IMPEACHABLE AMNESIA

The same old questions:
Who do you trust?
Who do believe?
Former C.I.A. Director George Tenet said that he warned Condoleeza Rice of impending Al-Qaeda attacks.

He maintains that in the summer of 2001, he sought a meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at which he presented a briefing. As he recalled to "60 Minutes," "Essentially, the briefing says, there are gonna be multiple spectacular attacks against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass casualties are a likelihood." He told "60 Minutes" that his message to her was: "We need to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan now. We need to move to the offensive." Rice has denied that she received any such specific information or suggestions from Tenet.

By Juan Cole
salon.com
April 30, 2007

If it's not denial then it's the Gonzo reply:
I DON'T RECALL.
But when Ms. Mushroom Cloud Lady Rice is under oath next month, maybe she will sing a different tune.

Apr. 25 - U.S. Democratic lawmakers voted to subpoena Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about administration justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
On a party-line vote of 21-10, the House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee directed Rice to appear before the panel next month.
Republicans accused Democrats of a "fishing expedition." But Democrats said they want Rice to explain what she knew about administration's warnings, later proven false, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for nuclear arms.
© Reuters 2007

If all of this was not so tragic it would be funny.
But it is a tragi-comedy of epic proportions.
Ignore the warnings for the 9-11 attacks.
THEN BOMB IRAQ!
How stupid!
And wrong!
How impeachable.

Another Historic Step On Impeachment

Sparked by an insurgency among delegates, the California Democratic Party has taken an historic step forward on the issue of impeachment. In a resolution affirmed by the full state party convention Sunday, the Democrats called on the U.S. Congress to use its subpoena power to investigate misdeeds of President Bush and Vice President Cheney – and to hold the Administration accountable “with appropriate remedies and punishment, including impeachment.” The delegate insurgency was coordinated by Progressive Democrats of America and its allies. While Speaker Pelosi had declared impeachment “off the table,” the Democratic Party rank-and-file has demonstrated its commitment to putting the issue “on” the table. And it’s no longer just the rank-and-file: Even among the members of the convention’s Resolutions Committee (appointed by the California Party chair), the impeachment resolution was the top vote-getter (tied with one other resolution). Coming on the heels of mass actions and resolutions across the country in support of impeachment, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s introduction of Articles of Impeachment against Cheney, this action by the powerful California Democratic Party builds on the pro-impeachment momentum. The resolution refers to Bush and Cheney having acted in a manner “subversive of the Constitution” by. . . using false information to justify the invasion of Iraq authorizing “the torture of prisoners of war” “authorizing wiretaps on U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant” “disclosing the name of an undercover CIA operative” suspending “the historic Writ of Habeas Corpus by ordering the indefinite detention of so-called enemy combatants” “signing statements used to ignore or circumvent portions of over 750 Congressional statutes” The resolution ends by calling for “vigorous investigation” and “appropriate remedies and punishment, including impeachment.” This action represents the successful culmination of PDA’s one-month, eleven-city barnstorming tour across California – aimed at putting impeachment and ending the occupation of Iraq at the top of the Party’s agenda. www.commondreams.org April 30, 2007

WANTED: A NEW DICTATOR

"Mr. Bush has hardly given up the habit of stonewalling Congress, or shown that he has learned the limits of his power. The war in Iraq not only continues, but Mr. Bush is escalating it and repeating many of the same myths about Saddam Hussein. The country does not need any more myths. It needs answers."
New York Times
Editorial: Answers Needed
April 29, 2007

Wanted:

A new dictator for Iraq.

Someone who will take the reins and restore order, water and electricity.

Gee…didn’t Bush and Dick just hang a dictator?

We should not forget that the U.S. government befriended the Butcher of Baghdad Saddam Hussein.

We should not forget that the C.I.A. helped install Saddam Hussein.

We should not forget that the U.S. turned a blind-eye and was as silent as a spider when Saddam used chemical WMD on Kurds and Iranians.

Some of whose WMD components came from the good Ol' U.S.A.:

How America armed Iraq

The Sunday Herald [Glasgow, Scotland]

June 14, 2004

Under the successive presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the USA sold nuclear, chemical and biological weapons technology to Saddam Hussein.

In the early 1990s, UN inspectors told the US Senate committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American export policy -- that they had “identified many US-manufactured items exported pursuant of licenses issued by the US department of commerce that were used to further Iraq’s chemical and nuclear weapons development and missile delivery system development programs”.

In 1992, the committee began investigating “US chemical and biological warfare-related dual-use exports to Iraq”. It found that 17 individual shipments totaling some 80 batches of biomaterial were sent to Iraq during the Reagan years.

These included two batches of anthrax and two batches of botulism being sent to the Iraqi ministry of higher education on May 2, 1986; one batch each of salmonella and E.Coli sent to the Iraqi state company for drug industries on August 31, 1987.

Other shipments from the US went to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the department of biology at the University of Basra in November 1989; the department of microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the ministry of health in April 1985 and Officers’ City military complex in Baghdad in March and April 1986.

As well as anthrax and botulism, the USA also sent West Nile fever, brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. The shipments even went on after Saddam ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which some 5000 people died, in March 1988.

The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: “The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think it’s a devastating record.”

Other items which were sent by the US to Iraq included chemical warfare agent precursors, chemical warfare agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.

Then Saddam was our man!

But...

He decided to reclaim oil-laden land in Kuwait...and wanted to start using Euros instead of Dollars:

Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse

By William R. Clark

August 5, 2005

It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam's long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market. Throughout 2004 information provided by former administration insiders revealed the Bush/Cheney administration entered into office with the intention of toppling Saddam.[1][2] Candidly stated, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' was a war designed to install a pro-U.S. government in Iraq, establish multiple U.S military bases before the onset of global Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency ( i.e. "petroeuro").[3] However, subsequent geopolitical events have exposed neoconservative strategy as fundamentally flawed, with Iran moving towards a petroeuro system for international oil trades, while Russia evaluates this option with the European Union.

THEN…

Boom!

Shock and Awe!

No more Saddam Hussein!

The Bush and Dick war is not being won.

It's a NO-NO to say that their war is (being) lost.

The show...the sham...the charade...

The tragedy...

Must go on and on and on and on and on...

Until all of the evildoers, radicals, insurgents and terrorists are killed…

Until the oil is in the bank!

It isn't a long war...

IT IS A PERPETUAL WAR!

Pay your taxes and shut up!

Dying for W

consortiumnews.com
By Robert Parry

April 25, 2007

George W. Bush admits he has no evidence that a withdrawal timetable from Iraq would be harmful. Instead, the President told interviewer Charlie Rose that this core assumption behind his veto threat of a Democratic war appropriation bill is backed by “just logic.”

“I mean, you say we start moving troops out,” Bush said in the interview on April 24. “Don’t you think an enemy is going to wait and adjust based upon an announced timetable for withdrawal?”
It is an argument that Bush has made again and again over the past few years, that with a withdrawal timetable, the “enemy” would just “wait us out.” But the answer to Bush’s rhetorical question could be, “well, so what if they do?”
If Bush is right and a withdrawal timetable quiets Iraq down for the next year or so – a kind of de facto cease-fire – that could buy time for the Iraqis to begin the difficult process of reconciliation and start removing the irritants that have enflamed the violence.
One of those irritants has been the impression held by many Iraqi nationalists that Bush and his neoconservative advisers want to turn Iraq into a permanent colony while using its territory as a land-based aircraft carrier to pressure or attack other Muslim nations.
The neocons haven’t helped by referring to Bush’s 2003 conquest as the “USS Iraq” and joking about whether next to force “regime change” in Syria or Iran, with the punch-line, “Real men go to Tehran.”
By refusing to set an end date for the U.S. military occupation, Bush has fed this suspicion, prompting many Iraqis – both Sunni and Shiite – to attack American troops. Another negative consequence has been that the drawn-out Iraq War has bought time for foreign al-Qaeda terrorists to put down roots with Sunni insurgents.
Obviously, there is no guarantee that a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal would bring peace to Iraq. The greater likelihood remains that civil strife will continue for some years to come as Iraq’s factions nurse their grievances and push for a new national equilibrium.
But the counterpoint to Bush’s veto threat against a withdrawal timetable is that his open-ended war is doomed to failure. To attain even the appearance of limited success would require American forces to effectively exterminate all Iraqis who are part of the armed resistance to the U.S. occupation.
After all, the only logical reason for not wanting the “enemy” to lie low is so American troops can capture or kill them.
That has been Bush’s strategy for the past four-plus years – longer than it took the United States to win World War II – and the military situation has only grown increasingly dire. Meanwhile, anti-Americanism has swelled around the world, especially among Muslims.
Failed Surge
But a long, bloody stalemate is the likely result from Bush’s stubbornness. With little fanfare, the Bush administration has essentially abandoned its earlier “exit strategy” of training a new Iraqi army so as “they stand up, we’ll stand down.”
Bush’s much-touted “surge” – beefing up American forces in Baghdad and other hot spots – is an indirect acknowledgement that the training was a flop. The “surge” is a do-over of the war’s original approach of relying on American troops to bring security to the country.
The “surge” also places American troops in lightly defended outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods, rather than concentrating U.S. forces in high-security barracks. The Pentagon acknowledges that this approach will put Americans in greater danger, both from insurgents and from Iraqi police whose loyalties are suspect.
The prediction of higher U.S. casualties is already coming true, as al-Qaeda-connected terrorists and Iraqi insurgents adjust their tactics to kill the vulnerable Americans. On April 23, two suicide truck bombers rammed a U.S. Army outpost near Baqubah, exploding two bombs that killed nine American soldiers and wounded 20 others.
As Iraq’s temperatures begin to soar into the 100s, the American troops will have to fight the heat as well as the insurgents. The secure base camps were well equipped with air conditioning, water and other supplies that won’t be as accessible in the remote outposts scattered throughout hostile neighborhoods.
Supplying these American troops will be another invitation for ambushes and roadside bombs.
The chances that U.S. troops will kill Iraqi civilians will rise, too, as may have happened earlier this month when an American helicopter gunship killed an Iraqi mother and her two sons in Baghdad Al-Amel neighborhood. [Christian Science Monitor, April 24, 2007]
Bush’s insistence on an open-ended U.S. occupation also plays into the hands of foreign al-Qaeda terrorists who are estimated to number only about five percent of the armed opposition.
Captured al-Qaeda documents reveal that the terrorist group has had trouble building alliances with Iraqi insurgents. So, al-Qaeda has pinned its hopes on keeping the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq indefinitely while those bridges are built and a new generation of extremists is recruited, trained and hardened.
In addition, having the U.S. military focused on Iraq protects Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders holed up on the Afghan-Pakistani border.
An announced date for American withdrawal would put non-Iraqi al-Qaeda operatives in a tighter fix. Without the indefinite U.S. occupation, al-Qaeda would find it tougher to recruit young jihadists and would likely face military pressure from Iraqi nationalists fed up with foreign interference of all kinds.
That is why al-Qaeda leaders view Bush’s open-ended war in Iraq as crucial to their long-range plans for spreading their radical ideology throughout the Muslim world. As “Atiyah,” one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants, explained in a Dec. 11, 2005, letter, “prolonging the war is in our interest.”

‘False Hope’
Military and intelligence analysts have told me that the “surge” is already recognized as a failure by U.S. military officers stationed in Iraq. “It’s just another layer on top of what they’ve already been doing,” one well-placed U.S. military source said.
In this view, the “surge” is more a political tactic than a military one, a way for Bush to argue for more money without strings, one more time. Presumably, after the “surge” collapses in obvious failure, Bush and his advisers will point to another mirage on the horizon.
Or, as comedian Lewis Black has put it, “Keep false hope alive.”
Given what the Iraq Study Group has called the “grave and deteriorating” conditions in Iraq, why not give a timetable for American withdrawal a chance? It potentially could help achieve three goals:
First, it might tamp down the violence from Iraqi nationalists who, if Bush’s “logic” is right, would lie low for a while. Second, it might pressure the Iraqi government to get serious about reconciliation during a respite from the violence. Third, it might help isolate al-Qaeda and deny the terrorist group the recruiting advantage from the open-ended U.S. occupation.
There also would be an incentive for the Iraqi nationalists to cooperate in reconciliation, because the United States could reverse its withdrawal plans if Iraq descended into chaos as a failed state or became a haven for al-Qaeda. At minimum, an announced U.S. withdrawal would change the current depressing political and military dynamic in Iraq.
So, a Bush victory in the funding showdown with congressional Democrats might lead to some high-fiving at the White House and mean that President Bush will have saved some political face. But the prospect of an open-ended war will condemn Iraqis and American soldiers alike to nightmarish months ahead and the certainty of many more deaths.
In effect, they will be asked to die for W.

Robert Parry's latest book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq,

BEWARE OF PERPETUAL GLOBAL WARFARE

"We should never question anybody's patriotism if they don't happen to agree with the President."George W. Bush
April 19, 2007

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
Thoreau

"As the struggle evolves some of the language will evolve as well."
A senior administration official said.

The Bush administration famously based its argument for invading Iraq on best-case assumptions: that we would be greeted as liberators; that a capable democratic government would quickly emerge; that our military presence would be modest and temporary; and that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for everything. All these assumptions, of course, turned out to be wrong.
Now, many of the same people who pushed for the invasion are arguing for escalating our military involvement based on a worst-case assumption: that if America leaves quickly, the Apocalypse will follow. "How would [advocates of withdrawal] respond to the eruption of full-blown civil war in Iraq and the massive ethnic cleansing it would produce?" write Robert Kagan and William Kristol in the Weekly Standard. "How would they respond to the intervention of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, Syria, and Turkey? And most important, what would they propose to do if, as a result of our withdrawal and the collapse of Iraq, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups managed to establish a safe haven from which to launch attacks against the United States and its allies?"
Similar rhetoric has been a staple of President Bush's recent speeches. If the United States "fails" in Iraq -- his euphemism for withdrawal -- the president said in January, "[r]adical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions ... Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people."
This kind of thinking is also accepted by a wide range of liberal hawks and conservative realists who, whether or not they originally supported the invasion, now argue that the United States must stay. It was evident in the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, which, participants say, was alarmed by expert advice that withdrawal would produce potentially catastrophic consequences. Even many antiwar liberals believe that a quick pullout would cause a bloodbath. Some favor withdrawal anyway, to cut our own losses. Others demur out of geostrategic concerns, a feeling of moral obligation to the Iraqis, or the simple fear that Democrats will be blamed for the ensuing chaos.
But if it was foolish to accept the best-case assumptions that led us to invade Iraq, it's also foolish not to question the worst-case assumptions that undergird arguments for staying. Is it possible that a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces will lead to a dramatic worsening of the situation? Of course it is, just as it's possible that maintaining or escalating troops there could fuel the unrest. But it's also worth considering the possibility that the worst may not happen: What if the doomsayers are wrong?
The al-Qaeda myth
To understand why it's a mistake to assume the worst, let's begin with the most persistent, Bush-fostered fear about post-occupation Iraq: that al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremists will seize control once America departs; or that al-Qaeda will establish a safe haven in a rump, lawless Sunnistan and use that territory as a base, much as it used Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The idea that al-Qaeda might take over Iraq is nonsensical. Numerous estimates show that the group called Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its foreign fighters comprise only 5 to 10 percent of the Sunni insurgents' forces. Most Sunni insurgents are simply what Wayne White -- who led the State Department's intelligence effort on Iraq until 2005 -- calls POIs, or "pissed-off Iraqis," who are fighting because "they don't like the occupation." But the foreign terrorist threat is frequently advanced by the Bush administration, often with an even more alarming variant -- that al-Qaeda will use Iraq as a headquarters for the establishment of a global caliphate. In December 2005, Rear Admiral William D. Sullivan, vice director for strategic plans and policy within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a briefing in which he warned that al-Qaeda hoped to "revive the caliphate," with its capital in Baghdad. President Bush himself has warned darkly that after controlling Iraq, Islamic militants will "establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
The reality is far different. Even if AQI came to dominate the Sunni resistance, it would be utterly incapable of seizing Baghdad against the combined muscle of the Kurds and the Shiites, who make up four fifths of the country. (The Shiites, in particular, would see the battle against the Sunni extremist AQI -- which regards the Shiites as a heretical, non-Muslim sect -- as a life-or-death struggle.)
Nor is it likely that AQI would ever be allowed to use the Sunni areas of Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks on foreign targets. In Afghanistan, al-Qaeda had a full-fledged partnership with the Taliban and helped finance the state. In Iraq, the secular Baathists and former Iraqi military officers who lead the main force of the resistance despise AQI, and many of the Sunni tribes in western Iraq are closely tied to Saudi Arabia's royal family, which is bitterly opposed to al-Qaeda. AQI has, at best, a marriage of convenience with the rest of the Sunni-led resistance. Over the past two years, al-Qaeda-linked forces in Iraq have often waged pitched battles with the mainstream Iraqi resistance and Sunni tribal forces. Were U.S. troops to leave Iraq today, the Baathists, the military, and the tribal leaders would likely join forces to exterminate AQI in short order.

Leaving Iraq: Apocalypse NotBy Robert DreyfussWashington MonthlyFebruary 19, 2007


“In this case, the idea that we are going to be involved in a ‘Long War,’ at the current level of operations, is not likely and is unhelpful.

We remain committed to our friends and allies in the region and to countering al-Qaida inspired extremism where it manifests itself. But one of our goals is to lessen our presence over time, and we didn’t feel that the term ‘Long War’ captured this nuance.”Centcom spokesman Lt. Col. Matt McLaughlin
“We’ve never had a government like this. The United States has done wicked things in the past to other countries but never on such a scale and never in such an existentialist way. It’s as though we are evil. We strike first. We’ll destroy you. This is an eternal war against terrorism. It’s like a war against dandruff. There’s no such thing as a war against terrorism. It’s idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed. But our media has collapsed. They’ve questioned no one. One of the reasons Bush and Cheney are so daring is that they know there’s nobody to stop them. Nobody is going to write a story that says this is not a war, only Congress can declare war. And you can only have a war with another country. You can’t have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids. Nothing makes any sense, and the people are getting very confused. The people are not stupid, but they are totally misinformed.”Gore Vidal
Only when US troops are withdrawn will Iraq move to the next stage in its development. That stage is unlikely to be pretty. It will involve jockeying for position by different religious and ethnic groupings, and the likelihood is that the violence that we now see will continue. Only one thing will change: The Iraqis will be in charge of their destiny. And that change is, of course, the essential one.
That's why the vast majority of Iraqis tell pollsters that the US occupying forces should leave.
It is time to put aside fantasies, and fantastical strategies, and recognize that the next chapter in Iraq's history will only begin when foreign military forces leave.
Strategists in Washington should be developing a plan for US troops to surge homeward, not pushing a scheme to send more young men and women into a hopeless--and deadly--quagmire.

[From “Surging” in the Wrong Direction
By John Nichols/The Nation/Posted
12/19/06]

“My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence."

From At the Center of the Storm

By George J. Tenet

"The president has let (the Iraq war) proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued. He lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money and blood".
Retired Army Lieutenant General William Odom
April 28, 2007

*

The Decisive Ideological Struggle of the 21st century.
The Long War.
The War on Terrorism.
The Global War on Terrorism or GWOT.
The Global War on Extremism.
The Test of Wills against Islamofascism.
The Generational War.
Instead of giving any new names to the Fabricated Pre-Emptive Iraq War by Bush and Dick…
END IT!
No new names will be required.
Radicals and Extremists will have less motivation to kill.
Yes, it is certain that they will still fight to get Power to rule the roost in Iraq.
But if the occupier and invader leave, Iraqi radicals and extremists will start scratching their heads and ask themselves:
WHY IN THE HELL ARE WE KILLING EACH OTHER NOW?
Iraqis will also fight to remove the Al-Qaeda invaders who were not in their homeland before Shock and Awe arrived.
Rival Iraqi sects will put more energy into removing other foreigners from their soil if the U.S. is out of Iraq.

 

If the Decider and all of his followers believe that the evil terrorists will come to America if the United States leaves Iraq...

Then begin investing all of those billions into securing THIS HOMELAND'S OWN BORDERS AND PORTS!
In the meantime, the new and broader name(s) for the WAR ON TERRORISM maintains and perpetuates the big business of PERPETUAL WAR.

Profits, profits, profits!

By Mad Plato

Here are some words by George W. Bush:

"The war against terrorists is a war against individuals who hide in caves in remote parts of the world, individuals who have these kind of shadowy networks, individuals who deal with rogue nations."

George W. Bush
 

"There is no such thing necessarily in a dictatorial regime of iron-clad absolutely solid evidence. The evidence I had was the best possible evidence that he had a weapon."

George W. Bush

[Comment: Freudian slip or what? Whose dictatorship is being referred to here?]
 

"The solution to Iraq -- an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself -- is more than a military mission. Precisely the reason why I sent more troops into Baghdad."

George W. Bush

Washington, D.C.

April 3, 2007
 

"The only way we can win is to leave before the job is done."

George W. Bush

Greeley, Colorado

Nov. 4, 2006

[Comment: This one is just incredible! He must have had more than beer and pretzels.]
 

"The United States of America is engaged in a war against an extremist group of folks."

George W. Bush

McLean, Va.

Aug. 15, 2006

“And now we're involved in -- I call it a global war against terror. You can't call it a global war against extremists, a global war against radicals, a global war against people who want to hurt America; you can call it whatever you want, but it is a global effort. And the major battlefield in this global war is Iraq. And I want to spend some time talking about Iraq.”

George W. Bush

[Yes! He actually said "You can't call it a global war..."

I checked the speech at two different sources.]
 

“This enemy is smart, capable, and unpredictable. They have defined a war on the United States, and I believe we're at war. I believe the attack on America made it clear that we're at war. I wish that wasn't the case. Nobody ought to ever hope to be a war President, or a presidency---President during war.”
George W. Bush

TO BE A BEE OR NOT TO BE

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
Albert Einstein


All this stupid fighting on our planet might come to an end sooner than we expect.
Our planet's bees have been dropping like flies.
First it was the frogs.
Now it's the bees.
The honey-makers also help pollinate the plants that we eat---that chickens eat---that cows eat...
Well, almost all the creatures on our beautiful planet!
What is killing the bees?
Global Warming?
Electromagnetic radiation?
Rush Limbaugh?
Scientists are trying to find out.
Let's hope that Einstein was wrong.

TORONTO (CP) - A mysterious malady that is causing honeybees to disappear en masse from their hives in parts of North America and Europe may be linked to radiation from cellphones and other high-tech communications devices, a study by German researchers suggests.
While the theory has created a lot of buzz in the beekeeping world, apiarists say there could be any number of reasons why the bees are deserting their hives and presumably dying off in large numbers, including changing weather patterns and mite or other kinds of infestations.
What they do agree on is that whatever is causing the phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), it is playing havoc with the production of honey and other products from the hive - and threatening the growing of fruit and vegetable crops, which depend on bees for pollination.
The small study, led by Prof. Jochen Kuhn of Landau University, suggests that radiation from widely used cellphones may mess up the bees' homing abilities by interfering with the neurological mechanisms that govern learning and memory. It also appears to disrupt the insects' ability to communicate with each other.

[From radiation may be killing bees
By Sheryl Ubelacker
Canadian Press
April 21, 2007]

A WAR A CZAR AND SOILED BLOOD-STAINED UNDERWEAR

"An individual can't fix a failed policy."

Carlos Pascual

[Former State Department coordinator of Iraq reconstruction and now a vice-president at the Brookings Institution.]

Why Does The Decider

Require A War Czar

For His Bloody Iraq War

That Has Become So Bizarre?

Is It To Save His Goose

From A Fateful Noose?

Is It Just One More Excuse

To Prolong A Vile Ruse?

Is It A Guileful Plan

To Prepare Us For Iran?

Is It More Lies For A Muddy Flood

To Make Waters More Crimson That Are Already Full of Blood?

JAMES HARRIS: We’re there to stay in the sense that even, let’s say somebody takes office in ‘o8, do you think that we’re gonna be occupying those bases still?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Absolutely! And we don’t even have status of forces agreements with any legitimate government in Iraq to support those bases. They are illegal bases, okay. But yes, they’re gonna stay, absolutely, they’re gonna stay. And I’ll tell you, there are guys that have been with this administration for awhile, people, in fact one of the guys was an Air Force General that was involved with the Kurds ten years ago, he’s retired now, but he was actually the guy, his name escapes me for the moment, but he [Jay Garner] was [Paul] Bremer’s predecessor for a short period of time. And he was fired, and Bremer came in and took over in Baghdad as part of the reconstruction phase. This is in the Spring of 2003. And this guy gave an interview in Government Exec Magazine, February 2004, he said “we will be in Iraq, and the American people need to get with this program, we will be in Iraq like we were in the Philippines for anywhere from 20 to 30 more years. That’s the time frame that we’re looking at. And that is the life span of the bases that we’ve constructed there. Yeah, we are not leaving these bases, and a Democratic president, I don’t care who they are, will keep those bases there. They will justify them and they will use them and we love that. We love it. So it’s not about what the American people think is right or wrong, it’s not about if we got lied to, what matters is, they did what they wanted to do, and as Bush says, and as Cheney says, “it’s quite the success.” And this is very frightening. Because none of this has ever been admitted to the American people, it’s only been hinted at by people that know. And of course the facts speak for themselves. The facts are, we are in Iraq, we have the finest military installations in the world, the newest military installations in the world, and we’re not leaving them. We’re not turning them over to a Shiite government, we’re not turning them over to a Sunni government, we’re not turning them over to a Kurdish government. We’re not doing that. They are American bases. We’ve got our flag there. And this is kind of the way they used to do things, I guess back in the Middle Ages. Maybe the Dark Ages. A king decided he wanted to go do something, he went and did it. And this is George Bush. We call him an elected president. I mean, he’s operating much as kings have operated in the past.

JAMES HARRIS: You called him “the war pimp” in your essay. “He’s behaving,” as you put it, “a lot like a pimp would treat a prostitute, ‘you do like I tell you to do.’”

[Note: Karen Kwiatkowski retired from the active duty USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel in early 2003. Her final assignment was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorate.]

[From Pentagon Whistle-Blower on the Coming War With Iran

www.truthdig.com

Feb 27, 2007]

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

To further disparage the bills, Mr. Bush also accuses the Democrats of larding them up with “pork”. That’s just as diversionary as Mr. Bush’s attempts to convince Americans that Congress is withholding money from the troops. The bills include roughly $20 billion in extra spending. About a quarter of it, nearly $5 billion, is for health care for veterans and active-duty members of the military and for expanding some military bases while closing others. Billions of dollars more are for other federal responsibilities that have been chronically neglected during the Bush years, including $1.3 billion to pay for post-Katrina levee repairs in Louisiana, $750 million for the state and federal health care partnership that insures poor children and roughly $500 million to help the poor pay for heat in the winter. And on it goes, money for homeland security, wildfire suppression, avian flu preparedness and other national issues.
Relatively little of the extra spending is targeted to lawmakers’ home districts — a precondition for labeling something pork. Mr. Bush invariably chooses to mock $25 million allotted for spinach growers in California. But that money is intended to mitigate growers’ losses from their voluntary recall of spinach during a bacterial contamination last September, which is the type of emergency that supplemental spending bills are supposed to address.

New York Times
April 23, 2007
From Editorial:
War-Spending

Obscene.
Disgraceful.
Heartless.
These are three words that have come trippingly off my fingertips to describe the continuing mendacity of our "great" Decider Long War President.
Most Americans still only believe the pablum which the media pawns feed them.
But this New York Times editorial informs us that Bush S*** is once again being dropped upon our frightened and obedient heads.
What is Bush's beef with aiding the soldiers who he sends to die in his illegal and deceitful war?
What is his beef with aiding poor children with health care?
What is the Unitary Executive Decider's beef with helping the poor pay for heat in the winter?
What is the Long War President's beef with helping post-Katrina repairs?
George W. Bush is about as compassionate as a turd.
(Thus, we can comprehend his love-affair with a big, shiny turd blossom.)

One doesn't appreciate or applaud another country's leader saying that our current president emanates a sulphurous smell, but Bush's rejection of the above domestic funding, and then incorrectly calling it pork-spending, no longer leaves room to beg the question about his sulphurous character.
One can only conclude that George W. Bush doesn't know what he's doing or that he doesn't care about what he's doing.
His veto of this current bill does not have the country at heart.
His veto puts his political ends above the health and welfare of our nation.
It is no wonder that Bush considers the Constitution of the United States of America just some Goddamned piece of paper.

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
President Theodore Roosevelt
May 7, 1918

AN OLD SONG THE SHITS AND PARALYSIS

The Woes of Wolfowitz

Are Giving Him the Shits.

The Wiles of Al Gonzales

Are Giving him Paralysis.

The Decider's Delusions of Grandeur

Remain Cocksure and Chock-Full of Manure.

John McCain Has Bombed Again

With His Refrain About Iran.

A Shooting Rampage

Has the U.S.A

On The World's Front Page.

Who Will Run in 2008

Who Can Begin to Liberate

Our Country From

This War and Hate

Before It is

Too Late?

LOSS OF MEMORY LOST IN SPACE AND THE IDIOCY DEFENSE

It's a good thing that George W. Bush hasn't lost his mind, or like other things lost or missing (or unremembered) in this fouled-up administration, the Decider Long War President might not know where in the hell he is or what in the hell he’s done and is doing.

Then the Homeland would be in very big trouble!

Or...

Maybe not.

If George W. Bush lost his mind and his memory, he might function better.

The nation might recover from his horrific policies of war and peace if he no longer remembered all of the blunders, omissions and deceptions.

Of course, amnesia and ignorance are the perfect rationalizations and smoke screens for culpability.

"I don't remember."

"I can't recall."

"I don't know."

“Did I shower yesterday?”

“Let me think...yes, I might have...I'm just not sure”.

“I don't know. My recollection isn’t clear.”

Computers don't get amnesia, do they?

Computers don't lose their minds or memories, do they?

But the cancerous problems are worse than Alberto Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld or George W. Bush losing their minds and memories.

This president and this administration have committed crimes and misdemeanors.

That is why they're trying so hard to lose their minds and memories!

Impeach them now.

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified Thursday before a Senate committee that he could not recall the details of any of the meetings he participated in over the course of two years, in which he and his staff discussed a plan to fire eight US attorneys.

"I have searched my memory," Gonzales said, in response to a question by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) about one meeting Gonzales attended in November 2006 when he discussed the firings. "I have no recollection of the meeting.... I don't remember the contents of this meeting."

Gonzales was visibly defensive as a frustrated group of bipartisan senators pounded the attorney general with some tough questions about his role in firings. Throughout the daylong hearing, Gonzales testified more than 70 times that he could not recall any part of the conversations or details of the backdoor meetings he had with White House officials or members of his staff surrounding the questionable dismissals of the US attorneys. He added that he could not recall whether he had certain conversations over the telephone or in person.

[From Gonzales Can't Recall Meetings That Led to Attorney Firings]

By Jason Leopold

t r u t h o u t Report

19 April 2007

Bush and Cheney hired Gonzales as attorney general to carry out their plan to amass governmental power in the hands of the Executive. They knew they could count on him.

Gonzales' bona fides were well-known to his bosses. When he was counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush from 1995 to 1997, Gonzales provided his boss with "scant summaries" on capital punishment cases that "repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence," according to the Atlantic Monthly.

Gonzales prepared 57 such summaries, including one regarding the case of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man executed for murdering a restaurant manager. The jury was never told about his mental condition. Gonzales's three-page summary of the case for Bush mentioned only that Washington 's defense counsel's 30-page plea for clemency (which covered the mental competency issue) was rejected by the Texas parole board. Bush refused to stay executions in 56 of the 57 cases in which Gonzales wrote abbreviated memos.

The attorney general was central to the Bush-Cheney-Yoo illegal domestic surveillance program. When he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the New York Times uncovered the secret spying program, attorney general Gonzales walked in lockstep with his bosses. Gonzales would not tell the senators whether Bush had authorized other secret programs. He refused to say whether the government could wiretap purely domestic calls without a warrant, or whether he had the authority to search the first class mail of American citizens or to examine people's medical records. When Republican Senator John Cornyn asked him whether law enforcement could shoot down a plane with drugs, Gonzales said, "I'd have to think about that."

At Gonzales' confirmation hearing for attorney general, he said he wasn't sure whether torturing prisoners could be lawful. The former Texas Supreme Court justice surely knew the terms of the Convention Against Torture, a treaty ratified by the United States and therefore part of the supreme law of the land under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The convention says, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture."

Yet, as White House counsel, Gonzales had advised Bush that the Geneva Conventions, which mandate humane treatment for all captives, were "quant" and "obsolete." Gonzales' advice facilitated the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan , Iraq , Guantánamo and secret CIA prisons around the world. Gonzales had evidently done his homework. The Nazi lawyers at Nuremberg also advised their clients that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and "obsolete."

by Prof. Marjorie Cohn
Global Research

April 21, 2007

SAVE IT OR LOSE IT

As the unnecessary Iraq War inferno expands, temperatures on our planet are also rising.

We go to bed each night as ice shelves come falling down.

Every breath that we take...every car that we make...

CO2 levels are watching us.

I tell my students:

"Buy boats. You're going to need them."

For almost seven years the Bush regime has fiddled while Earth has burned.

As with their Pre-Emptive War, the War Nuts in the White House have also lied (to us and themselves) that Global Warming was just a theory.

I recently saw An Inconvenient Truth.

My mind reeled and my stomach turned.

It may not be too late was one of the film's messages.

But the time IS getting late.

The window of opportunity IS closing.

The city of El Paso has recently provided containers for recyclable plastics and cardboard.

The first pickup occurs during the week of

Earth Day.

My garage is starting to pile up with plastic containers and cardboard.

I hope such local actions (of recycling) produce GLOBAL effects.

It may be a cliché...

But this IS our only home...

SAVE IT OR LOSE IT!

MURDER GAS WAR & HYPOCRISY

Murder.

That's what it's called when it's done by one person.

War.

That's what it's called when it's done by more than one person.

To defend democracy or spread freedom or...

To kill them there so they don't kill us here.

Hypocrisy.

That's what it's called when it's o.k. to kill when it's war, but not o.k. when it's homicide.

SCAN DICK'S BRAIN

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."
Dick Cheney

March 16, 2003

"So where is the oil going to come from? The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

1999
Dick Cheney/CEO of Halliburton

Dick Cheney said that the emergency spending bill for funding Iraq is needed so that (to quote Cheney from his latest appearance on Meet the Press ):

"Then we can get on with our business."
(April 15, 2007)

How accurate.

OUR BUSINESS.

Other gems by Dick on Iraq from this Meet the Press program:

"I think we are making progress."

"Just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't do it."

"This is a very difficult assignment."

"It is a global conflict."

"I do believe we can win in Iraq."

"We've got issues we need to work through. You do the best you can with what you have."

"I have enormous regard for the man (Scooter Libby)."

"You can ask, but you'll get the same answer."

"I spend as much time as I can and do other things. I spend most of my time on the job."

More by Dick:

"In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists, had an established relationship with al Qaeda, and his regime is no more."

Nov. 7, 2003

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

June 20, 2005