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

[Livyjr]

http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon02162006.html

"Dancing Around Accountability - Dick Cheney's Fox Trot"

By NORMAN SOLOMON

When Dick Cheney surfaced on Wednesday long enough for an interview with Fox News eminence Brit Hume -- an event that CNN’s Jack Cafferty promptly likened to “Bonnie interviewing Clyde” -- the vice presidential spin emerged from a timeworn bag of political tricks.

Cheney took responsibility.

But that’s nothing more than a propaganda technique ...

For those who view lying as an essential means of governance ....

Well ...

Whatever the dance really is that America's Dick is doing .....

As always ...

He has a ready and willing partner ....

In America's George .....

"Oh, Dick ..."

"Oh, Dick ..."

"That's just so absolutely, you know, well, how can I say this, so powerful, Dick ..."

"That was so powerful ..."

"That was very powerful, indeed ..."

"OH, Dick, I'm so satisfied ..."

"Bush Approves Cheney's Handling of Mishap"

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

30 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Thursday he was satisfied with Vice President Dick Cheney's explanation about his shooting accident in Texas.

"I thought the vice president handled the issue just fine," the president said in his first public comments on Saturday's accident.

"I thought his explanation yesterday was a powerful explanation."

Bush said it was "a deeply traumatic moment for him and obviously it was a tragic moment for Harry Whittington."

He said that the shooting "profoundly affected the vice president."

Bush said Democrats are drawing "the wrong conclusion about a tragic accident" when they say it depicts the White House as overly secretive.

"Yesterday when he was here in the Oval Office I saw the deep concern he (Cheney) had about a person who he wounded," Bush said.

"I thought yesterday's explanation was a very strong and important explanation to make to the American people."

Bush said Whittington, the 78-year-old attorney shot by Cheney in the face, chest and neck, is "a fine man" whom he knew from his days as governor of Texas.

"He's been involved in our state's politics for a long period of time."

"My concern is for Harry and I know the vice president feels the same way."

While some White House officials were unhappy about the vice president's handling of the accident, Bush did not publicly object to Cheney's decision not to make the shooting public until Sunday, the day after it happened.

The president also did not express concern about the fact that Cheney did not speak to him about the accident until they saw each other on Monday.

Bush recounted Cheney's explanation of the accident.

"He heard a bird flush and he turned and pulled the trigger and saw his friend get wounded," the president said.

Bush, during an Oval Office photo opportunity, seemed upset when pressed about whether he was satisfied that Cheney had disclosed the shooting in a timely way.

"I'm satisfied with the explanation he gave," Bush said tersely.

"I thought his explanation yesterday was a very strong and powerful explanation and I'm satisfied with the explanation he gave," the president said.

end quotes

Strong and powerful?

What is this?

The Elizabethan stage, or something?

Was Dick orating here?

Was this some kind of drama presentation?

Or was Dick Cheney supposed to be telling us the truth, instead?

[Livyjr]

"Bush Approves Cheney's Handling of Mishap"

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Thursday he was satisfied with Vice President Dick Cheney's explanation about his shooting accident in Texas.

"I thought the vice president handled the issue just fine," the president said in his first public comments on Saturday's accident.

"I thought his explanation yesterday was a powerful explanation."

Unfortunately, George ...

There is a federal judge out there ...

Who seems to be questioning some of the statements of your alleged Justice Department .......

Which maybe were not quite powerful enough ...

In convincing this federal judge ...

And the American people, as well ...

That your alleged Justice Department was following any laws at all ...

When it unilaterally decided ...

That it wanted to violate the rights ...

Of the American people ....

As they are set down in the laws of this nation ...

Laws which your crowd sees fit to disregard ...

Whenever you or they please ....

"Judge Orders Action on Spying Documents"

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

53 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A federal judge dealt a setback to the Bush administration on its warrantless surveillance program, ordering the Justice Department on Thursday to release documents about the highly classified effort within 20 days or compile a list of what it is withholding.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy said a private group will suffer irreparable harm if the documents it has been seeking since December are not processed promptly under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Justice Department failed to meet the time restraints under FOIA and failed to make a case that it was impractical to deal quickly with the request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said no determination has been made as to what the government's next step will be.

At a court hearing a week ago, Justice Department lawyer Rupa Bhattacharyya said the government would respond starting March 3, but she said she had no information on when the process might be completed.

Timing will depend on complexity, "and in this case there are a lot of complexities," Bhattacharyya said.

Kennedy wrote that "courts have the authority to impose concrete deadlines on agencies that delay the processing of requests meriting expedition."

Routine FOIA requests are to be handled within 20 days while expedited requests have no set time limit under the law, prompting the Justice Department to take the position that the amount of time for expedited requests could be longer than that for the routine 20-day handling.

"Congress could not have intended to create the absurd situation" enabling the government to unilaterally exceed the standard 20-day period, Kennedy wrote.

[Livyjr]

"I'm satisfied with the explanation he gave," Bush said tersely.

"I thought his explanation yesterday was a very strong and powerful explanation and I'm satisfied with the explanation he gave," the president said.

Somebody is not pleased with yours, though, George ...

That torture stuff that you and Dick are promoting .....

And all that stuff involving those men and their private parts .....

Who did you guys think you would be impressing with that as your military policy for taking over the world, anyway?

And who exactly is responsible for that business with these men and their private parts?

Douglas Feith?

Paul Wolfowitz?

RUMMY, himself?

"Annan Says U.S. Should Close Gitmo Prison"

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

46 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday said the United States should close the prison at Guantanamo Bay for terror suspects as soon as possible, backing a key conclusion of a U.N.-appointed independent panel.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected the call to shut the camp, saying the military treats all detainees humanely and "these are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about."

The panel's report, released Wednesday in Geneva and leaked earlier in the week, said the United States must close the detention facility "without further delay" because it is effectively a torture camp where prisoners have no access to justice.

Annan told reporters he didn't necessarily agree with everything in the report, but he did support its opposition to people being held "in perpetuity" without being charged and prosecuted in a public court.

This is "something that is common under every legal system," he said.

"I think sooner or later there will be a need to close the Guantanamo (camp), and I think it will be up to the government to decide, and hopefully to do it as soon as is possible," the secretary-general told reporters.

The 54-page report summarizing an investigation by five U.N. experts, accused the United States of practices that "amount to torture" and demanded detainees be allowed a fair trial or be freed.

The panel, which had sought access to Guantanamo Bay since 2002, refused a U.S. offer for three experts to visit the camp in November after being told they could not interview detainees.

Annan said the report by a U.N.-appointed independent panel was not a U.N. report but one by individual experts.

"So we should see it in that light," he said.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the report will be presented to the U.N. Commission of Human Rights, which appointed the panel, when it convenes on March 13 in Geneva.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator for torture who was one of the panel's experts, told The Associated Press in Geneva that the detainees at Guantanamo "should be released or brought before an independent court."

"That should not be done in Guantanamo Bay, but before ordinary U.S. courts, or courts in their countries of origin or perhaps an international tribunal," he said.

The United States should allow "a full and independent investigation" at Guantanamo and also give the United Nations access to other detention centers, including secret ones, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, Nowak said by telephone from his office in Vienna, Austria.

"We want to have all information about secret places of detention because whenever there is a secret place of detention, there is also a higher risk that people are subjected to torture," he said.

The United States is holding about 490 men at the military detention center.

They are accused of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or to al-Qaida, but only a handful have been charged.

The U.N. investigators said photographic evidence — corroborated by testimony of former prisoners — showed detainees shackled, chained and hooded.

Prisoners were beaten, stripped and shaved if they resisted, they said.

The report's findings were based on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media reports, lawyers and questions answered by the U.S. government, which detailed the number of prisoners held but did not give their names or the status of charges against them.

Some of the interrogation techniques — particularly the use of dogs, exposure to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and prolonged isolation — caused extreme suffering, the report said.

"Such treatment amounts to torture, as it inflicts severe pain or suffering on the victims for the purpose of intimidation and/or punishment," the report said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is the only independent monitoring body allowed to visit Guantanamo's detainees, but it reports its findings solely to U.S. authorities.

Legislators and journalists have been allowed in on guided tours but few are permitted to see interrogations.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.N. report "clearly suffers from their unwillingness to take us up on our offer to go down to Guantanamo to observe first-hand the operations."

McClellan, the White House spokesman, echoed Whitman, saying "it's a discredit to the U.N. when a team like this goes about rushing to report something when they haven't even looked into the facts."

"All they have done is look at the allegations."

Although his statement did not address specific allegations, the Pentagon has acknowledged 10 cases of abuse or mistreatment at Guantanamo, including a female interrogator climbing onto a detainee's lap and a detainee whose knees were bruised from being forced to kneel repeatedly.

In Strasbourg, France, the European Parliament condemned the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and renewed its calls for the detention center to be closed.

Human rights activists also supported the investigators' findings.

Amnesty International said the report was only the "tip of the iceberg."

"The United States also operates detention facilities at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq and has been implicated in the use of secret detention facilities in other countries," an Amnesty statement said.

Many of the allegations in the report have been made before.

But the document represented the first inquiry launched by the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission, the world body's top rights watchdog.
___

Associated Press correspondents Sam Cage and Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva, Jan Sliva in Strasbourg, France, and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

"Annan Says U.S. Should Close Gitmo Prison"

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday said the United States should close the prison at Guantanamo Bay for terror suspects as soon as possible, backing a key conclusion of a U.N.-appointed independent panel.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected the call to shut the camp, saying the military treats all detainees humanely and "these are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about."

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.N. report "clearly suffers from their unwillingness to take us up on our offer to go down to Guantanamo to observe first-hand the operations."

McClellan, the White House spokesman, echoed Whitman, saying "it's a discredit to the U.N. when a team like this goes about rushing to report something when they haven't even looked into the facts."

"All they have done is look at the allegations."

NOW ....

There is a pot calling a kettle black alright .....

Scotty "BOY" McClellan running his mouth about the U.N. rushing to report something when they haven't even looked into the facts .....

Those same words from Scotty "BOY" McClellan apply directly to George W. Bush's ill-fated BLITZKREIG armored invasion of IRAQINAM ......

Where George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, and "CON-JOB CONNIE" Rice and Scotty "BOY" were all rushing to report something when they not only hadn't even looked into the facts .....

But had made up out of whole cloth an entirely different reality ...

Than the one that actually existed .....

In the real time and space occupied by the rest of us ...

Here in OUR America ....

And so ....

[Livyjr]

"Climate expert claims coercion - Top NASA scientist says Bush administration is pressuring him to stop speaking out about dangers of greenhouse gases and links to global warming"

By ANDREW C. REVKIN, New York Times
First published: Sunday, January 29, 2006

NEW YORK - The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions.

And here .....

Once again ...

As a GOOD AMERICAN .....

One who gets his daily operating instructions ....

Or general orders, as it were, for the day ....

Right from Scotty "BOY" McClellan himself .....

His daily tips on what you must do today for George W. Bush and the REPUBLICAN PARTY ...

To be considered a GOOD AMERICAN ...

By them .....

I find myself once again in the position of having to issue this disclaimer before posting this next story ....

That this GLOBAL WARMING business discussed in this article ....

WELL ...

It's not real .....

No, no ...

It's not real at all ....

It's a political attack on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is really what it is ...

Because George and Dick have a lot of lawyers down there in the White House with them ...

And all these lawyers are real smart and everything like that ...

And they have conducted their own research ...

And what they have found ...

Is that there is absolutely no GLOBAL WARMING whatsoever ....

And so .....

THIS NEXT STORY JUST CANNOT BE TRUE ....

Right, Scotty ....

"Greenland glaciers melting faster, study finds"

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

1 hour, 54 minutes ago

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Greenland's glaciers are dumping twice as much ice into the Atlantic Ocean now as five years ago because glaciers are moving and melting more quickly, researchers said on Thursday.

This could mean oceans will rise even faster than forecast, and rising surface air temperatures appear to be to blame, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"This change, combined with increased melting, suggests that existing estimates of future sea level rise are too low," Julian Dowdeswell of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Britain's Cambridge University wrote in a commentary.

"At 1.7 million square km (656,000 square miles), up to 3 km (nearly two miles) thick and a little smaller than Mexico, the Greenland Ice Sheet would raise global sea level by about 7 meters (22 feet) if it melted completely."

The study did not explore what is causing the rising air temperatures in Greenland, but most scientists agree that human activity, notably the burning of fossil fuels, is playing an important role in global warming.

Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and Pannir Kanagaratnam of the University of Kansas used satellite data to track the movement of Greenland's glaciers, which slide slowly down to the sea and deposit ice.

They calculated that Greenland contributes about 0.02 inch (half a millimeter) to the annual 0.1 inch (3 mm) rise in global sea levels.

Since 1996, southeast Greenland's outlet glaciers have been flowing more quickly and since 2000 glaciers farther north have also sped up.

Rignot and Kanagaratnam found that ice loss due to glacier flow has increased from 12 cubic miles of ice loss per year in 1996 to 36 cubic miles of ice loss per year in 2005.

"It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet, but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes," Rignot said in a statement.

He said the models now used to predict how much ice Greenland will lose, and what effect that will have on sea levels, may underestimate the outcome.

Rising air temperatures are clearly a factor, the researchers told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science.

Over the last 20 years, the air temperature in southeast Greenland has risen by 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C).

Warmer air lubricates the bottoms of glaciers, helping them slide faster.

"Climate warming can work in different ways, but generally speaking, if you warm up the ice sheet, the glacier will flow faster," said Rignot.

And it may melt even more quickly in years to come, he added.

"The southern half of Greenland is reacting to what we think is climate warming."

"The northern half is waiting, but I don't think it's going to take long," Rignot said.

[Livyjr]

NOW ....

There is a pot calling a kettle black alright .....

Scotty "BOY" McClellan running his mouth about the U.N. rushing to report something when they haven't even looked into the facts .....

Those same words from Scotty "BOY" McClellan apply directly to George W. Bush's ill-fated BLITZKREIG armored invasion of IRAQINAM ......

Where George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and Colin Powell, and "CON-JOB CONNIE" Rice and Scotty "BOY" were all rushing to report something when they not only hadn't even looked into the facts .....

But had made up out of whole cloth an entirely different reality ...

Than the one that actually existed .....

In the real time and space occupied by the rest of us ...

Here in OUR America ....

And so ....

And speaking about "CON-JOB" .....

February 16, 2006

"Rice Is Seeking Millions to Prod Changes in Iran"

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — The Bush administration, frustrated by Iranian defiance over its nuclear program, proposed Wednesday to spend $85 million to promote political change inside Iran by subsidizing dissident groups, unions, student fellowships and television and radio broadcasts.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, announcing a request for the money at a Senate hearing, said the administration had worked out a way to circumvent American laws barring financial relations with Iran to allow some money to go directly to groups promoting change inside the country.

"We are going to begin a new effort to support the aspirations of the Iranian people," Ms. Rice said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We will use this money to develop support networks for Iranian reformers, political dissidents and human rights activists."

Senior State Department officials said they did not intend to publicize recipients of the money in the future, for fear that they could be jailed or even killed.

"This is a very good idea, but all these efforts face the same problem," said Michael McFaul, a political science professor at Stanford University.

"In working with their potential colleagues in Iran, will they get them into trouble?"

"Once they participate in a training program, what happens to them back in their country?"

The scope of the administration's effort goes beyond the numbers.

Until now, the United States has been cautious about supporting dissident groups, fearful that Iranians may view these efforts as an echo of past American meddling in Iran's affairs.

Though no one uses the words "regime change" to describe the ultimate American goal, that term has been used by conservatives in Congress who have in the last few years pressed for aid to Iranian dissidents.

Ms. Rice said the State Department was requesting $75 million to promote democracy in Iran, which she said would be added to $10 million already appropriated for that purpose.

The total is an increase from only $3.5 million the previous year.

Until recently, the administration has been cautious about embracing the "regime change" approach, but some conservatives at the Defense Department and Vice President Dick Cheney's office are known to be resigned to a nuclear-armed Iran and to argue that the best way to address that problem is by opening Iran to democracy and reform.

American officials, asking not to be identified while discussing internal administration deliberations, said the election last year of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose actions and statements have alarmed the West, had strengthened the hands of those who want to promote internal change in Iran.

European countries involved in negotiating with Iran over the last year have also been uneasy until recently about doing anything to provoke Iranian leaders.

But now that talks over Iran's nuclear program are at an impasse, and Iran is proceeding with uranium enrichment in defiance of the West, there is less concern about harming relations.

Ms. Rice's announcement is considered certain to anger Iranian leaders, who have long cited the American support for a coup in 1953 as an example of its designs on Iran.

The administration's limited attempts to channel money to human rights groups, labor unions and political organizations in Iran have not achieved much success so far, and many experts fear that future efforts could aid the wrong people or backfire on them if the financing becomes public.

The administration will try to upgrade American broadcasts into Iran by Voice of America and Radio Farda, an American-sponsored station that mostly plays music.

Ms. Rice's announcement said the administration would try to form partnerships with Farsi satellite television and radio stations in Los Angeles.

But Iranian experts caution that the private American stations have content that may be viewed as unsuitable in Iran.

In addition, American officials say the administration needs to be careful not to align itself with people in the Iranian diaspora who have political agendas that are unpopular in Iran.

Among these are monarchists who support the family of the late shah of Iran.

The American aid announced by Ms. Rice is to include $25 million to support "political dissidents, labor union leaders and human rights activists" and to work with nongovernmental organizations outside Iran to build support inside the country.

The administration plans $50 million to increase television broadcasting to 24 hours a day all week in Farsi into Iran.

Another $5 million is aimed at bringing Iranian students and scholars to study in the West, and $5 million more is earmarked for setting up Internet sites.

end quotes

AAAaahhh ...

The sweet sounds of another great big HOOVER vacuum cleaner starting up here ...

With its suction hose firmly into the bulk and mass of OUR tax dollars in the American treasury ...

And its outlet going to God only knows where ......

But somebody's pocket, indeed .....

Trickle down economy, hell ...

This is "suck up" economics in operation, big time ...

Here in OUR America ...

A con-job, indeed ...

Shades of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqinami National Congress, all over again ...

And what's his name ...

That "Sling-shot" guy ...

Or was it "Oddball" ....

No, that wasn't it ....

Oh, yeah ..

Curveball .....

And here we go again ....

[Livyjr]

February 16, 2006

"Rice Is Seeking Millions to Prod Changes in Iran"

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — The Bush administration, frustrated by Iranian defiance over its nuclear program, proposed Wednesday to spend $85 million to promote political change inside Iran by subsidizing dissident groups, unions, student fellowships and television and radio broadcasts.

"We are going to begin a new effort to support the aspirations of the Iranian people," Ms. Rice said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

end quotes

AAAaahhh ...

The sweet sounds of another great big HOOVER vacuum cleaner starting up here ...

With its suction hose firmly into the bulk and mass of OUR tax dollars in the American treasury ...

And its outlet going to God only knows where ......

But somebody's pocket, indeed .....

Trickle down economy, hell ...

This is "suck up" economics in operation, big time ...

Here in OUR America ...

A con-job, indeed ...

Shades of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqinami National Congress, all over again ...

And what's his name ...

That "Sling-shot" guy ...

Or was it "Oddball" ....

No, that wasn't it ....

Oh, yeah ..

Curveball .....

And here we go again ....

NY Times, February 15, 2006

"Quick Rise for Purveyors of Propaganda in Iraq"

By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — Two years ago, Christian Bailey and Paige Craig were living in a half-renovated Washington group house, with a string of failed startup companies behind them.

Mr. Bailey, a boyish-looking Briton, and Mr. Craig, a chain-smoking former Marine sergeant, then began winning multimillion-dollar contracts with the United States military to produce propaganda in Iraq.

Now their company, Lincoln Group, works out of elegant offices along Pennsylvania Avenue and sponsors polo matches in Virginia horse country.

Mr. Bailey recently bought a million-dollar Georgetown row house.

Mr. Craig drives a Jaguar and shows up for interviews accompanied by his "director of security," a beefy bodyguard.

The company's rise, though, has been built in part by exaggerated claims about its abilities and connections, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Lincoln Group employees and associates, and a review of company documents.

In collecting government money, Lincoln has followed a blueprint taught to Mr. Bailey by Daniel S. Peña Sr., a retired American businessman who described Mr. Bailey as a protégé.

Federal contracts in Washington can supply easy seed capital for a struggling entrepreneur, Mr. Peña says he advised a youthful Mr. Bailey in the mid-1990's when the two men started a short-lived technology company.

"I told him, 'When in trouble, go to D.C.,' and the kid listened," Mr. Peña said.

Mr. Bailey defends his company's record, saying, "Lincoln Group successfully executes challenging assignments."

He added that "teams are created from the best available resources."

Lincoln won its contracts after claiming to have partnerships with major media and advertising companies, former government officials with extensive Middle East experience, and ex-military officers with background in intelligence and psychological warfare, the documents show.

But some of those companies and individuals say their associations were fleeting.

Lincoln has also run into problems delivering on work for the military after its partnerships with more experienced firms fell apart, company documents and interviews indicate.

The firm has continued to bid for new business from the Pentagon and has hired two Washington lobbying firms to promote itself on Capitol Hill and with the Bush administration.

"They appear very professional on the surface, then you dig a little deeper and you find that they are pretty amateurish," said Jason Santamaria, a former Marine officer whom the company once described as a "strategic adviser."

The company's work in Iraq, where Mr. Bailey and Mr. Craig visit from time to time to direct operations, is facing growing scrutiny.

The Pentagon's inspector general last month opened an audit of Lincoln Group's contracts there, according to two Defense Department officials.

A separate inquiry ordered by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, after disclosures late last year that Lincoln Group paid Iraqi publications to run one-sided stories by American soldiers, has been completed but not made public, military officials said.

A spokesman for General Casey, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, declined to comment on Lincoln Group, citing the ongoing investigation.

In interviews, Mr. Bailey, 30, and Mr. Craig, 31, said they had succeeded by anticipating the military's need for help communicating with and influencing the Iraqi public, just as the insurgency was building.

"We saw that it was very hard for the U.S. to do that work," Mr. Bailey said.

"They didn't do media and outreach very well."

"We had local offices in a tough environment where traditional U.S. contractors would not operate."

He disputed suggestions that Lincoln had experienced difficulty delivering on work for the military, saying the firm had "successfully executed" more than 20 contracts from the Defense Department.

Lincoln's roster of advisers and other businesses assisting it has continually changed, Mr. Craig said, because "our work in often hostile environments has occasionally proved to be too risky or challenging for some of our partners."

Little in Mr. Bailey's background indicated he would end up doing propaganda work in Iraq.

Born in Britain as Christian Jozefowicz, he changed his name when he graduated from Oxford University and moved to San Francisco during the late-1990's dot-com boom.

There he founded or advised several companies and plunged into the Silicon Valley social scene, according to Mr. Bailey and several friends and former business associates.

Among the companies were Express Action, a company that planned to develop an Internet service to calculate duties on overseas purchases, and Motion Power, which intended to invent a shoe that would generate its own electrical power to run portable consumer devices.

"You would have been proud had you seen this 23-year-old kid pitching, with no product, no customers, no business plan," Mr. Bailey wrote in a letter to Mr. Peña, describing how he raised $15 million from investors for Express Action.

Mr. Bailey later moved to New York and sought investors for an investment fund, according to documents filed with the National Futures Association.

In 2003, he moved to Washington.

Mr. Craig's path to the capital began when he dropped out of West Point to pursue, he says, his interests in business and national security.

Enlisting in the Marines in 1995, he began working in military intelligence.

He earned an undergraduate degree in information technology while stationed in Okinawa and Australia through the University of Maryland and a masters in business administration from National University, which runs academic programs on military bases.

He left the Marines in 2000.

By 2004, Mr. Bailey had moved into Mr. Craig's house near downtown Washington, and the two had formed the company that eventually became Lincoln Group.

Their original goal was to make money exploiting Iraq's most obvious surplus — its shattered infrastructure.

But those efforts faltered.

A project to export scrap metal fell apart after the Iraqi government banned scrap exports in 2004, Mr. Bailey said.

A pile of scrap metal, purchased with a loan from an Indonesian bank, has been sitting in Basra ever since, according to two ex-employees.

Like several other former Lincoln workers, they asked to remain anonymous because they had signed confidentiality agreements with the company or still dealt with the firm.

Lincoln also spent about $50,000 for two portable brick-making machines from Texas.

The company had hoped to set up a brick plant near Mosul, where the demand for construction materials was vast, according to a presentation Mr. Bailey made to potential investors in Dubai.

The machines, though, were principally designed for homeowners or small contractors.

Lincoln would not comment on the project.

Eventually, Lincoln began working with the American military, which was spending millions on contractors for a broad range of services.

The firm rented a one-story house inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified government compound in central Baghdad.

Furnished with two sofas and a sheet of plywood that served as a desk, the house had a single telephone and an overloaded electrical outlet.

Lincoln formed a partnership with The Rendon Group, a Washington company with close ties to the Bush administration, and won a $5 million Pentagon contract to help inform Iraqis about the American-led effort to defeat the insurgency and form a new government.

One contract requirement was to get Iraqi publications to run articles written by the military, according to several ex-Lincoln employees.

Rendon soon dropped out and Lincoln handled the contract alone.

But the company had fewer than two dozen workers and little experience with public relations, according to several ex-employees.

Problems arose from the start.

In a 2004 briefing to the military, Lincoln conceded that it was "not yet fully staffed" and that "media monitoring software" required by the contract was "not ready."

And the government did not provide that much work at first.

The military's public affairs office produced only a few articles a day during that period, one Lincoln ex-employee said.

A small State Department contract to assist small businesses had just been cancelled, he said, and the firm was having difficulty making its payroll.

Lincoln lacked the armored vehicles or security guards employed by more established contractors.

When venturing outside the Green Zone, employees would grab weapons and climb into one of two beat-up Proton sedans, which employees were told were chosen to blend in with dilapidated Iraqi vehicles on the streets.

After winning a small contract from the Marines to do polling, the company hired Iraqis to go door-to-door in Anbar Province with questionnaires.

To protect themselves from possible insurgent reprisals, they were told to say they were working for an Iraqi university, according to a former Lincoln employee.

Last August, gunmen came to the home of one of the Iraqi workers, killing him and three others, according to an ex- employee.

Mr. Bailey said it was not clear whether the killing was related to the polling, but the company decided to move a Lincoln office staffed by Iraqis in downtown Baghdad to a less noticeable location.

Back in the United States, Mr. Bailey and Mr. Craig worked to drum up more business.

In late 2004, Mr. Craig traveled to Fort Bragg, N.C., to meet with officers of the 18th Airborne Corps, which was preparing take over management of Lincoln's public affairs contract in Iraq, according to a former employee and company documents.

Despite the problems with the existing work, Lincoln said it could assist the military in the more secretive realm of "information operations," according to a transcript of the briefing.

Unlike public affairs work, information operations are meant to influence and help defeat foreign adversaries, using deception, if necessary.

The briefing also touted the firm's "strategic advisers," including Mr. Santamaria, the former Marine officer, who received a master's degree from the Wharton business school and was co-author of a business book called "The Marine Corps Way."

Mr. Santamaria said he reviewed several investment proposals for Lincoln during a two-week association in late 2004.

But after becoming "concerned about their methods," he said, "I severed ties with them as quickly as I could."

A Lincoln spokesman, William Dixon, said "it was a mistake" to include Mr. Santamaria's name in the December briefing because he was no longer affiliated with the company.

Lincoln may simply have been following another principle taught by Mr. Peña.

"How do you create an instant track record?" Mr. Peña says he told Mr. Bailey.

"You joint-venture with someone who has a track record."

Early last summer, military commanders made Lincoln Group the main civilian contractor for carrying out an aggressive propaganda campaign in Anbar Province, known as the Western Mission project.

Over the next several months, the military transferred tens of millions of dollars to Lincoln for the project, records show.

The company hired dozens of employees, including academics and former military personnel, as well as hundreds of contract workers in Iraq and elsewhere, a number that fluctuates by contract requirements, according to Mr. Dixon, the Lincoln spokesman.

With the new duties came substantial new requirements, including producing television and radio ads, buying newspaper ads and placing many more articles in the Iraqi press.

The military also approved paying Iraqi editors to run stories, according to ex-Lincoln employees.

Lincoln also enlisted the New York advertising executive Jerry Della Femina, chairman of Della Femina Rothschild Jeary & Partners.

Mr. Della Femina said he was introduced to Mr. Craig last spring by a Washington lobbyist.

Mr. Della Femina said his firm "did a great deal of work" on advertising ideas for Lincoln to present to the military's Special Operations Command, which last summer was soliciting bids for contracts, potentially worth millions, for psychological operations.

Lincoln listed Mr. Della Femina as a "creative director" in materials presented last spring at a meeting with Special Operations officers in Tampa.

But Mr. Della Femina said his firm pulled out before executing any of the ideas.

Three months after ending the collaboration, Mr. Della Femina said, he discovered that Lincoln's Web site listed him as one of its partners.

"I was surprised that they had our name on their Web site in the first place," he said.

After he asked that his name be removed, Mr. Craig said, "we honored his request within the week."

By that time, Lincoln had already been notified by Special Operations Command that it and two other companies had been chosen to compete for work under the contract.

Lincoln later told Special Operations Command that one of its principal subcontractors was Omnicom Group Inc. of New York, an advertising and marketing conglomerate.

A proposal signed by Mr. Bailey in October said Lincoln "has exploited the extensive experience and expertise of the Omnicom Group."

But Pat Sloan, an Omnicom spokeswoman, said she could find no evidence it has ever worked with Lincoln Group.

"We're not aware of any relationship with Lincoln Group," she said.

She noted that Omnicom had once owned 49 percent of Mr. Della Femina's agency but had sold the stake in early 2005.

Michael J. Jeary, president of Mr. Della Femina's agency, said Lincoln's claim of Omnicom as a subcontractor was an "honest mistake" because he had never told the firm Omnicom had sold its minority stake.

Although Lincoln Group's work in Iraq is now under scrutiny in two Pentagon investigations, the firm is hunting for more government work.

Last month, Mr. Bailey attended a going-away reception at the Virginia condominium of a mid-level government employee on her way to a new job at the American Embassy in Baghdad.

Her job: overseeing contracts.

[Snuffysmith]

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=8556

As Long as We're Talking About the Constitution…
Why not read it?
by Scott Horton
"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
- Thomas Jefferson

All over the country, and even in the press, the U.S. Constitution is being discussed in regards to the president's war powers. This is apparently a side benefit of having an empire so corrupt and murderous that many folks are considering impeaching and removing the president who lied us into war and claims unlimited authority to wiretap, kidnap, torture, and murder whomever he likes – his lawyers even insist that the "commander in chief" has the "inherent" and "plenary" authority to crush a child's testicles to get at the boy's father. (Really. Click here to read all about it.)

The Constitution is not holy writ, but the government it describes would be a hell of a lot better than the one we have now.

It is a commonly held fallacy that the president of the United States has unlimited authority over this country's foreign policy. What authority does the Constitution grant the president in this regard? Well, he is to retain civilian supremacy over the military "when called into the actual service of the United States," and he can negotiate treaties that have no authority whatsoever unless and until ratified by a super-majority of the U.S. Senate. That's it. There is nothing else.

Congress holds "all legislative powers," according to the first sentence of the first section of Article One.

One could argue, as Thomas Jefferson did, that the spirit and letter of the Constitution has been corrupted since the first Washington administration, when the president accepted Alexander Hamilton's view that the new government could do anything not expressly forbidden by the Constitution and signed the law creating the second Bank of the United States – an act that caused Jefferson to resign his position as secretary of state. Even accepting Hamilton's false premise, as every generation since then has, it is apparent that precisely what is considered forbidden by the Constitution has been about as fluid as George Washington's interpretation of it and the whims of various politicians in the years since.

No where is this clearer than in the record of America's wars. Of the five wars that were actually declared by the Congress, as required by Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11, not one was defensive. The war of 1812-14 was the result of Jefferson and Madison's perfectly constitutional, yet economically and politically suicidal, trade war against Britain. James Madison, the Constitution's principal author, chose to take an aggressive posture against Britain (while, of course, playing the victim), and succeeded only in getting the Capitol burned to the ground and making Andrew Jackson (who would go on to centralize more authority in the presidency) into a war hero.

It's too bad Madison ignored his own advice on how to keep the government limited. In 1795, he had argued that America should do its best to avoid foreign conflicts since,

"[O]f all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."

The war against Mexico (in which half of that country was stolen) was provoked by U.S. troops as soon as possible after Texas' entry to the Union. Congress was "notified," that is, lied to, and declared war after the fact, to the infernal consternation of a congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. After gaining the presidency for himself, Lincoln turned around and provoked the first shots of the Civil War by sending troops to occupy Ft. Sumter, a tax-collection post in the bay of a state that had declared its independence. According to Thomas DiLorenzo, Lincoln "wrote to his naval commander Gustavus Fox thanking him for his assistance in drawing the first shot." Congress never did declare war, only that the war the president had started was for the purpose of "preserving the union" – months later.

By the time the Civil War was over, the idea that anything could limit the powers of the federal government was gone forever. The final step from a limited constitutional republic to a single nation-state had been taken – the union had become the nation – the united States, plural, replaced forever by the United States, singular. The right of people to secede from what they consider to be an illegitimate government, articulated so clearly in the Declaration of Independence, had been replaced by the president's prerogative to conquer them by violent force. (Yes, private slavery is also wrong.)

As soon as the settlement of the West, and the near extermination of the American Indians, was complete, the American empire went looking for foreign colonies to conquer. Apparently, the step between post-constitutional "statehood" and empire wasn't quite as far as the step from republic to nation-state. Hawaii was taken at 40-inch gun point in 1893.

(Throughout all this is a history of violent intervention in Central and South America that defies imagination.)


The "splendid little" Spanish-American war of 1898, which William Graham Sumner argued actually resulted in the U.S. being conquered by Spain, was sold to the people and the Congress as a defensive response to Spanish sabotage of the battleship Maine – which was, of course, a lie. "Acquired" were Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines– where a brutal "anti-insurgency" campaign took the lives of hundreds of thousands, all in the name of "liberation." There was no constitutional provision for how to suppress insurrections by the subjects of foreign colonies, so the Marines just improvised.

With the arrival of the butcher Woodrow Wilson, favorite of American court historians and thus of state-educated folks everywhere, came a whole "New Freedom," which included mass arrests, deportations, jailing of dissenters, and all the other staples of a totalitarian reign of terror. He had already invaded Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic – all without just cause or congressional declaration – before lying the U.S. into World War I. The suspicious sinking of the Lusitania, a ship full of civilians (and unbeknownst to them, munitions for British forces fighting the Kaiser), was not enough to convince the American people to get involved in the "Great War" in Europe, but when the people were shown an intercepted message known as the Zimmerman Telegram, which showed Germany's offer of an alliance with Mexico in the event of war with the United States and a promise to help them retake the American Southwest, opinion against Germany hit a fever pitch. How Germany could help Mexico retake New Mexico and Arizona when they couldn't conquer France, England, or Russia was never explained, but it was enough, and Wilson got his declaration of war.

America's entry into World War I set the 20th century on a course of death and totalitarianism. As described by Jim Powell in Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II, due to Wilson's interference, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Paul Wolfowitz's hero, Leon Trotsky, were able to seize power in Russia and create the Soviet Union, and the French and British were able to so humiliate the Germans as to assure the rise of the Nazi death machine.

Between Wilson and his fascist spawn, Franklin Roosevelt, there was an attempted "return to normalcy," but the incredible consolidation of state power during the Wilson years was far too extensive to be undone, and the Republican administrations of Coolidge, Harding, and Hoover were hardly in a hurry to undo Wilson's gains. After all, he had just been emulating their conservative socialism.

By the time Franklin Roosevelt and Harry "Lucky" Truman were through, the Constitution was nothing but pretty calligraphy on parchment for folks to reminisce about on the Fourth of July. Through various states of national emergency, the wholesale rewriting of the interstate commerce clause by the courts, and America's participation in WWII (another war in which the American people were deceived into thinking that our intervention was defensive in nature, though their sons were conscripted when that still wasn't good enough), Washington, D.C., had permanently established itself as the center of economic and political power in the United States. Garet Garrett called it Ex-America way back then: a massive warfare/welfare/regulatory/national security state, the final reduction of the several states to the status of large counties under "federal" control, a permanent military-industrial complex, and the inheritance of all the Western empires, plus Japan's. War could now be declared by the president or the United Nations Security Council. The Constitution was no longer amended when politicians decided they needed more power – they just went ahead. The rule of law was dead.

It is impossible to have a limited constitutional republic in a state of perpetual war. Since WWII, the Right has agitated for more foreign conflict – a government's most effective means of expanding its control – while the Left has sung J.P. Morgan's song of good democratic government and pushed for the disregard of the limits the law places on the actions of the state. As the historians Gabriel Kolko and Murray Rothbard have shown, the push for "progressive" government regulation of business in the years before World War I and during the Great Depression was led by the big businesses that were to be regulated. They had decided that competing over control of congressmen was easier than competing in a free market. The Left bought it, and continues to. When the Republicans are in charge, the Left is mad at them for "not doing enough." When Democrats are in power, the Left openly laments that our government doesn't interfere in people's lives quite as much as in Europe. Even the most atrocious and aggressive wars are sometimes praised by liberals, who, believing wholeheartedly in the benevolent power of the state to order the domestic sphere, carry that faith over into "humanitarian" and "peacekeeping" roles for the U.S. military around the world. Enumerated powers? Never heard of such a thing.

The Cold War – a neat euphemism for 40 years of constant fear and warmongering – required even those most dedicated to markets and the rule of law to accept a "totalitarian bureaucracy on our shores," according to the court intellectuals, as the military fought its proxy wars and the CIA installed its dictators overseas. As the Cold War was winding down, the National Security Council was preparing to scrap the Constitution altogether and create a military dictatorship, as detailed in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987.

When the Soviet menace imploded, the U.S. government created and found new enemies here and abroad to fight in the name of ending the distribution of illegal drugs and stopping aggressive war, beginning with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, which American diplomats had, of course, invited.

It is easy to see why the politicians lie us into all these conflicts: Americans don't want empire and never have. We have continued to believe in the traditions of our nation's founders, who led a successful rebellion against an empire and created in its place, at least they claimed, just enough government to protect our rights. When the politicians send our families off to war, they must always call it "liberation" and "defending freedom" against the forces of malevolent tyrants in order to disguise our empire's truly aggressive nature.

With the "war on terror," we see the brutal face of the $2.5 trillion per year government that has been created in this land, supposedly under this Constitution, in the name of all these good works. Halliburton – which has done such a great job with the ghost prisons overseas – has now been awarded the contract to build domestic concentration camps. In the event of a "Red Alert," we may very well see the Department of Homeland Security fulfill its destiny as the American National Police Force; the repeal (or reinterpretation out of existence) of posse comitatus; and the deployment of the military's new Northern Command over the people of this once-free land.

Some may try to pretend that the U.S. has become like the Soviet Union "allofasudden," under the corrupt direction of recent leaders, but the truth is that our government has been turning into this imperial leviathan for generations, while the citizenry has bought every lie and cheered it on. It has taken the blundering stupidity and ruthlessness of this recent gang to make people see what's happened – and now it may be too late to do anything about it.

There's one course left open, and that is the election of the House of Representative every two years. (Look out, they're trying to destroy that, too.) All bills for raising and appropriating revenue must originate in the House. They finally ended the Vietnam War by refusing to continue paying for it.

The U.S. Constitution provides us with the mechanism to completely purge our government without bloodshed – and we may not have many chances left. We could, theoretically, in this year's primary elections, send the machine candidates in both parties home and completely purge the House of Representatives (current reelection rate 99 percent). But will the choice between republic or empire be on the ballot in 2006?

[Livyjr]

Good morning, Snuffysmith .....

I just finished reading this post above ...

And as always ...

It left me with some thoughts and impressions ....

Which I am still mulling over, to be truthful .....

And it is interesting how this post fits in to an evolving "train of thought" that I have been having ...

Along the same lines ....

This "flow" from a Republic of individual states to this CORRUPT TYRANNICAL EMPIRE that we find ourselves in today ....

In here, I "style" myself as a student of history ...

Because in reality ...

Out there, in the non-BLOG-O-SPHERIC reality, I am a "student of history" .....

It is just something that I do ...

On my own ...

For my own reasons ...

BUT ...

Since one of those reasons is CITIZENSHIP ...

That makes my studies relevant in here ...

If I can have them be so ...

And my point of view, in counterpoint to this author's views above ...

Is that what is visited down on us by what purports to be OUR OWN GOVERNMENT ....

IS OUR OWN FAULT ....

If we have this CORRUPT TRAVESTY of a government today here in OUR America ...

It is because we have abdicated on what OUR citizenship responsibilities demand of us ...

And we have done that too many days in a row ....

Until now ...

We are here ....

Has a die really been cast?

A study of history says yes ...

And no ....

Yes, because, obviously ...

We are here, regardless of where we might have wanted to be ...

And no ...

Because nothing, including the EMPIRE OF ROME, lasts forever ...

As I have said before, I am a combat veteran ...

And so ..

Perhaps my mind is indeed altered ....

I study the past ...

But I am not at all obsessed by it ...

Since like the bullet that just went whinging by your head ...

IT IS GONE ...

The bullet that goes by is never the one to kill you ..

And so ...

And I am not overly concerned about the future, either ....

Whether it be doom and gloom ...

Or not ...

Because no one can say for sure what that future will be ...

And so ...

My concerns are right now ....

Regardless of how good or bad life around me seems ....

And that is why I try hard to put some thought into my words in here ....

Because here is where change has to start ....

If a train is coming roaring down the tracks ...

And you want to divert it ...

To avoid a calamity further down the line ....

Then you have to find a switch ...

And you have to throw that switch in time to divert that on-coming train over onto a different track ....

And if you can't .....

Well, let's just say for the moment that we will not consider that second option overlong in here, for the moment, at least ....

And so ....

[Livyjr]

If we have this CORRUPT TRAVESTY of a government today here in OUR America ...

It is because we have abdicated on what OUR citizenship responsibilities demand of us ...

And we have done that too many days in a row ....

Until now ...

We are here ....

A funny thing occurs when people get lost in the woods ....

They begin to run ....

Even though they don't know where they are ....

If you are lost ...

And you don't know where you are ...

You should stop and rest and think for a moment about how you got to that spot ...

But people don't do that ....

When the thought comes into their head that they are lost ...

People don't look backwards for their own trail in to that spot ...

Which has to exist ...

Unless you floated down on a parachute, or something ....

To the contrary ...

People panic ....

And so ...

They run looking for the exit ....

Never realizing that it was right behind them, all the time ....

"Tension Between Doctors, Free Clinics Rise"

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Writer

Thu Feb 16, 3:37 AM ET

LONG BEACH, Miss. - When Clifton Davis hurt his eye recently, he went to a free medical clinic in this hurricane-wrecked community.

For Davis, and others with health insurance, getting free care is easier than figuring out if regular doctors are still around.

"I don't even know who's open," said Davis, a 49-year-old landscaper.

"Everything got torn up by the storm."

Nearly six months after Katrina, there are still a half dozen free clinics in coastal Mississippi seeing hundreds of patients a day.

At the same time, hundreds of doctors whose offices were destroyed are struggling to rebuild their practices.

Some complain that jump-starting their businesses will be tougher as long as clinics are providing free care and free medicine.

"We are very appreciative of what they've done, but it's time to move on," said Dr. Douglas Lanier, who treats kidney diseases at Memorial Hospital in Gulfport.

The Long Beach clinic is one of the region's largest, with several doctors treating around 170 patients a day.

Under a big tent set up in an Episcopal school's parking lot, patients wait on folding chairs and school desks.

Doctors use picnic tables for desks and examine patients in areas screened off by plastic tarps.

For patients with no insurance and no transportation, the clinics often are the only option, said Jennifer Knight, a registered nurse who serves as the Long Beach clinic's medical services director.

Knight estimates about half her patients either have insurance or lost coverage after Katrina.

She said she's aware of the resentment of some local doctors.

"My answer to that is, 'Come to the area and open your office.'"

"... It's not my pleasure to serve people in a tent."

"It's not optimal care."

Her clinic is the target of fewer complaints, she says, because the staff includes some local doctors — and they're getting paid for their work.

Some of the visiting physicians at the clinic were sponsored by out-of-state institutions.

Others came on their own.

Some stay a day or two, others remain for as long as two or three weeks.

Many have used vacation time.

Catherine May, a psychiatrist with a private practice in Washington, D.C., said she relished the chance to apply her training in emergency medicine and came on her own.

"They needed the help," May said.

"I also find the work intensely gratifying and interesting."

In less than two weeks, Knight plans to merge her clinic with a nearby medical center, Coastal Family Health, and operate out of a trailer instead of a tent.

Many patients will continue to get free care, but others will be charged according to their ability to pay, she said.

Tension between local doctors and the free clinics is more pronounced in Bay St. Louis, which before Katrina wrecked it was a quaint resort town about 40 miles east of New Orleans.

Less than three-quarters of Bay St. Louis' pre-Katrina population of 8,200 has returned.

The Virginia-based Loudoun Medical Group opened a free clinic in the historic train depot.

Despite complaints from some area doctors, city officials have asked the group to stay until April.

Harold "Buz" Olsen, the city's community and economic development director, said between 40 and 80 patients a day visit the clinic for a variety of injuries and illnesses, including the nagging respiratory ailment locals have taken to calling "Katrina crud."

"It fills a need."

"It really does," Olsen said of the clinic.

"This is a place that's helping those who don't have the wherewithal to pay."

A day after Katrina demolished his Bay St. Louis office, Dr. James Crittenden raised a tent in his parking lot and started treating patients — both those who could pay and those who couldn't.

His income has dropped around 40 percent since the storm, but the internist said he views free care as an investment, not just a public service.

Still, he wants local doctors providing the care — not the clinic.

"The only way we can get back up and running is to put the patients back in the system, whether they're free or paying," Crittenden said.

Faith-based groups run many of the free clinics, including one at Bethel Lutheran Church in Biloxi, farther east on Mississippi's coast.

Judy Bultman, who worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Gulfport that was leveled by Katrina, now spends her days managing the clinic.

Many of the patients who visit her clinic are newly unemployed but have annual incomes that disqualify them from Medicare, she said.

Those patients, she added, wouldn't help pay private doctors' bills.

"I'm not doing battle with anybody to keep this clinic open," she said.

"We're trying to respond to the needs, the unmet needs, of the people."

Dr. Rowe Crowder downplays the friction between local physicians and the free clinics.

Still, the 41-year-old internist has grave doubts about staying in his native Bay St. Louis.

At least once a day, he fields a phone call or e-mail from a recruiter dangling a job that would take him far from the devastation.

The offers tempt Crowder, who lost his home and two offices to Katrina.

These days, Crowder lives in a donated trailer home and treats patients in another trailer parked outside Hancock Medical Center in Bay St. Louis.

He works for the hospital now, earning a salary less than half of what he made before the hurricane.

"Going to work for the hospital was a way for me to stay here and be part of the rebuilding," said Crowder, whose post-Katrina office attire often includes an untucked polo shirt, shorts and sockless loafers.

"But I'm not in a position to do a kamikaze run and wipe myself out financially."

[Livyjr]

A funny thing occurs when people get lost in the woods ....

They begin to run ....

We had quite a rip-roaring thunder storm up here where I am this morning ..

Which is something ...

Because it is February ...

Winter ...

And thunderstorms are a summer-time thing ...

Or at least they used to be .....

"Fierce Winter Storm Sweeps Across Midwest"

By KATIE O'KEEFE, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 22 minutes ago

A fierce storm system swept across the Midwest moving eastward on Friday, ripping the roof off an Indiana church, pelting Arkansas with hail and cutting power to thousands in Michigan.

In western New York, winds gusting up to 60 mph early Friday led several schools to close from Buffalo to Rochester and south to the Finger Lakes region, partly out of concern for safety and in anticipation of power outages.

A motorist near Rochester was killed by a falling tree.

Arkansas was bracing for a possible ice storm Friday after quarter-sized hail fell on the northwest part of the state, said Newton Skiles of the National Weather Service.

Stephanie Mayo, 33, stocked up on supplies at Harvest Foods in Little Rock, Ark.

"I'm buying a week's worth of food," she said.

In Indiana, an apparent tornado on Thursday blew the roof off a church in Terre Haute, and the roof on an Ivy Tech State College building partially collapsed.

Another suspected tornado damaged nearly a dozen homes in Vincennes, about 100 miles southwest of Indianapolis, authorities said.

In Michigan, about 100,000 customers were still without power Friday after 60-mph winds blew through the Lower Peninsula.

Some homes and businesses were expected to remain blacked out until Sunday.

The cold front came on the heels of much warmer weather.

Temperatures in Arkansas, where Fort Smith reached 79 degrees Thursday, were expected to be in the 20s and 30s Friday.

Indianapolis residents woke up to 23-degree weather.

In Rochester, N.Y., the temperature plunged from 60 degrees to the 30s in a few hours overnight.

Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. officials said 1,000 customers were already without power by dawn.

Parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska had been hit by the strong winds and, in their case, heavy snow, on Wednesday and Thursday.

As the cold front moved through Wisconsin on Thursday, the state got a mix of rain, sleet, snow, lightning, thunder and high winds gusting 50 mph.

Scores of motorists ended up in ditches, and Green Bay had over a foot of snow.

"It was a great system," said Steve Davis, of the National Weather Service in Sullivan.

"For meteorologists, these are extremely interesting."
___

On the Net:

Weather Underground: http://www.wunderground.com

National Weather Service: http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov

Intellicast: http://www.intellicast.com

[Livyjr]

George ...

That torture stuff that you and Dick are promoting .....

And all that stuff involving those men and their private parts .....

Who did you guys think you would be impressing with that as your military policy for taking over the world, anyway?

And who exactly is responsible for that business with these men and their private parts?

Douglas Feith?

Paul Wolfowitz?

RUMMY, himself?

We here in OUR America like to prattle on to all the rest of the world that we here in OUR America are a nation of laws ....

And each time George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Scotty "BOY" McClellan run their mouths about how they know all these individuals in George's PRISON CAMP down there in Gitmo are real bad people, despite never having had any evidence of anything, and despite the concept of due process of law FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS on the face of this earth of OURS ......

They make an absolute MOCKERY of that concept of a nation of laws ...

FOR AMERICA IS NOT .....

Not a nation of laws ...

Not when people like George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld can set the law aside on a whim ...

Of theirs .....

And Donald Rumsfeld would like us to believe that this torture business and especially this perversion business ON HIS WATCH is the work of low-level individuals ....

Well, Donald, as a former military here in OUR America .....

THAT IS CRAP!

Policy like that comes from on high ...

Which is to say ..

FROM YOU ...

SO ...

Donald ....

Why do you think that PERVERSION can win wars?

"Rumsfeld rejects calls for Guantanamo closure"

41 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday rejected calls from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others to close Guantanamo Bay prison, and firmly denied accusations of torture and abuse.

"He's just flat wrong."

"We shouldn't close Guantanamo," Rumsfeld said of Annan.

"We have several hundred terrorists, bad people, people who if they went back out on the field would try to kill Americans."

"... To close that place and pretend that really there's no problem just isn't realistic."

Rumsfeld was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, a day after a report by five United Nations special envoys called for closing the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

The report accused the United States of violating bans on torture and arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial.

Annan said he did not agree with everything in the report, produced by independent experts for the inter-governmental U.N. Human Rights Commission, but he believed the prison should be closed as soon as possible.

Adding its voice, the European parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday for a resolution urging that the prison be closed and inmates be given a fair trail.

Rumsfeld said that while the authors of the U.N. report had not come to Guantanamo Bay, the International Committee of the Red Cross, U.S. lawmakers and foreign officials who had visited the prison had not called for its closure.

The authors had turned down a U.S. offer to visit the detention center late last year because Washington would not allow them to interview individual detainees.

The defense secretary said such interviews were the exclusive purview of the ICRC.

"There is no torture."

"There's no abuse."

"It's being handled honorably, and to the extent anyone does anything wrong, it's reported and they are punished under the uniform code of military justice."

"And by golly, that's the way it ought to be," Rumsfeld said.

Most of the roughly 500 inmates at Guantanamo have been held for four years without trial.

The prisoners were mainly detained in Afghanistan and are held as part of President George W. Bush's declared war against terrorism.

Asked whether he would support a new, independent investigation into allegations of detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Rumsfeld said there had been more than a dozen previous probes and it would not serve anyone's purpose to "rehash all of this."

"Any single example of abuse that's ever been sited has been investigated and to the extent appropriate, people have been punished."

"And that's how it should be dealt with," he said.

[Livyjr]

Ah, yes ...

Donald Rumsfeld .....

And the "RUMSFELD DOCTRINE" .....

It looks like ordinary perversion and torture to us common ordinary Americans .....

But to George W. Bush apparently .....

It is a great weapon of war ...

And therefore .....

RUMMY is a military mastermind ....

Even though to us common ordinary Americans ...

The RUMSFELD DOCTRINE IS nothing more than perversion ....

And torture ....

Devoid of any honor at all ....

And now ...

The economy ....

"RadioShack to close up to 700 stores"

By Nicole Maestri

2 hours, 41 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - RadioShack Corp. (NYSE:RSH), whose chief executive has admitted to lying on his resume, on Friday said quarterly profit fell 62 percent after a switch in wireless providers led to an inventory write-down, sending its shares to a nearly three-year low.

The consumer electronics retailer, which said it was hiring legal counsel to investigate the admission by CEO David Edmondson, also announced a new turnaround plan that includes closing 400 to 700 company-operated stores and liquidating slow-moving inventory.

The company said it was "unwise" to issue earnings forecasts for 2006 given the uncertainty of the turnaround plan, which could cost up to $100 million.

"We have been very cautious on (RadioShack's) ability to execute the wireless transition smoothly and are skeptical on the just-announced turnaround," Lehman Bros. analyst Alan Rifkin said in a note.

"We would not be owners of (the) shares at this time."

RadioShack shares were down $1.61, or 7.8 percent, at $19.14 in afternoon New York Stock Exchange trading after touching as low as $19.02.

FALLING EARNINGS

Fourth-quarter earnings fell to $49.5 million, or 36 cents per share, from $130.9 million, or 81 cents per share, a year earlier.

According to Reuters Estimates, excluding 22 cents per share for the inventory write-down and a 2-cent charge for an accounting change, profit would have been 60 cents, which compares with the analysts' average forecast of 66 cents.

Sales rose 5 percent to $1.67 billion, compared with analysts' target of $1.62 billion.

The results come two days after Edmondson admitted that he lied about his academic record on his resume and on the company's Web site.

The discrepancy was first reported earlier this week by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

At an investor conference, Edmondson began by apologizing for any embarrassment the situation caused and said the issue was now in the hands of the board.

As for the quarterly results, Edmondson said sales were "good" in low-margin nonwireless categories like MP3 players, but were weak in high-margin categories, like batteries.

Sales of wireless products, a key profit driver, were below targets.

Last year, RadioShack said it would switch phone carrier partners to try to revive its wireless sales.

It agreed to sell Cingular Wireless phones and cut ties with long-time ally Verizon Wireless.

It also signed a new 11-year deal with Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE:S).

But the transition, which took place at the end of the year, turned out to be more difficult than expected.

On Friday, RadioShack said it took an inventory write-down of $62 million in the quarter, and it is replacing old, slower-moving merchandise like speaker wire and outdoor antennas with new, faster-moving items

"Our business model for many years has been based on high-margin, slow-moving products," Edmondson said during an investor presentation.

"These products are taking up valuable space in the store that can be much more efficiently utilized."

RadioShack said it would liquidate some products, take "aggressive" mark-downs on others and let some stay on store shelves until they sell out.

It will continue to sell some of the products on its Web site, though not in the stores.

The company also expects to add about 200 kiosks in 2006, relocate some stores to better sites, and close two distribution centers.

RadioShack, which has 7,000 company-owned and dealer stores, estimated it would incur costs of $55 million to $100 million on the inventory write-downs and store closures in 2006, although it may take some of the costs in 2007, depending on when it closes the stores.

"While the execution of the turnaround plan will trigger the recognition of significant costs," Edmondson said, "we are confident that the steps we are taking will put RadioShack back on the track to sustained profitable growth."

[jeffmoskin]

Starbucks is next. They must have 70,000 stores.

[Livyjr]

And on a lighter note ....

"Greek Hiker Finds 6,500-Year-Old Pendant"

By COSTAS KANTOURIS, Associated Press Writer

Fri Feb 17, 10:46 AM ET

THESSALONIKI, Greece - A Greek hiker found a 6,500-year-old gold pendant in a field and handed it over to authorities, an archaeologist said Thursday.

The flat, roughly ring-shaped prehistoric pendant probably had religious significance and would have been worn on a necklace by a prominent member of society.

Only three such gold artifacts have been discovered during organized digs, archaeologist Georgia Karamitrou-Mendesidi, head of the Greek archaeological service in the northern region where the discovery was made, told The Associated Press.

"It belongs to the Neolithic period, about which we know very little regarding the use of metals, particularly gold," she said.

"The fact that it is made of gold indicates that these people were highly advanced, producing significant works of art."

She said the pendant, measuring rough 1 1/2 by 1 1/2 inches, was picked up last year near the town of Ptolemaida, about 90 miles southwest of the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Karamitrou-Mendesidi is to present the artifact at a three-day archaeological conference that opened Thursday in Thessaloniki.

Greek police confiscated a hoard of 33 similar pieces of hammered gold jewelry from smugglers in 1997.

The woman who found the pendant did not want a reward and wished to remain anonymous, Karamitrou-Mendesidi said.

Similar finds have been excavated in modern Turkey and the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria.

Around 4500 B.C., when the pendant was made, Greece's early Neolithic farming settlements were consolidating into structured trading centers with a developed knowledge of metalworking.

In November, archaeologists announced the discovery of two prehistoric farming settlements dating back as early as 6000 B.C. in the Ptolemaida region.

The settlement digs uncovered burial sites, clay and stone figurines of humans and animals, pottery and stone tools.

Another 25 prehistoric settlements have been found in the area.

[Livyjr]

Starbucks is next.

They must have 70,000 stores.

Is this so, jeffmoskin?

The demise of Starbucks?

The end of the $3.00 cup of coffee that you can get for a dollar anywhere else?

Can this be so .....

Oh .....

What a disaster for OUR America this will be ......

[Livyjr]

WHOA, DICK ...

Easy down there, big fellow ....

Easy down ....

You're kind of getting carried away now, here .....

That's it ...

That's it ...

Right, right, right ...

NOW ...

That's it ...

Just put the gun down, there, Dick ...

And everything will be alright ....

Now ...

That's it ...

Just assume the position ....

"Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter"

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.

Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was "alert and doing fine" in a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday after he was shot by Cheney on a ranch in south Texas, said Katharine Armstrong, the property's owner.

Armstrong in an interview with The Associated Press said Whittington, 78, was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest during the incident which occurred late afternoon on Saturday.

Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued.

"The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot."

"And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

"Cheney Cited for Breaking Hunting Law"

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, said it happened toward the end of the hunt, when it was still sunny but as darkness was encroaching and they were preparing to go inside.

She said Whittington made a mistake by not announcing that he had walked up to rejoin the hunting line, and Cheney didn't see him as he tried to down a bird.

Pamela Willeford, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, another member of the hunting party, told The Dallas Morning News for a story in Tuesday's editions that she and Cheney didn't realize Whittington had picked up a bird and caught up with them.

Yes, indeed ...

You do hear it said from time to time that these big, predatory carnivores like Dick Cheney, the "BIG WYOMING GRIZ", that they can be tamed ...

Domesticated ...

As though they were just some big dog or something ....

And some people do appear able to tame them ...

To have wild animals like wolves and grizzly bears around them ...

Even living with them in houses and such ....

But the question always does remain ...

Are they really tame?

Might they turn?

And no one, absolutely no one ...

Ever quite knows for sure ....

"Cheney expresses remorse, DEFIANCE - Speaking on shooting, vice president accepts blame, rejects critics" 
 
By PETER BAKER, Washington Post
First published: Thursday, February 16, 2006

Cheney's account largely squared with that of Katharine Armstrong, one of the owners of the huge Armstrong Ranch in southern Texas where the vice president was hunting Saturday.

Whittington, dressed in hunter's orange, had left the group of three hunters to recover another bird he had shot and, according to Armstrong, failed to let his partners know he had returned.

Cheney said he was trying to shoot a low-flying quail when he swung his 28-gauge shotgun to the right, the setting sun in his eyes.

"I turned and shot at the bird, and at that second saw Harry standing there," he said.

Cheney estimated that Whittington was 30 yards away when the birdshot struck the right side of his face, neck and torso and knocked him to the ground, where he lay bleeding as the vice president rushed over.

The vice president said he had consumed a beer during a barbecue lunch hours earlier, but added that no one was drinking at the time of the shooting.

And here we are ...

Back once again to this story of the BIG GRIZ, that is, VICE PRESIDENT OF AMERICA Dick Cheney .....

And his shooting of this big-time Texas REPUBLICAN lawyer and fundraiser .....

It seems that the BIG GRIZ's popularity is soaring as a result of this lawyer shooting ....

"Cheers greet Cheney at appearance in Wyo."

By LYNN BREZOSKY and BEN NEARY, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:36 p.m., Friday, February 17, 2006

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- His face marked with tiny birdshot wounds, the lawyer shot by Vice President Dick Cheney while quail hunting left a hospital Friday, saying "accidents do and will happen" and apologizing for the trouble the incident had caused the vice president.

"My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with," Harry Whittington said, his voice a bit raspy but strong in his first comments since being shot on a South Texas ranch six days earlier.

The Austin attorney spoke less than 20 minutes before Cheney made his first public appearance since the shooting, receiving a rousing ovation from legislators in his home state of Wyoming.

"It's a wonderful experience to be greeted by such warmth by the leaders of our great state."

"It's especially true when you've had a very long week," Cheney told lawmakers in Cheyenne.

"Thankfully, Harry Whittington is on the mend and doing very well."

Whittington, 78, was hit in the face, neck and chest with birdshot Feb. 11.

After a shotgun pellet traveled to his heart, he had suffered a mild heart attack Tuesday while being treated at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.

Whittington, who did not answer questions after giving his brief statement, had what appeared to be a line of cuts on his upper right eyelid and scrapes on his neck.

"We all assume certain risks in what we do, in what activities we pursue," Whittington said.

"Accidents do and will happen."

He said the past weekend involved "a cloud of misfortune and sadness that is not easy to explain, especially with those who are not familiar with the great sport of quail hunting."

Dr. David Blanchard, the hospital's chief of emergency care, said the attorney was lucky to have survived the shooting.

Whittington was being released Friday because of "his excellent health," Blanchard said, but he added that Whittington wasn't answering questions because "he is not 100 percent."

Whittington did feel well enough to crack a joke.

"I also thank all of you for understanding as best you can that medical attention is very important to someone my age -- and you haven't failed to give my age," he said, drawing laughs from reporters.

He also sent his love and respect to Cheney and his family.

"We hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves," Whittington said.

Whittington returned to his home in Austin late Friday afternoon, smiling and waving to reporters through a tinted window before a garage door closed behind the green sport utility vehicle he was in.

"He's very tired."

"He's had a long, hard trip," said his daughter, Sally May Whittington, who added that the family would have no further comment.

"He's happy to be home."

U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Pam Willeford, who accompanied Whittington and Cheney on the hunting trip, was among the visitors at Whittington's house.

Cheney took full blame for the shooting in a Wednesday appearance on Fox News, but his comments Friday were focused on reminiscing about Wyoming politicians, including his own time as the state's sole representative in the U.S. House.

"For better than a decade, I proudly answered to the title, 'the gentleman from Wyoming,'" Cheney said.

He also recalled the late Gov. Stan Hathaway, who gave Cheney his first job in politics -- as an intern in the Wyoming Legislature in 1965, when Cheney was paid $300 for 40 days work.

About a dozen people waited outside the Capitol in subzero temperatures to protest Cheney's appearance.

"We're a little embarrassed that he's from our state," said Tony Hayden, of Cheyenne.

But Cheney also had his supporters, including Dan Yoksh, of Cheyenne, who watched Cheney's speech on television at the Cheyenne Regional Airport.

"I think the media has blown things out of proportion," Yoksh said of the accident.

"If you go duck hunting out here, you're bound to get shot sometime."

In Texas, the Kenedy County Sheriff's Department closed its investigation in the shooting Thursday without filing any charges.

The department's report supported the account of the vice president, who told an investigator he did not see his hunting partner while aiming for a bird.

------

Neary reported from Cheyenne, Wyo. Associated Press Writers Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, Nedra Pickler in Washington and Jennifer Byrd in Cheyenne contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

I wonder how many people read this little "stack" of news clippings above here ....

About Dick Cheney, the BIG GRIZ from Wyoming, shooting this Texas lawyer ....

And fail to see the questions that these accounts raise .....

For example ....

The Texas lawyer is shot in the right side of his face and body ....

Everybody seems to agree on that ...

And it would be hard to do otherwise, actually ....

Since that is where the BIG GRIZ's shot struck the lawyer .....

NOW ....

The ranch owner says the the lawyer Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter ....."

SO .....

He is coming up from behind ....

AND ....

He is hit in the RIGHT SIDE .....

And now ...

Look at what the BIG GRIZ is saying .....

"Cheney said he was trying to shoot a low-flying quail when he swung his 28-gauge shotgun to the right, the setting sun in his eyes."

SO .....

The lawyer is behind the BIG GRIZ ....

And the BIG GRIZ is turning to the right .....

Turning from south to west ....

And then ...

BA-BOOOOM .......

The lawyer is shot in the right side .....

Which would be the SIDE AWAY away from the BIG GRIZ .....

IF the lawyer was really coming up from behind as the REPUBLICAN ranch owner claims ....

And the BIG GRIZ was himself turning to his right when he shot the lawyer ....

Somehow ...

Something just don't seem to add up here ...

Which is probably why they waited the 24 hours before letting the news slowly leak out .....

They tried to get their stories straight ......

BUT .....

[jeffmoskin]

Something just don't seem to add up here ...

Which is probably why they waited the 24 hours before letting the news slowly leak out .....

They tried to get their stories straight ......

BUT .....

The reason they waited 24 hrs is because BIG GRIZ was snockered.
Only reason I can think of.

This post has been edited by jeffmoskin: Feb 17 2006, 08:06 PM

[Livyjr]

The reason they waited 24 hrs is because BIG GRIZ was snockered.

Only reason I can think of.

Or the old lawyer was .....

Or the both of them, for that matter .....

And while this WHITE HOUSE crowd is making quail hunting seem like some arcane, highly technical enterprise that only lawyers and above can even begin to understand ....

The fact is that there are a lot of people here in OUR America with experience of guns ...

And especially the various types of fools that one can find attached to them ....

In the driver's seat, so to speak ...

As was the BIG GRIZ when he shot this lawyer .....

And many of those people, like me, are wondering just what these two clowns were really up to when the BIG GRIZ shot the old lawyer ....

ESPECIALLY NOW THAT THE LAWYER HAS APOLOGIZED TO DICK CHENEY FOR BEING SHOT BY HIM .....

"Oh, gee, Dick, you just shot me in the face ..."

"But it's my fault ..."

"Oh, yes, it is my fault ..."

"And I don't know if I'll ever be able to give you as sincere an apology as you deserve ...."

"But hey ..."

"How about this ..."

"I'll go on national television, say, FOX NEWS FAIR AND BALANCED, YOU DECIDE, and I'll try to expiate my guilt at being shot in the face by you on Britt Hume's show ..."

"Britt's a good egg ...."

"Britt will give us some air time ..."

"And a real sympathetic ear ..."

"And Dick, as a lawyer, let me tell you ....

"You'll come out of this smelling like a rose, and that's a fact ..."

"After you sue me for shooting me, well, Dick, you'll be just rolling in dough ..."