowered Democratic majority in Congress, and even some of the president's political allies as well. No one challenges the notion that Congress can stop a war by canceling its funding. In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney challenged Congress to back up its objections to Bush's plan to put 21,500 more troops in Iraq by zeroing out the war budget. Underlying Cheney's gambit is the consensus understanding that such a drastic move is doubtful because it would be fraught with political peril. But there are other legislative options to force the war's end, say majority Democrats and some of Bush's traditional Republican allies. The alternatives range from capping the number of troops permitted in Iraq to cutting off funding for troop deployments beyond a certain date or setting an end date for the war. ``The Constitution makes Congress a coequal branch of government. It's time we start acting like it,'' said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who presided over a hearing Tuesday on Congress' war powers. He also is pushing legislation to end the war by eventually prohibiting funding for the deployment of troops to Iraq. His proposal, like many others designed to force an end to U.S. involvement in the bloody conflict, is far from having enough support even to come up for a vote on the Senate floor. Closer to that threshold is a nonbinding resolution declaring that Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province is ``not in the national interest.'' The Senate could take up that measure early next month. But some senators, complaining that the resolution is symbolic, are forwarding tougher bills. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, for example, is a sponsor of a bill that would call for troops to come home in 180 days and allow for a minimum number of forces to be left behind to hunt down terrorists and train Iraqi security forces. ``Read the Constitution,'' Boxer told her colleagues last week. ``The Congress has the power to declare war. And on multiple occasions, we used our power to end conflicts.'' Congress used its war powers to cut off or put conditions on funding for the Vietnam war and conflicts in Cambodia, Somalia and Bosnia. Under the Constitution, lawmakers have the ability to declare war and fund military operations, while the president has control of military forces. But presidents also can veto legislation and Bush likely has enough support in Congress on Iraq to withstand any veto override attempts. Seeking input, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Specter, asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the White House's views on Congress' war powers. Boxer and Feingold are in effect proposing managing a way in some way other than zeroing out the budget. But some lawmakers and scholars insist war management is the president's job. ``In an ongoing operation, you've got to defer to the commander in chief,'' said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. But the veteran senator and former Navy secretary said he understands the debate over Congress' ability to check the executive branch. ``Once Congress raises an army, it's his to command,'' said Robert Turner, a law professor at the University of Virginia who was to testify Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In recent decades, presidents have routinely bypassed Congress when deploying troops to fight. Not since World War II has Congress issued an official declaration of war, despite lengthy wars fought in Vietnam and Korea. Congress does not have to approve military maneuvers. John Yoo, who as a Justice Department lawyer helped write the 2002 resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion, called that document a political one designed only to bring Democrats on board and spread accountability for the conflict. The resolution passed by a 296-133 vote in the then-GOP-run House and 77-23 in the Democratic-led Senate, but it was not considered a declaration of war. Source:www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6381627,00.html
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Feb 8, 2007 17:14:26 GMT 4
Republicans shut down the debate on Iraq...WHY? While US citizens mouths drop to the floor. [BTW, I called Senator Specter's office this week and bitched out one of his aids, asking what the hell is going on, why did the Republicans stop debate on Iraq, which should have taken place 4 years ago!?] More money will be funneled into an illegal war while social services are cut to the quick....Are any of you here parents who depend on health insurance for your kids through the CHIP program? Well, war's more important than that. Below, take a gander at how YOUR and the Iraqi people's money is being managed. I don't know about you, but I'm so angry, spitting mad!!!....MichelleU.S. sent pallets of cash to Baghdad By Jeremy Pelofsky Tue Feb 6, 8:46 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday.The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.
Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially "the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history," according to an e-mail cited by committee members. It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The CPA turned over sovereignty on June 28. Paul Bremer, who as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority ran Iraq after initial combat operations ended, said the enormous shipments were done at the request of the Iraqi minister of finance. "He said, 'I am concerned that I will not have the money to support the Iraqi government expenses for the first couple of months after we are sovereign. We won't have the mechanisms in place, I won't know how to get the money here,"' Bremer said. "So these shipments were made at the explicit request of the Iraqi minister of finance to forward fund government expenses, a perfectly, seems to me, legitimate use of his money," Bremer told lawmakers. WHERE'S THE MONEY?Democrats led by Waxman also questioned whether the lack of oversight of $12 billion in Iraqi money that was disbursed by Bremer and the CPA somehow enabled insurgents to get their hands on the funds, possibly through falsifying names on the government payroll.
"I have no knowledge of monies being diverted. I would certainly be concerned if I thought they were," Bremer said. He pointed out that the problem of fake names on the payroll existed before the U.S.-led invasion.The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said in a January 2005 report that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqi ministries. "We were in the middle of a war, working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer told lawmakers. He said there was no banking system and it would have been impossible to apply modern accounting standards in the midst of a war. [tap dancing music, please!]"I acknowledge that I made mistakes and that, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have made some decisions differently," Bremer said. Republicans argued that Bremer and the CPA staff did the best they could under the circumstances and accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. "We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn't, in my opinion, constructive," said Rep. Dan Burton (news, bio, voting record), an Indiana Republican. Source:news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070207/pl_nm/iraq_usa_cash_dc_2------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ABC has a 4 page article on this which also lists more screwups and misplaced weapons....send these articles around...inform your friends.....spead a lot of anger around, call and encourage others to call your representatives, write some editorials to your local paper....I talked to a woman last night who seriously asked me if I thought the war was wrong....many people just don't have the facts....HELP THEM UNDERSTAND!Waste in War: Where Did All the Iraq Reconstruction Money Go?Congressional inquiry probes former Bush official's handling of billions of dollars Lost: $12 Billion of Your Money in Iraq By JENNIFER PARKER February 6, 2007— Sparks flew on Capitol Hill Tuesday as a Democrat-led Congressional committee investigated the Bush administration's handling of billions of reconstruction money in Iraq.Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator responsible for rebuilding post-war Iraq, appeared for the first time before Congress to defend his record — and pointed a finger at a lack of pre-war planning . Panel Investigates 'Waste, Fraud and Abuse' Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif, chairman of the House Government Reform & Oversight Committee summoned Bremer, citing a January 2005 audit report from Stuart W. Bowen, the government's special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, which concluded that Bremer's CPA failed to account for $8.8 billion given to Iraqi ministries. Democrats on the committee painted a picture of disorganization within the Bush administration after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In his opening statement, Rep. Waxman claimed $12 billion dollars were sent to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004 and is unaccounted for by the U.S. government. Rep. Waxman said that 'bags of money' were taken from the Federal Reserve in New York, loaded onto wooden palettes and put on cargo planes that were flown into Baghdad. "Who in their right minds would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" asked Rep. Waxman. "But that's exactly what our government did," he said. "They were handing out tons of cash from the back of pick up trucks," said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, arguing the Bush administration lacked a plan for the post-Saddam effort. Bremer's Defense Ambassador Bremer countered that the money he managed actually came from the Development Fund for Iraq, which was set up by the United Nations Security Council in May 2003 so that Iraq's oil revenue could be spent on rebuilding Iraq. "We're talking about Iraqi money, not American money," said Bremer, the top civilian in charge of post-Saddam Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004 and a former U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands. Bremer also described the overwhelming conditions in Iraq when he arrived in 2003. "The country was in chaos socially, economically and politically," Bremer said. "We were in the middle of a war, working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer contended. The Ambassador said that he fulfilled the CPA's mandate of dispersing money to the Iraqi people by giving the money to the Iraqi ministries themselves and argued that monitoring where the money went after that would have been impossible. "We were chronically under-staffed," said Bremer. "Pre-war planning had not anticipated the difficulty of the job we faced," he said, pointing out that the country lacked a banking system necessary to deal with the influx of money. "I think pre-war planning was inadequate," Bremer repeated. Stuart Bowen, the government official who is auditing where reconstruction money went in Iraq, contradicted Bremer, later testifying that Bremer should have done more to account for the funds. "More should have been done to find out what was done with the $8.8 billion," said Bowen. Under fire from Democrats, Bremer was asked about the qualifications of personnel hired for the CPA.
Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., claimed that recent college graduates with Republican ties were sent to Iraq instead of experienced government personnel.
Rodes challenged, "I want to know why half the U.S. staff had never been outside of the country before and had to get a passport for the first time?"
Rep. Waxman also suggestsed that staff members for the Coalition Provisional Authority were too often picked on the basis of Republican political affiliation, rather than experience or competence — with the result that people in their twenties were handed control over matters such as the Iraqi government budget. Bremer called such claims "nonsense", asserting, "I want to dispel one of the more pernicious myths, that the CPA was dominated by young, inexperienced ideologues," although he did acknowledge that he had very little control over who was sent to work under the CPA, reporting that most of the jobs were filled within the Pentagon. 20/20 Hindsight or Useful Debate? Contrary to their firey Democratic counterparts, many Republicans labeled the hearing counterproductive to the ongoing war in Iraq. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accused the Democrats on the committee of merely trying to embarrass President Bush. But many non-partisan Iraq experts also question the Bush administration's handling of the Iraqi money. Rick Barton, co-Director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, "There's a feeling among Iraqis that we wasted that money." Barton believes the administration failed to assess the unstable nature of the Iraqi ministries' infrastructure. "The ministries barely existed, so to try to come in a give them all this money was really flawed thinking," he said. Compounding the problem, Barton said, was the small window of time Bremer had to re-build Iraq. "The administration had an artificial timeline that they imposed on themselves, of getting in and out as soon as possible," Barton said. On Wednesday, the oversight panel is set to focus on private contractors hired to provide supplies for the U.S. military effort in Iraq, especially subcontractors working for Halliburton, the corporate giant once led by Vice President Dick Cheney. This is the first congressional inquiry into Bush administration spending in Iraq since the Democrats took control of congress in January. Iraq's Reconstruction Stalled By Bloody Violence The oversight hearing also comes on the heels of several grim reports describing a stalled reconstruction efforts amidsts a country besieged by bloody sectarian violence. In his latest quarterly report released last week, Bowen's office painted a dismal picture of Iraq reconstruction indicating that the government of Iraq has been unable to boost the production of oil or electricity despite U.S. aid.
Baghdad gets an average of only 6.5 hours of electric power a day, Bowen's report said, in part because transmission lines are sabotaged but also because of political squabbles about which power plants in regions outside of Baghdad should share electricity with the capital.
Bowen's latest report also indicated that the State Department paid $43.8 million for a temporary police training camp that has never been used and may have spent an additional $36.4 million for armored vehicles, body armor and weapons "that cannot be accounted for," according to the report released last month by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
A recent Government Accountability Office report said the Pentagon and the U.S. military command in Baghdad "may not be able to account" for about 90,000 rifles and 80,000 pistols issued to Iraqi security forces in 2004. The reconstruction efforts have been further hampered by problems within the fledging Iraqi ministries. According to that same GAO report, the Iraqi government has about $6 billion in unspent reconstruction funds because many Iraqi ministries lack the capacity to actually award contracts to get work done. Continued, read it all!!: www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2852426This week, I'll be posting more on the 'Great Iraqi Fraud', listing contracts and shakey deals...No wonder the Republicans shut down the debate...most likely got called into the oval office for a pep talk....some Republicans, by doing this, voted against their own resolutions.... Aren't you angry, people?!.....M
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Feb 13, 2007 16:47:43 GMT 4
In the previous post, I mentioned the following: More money will be funneled into an illegal war while social services are cut to the quick....Are any of you here parents who depend on health insurance for your kids through the CHIP program? Well, war's more important than that. Here's an article which supports that and also says that there will be more cuts in the Medicare program Following are more articles on fraud and profiteering....M Passing the Buck on Health Care Published: February 12, 2007 President Bush’s new budget would extend the administration’s warped priorities deep into the realm of federally supported health care programs. The administration long ago sacrificed any meaningful domestic agenda to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and its reckless war in Iraq. The White House’s reckless determination to make the tax cuts permanent is now driving it to slash domestic spending in health and other vital programs. Instead of trying to address the underlying problems of escalating health care costs, Mr. Bush’s strategy is to cut services or shift more of the bill to states, health care providers and individuals. In the Medicare program, which covers health care for Americans aged 65 and over, the administration would find most of its savings by slowing the annual increase in reimbursements for services, forcing hospitals and other providers to absorb the burden. Given Medicare’s precarious financial straits, the package appears broadly acceptable. The real outrage is that the administration has not proposed comparable reductions in the large overpayments — roughly 12 percent more per patient — made to private managed care plans that enroll Medicare beneficiaries. The budget would also phase out Medicare bad-debt payments, forcing hospitals to swallow beneficiaries’ unpaid bills. The budget also looks to save money by eliminating inflation indexing so that as incomes rise, so would the number of people required to pay higher premiums. Although this is a sneaky way to raise premiums, it is hard to argue with the notion that better-off beneficiaries should pay more to help rescue a financially strained program. What seems counterproductive is Mr. Bush’s plan to lower federal matching funds for Medicaid administration — forcing the states to find more of their own funds or sacrifice good management and oversight. More worrisome is his plan to cut back on state programs that insure the young. The most shortsighted restrictions would come in the highly acclaimed State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which uses federal matching funds to provide coverage for low- and moderate-income children who are not quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. The program has been enormously successful in reducing the number of uninsured children. Yet now the administration wants to reduce its matching rate and limit enrollment to children in households earning no more than twice the federal poverty level. That would undercut programs in 16 states that have expanded coverage to children above that level. Although the administration’s budget would grant the children’s program a small $5 billion increase spread over five years, that’s less than half, and possibly only a third, of the amount needed just to maintain current enrollments and participation rates. This is too high a price to pay for more tax cuts and Mr. Bush’s ill-managed presidency. Source: www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/opinion/12mon1.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Army Says It Will Withhold $19.6 Million From Halliburton, Citing Potential Contract Breach By PHILIP SHENON Published: February 8, 2007 WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 — The Army announced during a House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday that it would withhold $19.6 million from the Halliburton Company after recently discovering that the contractor had hired the company Blackwater USA to provide armed security guards in Iraq, a potential breach of its government contract. The Army has said that its contracts with Halliburton, which has a five-year, $16 billion deal to support American military operations in Iraq, generally barred the company and its subcontractors from using private armed guards. But in a statement, Halliburton disagreed with the Army’s interpretation and suggested that there was nothing to prohibit Halliburton’s subcontractors from hiring such guards. The announcement came during a hearing of the House Government Oversight Committee that included emotional testimony about the killing of four Blackwater employees in Falluja, Iraq, in 2004. In an e-mail message made public in the hearing and written only hours before the four were killed, another Blackwater worker told the company to end the “smoke and mirror show” and provide its employees in the war zone with adequate weapons and armored vehicles. “I need ammo,” the worker, Tom Powell, said in an e-mail message dated March 30, 2004, to supervisors at Blackwater, which is based in North Carolina. “I need Glocks and M4s — all the client body armor you got,” he wrote. “Guys are in the field with borrowed stuff and in harm’s way.” Mr. Powell said he had requested heavily armored vehicles “from the beginning, and from my understanding, an order is still pending.” “Why? I ask,” he added. The next day, a mob in Falluja attacked a supply convoy that was being guarded by Blackwater employees and killed four guards, later stringing up two of the mutilated, charred bodies from a bridge. The men were riding in vehicles that were only lightly armored, and their families have claimed in a lawsuit against Blackwater that the company failed to provide basic protective equipment. Blackwater’s general counsel, Andrew G. Howell, told the House panel on Wednesday that the company, which also had a State Department contract to provide security services, believed that it had had an appropriate number of armored vehicles in Iraq. He said, “We have not skimped on equipment — no sir.” The panel is investigating Blackwater and the work of other large American military contractors in Iraq. In the dispute with Halliburton, the Army insisted repeatedly to Congressional investigators last year that it could find no evidence that Blackwater had been hired by Halliburton and its subcontractors in Iraq for security. But in a letter dated Tuesday and made public on Wednesday, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said that additional investigation showed that Blackwater had provided private security guards for a Halliburton subcontractor, ESS Support Services, a construction and food services business, and that the costs “were not itemized in the contracts or invoices” prepared by ESS. “The Army is continuing to investigate this matter and we are committed to providing full disclosures of the results of our investigations to the committee,” he wrote to the chairman of the oversight committee, Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat. “We share your commitment to ensuring that contractors supporting the military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq comply with the terms and conditions of these contracts.” In a statement, Halliburton insisted that it was not in breach of its contract with the government. “Nowhere does it prohibit subcontractors from supplementing that protection with private security,” Halliburton said. “It is unrealistic to think that the military can both wage a war and at the same time protect every necessary civilian movement in Iraq.” The company said it would “sit down with the Army to discuss and resolve these issues.” The committee also heard from family members of the four security guards. “Why did Blackwater choose to make a profit over the safety of our loved ones?” asked Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, the mother of one of the men. “Blackwater gets paid for the number of warm bodies it can put on the ground in certain locations throughout the world. If some are killed, it replaces them at a moment’s notice.” “Although everyone remembers those images of the bodies being burnt, beaten, dragged through the streets and ultimately hung from a bridge, we continue to relive that horror day after day, as those men were our fathers, sons and husbands,” she said. 5 Charged in Iraq Bribery SchemeWASHINGTON, Feb. 7 (Reuters) — Three Army Reserve officers and two American civilians have been charged with taking or arranging for more than $1 million in cash, sports cars, jewelry and other items to be used as bribes in rigging bids on Iraqi reconstruction contracts, United States officials said Wednesday. They said the five have been indicted by a federal grand jury in New Jersey in a scheme that involved the theft of millions of dollars of Iraq reconstruction money and the awarding of contracts to Philip Bloom, who doled out the bribes. The officials said the agency in charge of Iraqi reconstruction lost more than $3.6 million because of the corruption scheme that began in December 2003 and lasted two years. Mr. Bloom, who has already pleaded guilty, received more than $8.6 million in rigged contracts, the officials said. They said more than $500,000 was smuggled into the United States. “They stole the money in Iraq and then smuggled vast sums into the United States to support lavish lifestyles,” said Mark W. Everson, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner. The 25-count indictment charged Col. Curtis Whiteford, Lt. Col. Debra Harrison and Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, and two civilians, Michael Morris and William Driver. Colonel Whiteford was once the second-most senior official in the Coalition Provisional Authority for the South Central Region in Iraq, while Colonel Harrison was its acting comptroller. Colonel Wheeler was an adviser for Iraqi reconstruction projects. Mr. Driver is married to Colonel Harrison. Mr. Morris, who was living in Romania, was accused of helping Mr. Bloom funnel money to the military officials. Source for both: www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/washington/08waxman.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Judge dismisses fraud allegation against war contractorBy MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press Writer February 8, 2007 McLEAN, Va. -- A federal judge for a second time has tossed out civil fraud charges against a Virginia-based military contractor accused by whistleblowers of scamming the U.S. government out of tens of millions dollars in the months following the 2003 Iraq invasion. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria ruled in favor of Custer Battles LLC, which has been pilloried in Congress and elsewhere as an example of the fraud and mismanagement that plagued the occupation of Iraq under the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. The case against Custer Battles was among the first filed against an Iraq war contractor under the federal False Claims Act, which allows whistleblowers to bring suits against companies they believe are cheating the government. In the ruling, issued Feb. 2 and made public Tuesday, Ellis said there was no evidence that Custer Battles committed fraud under a $16.8 million contract to provide security at the Baghdad International Airport in 2003. The whistleblowers, former Custer Battles employees Robert Isakson and William Baldwin, said the Fairax company failed to deliver on promises that it would provide 138 security personnel at the airport. But Ellis found that Custer Battles never specified how many security personnel it would provide. He said Custer Battles initially provided more than 138 workers and received glowing performance evaluations in its first few months on the job. But the whistleblowers' attorney, Alan Grayson, said Ellis' ruling ignored clear evidence that Custer Battles later diverted airport security workers to other contracts it obtained from the CPA, and illegally double-billed the government for those employees' work in the process. He cited written testimony from CPA inspector general Richard Ballard, who said Custer Battles left the airport woefully understaffed, resulting in long lines at checkpoints and, at times, vehicles being waved through checkpoints without inspection. "The judge never even bothers to mention (the inspector general's testimony) in his decision," Grayson said. "These are all matters that a jury is supposed to decide." Indeed, a jury found Custer Battles guilty of fraud and awarded a $10 million judgment against Custer Battles last year for its work on a separate, smaller contract to replace the old Iraqi currency that was replete with images of Saddam Hussein. But Ellis overturned the jury's verdict and dismissed the case on a technicality. Ellis ruled that any fraud was perpetrated on the CPA rather than the U.S. government, even though the U.S. government ultimately footed the bill. Some analysts have said that ruling could make it difficult for other whistleblowers to pursue similar claims. Grayson said he will appeal both rulings to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. Scott Custer, one of Custer Battles' founders, said in a statement that he was relieved by the judge's ruling "but it does not dispel the cloud that hangs over us or erase the two years of legal battles we've fought to clear our name." Source: www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--warcontractor0208feb08,0,728065.story
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Feb 20, 2007 17:46:26 GMT 4
More On The 'Great Iraqi Fraud' Or Free Trade At Its Best
I'm going to wrap up the squandering of lives and taxpayers' money with a lot of articles, links, and videos. There was a time when a young person could enter the military, serve for a few years, and leave with marketable job skills. Not anymore, the best, safest, and highest paid jobs are out sourced to contractors now. Our kids are pure fodder for the military machine. If they manage to make it back home, alive, they're left with mutilated bodies, shattered minds, and broken lives; all for the cause of a free and open market. And Lord, the people of Iraq, how dearly they have paid for free trade! Not that they have benefited from any of it; their country is in a shambles, poverty and unemployment continue to increase, and many lack the basic necessities.
As you read through the following, know that the powers that be do not want this war to end, at least until it's completely sewed up for the corporations...then they'll move along to another country. Let's face it, folks, our war-dependant economy rules over all. As they watch missiles flying and bombs dropping, top executives within the military industrial complex are adding up their profits, their brains working like cash registers gone haywire. And since they've proven that their weapons can kill on a massive scale, foreign sales by US weapons manufactures have skyrocketed.
And here's another tidbit for you: In 2001, Richard Pearl [chief architect of both the war on Iraq and Rumsfeld's efforts to 'revolutionize' military technology] joined Henry Kissinger and other Washington insiders to form a company called Trireme Partners. Trireme raises venture capital from wealthy individuals and invests it in weapons companies, betting on those it expects will get lucrative government contracts. Now most would call this Insider Trading, but they prefer to call it guaranteed speculation. The neocons and their friends go back and forth through a revolving door that connects jobs at the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, and corporate military contractors. Lots of money changes hands in Washington as weapons manufactures make generous contributions to politicians and politicians hand out fat Pentagon contracts to these contributing corporations. This leads to all kinds of shady deals and overpriced goods.
Let us all join them in a toast they must have daily: "Here's to the Pentagon....the only place you can sell a 13 cent bolt for $2,043!"
What a bunch of rotten rat bastards.....MichelleOne-third of Iraqis live in poverty A U.N. report cites the nation's damaged infrastructure and U.S. free-market policies.[*remember this data is three years old so it's much worse now]By Christian Berthelsen, Times Staff Writer February 19, 2007 AMMAN, JORDAN — A third of Iraqis live in poverty, according to a study released under United Nations auspices Sunday, dire findings for a nation that enjoyed widespread prosperity less than three decades ago. The report, produced by a division of the Iraqi government and the United Nations Development Program, examined access to, and the quality of, a wide range of basic needs. It found that by 2004, Iraqi living standards had deteriorated considerably compared with that of the 1970s and '80s, particularly in the areas of water, electricity, sanitation, jobs, income and assets. Damaged or dangerous housing conditions and educational access and quality were also found to be significant areas of deprivation. A subtext to the report is how much the eroding conditions are contributing to Iraq's civil war. Though the report made no official findings on the subject, a top U.N. official in Amman, the Jordanian capital, said that poverty offered "a very fertile ground to recruitment" for militant activity in Iraq. "When you are jobless, when you don't have electricity and water, you become more vulnerable to being recruited by extremist groups," Paolo Lembo, director of the United Nations Development Program in Iraq, said in an interview. "My personal opinion is, yes, it is a contributing factor."The survey was based on data collected in 2004 as part of a survey of Iraqi living conditions conducted by the U.N. and Iraq's Ministry of Planning and Development. In addition to the one-third of Iraqis living in poverty, the study found that 5% of the population was living in extreme poverty. Though the data are three years old and do not capture the deterioration in living standards since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, human rights officials say the study is still useful because it is the first comprehensive look at poverty and deprivation in Iraq and because it creates a baseline for future studies. Though living standards started to decline under the decades-long leadership of Saddam Hussein, and continued through two wars and crippling sanctions that followed, the report takes aim at economic policies put in place after the 2003 invasion. The policies, which reflect American free-market priorities, dismantled state-run enterprises that employed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and ended subsidies.The policies presented Iraqis with wrenching change, leading to high unemployment and frustration, the report said. The study found Iraq's damaged infrastructure to be the largest factor in creating poor living conditions. It said 85% of households lacked a stable source of electricity, with weekly and even daily outages. Nearly 70% of households struggled with getting rid of garbage, and more than 40% had inadequate sanitation facilities. Deprivation levels also were seen as a factor in malnourishment. Residents in the country's mostly Shiite Muslim south were found to suffer the most, whereas people in Baghdad and northern Iraq had the highest living standards. Poverty levels were three times higher in rural areas. The report's authors urged officials in charge of Iraq's reconstruction to slow efforts to privatize the economy and improve ways to help people cope with the changes. "It's not a criticism to anyone; it's a reality we must address," Lembo said. Source:www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-poverty19feb19,1,1789343.story "Iraq for sale" by Robert Greenwald A MUST SEE (1 hour 15 min)video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155&q=iraq+for+saleA film about corporations in Iraq. Interview with Robert Greenwald on Iraq For Sale (19 min 48 sec) video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=5558278940194162031&q=iraq+for+saleRegina Meredith of Conscious Media Network interviews Robert Greenwald on his latest movie, Iraq For Sale, and the subject of war profiteering. In Washington, Contractors Take On Biggest Role Ever By Scott Shane and Ron Nixon The New York Times Sunday 04 February 2007 Washington - In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administration responded with what has become the government's reflexive answer to almost every problem. They hired another contractor. It did not matter that the company they chose, CACI International, had itself recently avoided a suspension from federal contracting; or that the work, delving into investigative files on other contractors, appeared to pose a conflict of interest; or that each person supplied by the company would cost taxpayers $104 an hour. Six CACI workers soon joined hundreds of other private-sector workers at the G.S.A., the government's management agency. Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does. Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government's online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use). The contracting explosion raises questions about propriety, cost and accountability that have long troubled watchdog groups and are coming under scrutiny from the Democratic majority in Congress. While flagrant cases of fraud and waste make headlines, concerns go beyond outright wrongdoing. Among them:*Competition, intended to produce savings, appears to have sharply eroded. An analysis by The New York Times shows that fewer than half of all "contract actions" - new contracts and payments against existing contracts - are now subject to full and open competition. Just 48 percent were competitive in 2005, down from 79 percent in 2001. *The most secret and politically delicate government jobs, like intelligence collection and budget preparation, are increasingly contracted out, despite regulations forbidding the outsourcing of "inherently governmental" work. Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said allowing CACI workers to review other contractors captured in microcosm "a government that's run by corporations." *Agencies are crippled in their ability to seek low prices, supervise contractors and intervene when work goes off course because the number of government workers overseeing contracts has remained level as spending has shot up. One federal contractor explained candidly in a conference call with industry analysts last May that "one of the side benefits of the contracting officers being so overwhelmed" was that existing contracts were extended rather than put up for new competitive bidding. *The most successful contractors are not necessarily those doing the best work, but those who have mastered the special skill of selling to Uncle Sam. The top 20 service contractors have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated $23 million to political campaigns. "We've created huge behemoths that are doing 90 or 95 percent of their business with the government," said Peter W. Singer, who wrote a book on military outsourcing. "They're not really companies, they're quasi agencies." Indeed, the biggest federal contractor, Lockheed Martin, which has spent $53 million on lobbying and $6 million on donations since 2000, gets more federal money each year than the Departments of Justice or Energy. *Contracting almost always leads to less public scrutiny, as government programs are hidden behind closed corporate doors. Companies, unlike agencies, are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Members of Congress have sought unsuccessfully for two years to get the Army to explain the contracts for Blackwater USA security officers in Iraq, which involved several costly layers of subcontractors. Weighing the Limits The contracting surge has raised bipartisan alarms. A just-completed study by experts appointed by the White House and Congress, the Acquisition Advisory Panel, found that the trend "poses a threat to the government's long-term ability to perform its mission" and could "undermine the integrity of the government's decision making." The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose new Democratic chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, added the word "oversight" to signal his intentions, begins a series of investigative hearings on Tuesday focusing on contracts in Iraq and at the Department of Homeland Security. "Billions of dollars are being squandered, and the taxpayer is being taken to the cleaners," said Mr. Waxman, who got an "F" rating last year from the Contract Services Association, an industry coalition. The chairman he succeeded, Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, earned an "A." David M. Walker, who as comptroller general of the United States leads the Government Accountability Office, has urged Congress to take a hard look at the proper limits of contracting. Mr. Walker has not taken a stand against contractors - his agency is also dependent on them, he admits - but he says they often fail to deliver the promised efficiency and savings. Private companies cannot be expected to look out for taxpayers' interests, he said.
"There's something civil servants have that the private sector doesn't," Mr. Walker said in an interview. "And that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good - the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all rather than the interest of a few. Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not to the country." Even the most outspoken critics acknowledge that the government cannot operate without contractors, which provide the surge capacity to handle crises without expanding the permanent bureaucracy. Contractors provide specialized skills the government does not have. And it is no secret that some government executives favor contractors because they find the federal bureaucracy slow, inflexible or incompetent. Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, which represents government contractors, acknowledged occasional chicanery by contractors and too little competition in some areas. But Mr. Soloway asserted that critics had exaggerated the contracting problems. "I don't happen to think the system is fundamentally broken," he said. "It's remarkable how well it works, given the dollar volume." Blurring the Lines Wariness of government contracting dates at least to 1941, when Harry S. Truman, then a senator, declared, "I have never yet found a contractor who, if not watched, would not leave the government holding the bag." But the recent contracting boom had its origins in the "reinventing government" effort of the Clinton administration, which slashed the federal work force to the lowest level since 1960 and streamlined outsourcing. Limits on what is "inherently governmental" and therefore off-limits to contractors have grown fuzzy, as the General Services Administration's use of CACI International personnel shows. "Hi Heinz," Renee Ballard, a G.S.A. official, wrote in an e-mail message to Heinz Ruppmann, a CACI official, last June 12, asking for six "contract specialists" to help with a backlog of 226 cases that could lead to companies being suspended or barred from federal contracting. The CACI workers would review files and prepare "proposed responses for review and signature," she wrote. Mr. Amey, of the Project on Government Oversight, which obtained the contract documents under the Freedom of Information Act, said such work was clearly inherently governmental and called it "outrageous" to involve contractors in judging the misdeeds of potential competitors. CACI had itself been reviewed in 2004 for possible suspension in connection with supplying interrogators to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The company was ultimately cleared, though the G.S.A. found that CACI employees had improperly written parts of the "statements of work" for its own Iraq contract. The price of $104 an hour - well over $200,000 per person annually - was roughly double the cost of pay and benefits of a comparable federal worker, Mr. Amey said. Asked for comment, the G.S.A. said decisions on punishments for erring contractors "is indeed inherently governmental." But the agency said that while the CACI workers assisted for three months, "all suspension/debarment decisions were made by federal employees." A CACI spokeswoman made the same point. The G.S.A., like other agencies, said it did not track the number or total cost of its contract workers. The agency administrator, Lurita Doan, who previously ran a Virginia contracting firm, has actively pushed contracting. Ms. Doan recently clashed with her agency's inspector general over her proposal to remove the job of auditing contractors' proposed prices from his office and to hire contractors to do it instead. On some of the biggest government projects, Bush administration officials have sought to shift some decision making to contractors. When Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, addressed potential bidders on the huge Secure Border Initiative last year, he explained the new approach. "This is an unusual invitation," said Mr. Jackson, a contracting executive before joining the agency. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business." Boeing, which won the $80 million first phase of the estimated $2 billion project, is assigned not only to develop technology but also to propose how to use it, which includes assigning roles to different government agencies and contractors. Homeland Security officials insist that they will make all final decisions, but the department's inspector general, Richard L. Skinner, reported bluntly in November that "the department does not have the capacity needed to effectively plan, oversee and execute the SBInet program." A "Blended Work Force" If the government is exporting some traditional functions to contractors, it is also inviting contractors into agencies to perform delicate tasks. The State Department, for instance, pays more than $2 million a year to BearingPoint, the consulting giant, to provide support for Iraq policy making, running software, preparing meeting agendas and keeping minutes. State Department officials insist that the company's workers, who hold security clearances, merely relieve diplomats of administrative tasks and never influence policy. But the presence of contractors inside closed discussions on war strategy is a notable example of what officials call the "blended work force." That blending is taking place in virtually every agency. When Polly Endreny, 29, sought work last year with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, she was surprised to discover that most openings were with contractors. "The younger generation is coming in on contracts," said Ms. Endreny, who likes the arrangement. Today, only the "Oak Management" on her ID badge distinguishes her from federal employees at the agency's headquarters. She said her pay was "a little higher" than that of comparable federal workers, and she gets dental coverage they do not. Such disparities can cause trouble. A recent study of one NOAA program where two-thirds of the work force were contractors found that differences in salary and benefits could " substantially undermine staff relations and morale." The shift away from open competition affects more than morale. One example among many: with troops short in Iraq, Congress in 2003 waived a ban on the use of private security guards to protect military bases in the United States. The results for the first $733 million were dismal, investigators at the Government Accountability Office found. The Army spent 25 percent more than it had to because it used sole-source contracts at 46 of 57 sites, the investigators concluded. And screening of guards was so lax that at one base, 61 guards were hired despite criminal records, auditors reported. Yet the Army gave the contractors more than $18 million in incentive payments intended to reward good performance. (The Army did not contest G.A.O.'s findings and has changed its methods.) A Coalition for Contracting Mr. Soloway, of the contracting industry group, argues that the contracting boom has resulted from the collision of a high-technology economy with an aging government work force - twice as many employees are over 55 as under 30. To function, Mr. Soloway said, the government must now turn to younger, skilled personnel in the private sector, a phenomenon likely to grow when what demographers call a "retirement tsunami" occurs over the next decade. "This is the new face of government," Mr. Soloway said. "This isn't companies gouging the government. This is the marketplace." But Paul C. Light of New York University, who has long tracked the hidden contractor work force to assess what he calls the "true size of government," says the shift to contractors is driven in part by federal personnel ceilings. He calls such ceilings a "sleight of hand" intended to allow successive administrations to brag about cutting the federal work force. Yet Mr. Light said the government had made no effort to count contractors and no assessment of the true costs and benefits. "We have no data to show that contractors are actually more efficient than the government," he said. Meanwhile, he said, a potent coalition keeps contracting growing: the companies, their lobbyists and supporters in Congress and many government managers, who do not mind building ties to contractors who may hire them someday. "All the players with any power like it," he said. That is evident wherever in Washington contractors gather to scout new opportunities. There is no target richer than the Homeland Security Department, whose Web site, in a section called "Open for Business," displays hundreds of open contracts, including "working with selected cities to develop and exercise their catastrophic plans" ($500,000 to $1 million) and "Conduct studies and analyses, systems engineering, or provide laboratory services to various organizations to support the DHS mission" ($20 to $50 million). One crisp morning in an office building with a spectacular view of the Capitol, Alfonso Martinez-Fonts Jr., the agency's assistant secretary for the private sector, addressed a breakfast seminar on "The Business of Homeland Security." The session drew a standing-room crowd. Mr. Martinez-Fonts, a banker before joining the government, said he could not personally hand out contracts but could offer "tips, hints and directions" to companies on the hunt. Joe Haddock, a Sikorsky Helicopters executive, summed up the tone of the session. "To us contractors," Mr. Haddock said, "money is always a good thing." Source: www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020407Z.shtml
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Mar 22, 2007 15:25:39 GMT 4
Citizens in the united States never hear these statements from our troops in Iraq.....MUS troops in Iraq want out20/03/07 01h44 GMT+1 AFP News brief by Bryan Pearson For US troops from 9th Cavalry Regiment bumping around the dangerous streets of Baghdad in Humvees after dark on Monday, news that their deployment in Iraq could be extended fell like a hammer blow. Their commanders had cautioned that their second one-year tour due to end in October could be prolonged while US President George W. Bush later warned troops it was too soon to "pack up and go home." The expletives during the four-hour night patrol turned the air in the Humvee, already thick with cigarette smoke, a dark shade of blue. "We just want to get out of here as soon as possible," said one vehicle commander in one of his few printable comments. "It's because the Iraqi army is so scared that we have to come here to die,"he added, asking not to be named. "Ninety-five percent of Iraqis are good but five percent are bad. But the 95 percent are too weak to stand up to the five percent.""Bush should send all the Death Row prisoners here and they can be killed fighting the terrorists. We've had enough," said another soldier, as the Humvee accelerated past a roadside car in case it exploded. Added yet another, "Bush can come fight here. He can take my 1,000 dollars a month and I'll go home."Commander of the night operation, Lieutenant Brian Long, said the anger was understandable. "One of the men has five children, another has three. Another has a boy aged four -- he's missed two of those years. He'll never get them back," said Long. "It is like the movie 'Groundhog Day'. Each day is the same and nothing ever changes," he added, referring to the 1993 movie in which the principal character is doomed to repeat the same day endlessly. "It's tough. Everyone just wants to get home to their families," said the officer. Bush, after speaking to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the top US military commander in Iraq, said in Washington that his new plan to pacify war-wracked Iraq would take months. "It could be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home," Bush said, four years to the day after he announced that American troops were fighting to depose Saddam Hussein. "That may be satisfying in the short run, but I believe the consequences for American security would be devastating," Bush said, warning that a US departure would spark chaos in Iraq which would engulf the region. Platoon commander of the 9th Cavalry Regiment, Captain Christopher Dawson, said he understood the need for troops to stay in Iraq. "We are starting to make a difference," he said. "The violence is dropping. We are training Iraqis to take over responsibility for their own security. We are helping them see their future ahead of them. It is in their hands." But the lower ranks were in rebellious mood, especially after publication of a poll on Monday, commissioned by the BBC, ABC News, ARD German TV and USA Today, which showed only 18 percent of those questioned had confidence in US and coalition troops, while 78 percent opposed their presence. "If no one wants us here we are quite ready to get out tomorrow," said the outspoken vehicle commander. One of the few Iraqis the troops met during their night patrol -- most stay indoors once the 8pm curfew kicks in -- said he feared the day the US forces pulled out. "They can stay for 100 years if they want," said Salam Ahmed, a security guard at a shoe warehouse on the outskirts of the city. "If they go, the bad guys will certainly come for me." Source:www.france24.com/france24Public/en/administration/afp-news.html?id=070320004302.w8d2wm3v
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on May 3, 2007 19:53:07 GMT 4
Here's what our mission accomplishedBy Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | May 2, 2007 THESE ARE just some of the stories on the four-year anniversary of Mission Accomplished:Washington Post: "The deaths of more than 100 troops in April made it the deadliest month so far this year for US forces in Iraq."Los Angeles Times: "April was even more devastating for Iraqi civilians. More than 1,500 were killed in bombings, assassinations and sectarian violence."New York Times: "In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successful, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting, and expensive equipment that lay idle."Boston Globe: "Deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks increased sharply last year, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, with government officials, police, and security guards coming under greater attack than ever before . . . more than 20,000 people died and more than 38,000 were injured . . . an increase of 6,000 deaths or more than 40 percent over 2005, according to [the State Department]."This is four years after President Bush staged one of the gaudiest self-congratulations in American history. He landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a jet fighter, popped out in a flight jumpsuit and proclaimed major combat operations to be over in Iraq under the now-infamous banner, "Mission Accomplished." It is four years after Bush said, "We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost." Bush's cause is so lost that 71 percent of Americans disagree with his handling of Iraq in the latest New York Times/CBS poll and 64 percent say Bush should set a timetable for troop withdrawal in 2008. By a 57 percent-to-35 percent tally in that poll, Americans say Congress, not Bush, should have the final say about troop levels. Similarly, in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, Americans say by 56 percent to 37 percent they agree with the Democrats' push for a troop withdrawal deadline over Bush's refusal to set a deadline. Bush's cause is so lost that people are turning on him wherever he turns, from former CIA director George Tenet to the family of Pat Tillman, who calls the military's glorification of his death in Afghanistan "utter fiction," and soldier Jessica Lynch, who said the military's glorification of her capture and rescue in Iraq was utterly unnecessary. "The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate lies," she told a congressional oversight panel last week.This, not to mention Abu Ghraib, was all inevitable in a war that itself was an elaborate lie. With no weapons of mass destruction, no proof that Saddam Hussein was tied to 9/11, Al Qaeda, or an imminent threat himself, America was led by fiction into a disaster that has now claimed 3,351 US soldiers, 3,211 of the deaths coming AFTER Bush declared major combat operations to be OVER.The civilian toll will probably never be accurately known, since US military officials famously said "we don't do body counts." Numbers range from the conservative 60,000s of Iraq Body Count to the 600,000 of the medical journal Lancet. Last week, the United Nations criticized Iraqi officials for not providing civilian casualty figures. The United Nations estimates that the continuing violence claimed 34,452 civilian lives last year. The Iraqi government says the number was 12,357.Yesterday, Bush continued to do violence to history by going to Central Command in Tampa to once again string together 9/11 and Al Qaeda and Nazis and communists into Saddam and Iraq. Bush said, "Four years ago, we confronted a brutal tyrant who had used weapons of mass destruction, supported terrorists, invaded his neighbors, oppressed his people, and tested the resolve and the credibility of the United Nations." Four years later, we know what mission was truly accomplished. Bush destroyed the credibility of his presidency and degraded America's standing in the world for years to come. Whatever he tried to accomplish, America is saying the mission is over. Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper CompanySource: tinyurl.com/26kxww
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jul 11, 2007 15:04:01 GMT 4
Report: Wars cost US $12 billion a month By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 9, 9:38 PM ET WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say. All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion. The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers. For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006. The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates. The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion. Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat. But the estimates call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September. If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion. Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said. The latest estimates come as support for the war in Iraq among Bush's GOP allies in Congress is beginning to erode. Senior Republicans such as Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Richard Lugar of Indiana have called for a shift in strategy in Iraq and a battle over funding the war will resume in September, when Democrats in Congress begin work on a funding bill for the war. Congress approved $99 billion in war funding in May after a protracted battle and a Bush veto of an earlier measure over Democrats' attempt to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq. The report faults the Pentagon for using the Iraq war as a pretext for boosting the Pentagon's non-war budget by costs such as procurement, increasing the size of the military and procurement of replacement aircraft as war-related items. The new estimate comes as the White House and Democrats are fighting over spending bills for next year. That battle is over about $22 billion — almost the cost of two months' fighting in Iraq. "Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. [think about what $12 billion a month would mean to feeding our poor, educating our kids, helping the homeless, free medical care to US citizens, research for cancer and ways to save our planet... the list is endless...what we could do with all that cash, Nancy! Michelle]Source:news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_costs_12------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ U.S. Military Losses Hit 4,000 in Iraq, Afghanistan (Update1) By Robin Stringer July 9 (Bloomberg) -- Four thousand U.S. service members have died in U.S. President George W. Bush's ``war on terror'' in Iraq and Afghanistan 5 1/2 years after American forces ousted the Taliban in December 2001. A total of 3,596 have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Some 2,957 of that number were killed in action, according to the latest Department of Defense figures. More than 26,500 personnel have been wounded in that conflict, 11,959 of them so seriously they couldn't return to duty. In Afghanistan, 404 American personnel have died, of which 224 were killed in action. Those deaths include 61 personnel who died in Pakistan and Uzbekistan in support of the operation. Some 1,361 have been injured; 813 of them couldn't return to duty. In Iraq, an insurgency rages against U.S. and coalition forces. The first six months this year were the deadliest yet for the American military, with more than 580 killed. U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The U.S. accused the Taliban regime of hiding al-Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden, wanted for the worst terror attacks on U.S. soil. American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces are currently battling a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. Between 66,939 and 73,253 civilians have died in Iraq since March 2003, according to the Iraq Body Count Web site that counts casualties reported by at least two media outlets. To contact the reporter on this story: Robin Stringer in London at rstringer@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: July 9, 2007 12:51 EDT Source: www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aHIWBG4J_81I------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Official: Report says Iraq government hasn’t met any of its benchmarksASSOCIATED PRESS Article published Monday, July 9, 2007 WASHINGTON — A draft report to Congress on the war will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Iraq has met none of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration’s reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said today. One likely result of the report will be a vastly accelerated debate among President Bush’s top aides on withdrawing troops and scaling back the U.S. presence in Iraq. The “pivot point” for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush’s so-called “surge” plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said. A draft version of the report, expected to be presented to Congress on Thursday or Friday, circulated among various government agencies in Washington today. “The facts are not in question,” the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion. “The real question is how the White House proceeds with a post-surge strategy in light of the report.” The official said it is highly unlikely that Bush will withhold or suspend some aid to the Iraqis based on the report, as he can do under the law. As the White House prepared its first major progress report for Congress, war-weary Republicans are focusing their efforts on protecting unrelated anti-terrorism programs while Democrats are trying again to pass legislation ordering troop withdrawals. Simmering in the background is a growing sentiment among at least some Republicans that the U.S. strategy is failing and Bush should adopt a new policy before they must face their constituents during the August recess. The Senate began debate today on legislation that would authorize $649 billion in defense programs. By week’s end, senators are expected to vote on an amendment by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., that would order troop withdrawals to begin in four months, with the goal of completing the pullout by spring 2008. Source:toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070709/NEWS28/70709029
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Sept 12, 2007 10:35:48 GMT 4
Walsh says it's time to withdraw troopsErin Kelly Washington correspondent (September 11, 2007) — WASHINGTON — Rep. Jim Walsh, in a dramatic break with the White House, returned Monday from a trip to Iraq saying it's time to bring troops home and stop funding the war. The moderate Republican from Onondaga has struggled for months with conflicting emotions about the war. "Before I went, I was not prepared to say it's time to start bringing our troops home," Walsh said. "I am prepared to say that now. It's time." Walsh's announcement came as Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, told House members that the troop "surge" has made progress. But Walsh said he saw little evidence that much has changed in Iraq since he last visited four years ago. He said he hopes to meet with President Bush to convey his change of heart. Other members of the Rochester area's House delegation reacted to Petraeus' testimony largely along party lines, with Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-Clarence, Erie County, generally supportive of the recommendations and Democratic Reps. Louise Slaughter of Fairport and Mike Arcuri of Utica saying Petraeus painted an overly rosy picture. Rep. Randy Kuhl, R-Hammondsport, said he wants to read the testimony and wouldn't comment until today. "The testimony ... by Gen. Petraeus is nothing more than the predictable, cherry-picked information used to mask the reality of what is really happening in Iraq," said Slaughter. "Now that the U.S. military has made gains in its counterinsurgency strategy, the Iraqi government has a new opportunity to make things work. They've got to take hold of that opportunity," Reynolds said. "We simply cannot afford another year in Iraq," Arcuri said. EKELLY@gns.gannett.com Source: www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007709110353
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 4, 2007 17:31:07 GMT 4
Let's look at oil contracts [or wannabees] and links to the Bush Dynasty....MichelleBaker Botts Cuts an Iraqi Oil Deal -- and Draws a Backlash Both the U.S. and Iraqi governments are annoyed by a Baker oil deal in KurdistanBy Daphne Eviatar The American Lawyer November 26, 2007 Ever since oil first gushed in Texas, Houston-based Baker Botts [see article below..M] has represented wildcatters. While those deals were always risky, even Baker may not have anticipated that the deal made by the firm for its latest wildcatter -- Hunt Oil Co., a longtime client hungry for oil in Iraq -- was risking quite so much. In September, Baker lawyered a deal between Hunt and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In mid-November, the Iraqi Oil Minister announced that all oil companies that have cut deals with the KRG will be blacklisted. "Any company that has signed contracts without the approval of the federal authority of Iraq will not have any chance of working with the government of Iraq," oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani told reporters during OPEC meetings in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. "We warned the companies that there will be consequences... that Iraq will not allow its oil to be exported," Shahristani said. The deal was for exploration rights in northern Iraq. The Baker Botts team was led by Sean Korney, a Dubai-based partner with a record of representing energy companies buying up oil and gas rights around the globe. None were as controversial as the Hunt Oil rights, however. Not only was the deal made in a war zone, but Iraq is still working on oil resources legislation. Under the October 2005 Iraqi constitution, local oil is owned by "the Iraqi people." Neither Baker Botts nor Hunt Oil would comment on the deal or on the Iraqi government's latest pronouncements. Both the U.S. and Iraqi governments are annoyed by the Hunt contract. "Any deal [with the KRG] has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned," Iraqi oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani told reporters in September, even before he said in November that he'd bar the companies from working in the country. The agreements could "have no legal standing," added Thomas Casey, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of State, at an October briefing. The Bush administration also claims that the deal may hurt peace prospects in the region. Passing a national oil law that will cover Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish regions is one of the key "benchmarks" set by the Bush administration to measure progress in Iraq. And this deal, according to Casey, is not "helpful in terms of seeing a national oil law get passed." No one at Baker Botts would comment. Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee in Congress is investigating whether long-standing ties between Ray Hunt, the CEO of Hunt Oil, and the Bush administration (Hunt sat on the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) may have given Hunt access to classified information prior to the oil deal. The company denies that it relied on anything confidential. Hunt and Baker Botts aren't the only firms with their eyes on Iraq, home to the third-largest oil reserves in the world. "All major oil companies are taking a very close interest in the future potential in Iraq," says Mathew Kidwell, a partner in the Abu Dhabi office of Shearman & Sterling. "We have certainly had discussions with a number of our oil industry clients about the legal framework in Iraq and in the regions." He cites Kurdistan as having "the most immediate potential for foreign investment" in the area, mostly because "the security situation is much more robust" than in Sunni and Shiite areas. But uncertainty about the KRG's standing and fear of angering the central Iraqi government have so far kept the major international oil companies away. Nonetheless, the KRG has signed more than a dozen deals at this point with non-American companies. But the Hunt deal appears to be riskier than earlier ones. J. Jay Park, head of the oil and gas practice at Macleod Dixon in Calgary, negotiated a March 2006 contract between the KRG and the Canadian company Western Oil Sands Inc. He says that deal and others were explicitly ratified in the new Iraqi constitution. "The Hunt contract doesn't benefit from the constitutional guarantee that the earlier contracts benefit from," he says. "The legal regime that provides the additional detail you're looking for hasn't been fully defined yet." Until Iraq passes a national oil law, Park says, "there remains doubt as to how petroleum authority is to be applied." Despite the doubts, Hunt is busy generating facts on the ground in Iraq. Company engineers began conducting seismic surveys in the fall, and hope to drill their first exploration well next year. The political questions remain real: When will Iraq pass a national oil law? Will Kurdistan win some or all of its independence? But for the wildcatters and their law firm, oil is too important to be left in the control of the diplomats. Source: www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?hubtype=Inside&id=1196071456443------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Man at Their SideBy Robert Bryce, The Nation. Posted September 28, 2004. The Corleones had Robert Duvall as their consigliere. The Bushes have James A. Baker III. The induction of George W. Bush into the Texas crony network can be traced to a precise date: June 6, 1962. On that date, the gregarious 15-year-old went to work in the mailroom of Houston's oldest and most prestigious law firm, Baker Botts. Four decades later, the financial/political symbiosis between the Bushes and Baker Botts is stronger than ever. Indeed, no law firm in America has profited more from its association with the two Bush administrations than Baker Botts. Much of that influence stems from the firm's patriarch, the silver-maned, silver-tongued former secretary of state, James A. Baker III. And now that Baker has joined George W. Bush's campaign – he is leading the negotiations with the Kerry campaign on the presidential debates – it's assured that he and a battalion of Baker Botts barristers are ready to man the ramparts in the event of another Florida recount scenario. Nearly four years have passed since Baker stridently proclaimed that "the vote in Florida has been counted and then recounted. Gov. George W. Bush was the winner of the vote. He was also the winner of the recount." It scarcely matters now that Baker's statement wasn't true: When Baker made that pronouncement, on November 11, 2000, the recount had not even begun in two of the four counties the Gore campaign had targeted. The important thing was that Baker stuck to the script. He also kept the entire Bush legal team – which included several Baker Botts lawyers – focused and determined to win at all costs. Shortly after Bush prevailed at the US Supreme Court in 2000, Baker told an interviewer, "I think all this talk about legitimacy is way overblown." James A. Baker III has never doubted that the Bushes deserve to live in the White House. Their ties go back to the 1950s, when George H.W. Bush met Baker on the tennis courts at the Houston Country Club. At about the same time, Baker Botts began handling the legal work for Bush's company, Zapata Petroleum. It was a reasonable choice: Baker Botts is the second-oldest law firm west of the Mississippi. And since its founding, it has consistently represented the looters, polluters and plutocrats. Baker's great-grandfather Judge James A. Baker made his reputation by representing the infamous railroad robber baron Jay Gould, the man who tried to corner the gold market in 1869. Gould's shenanigans led to "Black Friday," when gold prices collapsed, financial panic ensued and the reputation of President Ulysses S. Grant, who had been duped by Gould, was ruined. After aligning itself with Gould, the law firm began specializing in railroad law. When oil began dominating Texas, Baker Botts began working for Big Oil.In 1957 Baker was prevented from working at the law firm that employed his father, grandfather and great-grandfather thanks to the firm's new anti-nepotism rule, a policy adopted during his father's tenure. But the nepotism policy was rescinded when the newly out of work former secretary of state returned to Houston. In fact, the firm welcomed him – at a salary reported to be $1 million per year. In addition to his job at Baker Botts, Baker also began selling his influence to select corporations. Just thirty-three days after Bill Clinton moved into the White House, Baker, in addition to his duties at Baker Botts, took a job lobbying for Enron in post-war Kuwait and elsewhere.
Baker's history in the diplomatic arena has apparently helped Baker Botts land a surfeit of lucrative international deals involving everything from Russian platinum and Caspian oil to representing Halliburton and the Saudi royal family. In the past few years, Baker Botts – which employs about 650 lawyers, has had annual revenues of about $365 million and operates offices in Austin, Baku, Dallas, London, Moscow, New York, Riyadh and Washington, DC – has become a major player in big international energy projects, on a par with much bigger international firms like White & Case and Baker & McKenzie.As soon as George W. Bush got into the White House, a lawyer from a big international firm told me, Baker Botts went from "being a well-regarded firm with experience in the United States and Latin America to being everywhere." That near-omnipresence includes Russia, where it has snared some powerful clients. Last year, Baker Botts advised Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel MMC in its purchase of Stillwater Mining Company, a Montana-based producer of palladium and platinum. Controlled by a secretive Russian oligarch named Vladimir Potanin, Norilsk faced obstacles at the Treasury Department and Federal Trade Commission. Treasury had to approve foreign purchases of strategic assets, and the FTC had to agree that Norilsk's purchase of Stillwater would not violate antitrust rules – even though it allowed the Russian firm to control more than 50 percent of the world's market for palladium and platinum. (The two are vital ingredients in both catalytic converters, which reduce pollution from automobiles, and in fuel cells, the pollution-free devices that turn hydrogen into electricity.) Baker Botts convinced the Treasury Department to approve the deal in just one month. The FTC accelerated its approval process and gave the nod to the deal after just eight months. The speed of the approval left some FTC watchers agog. But then Baker Botts had good help. One of the lead lawyers on the deal was Diana Dietrich, who before working for the law firm had been a lead litigator in the FTC's antitrust division. It may be pure coincidence, but the FTC announced approval of the Norilsk deal on June 16, 2003, just one day before Baker gave a speech in Moscow on the importance of Russian-U.S. relations. The event was co-hosted by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.In 2003 Baker Botts advised Houston-based Marathon Oil on its acquisition of Khanty Mansiysk Oil Corporation, which produces oil in western Siberia. The law firm has also carved itself a foothold in the oil-rich Caspian Sea region. It was lead adviser to a consortium of oil companies that wrapped up a $3.5 billion finance package in February for one of the world's biggest energy projects, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Critical support for the pipeline came from two U.S. government-backed agencies, the Export Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The pipeline, which will carry one million barrels of oil a day from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, faced fierce opposition from environmental groups. But Baker Botts and the oil companies prevailed. Baker Botts lawyers wrote all the regulations governing the pipeline, overriding domestic laws, including the environmental policies of the nations of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. In a recent Los Angeles Times story, James A. Baker IV, the son of the former secretary of state and a partner in the firm, was asked if Baker Botts's business in the Caspian was profiting from his father's connections. The younger Baker replied that his father had been "reserved in his business development activities, but it would be disingenuous to say it hasn't been an asset." Over the past nine months, George W. Bush has been using the elder Baker as an asset. Last December, Bush appointed him to be his personal envoy on the matter of Iraq's huge foreign debt. Baker has been negotiating with several foreign governments, including the German and the French. But the key player in the Iraq debt sweepstakes is Saudi Arabia, which holds more Iraqi debt than any other country.
Baker has a long history in Riyadh. He started traveling there while he was Ronald Reagan's treasury secretary. As secretary of state in the first Bush administration, he was a regular visitor to the House of Saud. After that, Baker and the senior Bush both joined the Carlyle Group, a wealthy merchant bank, which has become something of a retirement haven for former conservative bigwigs, including Reagan defense secretary Frank Carlucci and former British Prime Minister John Major. In 1993 Baker joined Carlyle as an equity partner and senior counselor. Bush joined later on a consulting basis. One of the primary jobs that Baker and Bush had at Carlyle was raising cash – and they were particularly adept at getting it from the Saudis.
Bush and Baker helped convince their pal and hunting buddy Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States, to put money into Carlyle. Other Saudis who invested included two sons of the wealthy Saudi banker Khaled bin Mahfouz. A few million more came from the family of Osama bin Laden.Baker doesn't like to discuss his business dealings. I caught up with him last fall at a high-dollar benefit at Rice University in Houston for the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. (Prince Bandar gave $100,000 for the black-tie event, which raised millions for the Baker Institute). I asked Baker if a published report – which estimated that his stake in Carlyle was worth $180 million – was accurate. Irritated, he replied, "That's bullshit. You print that." When asked how much his Carlyle stake was worth, he replied, yelling, "That's for me to know and you to not know" and refused further questions. On Aug. 12, his representative told me that Baker would not be available to answer questions for this article "due to his travel commitments." Although Baker now works as an official representative of the United States, none of his personal financial information is available to taxpayers. That's because the White House has deemed him a "special government employee" – a status that shields his financial statements. It's up to the White House general counsel to determine if Baker has any conflicts of interest. Thus far, Bush administration lawyers haven't found any – despite the fact that Baker Botts represents Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Occidental, all of which have major business interests in the Persian Gulf. Nor was it considered a conflict for Baker to be a partner in Carlyle. For its part, Baker Botts has said that Baker has forsworn his share of any partnership fees from firm activities that might pose a conflict with his job as debt envoy. In other words, Baker and his cronies are telling the world, "trust us."Hugh Ray, a partner at the Houston law firm of Andrews Kurth, the firm that employed Baker before he went into politics, says that Baker Botts lawyers are not doing anything improper. And they're not bragging about their connections to the Bush administration to get new business. Instead, says Ray, they are getting a lot of their work "by default." He adds, "They are the only ones I know who have an active energy practice in the Middle East. They are on the ground in Riyadh, and they have a huge advantage that way. The reason they have a willingness to take a leap like that is because of their contacts. They are connected in the Middle East." That's a bit of an understatement. Several other big firms, including White & Case and two huge Texas-based firms – Akin Gump and Vinson & Elkins – are also active in the Persian Gulf. But thanks to the Bush-Baker symbiosis, Baker Botts appears to have closer ties to the Saudi royal family than any of the other firms. When two of the most powerful members of the House of Saud – the Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, and his brother, Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the governor of Riyadh – needed lawyers to defend them against a lawsuit brought against them and other Saudis by survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sultan and Salman hired Baker Botts. The firm categorically denies that it was hired because of any political influence it might have. Nevertheless, Baker Botts is not shy about touting Baker's experience to clients interested in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. On its web site, the firm says clients can use Baker as "an additional resource on which to rely regarding their activities in the region." Nor is it shy about trying to cash in on the expertise of Robert Jordan, who is the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Within a few months of moving into the White House, George W. Bush named Jordan – the Baker Botts lawyer who had represented him in the early 1990s while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating Bush's sale of stock in Harken Energy – to be his representative in Riyadh. Jordan quit his post in Riyadh earlier this year. When he returned to Dallas in April, Baker Botts rehired him and promptly put out a press release saying that Jordan's "wealth of knowledge relating to international matters and key development initiatives in the Middle East will be a great asset to our firm." Meanwhile, back in Houston, Baker Botts is taking care of another charter member of the Texas crony network: Halliburton. Unfortunately for the oil services giant, Dick Cheney's ineptitude as CEO has left it with a panoply of legal problems. These include allegations that it engaged in improper accounting (Halliburton recently agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to the SEC to settle that problem); ongoing investigations by the Pentagon into apparent overbilling for its logistics work in Iraq; and a wide-ranging investigation by French and American authorities into allegations that Halliburton employees paid bribes to secure a contract for a liquefied natural gas plant in Nigeria. Much of the work for Halliburton is being handled by James Doty, a partner at Baker Botts's Washington office. During the first Bush administration, Doty spent two years as the general counsel for the SEC. In response to questions about its dealings with Baker Botts, Halliburton issued a statement that said Baker Botts is "one of the best firms in the country and, as such, has a great many exceptional lawyers who, because of their skill, attract prominent clients, of whom we are proud to be included." Of course Baker Botts employs excellent lawyers. No doubt about it. It's also true that Halliburton's alliance with Baker Botts provides yet another example of how the Texas crony network looks after its own. On Sept. 2 the Houston Chronicle was the first to report that Baker was joining George W. Bush's campaign. Baker – who has played a key role in six of the last seven presidential elections, including all four of the races in which a man named Bush has been a candidate – was chosen to joust with Democrat Vernon Jordan over the rules and format for the presidential debates. Now that that job is done, Baker will surely continue being the Bush family's consigliere. If the younger Bush's campaign begins to falter, or if there's controversy after the polls close, count on Baker to re-emerge as Bush's field marshal. And if Baker can help secure another quadrennium in the White House for the Bushes, Baker Botts will – once again – reap the benefits. Source: www.alternet.org/election04/20012/?page=entire
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Dec 11, 2007 14:05:20 GMT 4
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED FOR BUSH/CHENEY ADMINISTRATION. They're moving forward with oil deals despite the lack of a new national oil law....MichelleAnalysis: Big Oil to sign Iraq deals soon Published: Dec. 6, 2007 at 2:00 PM By BEN LANDO UPI Energy Editor WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Big Oil's big dreams are close to coming true as Iraq's Oil Ministry prepares deals for the country's largest oil fields with terms that aren't necessarily what companies were hoping for but considered a foot in the door of the world's most promising oil sector. Iraq's proven oil reserves are only smaller than those in Saudi Arabia and Iran -- and the country is only about 30 percent explored. Iraq produces about 2.4 million barrels per day, a recent increase from the 2 million bpd post-invasion average, but far below what its reserves could handle. Its oil sector is suffering from decades of Saddam Hussein-era mismanagement, U.N. sanctions and the effects of the current war. The decision of how to develop a resource that provides for nearly the entire federal budget is political and controversial. To each side's alarm, the national government will rely on a Saddam-era law and Iraq's Kurdish region is signing deals on its own. Details of negotiations between the ministry and international oil majors are being kept quiet, though media are picking up on pieces of deal-making. MarketWatch reports executives from BP and Shell were to meet with Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani following Wednesday's meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Abu Dhabi. The global energy information firm Platts reports top ministry and company officials are to meet in Amman this week. Shahristani himself dropped hints to United Press International in a recent interview. He said he's moving forward with oil deals despite the lack of a new national oil law, a draft of which has been stalled in negotiations for more than a year. "This has nothing to do with the national oil law. There is no timeline. Whenever we finish our discussions we'll just sign the contracts," he told UPI on the sidelines of the OPEC heads of state summit last month. "This is basically technical-support contracts," he said, adding the contracts will not be the result of a bidding process. "Selected companies will offer us technical support that we need to develop our producing fields." Develop producing fields? "Yes, only." With the companies who are helping to, who have been studying them, who have been doing this work? "Yes. Exactly. That's right." How many fields? "We will not be announcing anything until we sign the contracts." Super giants? "They are the super giants, yes." Super giant fields are those with at least 5 billion barrels in reserves, and in Iraq include the Kirkuk, Majnoon, Rumaila North and South, West Qurna and Zubair fields. Reserves of the Nahr Umr and East Baghdad fields may also reach 5 billion barrels, and there are many large producing fields rumored to be on the negotiating table. The world's largest oil companies are keen on entering Iraq, as their own booked reserves decline and a growing bulk of global reserves are under nationalized systems. Oil company officials met with U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, prior to the war and since, to discuss contracts for Iraq's oil. Former top officials of the companies were tasked by the U.S.-led occupation with advising the Oil Ministry. "This means that it is pay-off time for the majors that have been running training courses for Oil Ministry personnel, reservoir surveys, drawn up work-plans and given general advice during the past years," said Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst for Global Insight. "It is clever." He said forgoing bidding allows the ministry to move quickly, as well as prove wrong critics, such as the Iraqi Kurds. According to insiders to whom UPI talked recently as well as media reports, Shell, which produced a technical study of Kirkuk in 2005, wants a deal for the field. BP wants one for Rumaila, which it studied last year. Shell and BHP Billiton are angling for the Missan field in the south. ExxonMobil is interested in the southern Zubair field while the Sabha and Luhais fields are being targeted by Dome and Anadarko Petroleum. ConocoPhillips is talking with the ministry about the West Qurna oil field, officials with Russian major Lukoil told Dow Jones Newswires. Lukoil, of which Conoco is a 20 percent shareholder, had a deal with Saddam Hussein for West Qurna in the 1990s, but it was cancelled prior to the war. Chevron and Total have teamed up in a bid for the Majnoon field. Less than 1 percent of Iraq's proven reserves are located in the area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government, but limited successful exploration and geological formations have the KRG excited with prospects. Bolstered by contempt for central control and the sluggish pace of the oil law, the KRG has passed its own regional oil law and signed more than 20 exploration and production deals with international oil firms. Shahristani has called the KRG deals "illegal" and a dispute is slowly brewing in Baghdad. None of the major companies has signed with the KRG, fearing being blacklisted by Baghdad from the rest of Iraq's bounty. Shahristani, growing impatient himself, has started his negotiations, though the KRG claims the Saddam-era law is illegitimate. Washington, which maintains an emphasis on approving a new oil law, has given Shahristani its blessing. Iraq's oil sector was fully nationalized in 1972 and power was concentrated in the hands of the Iraqi National Oil Company. INOC is temporarily defunct, and its role has been incorporated into the ministry. The ministry can sign the service contract deals on its own, though it may need to get Cabinet approval first. But if it were to sign any risk or concession contracts, such as production-sharing contracts like the KRG, it would need parliamentary approval under the Saddam-era law. And while service contracts would be highly profitable for companies, Big Oil wants risk contracts. Such deals are usually long term, covering its exploration costs and guaranteeing a profit if oil is found, and allowing them to put the reserves it discovers on the books, a boon in Wall Street's eyes. Aside from security -- which if it stays bad would make the deals costlier for Iraq -- there's relatively little risk in exploring for crude in Iraq. Historically it has been easy to find, inexpensive to produce and top quality. Supporters of the popular nationalized structure in Iraq -- led by the powerful oil unions -- and campaigners who fear the ultimate end to the war is the heist of Iraq's oil wealth are against risk contracts. Hassan Jumaa Awad, president of the umbrella Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, told UPI in London last week that service contracts bringing new technology and training will suffice. "National expertise and resources," he said, "are capable of enhancing production in the oil industry." (blando@upi.com)Source:tinyurl.com/2ho87r
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jan 29, 2008 18:47:38 GMT 4
Subject: 100 Years in IraqDate: 1/28/2008 12:08:05 PM Eastern Standard Time From: russ@progressivepatriotsfund.com Greetings,
Council for a Livable World[/i], a progressive organization working on foreign policy issues, has always been one of my strongest advocates in adopting sensible national security policies. When the Senate voted last year to set a deadline for withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq, Council for a Livable World was a critical ally, working with Senate leaders to put an end to the tragic and misguided war in Iraq. Almost five years into this disastrous war, President Bush, his Republican allies and Iraqi officials are talking about occupying Iraq for another decade - or even longer. Click here to join Council for a Livable World in rejecting the permanent presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.www.clw.org/action/petitions/no_permanent_presence?source=web_clw0108The American public wants the United States out of Iraq, but President Bush refuses to listen. When asked on January 11th if the U.S. presence in Iraq would continue for another ten years, President Bush responded "It could easily be that. Absolutely." The Iraqi defense minister agreed a few days later, saying that Iraq would need American help to defend its own borders until at least 2018. According to Council for a Livable World, keeping just one third of our current troop levels in Iraq through 2018 pushes the cost of the war to over $1 trillion. And many, many more American and Iraqi lives lost. Please join me by clicking here to support Council for a Livable World in their fight today.www.clw.org/action/petitions/no_permanent_presence?source=web_clw0108Sincerely, Russ FeingoldUnited States Senator Honorary Chair, Patriots Progressive Fund
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Feb 14, 2008 14:02:12 GMT 4
The Chicken Doves Elected to end the war, Democrats have surrendered to Bush on Iraq and betrayed the peace movement for their own political ends MATT TAIBBI Posted Feb 21, 2008 12:00 AM Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.Solidifying his reputation as one of the biggest pussies in U.S. political history, Reid explained his decision to refocus his party's energies on topics other than ending the war by saying he just couldn't fit Iraq into his busy schedule. "We have the presidential election," Reid said recently. "Our time is really squeezed." There was much public shedding of tears among the Democratic leadership, as Reid, Pelosi and other congressional heavyweights expressed deep sadness that their valiant charge up the hill of change had been thwarted by circumstances beyond their control — that, as much as they would love to continue trying to end the catastrophic Iraq deal, they would now have to wait until, oh, 2009 to try again. "We'll have a new president," said Pelosi. "And I do think at that time we'll take a fresh look at it." Pelosi seemed especially broken up about having to surrender on Iraq, sounding like an NFL coach in a postgame presser, trying with a straight face to explain why he punted on first-and-goal. "We just didn't have any plays we liked down there," said the coach of the 0-15 Dems. "Sometimes you just have to play the field-position game...." In reality, though, Pelosi and the Democrats were actually engaged in some serious point-shaving. Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation's leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. "Our focus is on the Republicans," one Democratic apparatchik in charge of the anti-war coalition declared. "How can we juice up attacks on them?" The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what's to come if they win the White House. And if we don't pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there's still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame.The controversy over the Democratic "strategy" to end the war basically comes down to whom you believe. According to the Reid-Pelosi version of history, the Democrats tried hard to force President Bush's hand by repeatedly attempting to tie funding for the war to a scheduled withdrawal. Last spring they tried to get him to eat a timeline and failed to get the votes to override a presidential veto. Then they retreated and gave Bush his money, with the aim of trying again after the summer to convince a sufficient number of Republicans to cross the aisle in support of a timeline. But in September, Gen. David Petraeus reported that Bush's "surge" in Iraq was working, giving Republicans who might otherwise have flipped sufficient cover to continue supporting the war. The Democrats had no choice, the legend goes, but to wait until 2009, in the hopes that things would be different under a Democratic president. Democrats insist that the reason they can't cut off the money for the war, despite their majority in both houses, is purely political. "George Bush would be on TV every five minutes saying that the Democrats betrayed the troops," says Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an Independent who voted against the war but caucuses with the Democrats. Then he glumly adds another reason. "Also, it just wasn't going to happen." Why it "just wasn't going to happen" is the controversy. In and around the halls of Congress, the notion that the Democrats made a sincere effort to end the war meets with, at best, derisive laughter. Though few congressional aides would think of saying so on the record, in private many dismiss their party's lame anti-war effort as an absurd dog-and-pony show, a calculated attempt to score political points without ever being serious about bringing the troops home."Yeah, the amount of expletives that flew in our office alone was unbelievable," says an aide to one staunchly anti-war House member. "It was all about the public show. Reid and Pelosi would say they were taking this tough stand against Bush, but if you actually looked at what they were sending to a vote, it was like Swiss cheese. Full of holes." In the House, some seventy Democrats joined the Out of Iraq caucus and repeatedly butted heads with Reid and Pelosi, arguing passionately for tougher measures to end the war. The fight left some caucus members bitter about the party's failure. Rep. Barbara Lee of California was one of the first to submit an amendment to cut off funding unless it was tied to an immediate withdrawal. "I couldn't even get it through the Rules Committee in the spring," Lee says. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a fellow caucus member, says Democrats should have refused from the beginning to approve any funding that wasn't tied to a withdrawal. "If we'd been bold the minute we got control of the House — and that's why we got the majority, because the people of this country wanted us out of Iraq — if we'd been bold, even if we lost the votes, we would have gained our voice." An honest attempt to end the war, say Democrats like Woolsey and Lee, would have involved forcing Bush to execute his veto and allowing the Republicans to filibuster all they wanted. Force a showdown, in other words, and use any means necessary to get the bloodshed ended. "Can you imagine Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert taking no for an answer the way Reid and Pelosi did on Iraq?" asks the House aide in the expletive-filled office. "They'd find a way to get the votes. They'd get it done somehow." But any suggestion that the Democrats had an obligation to fight this good fight infuriates the bund of hedging careerists in charge of the party. In fact, nothing sums up the current Democratic leadership better than its vitriolic criticisms of those recalcitrant party members who insist on interpreting their 2006 mandate as a command to actually end the war. Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee and a key Pelosi-Reid ally, lambasted anti-war Democrats who "didn't want to get specks on those white robes of theirs." Obey even berated a soldier's mother who begged him to cut off funds for the war, accusing her and her friends of "smoking something illegal." Rather than use the vast power they had to end the war, Democrats devoted their energy to making sure that "anti-war activism" became synonymous with "electing Democrats." Capitalizing on America's desire to end the war, they hijacked the anti-war movement itself, filling the ranks of peace groups with loyal party hacks. Anti-war organizations essentially became a political tool for the Democrats — one operated from inside the Beltway and devoted primarily to targeting Republicans.This supposedly grass-roots "anti-war coalition" met regularly on K Street, the very capital of top-down Beltway politics. At the forefront of the groups are Thomas Matzzie and Brad Woodhouse of Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq, the leader of the anti-war lobby. Along with other K Street crusaders, the two have received iconic treatment from The Washington Post and The New York Times, both of which depicted the anti-war warriors as young idealist-progressives in shirtsleeves, riding a mirthful spirit into political combat — changing the world is fun! But what exactly are these young idealists campaigning for? At its most recent meeting, the group eerily echoed the Reid-Pelosi "squeezed for time" mantra: Retreat from any attempt to end the war and focus on electing Democrats. "There was a lot of agreement that we can draw distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans," a spokeswoman for Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq announced. What the Post and the Times failed to note is that much of the anti-war group's leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes — whose partners, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes, served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). In addition, these anti-war leaders continue to consult for many of the same U.S. senators whom they need to pressure in order to end the war. This is the kind of conflict of interest that would normally be an embarrassment in the activist community.
Worst of all is the case of Woodhouse, who came to Hildebrand Tewes after years of working as the chief mouthpiece for the DSCC, where he campaigned actively to re-elect Democratic senators who supported the Iraq War in the first place. Anyone bothering to look — and clearly the Post and the Times did not before penning their ardent bios of Woodhouse — would have found the youthful idealist bragging to newspapers before the Iraq invasion about the pro-war credentials of North Carolina candidate Erskine Bowles. "No one has been stronger in this race in supporting President Bush in the War on Terror and his efforts to effect a regime change in Iraq," boasted the future "anti-war" activist Woodhouse.With guys like this in charge of the anti-war movement, much of what has passed for peace activism in the past year was little more than a thinly veiled scheme to use popular discontent over the war to unseat vulnerable Republicans up for re-election in 2008. David Sirota, a former congressional staffer whose new book, The Uprising, excoriates the Democrats for their failure to end the war, expresses disgust at the strategy of targeting only Republicans. "The whole idea is based on this insane fiction that there is no such thing as a pro-war Democrat," he says. "Their strategy allows Democrats to take credit for being against the war without doing anything to stop it. It's crazy." Justin Raimondo, the uncompromising editorial director of Antiwar.com, regrets contributing twenty dollars to Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq. "Not only did they use it to target Republicans," he says, "they went after the ones who were on the fence about Iraq." The most notorious case involved Lincoln Chafee, a moderate from Rhode Island who lost his Senate seat in 2006. Since then, Chafee has taken shots at Democrats like Reid, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, all of whom campaigned against him despite having voted for the war themselves. "Look, I understand partisan politics," says Chafee, who now concedes that voters were correct to punish him for his war vote. "I just find it amusing that those who helped get us into this mess now say we need to change the Senate — because we're in a mess." The really tragic thing about the Democratic surrender on Iraq is that it's now all but guaranteed that the war will be off the table during the presidential campaign. Once again — it happened in 2002, 2004 and 2006 — the Democrats have essentially decided to rely on the voters to give them credit for being anti-war, despite the fact that, for all the noise they've made to the contrary, in the end they've done nothing but vote for war and cough up every dime they've been asked to give, every step of the way.Even beyond the war, the Democrats have repeatedly gone limp-dick every time the Bush administration so much as raises its voice. Most recently, twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to grant immunity to phone companies who participated in Bush's notorious wiretapping program. Before that, Democrats caved in and confirmed Mike Mukasey as attorney general after he kept his middle finger extended and refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Democrats fattened by Wall Street also got cold feet about upsetting the country's gazillionaires, refusing to close a tax loophole that rewarded hedge-fund managers with a tax rate less than half that paid by ordinary citizens.But the war is where they showed their real mettle. Before the 2006 elections, Democrats told us we could expect more specifics on their war plans after Election Day. Nearly two years have passed since then, and now they are once again telling us to wait until after an election to see real action to stop the war. In the meantime, of course, we're to remember that they're the good guys, the Republicans are the real enemy, and, well, go Hillary! Semper fi! Yay, team! How much of this bullshit are we going to take? How long are we supposed to give the Reids and Pelosis and Hillarys of the world credit for wanting, deep down in their moldy hearts, to do the right thing? Look, fuck your hearts, OK? Just get it done. Because if you don't, sooner or later this con is going to run dry. It may not be in '08, but it'll be soon. Even Americans can't be fooled forever. Source:www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18349197/the_chicken_doves
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Mar 3, 2008 13:42:00 GMT 4
Finally! Dick Cheney's prediction of being greeted by the Iraqi people with flowers has come true....except it isn't for 'US'...MichelleAhmadinejad welcomed heartily in IraqMARK MACKINNON From Monday's Globe and Mail March 2, 2008 at 9:53 PM EST BAGHDAD — It's a damning indication of how poorly things have gone for the United States during its five-year misadventure in Iraq that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can drive in broad daylight though this war-ravaged city and spend the night at the presidential palace, but George W. Bush can't.Mr. Ahmadinejad was greeted with lavish ceremony yesterday as he became the first Iranian President to visit Baghdad, a trip some said reflected Iran's great and growing power in Iraq and how severely the U.S. effort to remake Iraq into a Western-friendly democracy has gone awry.Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died since the war began in 2003, but Iraq's U.S.-backed government warmly welcomed Washington's No. 1 enemy with flowers and a band.Apparently ignoring repeated U.S. charges that Iran is destabilizing his country, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani smiled broadly as he greeted Mr. Ahmadinejad outside his palace. Hailing a new era in ties between their states, the two men clasped hands and exchanged traditional kisses on the cheeks before walking together down a red carpet to review an honour guard as a military band played the two national anthems. Despite the presence of 157,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the visit left the impression that Iran's President now feels more comfortable in Baghdad than his U.S. counterpart does. Unlike Mr. Bush's cloak-and-dagger visits here — fly-in trips to heavily guarded U.S. military bases that only last a few hours, often with no advance notice given to even the Iraqi government — Mr. Ahmadinejad's schedule was announced days earlier. He spent last night at Mr. Talabani's palace, across the Tigris River from the fortified Green Zone that houses the massive new U.S. embassy. The United States severed ties with Iran in 1980 after Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the staff hostage. Some former hostages have alleged that they remember Mr. Ahmadinejad as one of the hostage-takers, an accusation he denies. The Iranian leader did travel to the Green Zone to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, however, a trip that would have necessitated him passing through a series of U.S.-controlled checkpoints. The visit was seen as an effort to bolster Mr. al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government. The pan-Arab as-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported yesterday that Iran was planning to help the Iraq administration with as much as $1-billion in interest-free loans that would go toward reconstruction projects to be carried out by Iranian firms. Iraqi officials confirmed yesterday that such an offer was discussed during the visit. Mr. Ahmadinejad is to return to Tehran today. Mr. Ahmadinejad brushed off U.S. accusations that Iran, which has a Shia majority, had been supporting Iraqi Shia militias in their deadly sectarian warfare against Iraq's Sunni minority. The Iranian leader said it was ridiculous for President Bush to be accusing others of interfering in Iraq when it was the United States that invaded the country in 2003, sparking the violence that has since taken tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lives. "We tell Mr. Bush that accusing others without evidence will increase the problems in the region and will not solve them," Mr. Ahmadinejad said at a press conference alongside Mr. al-Maliki. "The Americans have to understand the facts of the region. The Iraqi people do not like America." Yesterday's visit was even more significant given the acrimonious history between Iran and Iraq, which fought a long and bloody war from 1980 to 1988 that left upwards of a million people dead and saw the first battlefield use of chemical weapons since the First World War. The United States backed Iraq, which was ruled at the time by Saddam Hussein, with weapons and money during the war. The eventual U.S. decision to depose Mr. Hussein, a Sunni dictator, set off a chain reaction that has seen Iraq's once-oppressed Shia majority rise to power, setting off the brutal civil conflict between the country's Sunni and Shia communities. Joost Hiltermann, a regional analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, noted that the groups now in power in Iraq, including key Shia and Kurdish political factions, are some of same groups that allied themselves with Tehran during the conflict while the United States was supporting Mr. Hussein. Many Iraqi Shia leaders lived in Iran during the war, while Mr. Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, speaks fluent Farsi. "There was always a contradiction in American policy in Iraq," he said. "If you want to turn Iraq into a democracy, you're going to bring Iran's friends to power. "If people in Washington are surprised [at the reception for Mr. Ahmadinejad] it's because they didn't understand what they were getting into." Source:www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080302.wiraqi03/BNStory/International/
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