Life in OUR America, Volume 5, the Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

Tsk. Tsk, Livyjr.

Holding Bush accountable for what he says is just like blaming Charlie McCarthy
for what Edgar Bergen says.

At least what he used to say when he was still alive.

Actually, if Charlie McCarthy had been allowed to speak up for himself, I think he would have made more sense.

A.B.

As always, Mr. A.B. .....

You have nailed it ....

Dead on .....

We are in trouble ......

In this country .....

In the same way .....

That a ship .....

With no rudder .....

And no anchor .....

Is in trouble ....

On a windward shore .....

With high cliffs ....

No beach ....

And a bad storm brewing .....

A lot like the Spanish Armada .....

In its last moments .....

Off the west coast of Ireland .....

Just before the storm struck ....

And so .....

What we lack the most .....

When we need one in this country .....

Is a real leader ....

Someone more ....

Than just a ventriloquist's dummy .....

With Dick Cheney's hand .....

Up its back ......

Or a little face .....

Painted on Tony Blair's little finger ......

And so .....

About all the substance .....

There is to George W. Bush .....

Is that ventriloquist's dummy .....

Which has nothing in it .....

But somebody else's arm ....

And hand .....

Or that little bit of pigment .....

Along with ....

The tiny cowboy hat .....

On Tony Blair's little finger .....

Take away the little finger ....

And outside of a cowboy hat .....

On a little pile of something .....

Well .....

It will amaze me .....

For the rest of my days .....

What this country must have been thinking .....

When it scoured around ....

Way down deep .....

In the political barrel .....

To dredge up this George W. Bush .....

As its president ......

When almost anything else .....

Including a fence post ....

A dead dog ....

And box of rocks .....

Would have been a better choice .....

Assuming they were born here .....

And thus were eligible .....

For that high office .....

And so .....

[Livyjr]

More Yada Yada Yada

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politi...icle1202887.ece

"Just hot air? Bush and Blair refuse to call for ceasefire"

By Colin Brown and Francis Elliott in Washington

Published: 29 July 2006

Tony Blair and George Bush defied the growing anger across the world yesterday by seeking a UN resolution that fell far short of a ceasefire to end the killing of Lebanese civilians.

This is what got me to going stratospheric, here, Snuf .....

And by the way, it is nice to see both you and Mr. A.B. in here .....

You're both missed .....

As is jeffmoskin .....

Who might have melted by now .....

With all of that heat out there ....

But hopefully not .....

I was listening to these two BUFFOONS .....

And what they are doing ....

Is moving peoples lives ....

ALL OVER THE PLACE .....

In other countries ...

Where neither of them have a drop of power ...

Or authority .....

OTHER THAN WHAT THEY HAVE USURPED ....

OR ARROGATED TO THEMSELVES .....

WITH NO LAWFUL BASIS .....

FOR HAVING DONE SO .....

OTHER THAN ....

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT ....

AND HERE I SPECIFICALLY MEAN LEBANON .....

I wonder ...

At what must run through these two DANGEROUS CLOWN'S minds ......

When they believe .....

That they have this right ...

This innate power .....

TO MANIPULATE .....

AND DESTROY .....

THE LIVES ....

AND PROPERTY .....

OF INNOCENT PEOPLE ....

OVER THERE .....

ESPECIALLY .....

IN THE LIGHT ....

OF THE REAL MESS .....

THAT THE PUPPET BUSH .....

AND HIS MASTER BLAIR .....

HAVE MADE ....

OVER THERE IN IRAQ .....

THE TOWERING ARROGANCE .....

OF THIS PAIR OF TYRANTS .....

IS INCREDIBLE TO SEE ...

FROM A DISTANCE .....

AND FOR THE INNOCENT PEOPLE OF LEBANON .....

WHO TONY BLAIR .....

AND GEORGE W. BUSH .....

ARE WILLING TO SACRIFICE .....

THAT TOWERING ARROGANCE .....

IS VERY DEADLY .....

WHEN VIEWED CLOSE UP ....

GEORGE W. BUSH .....

AND TONY BLAIR .....

NOW HAVE THIS POWER ....

BETWEEN THEM ....

TO DECIDE ....

WHO GETS TO DIE .....

IN THIS WORLD OF OURS ....

AS WELL AS WHO GETS TO KILL THEM .....

And so .....

Fifty years or more after WWII .....

We now don't have .....

Just one monster ....

As the world did back then .....

We have a pair of them .....

Named BUSH BOBBSEY .....

AND BLAIR BOBBSEY .....

And so .....

[Livyjr]

More Yada Yada Yada

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politi...icle1202887.ece

"Just hot air? Bush and Blair refuse to call for ceasefire"
By Colin Brown and Francis Elliott in Washington
Published: 29 July 2006

He (BLAIR) claimed the violence was "part of a bigger picture" in the Middle East of reactionary groups trying to stop progress towards democracy.

As an American ......

Who was born ....

And lives .....

Not far ....

From the Saratoga Battlefield .....

In the State of New York .....

Where our forefathers .....

SECURED OUR DEMOCRACY .....

AND LIBERTY ....

AS FREE PEOPLE ......

From England .....

BY FIGHTING THEM .....

TO THEIR DEATH .....

FOR IT .....

I wonder .....

Who Tony Blair .....

Thinks he is fooling ......

When he tries to come across .....

As anything other than .....

THE RAJ!

As Disreali .....

Is said ....

To have said ....

To Queen Victoria .....

"England has no permanent friends, nor permanent enemies, just permanent interests" ......

AND THOSE INTERESTS ......

ARE NOT OURS .....

We are not a part of the British EMPIRE .....

Anymore .....

We are a sovereign nation .....

ON OUR OWN ...

Independent from England ......

And so .....

WE SHOULD HEED ....

THE WORDS ....

OF DISREALI .....

TO QUEEN VICTORIA .....

And wonder .....

What George W. Bush .....

Is up to .....

TYING OUR AMERICA .....

TO ENGLAND'S COAT TAILS ......

IN THE MIDDLE EAST .....

WHICH ENGLAND .....

PROBABLY MORE THAN ANY OTHER NATION .....

ON THE FACE OF THIS EARTH OF OURS ....

HAS DONE ...

ITS LEVEL BEST ...

TO MAKE A MESS OF .....

AND HERE ...

I MEAN IRAQ ....

BACK IN THE COLONIAL DAYS .....

WHICH TONY BLAIR ....

SEEMS INTENT .....

ON BRINGING BACK ...

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, WHAT, WHAT .....

IT'S A MOCKERY .....

TO HEAR .....

TONY BLAIR .....

OF ENGLAND .....

TALK ABOUT DEMOCRACY ....

WHEN IT IS THE ONE NATION .....

ON THE FACE OF THIS EARTH OF OURS .....

THAT KNOWS DOODLEY-SQUAT ......

ABOUT DEMOCRACY .....

OUTSIDE OF WHAT WE TAUGHT THEM .....

ABOUT IT ....

AT SARATOGA .....

WHERE FREE MEN ....

AND WOMEN ...

BEAT THE ENGLISH TYRANT KING'S .....

REDCOATS ....

AND HESSIAN MERCENARIES .....

I find it openly mocking ....

To hear Tony Blair talk about democracy .....

As if England .....

With its own history .....

Of being a WORLD-CLASS THUG .....

What with the opium trade .....

And the slave trade ....

Both of which ....

Subjugated people ....

As the ENGLISH subjugated .....

OUR America .....

And India ...

And China .....

AND ....

AND ....

On and on and on .....

WERE SOME KIND OF CHAMPION OF DEMOCRACY .....

AS OPPOSED TO THE ENEMY OF IT .....

WHO WE .....

AND OTHER NATIONS .....

HAD TO FIGHT AGAINST ....

TO BE FREE ...

AND NOT SLAVES .....

OR SUBJECTS ....

OF ...

OR TO .....

THE ENGLISH CROWN .....

WHICH IS WHO TONY BLAIR REPRESENTS .....

AND NOT DEMOCRACY, AT ALL ......

WHO REALLY SHOULD BE ISOLATED HERE .....

AND BLOCKADED .....

IS TONY BLAIR .....

AND ENGLAND ....

BECAUSE ....

THEY ARE NO FRIEND .....

TO DEMOCRACY .....

THAT I CAN FIND ...

IN A SEARCH OF HISTORY ....

INCLUDING THEIR OWN ....

And so .....

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/20...east/index.html


Domino diplomacy
Condi Rice and Co. are using the conflict in Lebanon as a proxy war with Iran that will somehow rescue the U.S. from failure in Iraq.

By Sidney Blumenthal

July 27, 2006 | Once again the Bush administration is floating on a wave of euphoria. Israel's offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon has liberated anew the utopian strain of neoconservatism that had been traduced by the Iraqi sectarian civil war. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has propelled herself forward as chief cheerleader. "What we're seeing here," she said, "are the birth pangs of a new Middle East." At every press conference she repeats the phrase "a new Middle East" as though its incantation were magical. Her jaunt to the region is intended to lend the appearance of diplomacy in order to forestall it.

In Rome Wednesday, a proposal by European and Arab nations for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon was scuttled by U.S. opposition. As explained to me by several senior State Department officials, Rice is entranced by a new "domino" theory: Israel's attacks will demolish Hezbollah; the Lebanese will blame Hezbollah and destroy its influence; and the backlash will extend to the Palestinians' Hamas, which will collapse. From the administration's point of view, the Israel-Lebanon conflict is a proxy war with Iran (and Syria) that will inexplicably help turn around Iraq. "We will prevail," Rice says nearly as often as she refers to a "new Middle East."

The Bush administration has traditionally engaged in promiscuous threat conflation -- al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein, North Korea and Iran in "the axis of evil," and now inferentially the Shiite Hezbollah with the Sunni Iraqi insurgency. By asserting "we" before "will prevail" Rice is engaging in national-interest conflation. According to the Rice doctrine, the United States has now deserted its historical role as ultimate guarantor of Israel's security by acting as the honest broker among all parties. Rather than emphasize the paramount importance of Lebanese sovereignty, presumably a matter of concern to an administration that had made a nation's sovereignty Exhibit A in the spread of democracy in a "new Middle East," Rice has downplayed or ignored it in favor of an uncritical endorsement of Israel's offensive against Hezbollah, which has destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure, made refugees of about 20 percent of the Lebanese, and treated the Lebanese government as a contemptible irrelevance. Rice's trip was calculated to interpose the influence of the United States to prevent a cease-fire and to give Israel at least another week of unimpeded military action.

To the Bush administration the conflagration has appeared as a deus ex machina to rescue it from the Iraq quagmire. That this is patently absurd does not dawn on those who remain in thrall to the same pattern of thought that imagined the invaders of Iraq would be greeted with flowers in the streets of Baghdad. Denial is the basis of repetition. New and irrefutable revelations of the administration's disastrous consequences are brushed off like lint.

This week has also seen the publication of "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq," by Thomas E. Ricks, the military correspondent of the Washington Post, a book devastating in its factual deconstruction. The Iraqi invasion, he writes, was "based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history." The policy making at the Pentagon was a "black hole," with the Army adamantly opposed to "the optimism," and resistance by the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to disinformation linking Iraq to Sept. 11 dismissed. ("How the hell did a war on Iraq become part of the war on terrorism?" demanded one officer summarizing the general reaction of the Joint Chiefs' staff.) Orders that "smacked of politicized military leadership" suppressed internal debate; commanders who raised questions were cashiered. After the absence of a plan for postwar Iraq, blunder upon blunder fostered the insurgency. These errors combined with "ignorance of long-held precepts of counter-insurgency warfare," leading to a "descent into abuse" and torture.

In one of its unintentionally ironic curiosities, the Bush White House has created an Office of Lessons Learned, complete with director and deputies. But the thinking that made possible the catastrophe in Iraq is not a subject of this office. Instead the delusional mind-set went underground only to surface through the crack of the current crisis. There have been no lessons learned about the blowback from Iraq -- about Iraq's condemnation of Israel and its sympathy for Hezbollah -- or about the United States' unwillingness to deal with the Palestinian Authority that made inevitable the rise of Hamas, or about the counterproductive repudiation of direct contact with Syria and Iran.

Indeed, Rice's "new Middle East" doctrine is one in which the United States is distrusted and even hated by traditional Arab allies, and the U.S. ability to restrain Israel while negotiating on behalf of its security has been relinquished and diminished. Since Rice became secretary of state she has been in search of what she has called "transformational diplomacy." At last, she has discovered the transformation by abandoning the diplomacy

[Livyjr]

More Yada Yada Yada

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politi...icle1202887.ece

"Just hot air? Bush and Blair refuse to call for ceasefire"

By Colin Brown and Francis Elliott in Washington
Published: 29 July 2006

Mr Blair's spokesman was dismissive of calls for a ceasefire without an agreement on a new force as "just so much wind".

Instead, said the spokesman, Mr Blair wants to step up the pace of diplomatic efforts.

"We want to increase the pace of diplomacy in identifying the steps necessary to bring about a ceasefire on both sides," he said.

"I believe what we should be working towards is a resolution as early as possible next week."

"We believe others are roughly in the same ballpark."

And speaking about a REAL LOAD .....

Of HOT AIR .....

AND FAILURE ....

HEEERE'S "CON-JOB CONNIE" RICE .....

WHO IS MUCH MORE ...

THE CAUSE .....

OF PROBLEMS .....

IN THE WORLD ...

THAN SHE WILL EVER BE .....

THE SOLUTION TO THEM ....

BECAUSE SHE HAS NO CREDIBILITY .....

HAVING WILLINGLY SQUANDERED IT .....

SO AS TO GET US .....

INTO THIS QUAGMIRE .....

GEORGE W. BUSH ....

AND HIS REPUBLICAN PARTY ....

HAVE GOT US INTO ....

OVER THERE IN IRAQ ....

And so ....

WHO CAN BE SURPRISED AT THIS?

"Stymied in Mideast, Rice to head home"

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press
Last updated: 12:46 p.m., Sunday, July 30, 2006

JERUSALEM -- Stymied in her diplomatic mission and rocked by an Israeli bombing gone awry, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice consulted Israelis in a tense atmosphere Sunday and planned to head home Monday.

Rice had hoped to leave the region after concrete progress on ending the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.

But her work was hampered severely by Israel's missile strike early Sunday that killed more than 50 people, including many children.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity about the diplomatic situation, said Rice would work from Washington to complete a U.N. Security Council resolution to end the crisis.

A draft resolution circulating Saturday among council members would call for an immediate halt to fighting and seek a wide new buffer zone in south Lebanon monitored by international forces and the Lebanese army.

Israel's attack, which killed scores of civilians while they sleep, led Rice to canceled an expected visit to Beirut for a meeting Sunday with Lebanese Prime Minister Faud Saniora.

Rice said she called Saniora to postpone; angry Lebanese officials said it was their government that called off the meeting.

The chief U.S. diplomat told reporters after the attack that she planned to stay in Jerusalem, where she said she had work to do to end the fighting.

A White House spokesman, Blair Jones, said the U.S. was urging Israel "to exercise the utmost care so as to avoid any civilian casualties."

"This tragic incident shows why this is so critical."

The State Department's third-ranking official reaffirmed the admistration's position that Israel has the right to defend itself.

"Israel was attacked two weeks ago."

"It was Hezbollah who started this and crossed the blue-line," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said from Washington.

In Jerusalem, the U.S. official said Rice planned an evening meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and that she had been talking with President Bush, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other world leaders.

"We are also pushing for an urgent end to the current hostilities, but the views of the parties on how to achieve this are different," Rice said.

Olmert expressed "great sorrow" for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at Israel.

The U.S. official said Rice would have stopped in Beirut, but the bombing dramatically altered the situation.

The official said U.S. diplomats would be in touch with Lebanese officials by phone or through the U.S. ambassador to Beirut.

Rice reiterated U.S. concerns about the loss of civilian life in the fighting.

Hundreds, mostly Lebanese civilians, have died in the three weeks since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a raid into Israel.

The action provoked Israel's largest military campaign against Lebanon in 24 years.

"We all recognize this kind of warfare is extremely difficult," said Rice, noting it comes in areas where civilians live.

"It unfortunately has awful consequences sometimes."

"We want a cease-fire as soon as possible," said Rice, during one of her strongest statements yet on the need to end the conflict.

end quotes

TAKE "CON-JOB CONNIE" RICE .....

AND CHAIN HER .....

BY HER ANKLE .....

RIGHT WHERE ISREAL .....

IS DROPPING ITS BOMBS .....

AND GIVE THAT ***** .....

A TASTE ....

OF WHAT THOSE PEOPLE ...

OVER THERE ARE GOING THROUGH .....

AND SHE'LL HAVE THAT BOMBING STOPPED ....

IN AN INSTANT ....

OR SHE'LL GET BLOWN TO HELL .....

WHICH MIGHT NOT BE .....

THE WORST ALTERNATIVE .....

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED ....

FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD ....

And so .....

[Livyjr]

"US urges restraint after Qana"

By Caren Bohan

1 hour, 11 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States urged Israel on Sunday to take more care to avoid civilian casualties in Lebanon after an air strike killed at least 60 people, but still resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was working to arrange the conditions for a "sustainable" halt to the violence as soon as possible.

"This is a horrible event, a terrible event, and we certainly want to make it clear that not only do we feel sorrow for what happened, but determination that it really is important to end the conditions that led to that," Snow told a group of reporters by telephone.

President George W. Bush is under pressure from Arab leaders as well as many in Europe who want an immediate ceasefire.

Despite Sunday's events, he still insists on a resolution that aims to end Hizbollah's military control of southern Lebanon, officials said.

Snow repeated that "Israel does have a right to defend itself" but said it should show restraint and remember that in the end it will need to have positive relations with Lebanon and work for a two-state solution for the Palestinians.

Bush was informed of the Qana attack at 6:40 a.m. EDT (10:40 GMT) by national security adviser Stephen Hadley and discussed it on the telephone with Rice and Hadley.

Snow said Bush wanted to push ahead this week toward a U.N. Security Council resolution that would set conditions for a ceasefire and establish a multinational force.

The Security Council met in emergency session on Sunday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urging the body to condemn the Qana attack and call for an immediate end to hostilities.

Despite growing calls around the world for an immediate ceasefire, the United States has insisted for days that hostilities should only be halted on a basis that will last.

It backs Israeli demands for the Lebanese army, bolstered by an international force, to deploy to the south of the country currently controlled by Hizbollah which has used the territory to rain rockets down on towns in northern Israel.

Images of destruction and mass civilian casualties in Lebanon are fueling anti-American fury throughout the entire Arab world and may force Israel to end its offensive sooner than it would like, without achieving its strategic goal of inflicting massive damage on Hizbollah.

Bush has insisted that a ceasefire package must include steps to compel Hizbollah to stop attacking Israel while putting pressure on Syria and Iran to stop arming Hizbollah with rockets and other weapons. (Additional reporting by Steve Holland)

[Livyjr]

YADA, YADA, YADA, MARINES DEAD, YADA, YADA, YADA .......

On and on and on and on and on .....

MORE VIOLENCE .....

MORE VIOLENCE ....

MORE VIOLENCE ....

Where are George W. Bush ...

AND PEACEKEEPER "CON-JOB CONNIE" RICE .....

When the WORLD .....

Needs ....

Their tender loving care?

"4 Marines die as Iraq violence continues"

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press
Last updated: 3:35 p.m., Sunday, July 30, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Four U.S. Marines were killed in a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, and pressure mounted in parliament Sunday to replace the interior minister because of the security crisis in the capital.

Also Sunday, a U.S. F-16 jet dropped two precision-guided bombs on a building near Baghdad used by militants affiliated with a group believed responsible a mortar-and-rocket attack in Baghdad's mostly Shiite district of Karradah last week that killed at least 31 people, U.S. officials said.

Two militants and a child were killed in the airstrike, and four suspects were arrested, the United States said.

American officials expressed regret about the child's death and said "terrorists continue to deliberately place innocent Iraqi women and children in danger by their actions and presence."

"We do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties during these operations," U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said.

"We deeply regret the loss of an innocent life while eliminating a group responsible for targeting so many other innocent Iraqis.

"We believe that countless more Iraqis would have been at risk had we not taken immediate action to eliminate this terrorist cell when we discovered their exact location."

U.S. officials did not specify where the airstrike took place, but it appeared to have been in the area around Youssifiyah that has long been a stronghold of al-Qaida and other extremist groups.

The Marines, from Regimental Combat Team 7, died Saturday in Anbar province, the heavily Sunni Arab region west of Baghdad that includes such flashpoints as Ramadi and Haditha, a U.S. statement said without further details.

So far this month, 44 U.S. service members have died in Iraq -- including 10 in Anbar province during the past week.

That underscores the threat to U.S. troops from Sunni insurgents, despite the attention paid to recent sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Baghdad.

The U.S. command is moving 3,700 troops from Mosul to Baghdad to cope with the crisis in the capital, raising concern that violence could flare up again in that northern city as American forces scale back.

With violence on the rise, several key Iraqi parliament members are pressing to replace Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, who is responsible for police and paramilitary commandos at the forefront of the fight against extremists in the capital.

"Some changes will take place in Cabinet during the coming days," said Hassan al-Suneid, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party.

"There is talk among the Cabinet, the (Shiite) alliance and parliament about changing the interior minister because he is unqualified."

Bassem Sharif, a lawmaker from the Shiite party Fadhila, confirmed there were moves underway to demand changes in the Cabinet, including the Interior Ministry.

"The structure of the Interior Ministry is not right -- unmarked cars, no checkpoints formed yet ..."

"So far they have done nothing," Sharif said.

"There are only excuses."

Al-Bolani, a Shiite, was chosen for the sensitive post after protracted negotiations among the various religious and ethnic parties within the national unity government.

The interior and defense posts were not filled until June 8 -- nearly three weeks after the rest of the Cabinet.

Al-Maliki told reporters the government was preparing a "comprehensive reform plan" for both the interior and defense ministries, but he did not mention replacing any ministers.

The Interior Ministry, which controls the police, and the Defense Ministry, which manages the army, are the two most important and sensitive Cabinet posts.

In an attempt to mollify the two major sects, the Defense Ministry post went to a Sunni while the Interior Ministry was given to a Shiite.

But the Americans demanded the jobs go to people without ties to avowedly sectarian parties -- a tall order in a country where politics is organized along sectarian and ethnic lines.

The U.S. demand was aimed at pacifying Sunni Arabs, who accused the Interior Ministry of widespread abuses against civilians when the post was held by Bayan Jabr, a key member of the biggest Shiite party.

After the parties failed to agree on a choice, al-Bolani, 46, got the job despite no background in security or high-level administration.

He was an engineer with the Iraqi air force until 1999.

In a speech to parliament, the embattled minister acknowledged that "disloyal and corrupt elements" had infiltrated the police and government and were "not performing their duties in a proper manner."

"We will not allow any act of violence and sectarianism inside the ministry," he told parliament.

"Our country faces a big confrontation and challenges."

"We will fight kidnapping, terrorism and killing."

"We will dismiss those who do not respect the law."

As part of a crackdown on corruption, the United States said Iraqi forces arrested an Iraqi police colonel in Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad, on Sunday because of his alleged involvement "in numerous illegal and insurgent activities."

Also Sunday, al-Maliki warned television stations against broadcasting footage that could undermine stability and fan sectarian hatred.

A statement by the prime minister's office cited news reports that "capitalize on the footage of victims of terrorist attacks."

The prime minister called on media outlets to "respect the dignity of human beings and not to fall in the trap set up by terrorist groups, who want to petrify the Iraqi people."

There has been an increase in biased reporting by Shiite and Sunni television stations that focus on the suffering of their communities -- often with little mention of the other.

------

Associated Press reporters Qais al-Bashir, Bushra Juhi and Rawya Rageh contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

GROSS STUPIDITY ....

AND INCOMPETENCE ...

AND GREED ....

AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL .....

AND UP HERE ....

IN REPUBLICAN GEORGE PATAKI'S ....

CORRUPT EMPIRE ...

OF NEW YORK .....

WE HAVE ....

WHAT ELSE .....

CORRUPTION ....

AT THE STATE ....

AND LOCAL LEVEL ....

BUT HEY .....

THAT IS ....

THE REPUBLICAN VERSION ....

OF DEMOCRACY ....

IN ACTION ...

And so .....

HEEERE'S JOE BRUNO .....

WHO IS CORRUPTION'S ....

OWN CHAMPION UP HERE ....

Being "in it" .....

For his pocket .....

As he is ....

And so ....

"Bruno flight at issue in probe - Businessman, a member of panel trying to win state racing franchise, tries to block state subpoena"

By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, July 30, 2006

ALBANY -- A Capital Region businessman who leads a group trying to win the state franchise on racing paid for Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's flight to a thoroughbred gathering in New York City last year, according to court documents.

Jared Abbruzzese "is paying for the senator's portion of the flight'' reads a notation on the "tripsheet'' of the Dec. 1, 2005 flight from Schenectady County Airport, according to an exhibit from Abbruzzese's lawsuit against the state.

Abbruzzese is trying to quash a subpoena for letters between him and Bruno, R-Brunswick.

The Temporary State Commission on Lobbying is investigating Abbruzzese to see whether he should have registered as a lobbyist and if he provided illegal gifts to public officials, according to records in Abbruzzese's case against the commission.

He lodged the case July 5 after failing to get the lobbying commission to withdraw a subpoena.

On Friday, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office, representing the commission, filed documents with state Supreme Court Judge Joseph Teresi exposing the confidential probe and some of its findings.

The documents say that Bruno and some of his top aides used several aircraft housed at Richmor Aviation in Glenville for trips within and outside the state.

Abbruzzese has planes chartered by Richmor at Schenectady County Airport.

Abbruzzese, of Loudonville, is a leader of the recently formed Empire Racing Associates.

Empire is one of 15 prospective bidders who notified the state of its interest to bid on a 20-year franchise for the rights to run racing at the Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga Springs thoroughbred tracks.

The Legislature and governor will decide the winning bidder following the bidding process now under way.

Abbruzzese also was a member of the board of the former Friends of New York Racing, a research and lobbying organization that provided several reports for the Legislature, including a list of proposed new laws aimed at improving the horse racing industry and making the franchise more valuable.

The group picked up catering costs at a Lexington, Ky., fundraiser for the New York Senate Republican Campaign Committee.

Bruno and aides boarded a plane based at Richmor to get to the Blue Grass State last October for the event.

Abbruzzese apparently arranged for the aircraft, according to the court records.

Friends also donated $16,000 to the Senate GOP committee last year and this year combined.

The lobbying commission investigation learned about the Kentucky trip by Bruno and others in its probe of a Dec. 1, 2005 one-way flight that Bruno and aides Steve Boggess, Edward Lurie and Kenneth Riddett took to New York City.

Bruno had wanted to used a state helicopter but it was unavailable.

Abbruzzese made his Falcon 20 available for the trip, according to the court records, but the pilot was unavailable.

Another Richmor plane was used to take the senator to LaGuardia Airport that morning and Abbruzzese picked up the tab, the Richmor records said.

Depositions by Richmor staff failed to show who paid the cost, however.

Bruno's spokesman, John McArdle said Bruno's campaign committee pays for all such flights.

Campaign records show the political committee paid $4,100 for the Dec. 1 flight, perhaps less than half the cost of a round trip flight, Richmor officials have said.

Abbruzzese, who has declined interviews, "is not a lobbyist, nor ... do any of the requested documents deal with lobbying activities,'' his lawyer, Brandon Tully said in court papers.

In his motion to kill the subpoena, he told Teresi that public agencies are "prohibited from conducting a wide, sweeping and general fishing expedition in the hope of discovering some illegality.''

In his response papers, Assistant Attorney General James B. McGowan says:

"Mr. Abbruzzese cannot be the sole arbiter of whether he has offered inappropriate gifts.''

The commission investigators learned, as a result of questioning Smith and gaining some of his correspondences, that Abbruzzese was considered a "close friend'' of Bruno and helped arrange a meeting with the senator.

He "touted his relationship with Bruno and Friends of New York Racing relied on it to garner access to other public officials,'' said David Grandeau, executive director of the lobbying commission, in an affidavit.

James M. Odato can be reached at 454-5083 or by e-mail at jodato@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

I'm a believer, me .....

That if one wants to be an example .....

Of something ....

Whatever ......

To anyone else .....

Then one should really strive ......

To be that thing first .....

Whatever it may be .....

BEFORE THE FACT .....

And that applies to NATIONS ....

Just as it does .....

To individuals .....

And so ....

IF ......

AMERICA .....

IS GOING TO HOLD ITSELF ......

OUT .....

TO ALL OF THESE OTHER NATIONS .....

OF THE WORLD ....

AND PEOPLES .....

AS A LAND .....

OF TRUTH ....

AND JUSTICE .....

THOSE THINGS ....

SHOULD REALLY BE HERE .....

FIRST .....

THEY SHOULD BE REAL .....

NOT SMOKE .....

AND MIRRORS ......

IT SHOULDN'T JUST BE .....

A LOAD ....

OF EMPTY WORDS ....

OUT OF THE HEAD .....

OF GEORGE W. BUSH ....

AND "CON-JOB CONNIE" RICE .....

WHICH IS JUST RANK HYPOCRISY .....

Which is there ...

For all to see .....

AS IS THE CASE RIGHT NOW ....

BECAUSE IN THE END .....

EVEN SIMPLE PEOPLE ....

ARE NOT ....

TOTAL FOOLS ....

AND CAN TELL ....

A LIE ....

FROM THE TRUTH ....

BECAUSE LIES .....

STAND OUT ....

LIKE A SORE THUMB ....

WHEN THE ACTIONS ....

OF THOSE SPEWING THEM ....

ARE OBSERVED ....

OVER TIME .....

And so .....

"UAlbany professor warns of Mideast fallout - Teacher just back from region says war damages U.S. image among Arabs"

By KEN THURMAN, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Monday, July 31, 2006

ALBANY -- Anti-American sentiment is growing in neutral Arab states because of this country's failure to demand an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, according to a UAlbany professor just back from the Middle East.

Helen Desfosses, an associate professor of public administration and policy, and Africana studies, said Sunday she is not optimistic about the prospects for peace in a war that in three weeks has claimed hundreds of civilian lives.

And the pressure for the United States to do something to stop the bloodshed on both sides is building in the wake of an Israeli airstrike over the weekend that killed more than three dozen Lebanese children, she said.

"When you walk into every restaurant or corner store the TV is on and everyone is talking about the war ..."

"Over here we've reduced the war to page 4 but to them it's like watching 9/11."

"The potential for destabilization of the Middle East is extremely high," said Desfosses, who last week returned to the United States after spending 12 days in Jordan and Morocco.

She said she arrived in Jordan only two days before the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon began.

Desfosses, a former president of the Albany Common Council, is an authority and published author on national and international policy issues.

She said she was overseas doing consulting work with the parliaments of the countries she visited as part of a legislative strengthening project with the State University of New York's Center for International Development.

Desfosses, who spent several days in Jordan, said that country has historically been a "neutral" country and has had good relations with the United States.

But with the conflict in Lebanon dragging on without U.S. intervention, leaders in Middle Eastern countries such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are feeling pressure from their Muslim constituents to take a stand that is more critical of Israel and its strongest supporter -- the United States, she said.

"Those who had denounced Hezbollah are now critical of the U.S. ... are now making anti-American statements and distancing themselves from the U.S.," Desfosses said.

On Sunday, President Bush, responding to the deaths of Lebanese civilians in an Israeli bombing, urged diplomats to work toward a "sustainable peace" in the region.

But he has resisted calls for an unconditional halt to the fighting, saying that would allow the Hezbollah fighters who sparked the conflict to continue attacking Israel.

The deaths also forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a trip to Beirut and to cut short her mission to the region.

The fighting was sparked when Hezbollah militants staged a cross-border attack July 12 and captured two Israeli soldiers.

Hezbollah has claimed credit for or been linked to scores of attacks on Israelis and Americans since its founding in 1982.

Israel was targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers in the area used to fire hundreds of missiles at northern Israel.

Desfosses, critical of violence on both sides, said it's important to note that as the war wears on it has the potential to unite Muslims all over the world.

"The Muslim world is broader than the Middle East and one of the problems is that this war can become a source of grievance for Muslims, whether Arabs or not," Desfosses said, noting that "it's becoming very hard to distinguish religion from politics."

"I am not optimistic about a settlement as of yet, because the only country powerful enough to bring everyone to table is the U.S., and we have not proven yet that we're willing to do that," Desfosses said.

News service contributed to this report. Ken Thurman can be reached at 454-5638 or by e-mail at kthurman@timesunion.com.

[Livyjr]

I'm a believer, me .....

That if one wants to be an example .....

Of something ....

Whatever ......

To anyone else .....

Then one should really strive ......

To be that thing first .....

Whatever it may be .....

BEFORE THE FACT .....

And that applies to NATIONS ....

Just as it does .....

To individuals .....

And so ....

IF ......

AMERICA .....

IS GOING TO HOLD ITSELF ......

OUT .....

TO ALL OF THESE OTHER NATIONS .....

OF THE WORLD ....

AND PEOPLES .....

AS A LAND .....

OF TRUTH ....

AND JUSTICE .....

THOSE THINGS ....

SHOULD REALLY BE HERE .....

FIRST .....

THEY SHOULD BE REAL .....

NOT SMOKE .....

AND MIRRORS ......

IT SHOULDN'T JUST BE .....

A LOAD ....

OF EMPTY WORDS ....

OUT OF THE HEAD .....

OF GEORGE W. BUSH ....

AND "CON-JOB CONNIE" RICE .....

WHICH IS JUST RANK HYPOCRISY .....

Which is there ...

For all to see .....

AS IS THE CASE RIGHT NOW ....

BECAUSE IN THE END .....

EVEN SIMPLE PEOPLE ....

ARE NOT ....

TOTAL FOOLS ....

AND CAN TELL ....

A LIE ....

FROM THE TRUTH ....

BECAUSE LIES .....

STAND OUT ....

LIKE A SORE THUMB ....

WHEN THE ACTIONS ....

OF THOSE SPEWING THEM ....

ARE OBSERVED ....

OVER TIME .....

And so .....

"Iraq's vice president criticizes Israel"

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 33 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's vice president on Monday accused Israel of carrying out "massacres" in Lebanon, the strongest criticism yet of the Jewish state by a top official of the U.S-backed Iraqi government.

Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite, singled out Sunday's Israeli airstrike that killed at least 56 Lebanese, mostly women and children, in the village of Qana.

The deadliest attack in nearly three weeks of fighting has triggered an international uproar.

"What happened in Qana is a repetition to these crimes that happened to our nation decades ago."

"It's time for this nation to stand up and stop this aggression and all forms of aggression that could affect any of its parts," Abdul-Mahdi said.

"These horrible massacres carried out by the Israeli aggression, incites in us the spirit of brotherhood and solidarity," he said in a speech attended by Iraq's president, the prime minister and other top government officials.

The comments were harsher than the criticism leveled by Iraq's president and the deputy prime minister on Sunday.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, another Shiite, had also condemned Israel's offensive before traveling to Washington last week, provoking criticism from U.S. lawmakers.

Several Democrats boycotted his speech to Congress on Wednesday and Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean called the Iraqi leader an "anti-semite."

On Sunday, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, demanded an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, warning that "Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire," al-Sistani said, in a clear reference to the United States.

The latest remarks by Abdul-Mahdi and Sistani are likely to heighten Iraqi public anger against the United States and create political problems for the Iraqi government, which depends on the Americans for its security and survival.

Abdul-Mahdi made the comments during a memorial at the headquarters of the influential Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, marking the third anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim.

Al-Hakim, a revered cleric, died in an al-Qaida-linked car bomb attack in Najaf in 2003, and has since been considered a symbol of martyrdom.

President Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, also addressed the gathering, expressing "sympathy and support to our brothers in Lebanon against the Israeli aggression."

"We support them in getting rid of the effects of this aggression and imposing their sovereignty," Talabani said.

Anger over the Israeli offensive has united Shiites and Sunnis at a time of sectarian divisions here that has triggered a series of attacks and reprisal killings.

On Monday, about 200 people demonstrated in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, waving Lebanese and Iraqi flags.

"Allah, Allah, grant victory to Hassan Nasrullah," the demonstrators, including women and children, shouted, referring to Hezbollah leader.

end quotes

Well .....

America .....

This America .....

Wanted .....

TO TRY .....

HAVING .....

THE BIGGEST FOOL .....

ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH .....

FOR ITS LEADER .....

INSREAD OF SOMEONE ...

WHO COULD REALLY LEAD .....

AND THAT BIG FOOL .....

WANTED A WAR .....

AND THIS AMERICA ....

WENT ALONG WITH THE FOOL .....

AND SO .....

STUPID IS .....

AS STUPID DOES ....

AND HERE WE ARE .....

HEADING TOWARDS .....

THE CENTER ....

OF DOWNTOWN STUPIDVILLE ....

WHICH IS CENTERED ....

RIGHT ON THE HEART ....

OF WASHINGTON, D.C. ....

WHERE ONE CAN FIND .....

WHAT IS LIKELY TO BE ....

THE BIGGEST PACK .....

OF REAL IGNORANT ....

YET EXTREMELY ARROGANT ....

FOOLS ...

THE WORLD HAS SEEN ....

SINCE THE DAYS ....

OF CALIGULA .....

IN ROME ....

And so ...

[Livyjr]

And while the FOOL is out there .....

Burning down the world .....

Back here ....

At home ....

We have ....

"Gloomy outlook for US automakers"

by Joseph Szczesny

Sun Jul 30, 12:39 AM ET

DETROIT, United States (AFP) - As plant-closing announcements piled up last winter, Detroit's automakers talked hopefully that warmer weather might bring signs of a turnaround.

Instead, with gasoline prices hovering around three dollars per gallon according to the US Department of Energy, US carmakers are feeling the pressure of stagflation.

Demand for new vehicles softened during the spring, and new vehicle sales are expected to drop 15 percent from July 2005, with US carmakers absorbing the biggest part of the decline, according to Edmunds.com.

Even Chrysler Group, the lone bright spot in the American auto industry over the past 18 months, has warned it will probably lose 600 million dollars in the third quarter as it launches new vehicles and struggles to reduce inventories.

Chrysler's operating profits also plunged 91 percent in the second quarter, according to DaimlerChrysler AG's quarterly financial report.

Tom LaSorda, Chrysler Group's chief executive, blamed the sharp drop on the declining sales of the group's minivans, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Chrysler dealers have complained that inventories have gotten out of line with demand.

Consequently, the Chrysler Group is prepared to cut production by as much as 75,000 units in the third quarter, LaSorda said.

Ford Motor Co. also is cutting production, after posting a 123-million-dollar loss in the second quarter.

Ford is also struggling to find a way to end the company's heavy dependence on pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, according to Ford chairman and chief executive Bill Ford.

The company's new crossover vehicles, the Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX, must turn into hits quickly or the company will face another round of cuts, analysts predicted.

The second-quarter loss was in sharp contrast with a profit of 946 million dollars, or 47 cents per share, in the second quarter of last year.

"The key question is how Ford's solution has changed in response to a more difficult environment," Morgan Stanley analyst Jonathan Steinmetz said in a research note to investors.

Citigroup's Jon Rogers wrote that "restructuring risk remains, as Ford management must stem market-share losses and free cash use headed into a difficult second half 2006 for North American automotive operations and FMCC (Ford Motor Credit Co.)."

At the same time, Ford is feeling aftershocks from a decline in its credit rating over the past 18 months, as well as a 40 percent drop in income from Ford Motor Credit in the second quarter.

Ford also continues to lose market share to Asian manufacturers, as it has for the past decade.

General Motors Corp.'s fortunes, meanwhile, improved in the second quarter despite a huge loss attributed to balance sheet adjustments that opened the door for thousands of GM employees to retire early.

GM ended the second quarter with a net loss of 3.2 billion dollars, or 5.62 dollars per share, compared with a reported loss of 987 million dollars, or 1.75 dollars per share, for the same period a year ago.

Fritz Henderson, GM's chief financial officer, declined to predict when the automaker's critical North American operations would return to profitability.

But he noted that more than 10,000 GM employees have left the payroll and that balance will leave in the third and fourth quarters.

GM North America posted an adjusted net loss of 85 million dollars, excluding special items, in the second quarter of 2006, a 1.1-billion-dollar improvement over the prior year.

Still, Henderson said GM's management is acutely aware that it can't rely on cost cutting to ensure its success.

"We know we have to develop and build great cars and trucks to grow our business, and we're encouraged by the recent success of our newest vehicles, particularly in the US market," added GM chairman Richard Wagoner.

[Livyjr]

And while the FOOL is out there .....

Burning down the world .....

Back here ....

At home ....

We have ....

"Midwest, Plains hit by blowtorch heat"

By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press
Last updated: 4:46 p.m., Monday, July 31, 2006

CHICAGO -- The blowtorch heat that blistered California last week gripped the Midwest on Monday, prompting communities to throw air-conditioned buildings open to the public and endangering millions of people with outdoor jobs -- including NFL players in training camp.

Temperatures throughout the Midwest and Plains were expected to reach at least 100 degrees.

Forecasters said the heat index, a measure of temperature plus humidity, could climb as high as 110 in some places.

The National Weather Service issued heat warnings for such cities as Chicago, Cincinnati, Dayton, Ohio, and Tulsa, Okla.

The Midwest could get some relief by Wednesday, but the worst of the heat was expected to drift into the Northeast on Tuesday, bringing scorching temperatures to New York, Washington and Boston.

NFL teams closely monitored players for signs of heat-related illness.

The heat prompted the Chicago Bears to cancel morning practice at training camp in Bourbonnais, Ill.

On Sunday, the Tennessee Titans let defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth leave practice early with dizziness.

Chicago resident Tony Tesfay, 43, left his basement room at a halfway house first thing Monday and rode his bicycle to one of the city's cooling centers -- air-conditioned recreation centers and other buildings that were opened to the public to prevent a repeat of 1995, when a heat wave killed 700 people in Chicago.

"I was pedaling slow, not too hard, so I could keep hydrated," he said.

"It took me about 15 minutes."

"It wasn't too bad."

In California, the sweltering heat that punished the state for two weeks subsided, but the number of confirmed or suspected heat-related deaths climbed to 163 as county coroners worked through a backlog of cases.

Cities across the Midwest urged neighbors to check on the elderly and disabled.

Utilities expected to set records for power usage and asked customers to conserve electricity to prevent blackouts.

In Chicago, officials made available a special telephone line to request checks on vulnerable neighbors and friends.

The Department of Human Services and police responded to nearly 50 such requests by early Monday.

The city's Department of Aging also telephoned more than 300 senior citizens to offer help, such as rides to cooling centers.

In Wisconsin, sheriff's deputies put a high priority on responding to calls about disabled vehicles.

"When it's 100 degrees and you've got kids in the car, that's not good," said Waukesha County Sheriff's Lt. Thom Moerman.

Burlington County, N.J., offered free fans to poor people and the elderly.

The weather posed special risks for people with outdoor jobs, such as construction workers and delivery drivers.

Jerry Wall, who collects coins from parking meters in Tulsa, Okla., said he tries to work in the shade of buildings whenever possible.

But "there's no good way to do it on days like today," he said.

Cleveland's mayor said city recreation centers would be open Monday and Tuesday to provide relief from the heat.

The mayor of Akron, Ohio, opened four cooling centers.

"So many of us live and work in air-conditioned environments, we may not realize how dangerous this oppressive heat truly is for those who do not," Mayor Donald Plusquellic said.

In Nebraska, high temperatures, a drought and strong winds combined to feed enormous wildfires near the Panhandle town of Harrison.

Chicagoan Danita Winfield, who does not have air conditioning in her apartment, planned to visit the city's 24-hour cooling station Monday night.

In the meantime, she said, "I sit out in the front of the complex for a while until I really get tired, then I go in the house and make a pallet on the floor because we do have a little breeze that comes through the window."

The air conditioning at the Fargo, N.D., police headquarters was out of order Monday, and won't be fixed for days.

"Right now, we're just kind of sweating," Sgt. Jeff Skuza said.

------

Associated Press writers Shaun Schafer in Tulsa, Okla., and Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

"Midwest, Plains hit by blowtorch heat" 
 
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press
Last updated: 4:46 p.m., Monday, July 31, 2006

The Midwest could get some relief by Wednesday, but the worst of the heat was expected to drift into the Northeast on Tuesday, bringing scorching temperatures to New York, Washington and Boston.

"Don't bother sweating; it won't even help you"

By MARC PARRY, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Monday, July 31, 2006

Prepare to suffer.

You will boil.

You will steam.

You will sweat.

And you know what?

Starting Tuesday, the heat and humidity will be so awful that when you do sweat, the air won't even draw the moisture off your body.

How awful?

According to National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Kilpatrick, so awful that people have been found dead in the Midwest under similar conditions.

The elderly and people with respiratory problems are especially vulnerable, he said.

"This could be bad," Kilpatrick said.

Today won't be too bad, with highs close to 90.

But a hot-air mass heading east will mean highs in the mid-90s Tuesday afternoon.

With the humidity, that will feel like 106.

Expect fog.

Expect haze.

Expect more of the same Wednesday.

And listen up, city dwellers.

Those old brick buildings heat up like furnaces.

Might be time to splurge on that air conditioner, if you don't own one already.

The National Weather Service in Albany has put out an "excessive heat watch" from Tuesday afternoon to Tuesday evening.

The agency suggests staying out of the sun and checking on relatives and neighbors.

Some relief should arrive on Thursday, with highs dropping to the mid-80s and probable clouds and showers.

end quotes .....

Me ....

I was lazy .....

And never cut down all my trees .....

So now ....

I have shade .....

And I don't bake ....

Because of that .....

And so ....

There is something ....

To not even caring ....

To try ....

To keep up ....

With the Jones ....

Whoever they are, anyway .....

Besides ....

Someone living .....

In a treeless subdivision somewhere .....

With all the toys .....

And then some ....

Which apparently .....

Is why all these other people ....

Want to keep up with them .....

But no trees ....

And hence ....

No cooling shade ....

And so ...

Maybe having all them toys .....

Will help .....

Deal with the heat ....

But as for me .....

Life is simple without them ....

And to me ....

They are nothing but dead weight ....

And so ....

[Livyjr]

And speaking of OUR own history .....

Which is already forgotton .....

Before it is even five minutes old ....

We have .....

A bit of perspective .....

Concerning 9-11 ......

And all the BUSHCO HYPE .....

About TAY-RISTS .....

Done gonna steal our freedom from us ....

As if they could even try ....

And so ....

"A deadly act of terror, 90 years before 9/11 - Saboteurs blamed for triggering the Black Tom Island blast in 1916"

By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press
First published: Sunday, July 30, 2006

NEW YORK -- The sound of the blast was unearthly, and the tremor was felt 100 miles away in Philadelphia.

The night sky over New York Harbor turned orange.

From Bayonne to Brooklyn and beyond, people were jolted from bed as windows shattered within a radius of 25 miles.

The Statue of Liberty, holding high its torch less than a mile from the epicenter, was damaged by a rain of red-hot shards of steel.

On nearby Ellis Island, frightened immigrants were hastily evacuated to Manhattan.

Ground zero itself -- a small island called Black Tom -- all but disappeared, "as if an atomic bomb fell on it," says historian John Gomez.

It was 2:08 a.m. on Sunday, July 30, 1916, when what was then the largest explosion ever in the United States erupted.

It destroyed an estimated 2,000 tons of munitions parked in freight cars and pierside barges, awaiting transfer to ships destined for Britain and ultimately, the World War I battlefields of France.

Evidence pointed to German sabotage, and some historians regard it as the first major terrorist attack on the United States by a foreign party -- 85 years before the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Marked today by a plaque in a corner of New Jersey's Liberty State Park, the blast site lies less than two miles from lower Manhattan, within sight of where the twin towers were brought down by terrorist hijackers on 9/11.

No comparable explosion would occur on American soil until World War II, when the Port Chicago naval arsenal on San Francisco Bay blew up accidentally on July 17, 1944, killing some 200 sailors.

Almost a year to the day later, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested at the Trinity site in New Mexico.

Black Tom was one of several World War I conspiracies that have been given little attention over the last 90 years.

A 1989 book, "Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany's Secret War in America, 1914-1917," by former Washington Post reporter Jules Witcover, details various plots that also included infecting horses bound for war duty with deadly anthrax.

"Black Tom was the centerpiece of everything that was done," Witcover said in an interview.

In 1916, the United States was still officially neutral but supported the Allies, led by Britain, against the Central Powers -- Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey.

That Berlin had been barred from buying American munitions was a further reason for its agents to engage in sabotage.

"There was no question about Black Tom being an act of terror, and I believe the Germans were responsible -- their spy network was based here in Hudson County -- but the case has never truly been solved," said Gomez, a historian and founder of Jersey City's landmarks conservancy.

"I think the real answers are still in Germany."

Black Tom -- the name supposedly came from a fisherman who once lived there --was an especially ripe target, isolated at the end of a mile-long rail causeway and accessible by water.

According to Witcover's book, investigators found security was lax and company officials had violated time limits and other rules for storing explosives.

It was perhaps miraculous that only seven people were killed, among them a barge captain, two policemen and a child tossed from a crib in Jersey City.

Black powder, TNT and ammunition continued to "cook off" through the dawn and into daylight.

At the Statue of Liberty, some 2,000 feet northeast of Black Tom, damage to the torch prompted its being closed to the public after 30 years.

Farther north, iron beams bent by the explosive forces are still visible at Jersey City's century-old Central Railroad Terminal, Gomez said.

The rippling shock waves blew out windows of Manhattan skyscrapers, cracked a wall at Jersey City's city hall and stopped the tower clock at the local newspaper, The Jersey Journal, at 2:12 a.m.

A recent study theorized that Black Tom would have measured 5.5 on the Richter Scale, had the earthquake rating system then existed -- the equivalent of a moderate temblor, but more than 30 times greater than the collapse of the World Trade Center's north tower, which registered 2.3 at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Palisades, Rockland County.

At first, the blast was blamed on sparks from smudge pots that guards at Black Tom had lit to keep mosquitoes away, but suspicion soon focused on German espionage activities.

Investigators uncovered a spy ring involving Berlin's ambassador to Washington, but some members of the group eluded discovery and carried out the Black Tom plot, apparently using incendiary "pencil bombs" to ignite the munitions stores.

The suspects fled the country after being identified through a secret message, written in lemon juice and visible only when held over a flame.

Tracked to Latin America, agent Lothar Witzke told investigators that he and fellow spy Kurt Jahnke had triggered the blast, then nearly drowned in the waves it generated.

Although no one was ever convicted, a postwar claims commission spent 17 years weighing demands by the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which owned the island, and other companies for reparations by Germany.

In 1939, on the cusp of World War II, the commission found Germany liable for $95 million in damages.

The then-Nazi regime refused to pay and it was not until 1979 that the case was settled.

The accusations of skullduggery devastated Jersey City's once-thriving German community, says Gomez, but "a lot of stained-glass makers, including the Germans, had big business replacing church windows."

One such window, at Our Lady of Czestowchowa Catholic church, memorializes the victims of Black Tom -- in Polish.

end quotes

al-Qaida ......

Must have been involved .....

Somehow .....

Some way ....

Because nothing bad .....

Happens in this world .....

But that al-Qaida .....

Is behind it .....

Unless Hezbollah .....

Is of course ....

And maybe ....

They were really responsible .....

For Black Tom .....

And so ....

Proabably ought to wipe out .....

Everybody ......

On earth ....

Except for some REPUBLICANS ....

Here in OUR America ....

And then ....

We'll all be safe ....

From them Hezbollah TAY-RISTS .....

Who are really ....

al-Qaida .....

In disguise .....

Because that is how them TAY-RISTS operate ....

Real sneaky like ....

Always trying to fool everybody ....

Into thinking .....

They were really Germans ...

And so ...

[Livyjr]

And maybe al-Qaida is responsible for this, too ....

Or was it Hezbollah?

Had to be or the other of them .....

Because nothing bad ...

Happens in the world ....

But for them doing it .....

And so ....

"Con Ed still repairing cables - Council has set a hearing on the 10-day-old outage, which has affected 100,000 people"

By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press
First published: Sunday, July 30, 2006

NEW YORK -- Days after electrical power was restored to northwest Queens, utility crews were still working Saturday to repair hundreds of underground cables unearthed in a feverish attempt to end a 10-day blackout.

"They're working round the clock, and we're asking customers in northwest Queens to conserve power," said Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert.

In Queens, 36 generators bolstered Con Ed equipment while crews performed permanent repairs on cables that had been fixed with what Olert called "shunts" to keep the system operating.

The utility warned that customers might lose power for minutes at a time as crews switched them from generators to the permanent grid.

The work is yet another sign that Con Edison's problems in New York didn't end Wednesday, when power was restored to all but a handful of Queens homes following a long, hot blackout that had affected as many as 100,000 people.

On Friday, a rainstorm knocked out power to 2,000 of the utility's customers on Staten Island, affecting as many as 10,000 people.

And approximately 9,900 Staten Island customers lost power on Thursday when power lines were knocked over in another storm.

Only eight Staten Island customers remained without electricity on Saturday, the company said.

City Council hearings on the blackout are scheduled for Monday, and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on Saturday demanded an investigation of the utility's power grid capacity and infrastructure.

"It's clear we need an independent assessment of what ails the power grid before we have another blackout," the senator said in a statement.

On Friday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., toured the affected Queens streets and called the outage "a classic case of blunder after blunder."

Clinton asked the President to declare the neighborhood a disaster area, a step that could trigger federal aid.

Officials working for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who resisted taking that move, said they don't believe the aftermath of the blackout meets federal criteria for a disaster.

Gov. George Pataki asked the federal government to offer low-interest disaster loans to Queens residents who suffered heavy losses.

"I still firmly believe that the primary responsibility for these costs should be shouldered by Con Ed and not the taxpayer," the governor said.

In the past two weeks, with summer heat stretching utility capacity, outages have crippled areas of the country from Missouri to Arkansas to California.

Olert, the Con Ed spokesman, would not speculate on whether there might be other areas of the city at risk of the kind of blackout that hit Queens, but said the utility is monitoring the system.

The company still isn't certain what caused the outages, but has said it is possible that record demand for electricity to run air conditioners and refrigeration during a heat wave caused multiple circuits to fail.

The repairs performed on the system "are holding, but they're temporary fixes," said Olert.

Temperatures through next Wednesday are expected to reach well into the 90s, according to the National Weather Service.

And a lengthy heat stretch, Olert said, "creates the potential for equipment to get hot."

[Livyjr]

"Tossing Rice at Lebanon war"

By EUGENE ROBINSON
First published: Sunday, July 30, 2006

Lebanon has now become Condi's war.

You can argue whether legal title to the tragic mess in Iraq properly belongs to Rummy or Cheney or to the Decider himself, but as far as Lebanon is concerned, it's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who has stepped front and center to handle the crisis and show the world who's boss.

It was Rice who waited more than a week, giving Israel time to pound the daylights out of Lebanon, before finding time to visit Beirut, Tel Aviv and a crisis summit in Rome.

It was Rice who spent her trip categorically ruling out a quick cease-fire, which made one wonder it she really needed to travel at all, since she could have just thumbed out a text message: "2 soon 2 stop boom boom."

The most significant development from Rice's swing through the region was that she took personal ownership of the bloody, escalating war between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas with a single pronouncement:

"It is time for a new Middle East."

"It is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail, they will not."

Take a moment to absorb those two sentences.

The bit about how "we will prevail" is just standard chest-thumping from the Bush administration, the equivalent of George W. Bush's "bring it on" challenge to the Iraqi insurgents.

It's the "new Middle East" part, which she repeated at every opportunity, that makes this Condi's war and that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of the region.

What secretary of state hasn't dreamed of a new Middle East where peaceful, democratic nations live in harmony?

They all have, I suspect, but any utopian fantasies they might have entertained inevitably ran smack into dystopian realities.

The current-model Middle East is replete with legitimate grievances, nonnegotiable demands, ancient resentments, Machiavellian alliances, religious fanaticism and modern weapons of war.

The idea of some grand stroke that would somehow create a "new" model is not just unrealistic but frightening.

Rice's predecessors have all discovered that containment, incrementalism, trust-building and similar unglamorous, snail's-pace measures are the worst way to handle the Middle East -- except for all the other conceivable ways.

Rice prefers glamorous, though.

And her boss remains convinced that grand gestures change everything -- witness how the Iraq invasion and occupation have convinced Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to bring out their guitars and join in chorus after chorus of "Kumbaya."

Does Rice envision that in her "new" Middle East, Palestinians will somehow develop amnesia and forget their aspirations for a viable homeland state?

Does she believe the autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere will allow free and fair elections -- and that voters will reject the militant faith-based factions that for years have been providing needed services that corrupt governments can't be bothered with?

Does she think anyone is going to see the uncontrollable Frankenstein we created in Iraq as a model to emulate?

The one thing that's clear so far is that Rice believes that allowing Israel to decimate Hezbollah and drive what's left of the group out of southern Lebanon is such a worthwhile step toward her "new" Middle East that it's worth crippling a nascent Arab democracy with hundreds of civilian casualties and billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure damage.

At least that's what she believed before her trip.

If at this point she isn't rethinking the whole thing, given the trouble Israeli forces are having with Hezbollah, then we're really in trouble.

Other stalwarts of the Bush administration's grandiose schemes seem exhausted --Rumsfeld is more philosopher than conqueror when he talks about Iraq these days, while Cheney bizarrely sticks with the story that everything's just fine.

But Rice's life story -- little black girl from Birmingham rises to become secretary of state, somehow becoming a hawkish Republican along the way -- and her obvious potential in politics still make her an intriguing figure.

I personally know three people who are writing books about her.

Now, in her first real test as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice will be judged on more than her impressive resume, her obvious intelligence, her poise on the world stage and her fashion sense.

Now she has her own war to sort out, and all she's done so far is scare people with her talk of somehow making the world's tinderbox into something "new."

She should remember the famous dictum from philosopher Rumsfeld, which I paraphrase: You go to war with the Middle East you have, not the Middle East you might want.

Eugene Robinson's e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

[Snuffysmith]

This is worth the read. I went to hear Ricks give a presentation on his book to the New American Foundation hosted by Steve Clemmons of the Washington Note.

Books of The Times
From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/books/25....html?ref=books
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: July 25, 2006
The title of this devastating new book about the American war in Iraq says it all: “Fiasco.” That is the judgment that Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, passes on the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and the occupation. And he serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive.


FIASCO
The American Military Adventure in Iraq
By Thomas E. Ricks

By virtue of the author’s wealth of sources within the American military and the book’s comprehensive timeline (beginning with the administration’s inflammatory statements about Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, through the invasion and occupation, to the escalating religious and ethnic strife that afflicts the country today), “Fiasco” is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the United States came to go to war in Iraq, how a bungled occupation fed a ballooning insurgency and how these events will affect the future of the American military. Though other books have depicted aspects of the Iraq war in more intimate and harrowing detail, though other books have broken more news about aspects of the war, this volume gives the reader a lucid, tough-minded overview of this tragic enterprise that stands apart from earlier assessments in terms of simple coherence and scope.

“President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy,” Mr. Ricks writes. “The consequences of his choice won’t be clear for decades, but it already is abundantly apparent in mid-2006 that the U.S. government went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect information — about weapons of mass destruction and a supposed nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda’s terrorism — and then occupied the country negligently. Thousands of U.S. troops and an untold number of Iraqis have died. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, many of them squandered. Democracy may yet come to Iraq and the region, but so too may civil war or a regional conflagration, which in turn could lead to spiraling oil prices and a global economic shock.”

Much of the material dealing with the time just before the war has been chronicled in earlier books (not to mention an outpouring of newspaper and magazine articles), but Mr. Ricks provides a succinct narrative that emphasizes how this period “laid the shaky foundation for the derelict occupation that followed.” He reminds us that when it came to the threat posed by Mr. Hussein, the administration consistently emphasized “worst-case scenarios” even as it was “ ‘best-casing’ the subsequent cost and difficulty of occupying the country.” And he shows how this blinkered outlook resulted in a failure to plan for the realities of the occupation and a failure to allocate sufficient manpower and resources.

Mr. Ricks’s narrative is based on hundreds of interviews and more than 37,000 pages of documents, and many of the book’s most scorching assessments of the White House and Pentagon’s conduct of the war come from members of the uniformed military and official military reports.

An after-action review from the Third Infantry Division underscores the Pentagon’s paucity of postwar planning, stating that “there was no guidance for restoring order in Baghdad, creating an interim government, hiring government and essential services employees, and ensuring that the judicial system was operational.” And an end-of-tour report by a colonel assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority memorably summarized his office’s work as “pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck.”

Mr. Ricks writes in these pages as both a reporter and an analyst, and many of his findings amplify observations made by other journalists and former insiders in earlier books: namely that the Bush White House routinely ignored the advice of experts (be they military, diplomatic or Middle East experts); that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s determination to conduct the war with a light, fast force had crippling consequences for the American military’s ability to restore law and order in post-invasion Iraq; and that infighting between the State and Defense Departments, between civilians at the Pentagon and the uniformed military, and between the military and the Coalition Provisional Authority severely hampered the making and execution of United States policy.

“Fiasco” does not possess the dramatic combat details of “Cobra II” by Michael R. Gordon (chief military correspondent for The New York Times) and Bernard E. Trainor (a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former military correspondent for The Times), but unlike that book, which basically ends in the summer of 2003, it goes on to chronicle America’s flailing efforts to contain a metastasizing insurgency over the next three years.

Mr. Ricks argues that the invasion of Iraq “was based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history,” an incomplete plan that “confused removing Iraq’s regime with the far more difficult task of changing the entire country.” The result of going in with too few troops and no larger strategic plan, he says, was “that the U.S. effort resembled a banana republic coup d’état more than a full-scale war plan that reflected the ambition of a great power to alter the politics of a crucial region of the world.”

This was partly a byproduct of the Pollyannaish optimism of hawks like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who slapped down the estimate by the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, that several hundred thousand soldiers would be required to secure Iraq. And it was partly a byproduct of a conviction shared by Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks that speed, in Mr. Ricks’s words, “could be substituted for mass in military operations.”

Mr. Rumsfeld’s stubborn reluctance to acknowledge a growing insurgency and his resistance to making adjustments, Mr. Ricks says, contributed further to the military’s problems on the ground. A continuing shortage of troops meant that borders could not be sealed, armament caches could not be secured, and security and basic services could not be restored. As a consequence support for the occupation rapidly dwindled among the Iraqis.

To make matters worse, Mr. Ricks adds, the Army seemed to have “forgotten almost everything it had learned in the Vietnam War about counterinsurgency.” During 2003 and much of 2004 effective counterinsurgency measures aimed at winning the political support of the Iraqi people were not being employed; instead, an emphasis was put on “the use of force, on powerful retaliation and on protecting U.S. troops at all costs.”

There were mass roundups of Iraqis (many of them bystanders caught up in the sweeps), and some of those detainees were harshly treated by American troops who had not been “trained or mentally prepared for the mission” they faced in postwar Iraq. Mr. Ricks sees the Abu Ghraib scandal not as an anomalous incident but as “the logical and predictable outcome of a series of panicky decisions made by senior commanders, which in turn had resulted from the divided, troop-poor approach devised months earlier by Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Franks.”

Mr. Ricks notes that the Bush administration has tended “to dismiss critics as ‘Monday morning quarterbacks,’ ” but he points out that that phrase “conveniently disregarded the fact that many of the critics had expressed their worries before the war even began.” His book is replete with warnings from Middle East experts and military veterans (like Gen. Anthony C. Zinni and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf), who presciently cautioned that the invasion and its aftermath would not be as simple or as fast as many in the administration predicted.

In late 2002, Mr. Ricks reports, 70 national security experts and Mideast scholars met at the National Defense University to discuss the looming war and concluded that occupying Iraq would “be the most daunting and complex task the U.S. and the international community will have undertaken since the end of World War II.” The group’s emphasis on the importance of “maintaining a secure environment” in post-invasion Iraq and its recommendation against a swift dissolution of the Iraqi military would be ignored in the ensuing months.

“It isn’t clear that a large and persistent insurgency was inevitable,” Mr. Ricks concludes, adding that “the U.S. approach, both in occupation policy and military tactics, helped spur the insurgency and made it broader than it might have been.” Among the crucial post-invasion missteps made by the Bush administration, he suggests, were the decision, after the fall of Baghdad, not to send two additional divisions of troops immediately, which might have helped keep the lid on the insurgency, and the orders issued by the head of the American occupation, L. Paul Bremer III, disbanding the old Iraqi army and banning thousands of Baath Party officials from returning to their government jobs.

The failure to contain the insurgency would have dire consequences as the war dragged on. While the occupation of Iraq (which Mr. Wolfowitz had predicted would basically pay for itself through oil revenue) was costing American taxpayers an estimated $5 billion a month in 2004 and 2005, the chaos-ridden country was replacing Afghanistan as a training ground for a new generation of terrorists. Meanwhile, writes Mr. Ricks, the United States Army found itself in a strategic position that “painfully resembled that of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the early 1980’s.”

Not only had the war “stressed the U.S. Army to the breaking point,” a study published by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute declared, but it had also turned out to be “an unnecessary preventive war of choice” that “created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland” against further attacks from Al Qaeda. The war “was not integral” to the global war on terrorism, the report concluded, but was a costly “detour from it.”

[Livyjr]

"Tossing Rice at Lebanon war" 
 
By EUGENE ROBINSON
First published: Sunday, July 30, 2006

You can argue whether legal title to the tragic mess in Iraq properly belongs to Rummy or Cheney or to the Decider himself, but as far as Lebanon is concerned, it's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who has stepped front and center to handle the crisis and show the world who's boss.

"No news is good news for Bush"

First published: Sunday, July 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Candor seldom has a place in national politics, more's the pity.

But Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate this fall, committed that partisan sin recently and has been explaining himself ever since.

Steele said that being a Republican these days is "like wearing a scarlet letter."

Steele is a black politician in a Democratic-leaning state.

His honesty has made him something of a pariah in the Bush White House.

But his reference to Hester Prynne, Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 heroine branded with the letter A to shame her for sexual infidelity, made a point with which voters can increasingly identify.

Loyalty to the unpopular Bush is flirting with banishment from the voting booth, going down with the ship and other inconvenient happenings.

Steele later backed away from his statement, claiming he was "not trying to dis the President but show those lines where I have a different perspective."

Steele may not be very tactful but he has a lot of GOP colleagues trying to walk that same limp line.

The murmurs about Republican unhappiness with the party's leadership are growing louder.

For the President these days, the only good news is no news.

He can't seem to win for losing.

Last week's visit of Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was supposed to celebrate progress toward peace being made in that country.

But al-Maliki proved to be controversial.

The visit came at a time of increasing violence there.

The President announced up to 5,000 troops in Iraq would be redeployed to Baghdad to quell escalating violence there.

And the Pentagon said that 3,500 soldiers scheduled to come home would stay in Iraq an extra four months.

The prime minister refused to condemn Hezbollah by name and call it a terrorist organization, which led several congressional members to boycott his speech before a joint session of Congress.

Although al-Maliki thanked America for its support, he also begged for more money, reinforcing the specter of a bottomless financial pit that increasingly disturbs voters.

The bloody combat between Israel and Hezbollah, and the involvement of Hezbollah's backers Syria and Iran, surprised Washington and poses new Middle East complications and dangers.

The images filling U.S. television screens of evacuees fleeing Lebanon and buildings burning suggest a world out of control and a White House helpless to take charge.

Bush's well-hyped veto of a measure to expand federal support for stem cell research won him no new friends; 59 percent of voters polled said they approve of such research.

The White House concedes officials are so worried about the impact of all the bad news that the President will cut short his treasured Crawford vacation this August so he can campaign around the country.

The defeat of Ralph Reed, a religious-right favorite who was a candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia, sent shock waves throughout the GOP's conservative wing.

The stories about waste and corruption in noncompetitive bidding for contracts in Iraq and homeland security programs are giving GOP insiders heartburn.

The Democratic "culture of corruption" theme is growing legs.

A new poll by The New York Times and CBS News on Thursday brought more pessimistic data.

A majority of those polled -- 61 percent -- said they felt the war between Israel and Hezbollah would lead to a wider war.

A similar number said their overall opinion of Israel was mostly or very favorable.

But 47 percent gave Bush good marks for handling the crisis.

Yet the public is turning against the war in Iraq.

In the same poll, a timetable for a reduction in U.S. forces there is supported by 56 percent; 42 percent said the loss of life is not worth it; 71 percent said that staying in Iraq for several more years would either make no difference to U.S. safety or make us less safe.

The Republicans are losing their "cut-and-run" argument that Democrats who want to begin pulling out are defeatists.

The President himself earned a teeny-weeny boost in his overall job approval rating, but it only went up from 31 to 36 percent of those surveyed.

That's still a sign of a very weak presidency.

More telling is the fact that more than twice as many people believe the country is heading in the wrong direction than believe it is heading in the right direction.

And it's the Decider's party that gets the credit or blame for picking the direction.

Marianne Means' e-mail address means@hearstdc.com.

[Livyjr]

"Books of The Times - From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/books/25....html?ref=books

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: July 25, 2006

The title of this devastating new book about the American war in Iraq says it all: “Fiasco.”

That is the judgment that Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, passes on the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and the occupation.

And he serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive.

"FIASCO - The American Military Adventure in Iraq"

By Thomas E. Ricks

Not only had the war “stressed the U.S. Army to the breaking point,” a study published by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute declared, but it had also turned out to be “an unnecessary preventive war of choice” that “created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland” against further attacks from Al Qaeda.

The war “was not integral” to the global war on terrorism, the report concluded, but was a costly “detour from it.”

And it's the Decider's party that gets the credit or blame for picking the direction.

[jeffmoskin]

"Holding Bush accountable for what he says is just like blaming Charlie McCarthy
for what Edgar Bergen says.'

BTW. Cheney's code name is EDGAR