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

[Livyjr]

And then ....

There is George Pataki's CORRUPT REPUBLICAN EMPIRE ....

Of New York State ....

Where the PEOPLE ....

Will be quite glad ....

To see the last ....

Of REPUBLICAN George Pataki ....

And so ....

"Reform? What reform? - As state legislators prepare to leave town, their promises to change their ways seem empty"

Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, June 18, 2006

The early days of June have the state Legislature limping to the conclusion of a session where all that progress toward open government and a more representative democracy last year is little more than a faint memory.

There's even one less legislator lingering around for a rather anticlimactic conclusion of the session.

Assemblyman Ryan Karben, a Democrat from Orange County, resigned quite abruptly last month.

He had been an ambitious legislator, with an especially high profile for someone still in just his second term.

Oh, and he had been one of the Assembly's most aggressive fundraisers as well.

It's in that regard, in fact, that Mr. Karben stands out as a symbol of what's wrong with state government even as he retreats into private life.

He left Albany with a campaign account of $534,000, and, thanks to a gaping hole in the state law, can do almost anything with that money.

Lee Daghlian of the state Board of Elections sums up the loophole as well as anyone could.

"He just can't write a check to himself," Mr. Daghlian says, in a rather exhaustive summary of the restrictions on how Mr. Karben might spend that money.

That anything-goes approach to campaign contributions underscores how far legislators are removed from the people they represent as well as anything does.

Failure to tighten the law so campaign contributions can be used for the cost of running for office, and only for that, is indicative of how much further a now sputtering reform movement still needs to go.

There are only days left in the legislative session.

But that still leaves time to debate and pass reform legislation proposed by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to prohibit the personal use of campaign funds.

His bill builds on one pushed by Assemblyman Rob Reilly, D-Colonie, that would ban legislators leasing cars, paying their kids' college tuition, buying expensive tickets to sporting events and indulging in other entertainment, taking trips and buying gifts on their campaign contributors' nickel.

Two other reform measures are even more urgently needed.

The Legislature simply shouldn't be allowed to control the drawing and redrawing of its own districts.

The hearings on this issue that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, is talking about can't convene quickly enough.

And then, finally, campaign finance laws have to be further toughened to provide for more competitive elections.

That means public funding of campaigns, as the Assembly has repeatedly endorsed, but there's almost no hope of any such action this year.

Next year, though, under a new governor?

Perhaps then, the Legislature might change its ways, just as the leaders were promising a year ago.

[Livyjr]

"Question Kerry's anti-war stance"

By JOAN VENNOCHI
First published: Sunday, June 18, 2006

Why is it so hard to believe John Kerry?

The Massachusetts senator is finally taking the anti-war position that people who know him well expected him to embrace long ago.

The position is welcome, if long overdue; unfortunately, it doesn't dispel doubts about the thinking that got him to this place.

Kerry now labels his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq invasion a mistake and is calling for U.S. troop withdrawal by the end of the year.

His position -- for now -- is as crisp today as it was meandering during the last presidential campaign.

Had he taken such a clear stand in 2004, he might be in the White House.

Remember, George W. Bush's convictions on war and miscellaneous matters ended up as an advantage on Election Day.

Kerry's penchant to finesse everything, especially war, helped create the flip-flopping caricature depicted in the Bush campaign ads.

As he moves toward a second presidential bid, Kerry continues to pay a price for the straddles, calculations and parsings of 2004.

It's going to take time and a lot of plain talking to overcome the excruciating equivocations from his previous performance as presidential nominee.

Overcoming skepticism about Kerry's change of heart on Iraq will be especially challenging.

For one thing, it tracks nicely with the general public's change of heart and coincides conveniently with the liberals' search for an anti-war champion.

In addition, the anti-war fervor that Kerry displayed last week also coincides with an early poll from Iowa that puts John Edwards in first place with Democrats in that presidential caucus state.

The two former running mates now seem to be vying for the anti-war political left.

Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, flatly labeled his vote for war "a mistake" in a November 2005 opinion piece for The Washington Post.

In October 2005, Kerry expressed regret about the vote, telling an audience at Georgetown University, "I understand that as much as we might wish it, we can't rewind the tape of history."

In that Georgetown speech, Kerry also opted for a middle ground between advocating an immediate drawdown of troops and the Bush administration's refusal to set a timetable: "The way forward in Iraq is not to pull out precipitously or merely promise to stay 'as long as it takes.'"

"We must instead simultaneously pursue both a political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces," he said then.

Kerry has moved further left since that time, along with one wing of the Democratic Party.

At the "Take Back America" conference in Washington last week, liberal activists cheered him for setting a deadline for troop withdrawal.

They booed Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York for arguing against it.

American voters once accepted the concept of a "new Nixon," sending Richard M. Nixon to the White House in 1968 after rejecting him narrowly in 1960.

So it's possible that voters could embrace a "new Kerry," although the memory of the old one is still fresh enough to raise questions in a voter's mind.

The new Kerry's problem isn't a change of heart on the Iraq invasion.

Public sentiment reflects a similar shift and a desire to focus on ending the conflict, not endlessly second-guessing the decision to start it.

The new Kerry's problem is the need to overcome skepticism about his motives from the very start.

Did he vote to authorize the Iraq invasion in the first place because he did not want to run for president in 2004 as an anti-war candidate?

Is he repudiating the vote and war now because he wants to run as an anti-war candidate in 2008?

On one hand, you want to believe in the Vietnam veteran who testified famously in 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asking, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that veteran taking so long to call the current war a mistake.

What was he thinking back in 2002 when he cast a vote to send American troops to die, again, for a mistake?

Did he forget about them because he was thinking only of himself and what he believed the voters wanted to hear?

Hillary Clinton faces a version of the same question.

Kerry's painful repositioning on Iraq raises some tough political questions: Is this too little, too late -- or better late than never?

But the toughest question Kerry faces isn't about war, it's about credibility.

Vennochi writes for The Boston Globe. Her e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.

[Livyjr]

"House GOP to set up vote on Iraq pullout"

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - House Republicans engineered an election-year debate on Iraq to show support for U.S. troops and force lawmakers, particularly Democrats, to take a position on withdrawing American forces from a conflict that is in its fourth year.

As debate got under way in the House on Thursday, the Senate sent the president an additional $66 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan —legislation Bush promptly signed —

And the Pentagon announced the U.S. death toll for the war had reached 2,500.

"It's a number," White House press secretary Tony Snow said of the grim milestone.

"Hey, DUDE, it's like ..."

"Well, hey ..."

"C'mon here ...."

"I mean ..."

"Well, hell ..."

"LOOK, MAN, EVERYBODY KNOWS ....."

"IT'S JUST A NUMBER, MAN!"

"I mean ..."

"Well, you can't have a war, man ..."

"IF YOU'RE AFRAID ...."

"OF PEOPLE GETTING KILLED ..."

"YOU DIG, MAN?"

Ah ...

Yes ...

Yes, actually ...

I think ...

I do ....

And so ...

AIN'T THAT TONY SNOW JUST A KICK?

"Iraq official: U.S. soldiers' bodies found"

Associated Press
Last updated: 7:36 a.m., Tuesday, June 20, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The bodies of two U.S. soldiers have been found near where the men went missing, a senior Iraqi military official said Tuesday, but the U.S. military said it could not confirm the report.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed said the bodies of Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Army Pfc. Thomas Lowell Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., were found on a street near a power plant in the town of Youssifiyah, just south of Baghdad.

U.S. Maj. Doug Powell said he could not confirm the report.

The soldiers came under attack Friday at a traffic checkpoint near Youssifiyah.

A third soldier, Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the attack.

All three were from the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, Ky.

An umbrella group that includes al-Qaida in Iraq claimed in a statement Monday that it had kidnapped the two U.S. soldiers, but it did not name them.

"The news is going to be heartbreaking for my family," Ken MacKenzie, Menchaca's uncle, told NBC's "Today" show.

He said the United States should have paid a ransom from money seized from Saddam Hussein.

"I think the U.S. was too slow to react to this."

"Because the U.S. did not have a plan in place, my nephew has paid with his life."

More than 8,000 Iraqi and American troops searched for the missing soldiers on Monday.

Earlier Tuesday, a parked minivan exploded in a busy outdoor market in a Baghdad slum, killing four people and wounding 16, police said.

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt blew himself up in a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra, killing two people and wounding three.

The minivan bombing occurred as people were shopping in the rundown district of Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite district in eastern Baghdad.

Police Col. Hassan Chalob said four civilians were killed and seven cars were left charred.

The area has been targeted by attackers in the past.

Bombs exploded in two markets there on March 12, killing at least 44 people.

The motive of the attack on the elderly home was unclear and an investigation was under way, police Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaida said.

Two women were killed.

Tensions have been worsening in the Shiite-dominated area of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, which is about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Britain has about 8,000 soldiers in the city.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared a state of emergency there late last month, but it has failed to quell the rampant violence as rival Shiite militias fight each other for power.

Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer, has told The Associated Press that he witnessed seven masked gunmen seize the soldiers near Youssifiyah, about 12 miles south of Baghdad, in a region known as the "Triangle of Death."

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization for a variety of insurgent factions led by al-Qaida in Iraq, offered no video, identification cards or other evidence to prove that they had the Americans.

The group had vowed to seek revenge for the June 7 killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, in a U.S. airstrike.

[Livyjr]

"Iraq official: U.S. soldiers' bodies found" 
 
Associated Press
Last updated: 7:36 a.m., Tuesday, June 20, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The bodies of two U.S. soldiers have been found near where the men went missing, a senior Iraqi military official said Tuesday, but the U.S. military said it could not confirm the report.
 
"The news is going to be heartbreaking for my family," Ken MacKenzie, Menchaca's uncle, told NBC's "Today" show.

"I think the U.S. was too slow to react to this."

"Because the U.S. did not have a plan in place, my nephew has paid with his life."

"Bush travels to Europe to shore up ties"

By TERENCE HUNT, Associated Press
Last updated: 4:55 p.m., Tuesday, June 20, 2006

VIENNA, Austria -- President Bush confronted high-stakes nuclear showdowns with North Korea and Iran and grisly news about U.S. war deaths Tuesday as he began a quick trip to strengthen ties with European allies unhappy about Iraq.

A week after Bush made a surprise, celebratory visit to Baghdad, he learned that two U.S. soldiers captured in Iraq had been found slain.

They were killed by the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, an insurgent umbrella group said in a Web statement that suggested the servicemen had been beheaded.

"It's a reminder that this is a brutal enemy that does not follow any of the rules," National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters on Air Force One on the way to Europe.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said, "We are seeing evidence that the Iraqi people are also sick of this."

More than 2,500 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March, 2003.

On his 15th trip to Europe since taking office, Bush and his wife, Laura, were greeted by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel.

As Bush was driven to his hotel, curious onlookers, most of whom remained motionless and expressionless, gathered along Vienna's streets.

One group struggled unsuccessfully to unfurl a "Go Home" banner from a restaurant balcony in time for it to be seen by occupants of the speeding motorcade.

Anti-Americanism is widespread in Europe where Bush is seen by many as a cowboy president who doesn't care about the concerns of other countries.

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib, allegations of a massacre of unarmed civilians by U.S. Marines at Haditha and reports of secret prisons for terror suspects have hurt America's image.

Bush is under political pressure at home, as well.

Approval of his handling of Iraq had dropped to 33 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll this month.

Hadley took issue with a debate in Congress about Iraq, saying that "there's been sort of a suggestion out there that somehow there's an open-ended commitment by the United States to Iraq."

He repeated Bush's oft-stated promise that as Iraqi troops are capable of defending their country, American forces will leave.

The president will hold several hours of talks Wednesday with leaders of the 25-nation European Union.

Wednesday evening he will go to Budapest, Hungary, to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising against communist rule.

The president returns to Washington Thursday evening.

North Korea was a growing concern because of fears its government was preparing to test-fire a long-range ballistic missile.

"They seem to be moving toward a launch, but the intelligence is not conclusive at this point," Hadley said.

He said North Korea seemed to feel that creating a sense of crisis brings attention that is helpful.

"A lot of folks are sending messages to the North Koreans this would be a bad idea, they shouldn't do it," Hadley said.

"And a lot of countries are going to have ideas about what we do, should North Korea ignore the advice of the international community and go forward with this launch."

Iran was another problem.

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia have offered Iran incentives to impose a long-term moratorium on uranium enrichment, a process that can produce material for nuclear generators or bombs.

Two weeks after receiving the proposal, Iran has not said yes or no.

Hadley said he was confident the U.S. and its partners were standing united.

"If Iran does not accept this offer, then we return to the U.N. Security Council," he said.

Bush planned to press Europe to eliminate agricultural subsidies so that talks for a global free-trade pact can proceed.

"If they can move in that direction," Hadley said, "we're going to be in the zone of getting an agreement by the end of the year."

The White House said Bush would prod nations to honor their pledges of reconstruction aid for Iraq.

Of $13 billion promised, only $3 billion has been delivered, the administration says.

European leaders have their own concerns, many of them revolving around Iraq and the war on terror.

Schuessel, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, was expected to urge Bush to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The White House said Bush wouldn't have anything new to say on that.

Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo but some of its prisoners are too dangerous to set free and it's unclear what to do with others.

Bush was the first American president in 27 years to visit Austria.

end quotes

What George W. Bush should be doing ....

Is visiting OUR America ....

To clean up all of his messes ....

Instead of shilly-shallying around ....

As he always seems to be doing ....

FIXIN' TO GET WITH IT ...

Instead of actually getting it done ...

Which seems beyond his intellectual capacity ....

And so ...

[Livyjr]

"Booby-trapped bodies of 2 GIs recovered"

By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:55 p.m., Tuesday, June 20, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military recovered the bodies Tuesday of two missing soldiers from an area it said was rigged with explosives.

An Iraqi official said the Americans were tortured and killed in a "barbaric" way.

An insurgent group claimed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq executed the men personally, but it offered no evidence.

The U.S. military did not confirm whether the soldiers died from wounds suffered in an attack Friday or were kidnapped and later killed.

The discovery of the bodies dealt a new setback to U.S. efforts to seize the momentum against al-Qaida in Iraq after killing its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a June 7 airstrike.

Violence was unabated Tuesday, with at least 18 people killed in attacks nationwide, including a suicide bombing of a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra.

Coalition forces spotted the American soldiers' bodies late Monday, three days after the men disappeared following an attack on their checkpoint south of the capital, the military said.

But troops delayed retrieving the remains until an explosives team cleared the area after an Iraqi civilian warned them to be alert for explosive devices.

"Coalition forces had to carefully maneuver their way through numerous improvised explosive devices leading up to and around the site," the military said in a statement.

"Insurgents attempting to inflict additional casualties had placed IEDs around the bodies."

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the bodies were found together in the vicinity of an electrical plant, which would be just a few miles from where the initial attack took place near the town of Youssifiyah in the volatile Sunni Triangle south of Baghdad.

Caldwell said the remains were believed to be those of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore.

The bodies will be flown from Kuwait to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for positive identification through autopsies and DNA testing.

Menchaca's cousin Sylvia Grice said the soldier visited relatives in Texas last month but didn't talk much about the war.

"He wanted to go out and visit his friends," she said.

"He wanted to eat a hamburger."

"He didn't want to sit down and talk about what was going on."

"But he was very proud of serving his country and he believed in what he was doing."

The director of the Iraqi Defense Ministry's operation room, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, said the bodies showed signs of having been tortured.

"With great regret, they were killed in a barbaric way," he said.

The two soldiers disappeared after an insurgent attack at a checkpoint by a Euphrates River canal, 12 miles south of Baghdad.

Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the attack.

The three men were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky.

Caldwell said only a single vehicle carrying the three U.S. soldiers was attacked.

A witness has said two other Humvees were in the area and went after the assailants, while seven masked gunmen ambushed the third Humvee.

Some 8,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops searched for the missing soldiers.

One U.S. soldier died and 12 were wounded during the search, Caldwell said, adding that coalition troops killed two insurgents and detained 78.

The troops received 66 tips, 18 of which were considered worthy of follow up.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of five insurgent groups led by al-Qaida in Iraq, posted an Internet statement Monday claiming it was holding the American soldiers captive and that "we shall give you more details about the incident in the next few days, God willing."

On Tuesday, after Iraqi officials disclosed that the bodies were found, the Shura Council posted another Web statement, saying al-Zarqawi's successor had "slaughtered" the soldiers.

The language in the statement, which could not be authenticated, suggested the group was saying the men were beheaded.

"With God Almighty's blessing, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer carried out the verdict of the Islamic court" calling for the soldiers' slaying, the statement said.

The U.S. military has identified al-Muhajer as an Egyptian associate of al-Zarqawi also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

If confirmed, the killings would be the first acts of violence attributed to al-Muhajer since he was named the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq in a June 12 Web message by the group.

Al-Zarqawi made al-Qaida in Iraq notorious for beheadings and was believed to have killed two American captives himself -- Nicholas Berg in April 2004 and Eugene Armstrong in September 2004.

A dozen Americans are still missing in Iraq, Caldwell said.

Just hours before Tucker and Menchaca disappeared Friday, a U.S. airstrike killed a key al-Qaida in Iraq leader described as the group's "religious emir," Caldwell said.

Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, died along with two foreign fighters in the same area where the soldiers' bodies were found.

The three were trying to flee in a vehicle.

Al-Mashhadani, identified as an Iraqi in his late 30s, was "a key leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, with excellent religious, military and leadership credentials" and tied to the senior leadership, including al-Zarqawi and his alleged replacement, Caldwell said.

U.S. forces captured Mansour in July 2004 because of his ties to the militant groups Ansar al-Islam and Ansar al-Sunna, but the military let him go because he was not deemed an important terror figure at the time.

Tuesday's violence across Iraq included at least three bombs striking Baghdad despite a security crackdown launched nearly a week ago.

In the bombing of the home for the elderly, an 18-year-old Sunni wearing an explosives belt blew himself up as senior citizens were lined up to collect monthly pensions.

Two elderly women were killed and three people were wounded.

Police said the motive was unclear, but sectarian tensions have been worsening in the predominantly Shiite city of Basra.

------

Associated Press writers Patrick Quinn in Baghdad, Ryan Lenz in Balad, and Nadia Abou el-Magd in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.

[Livyjr]

Well ....

According to the radio news this morning ....

THE WORLD'S MOST ODIOUS MAN ....

That being the GUN-TOTIN' COWBOY, George W. Bush .....

Up from Texas ....

To be the SHERIFF OF EVERYTHING ....

And the BIG BOSS OF ALL THE WORLD ....

Is over in Austria ....

Where he is seeking APPEASEMENT ....

For his concentration camps, here and there in the world ....

In mostly undisclosed locations, of course .....

Since like Hitler before him ...

The GUNSLINGER Bush doesn't really want anyone to believe that there are really concentration camps ....

So we just don't talk about them ....

And if there is a STINK of them in the air ....

Well ...

Like the peoples of Europe so many years ago ...

We just don't notice it ...

And so ....

And BUSHCO is also seeking APPEASEMENT ....

For his WARS OF AGGRESSION around the world ....

As did Hitler before him ...

And to their credit .....

At least some of the people of Austria ....

Are telling this GUNSLINGER ....

What Hitler should have been told ....

"GET LOST, YOU LOSER, SCRAM ..."

And while the good people of Austria are holding their noses in disgust ....

At the stink of George W. Bush being now among them ....

The BUSHCO is issuing more apologies ....

This time for GUNNING DOWN AND KILLING three POLICEMEN over there in AFGHANIST-NAM .....

WHAT A HACKER IS THIS BUSHCO ....

Is my thought for this morning ....

And all I can think ...

In line with what SENATOR BIDEN has now realized ....

Is that giving WAR POWER to this loser Bush ....

WAS JUST LIKE HANDING ....

A LOADED AND COCKED MACHINE GUN ....

WITH A FULL LOAD OF AMMUNITION READY TO BE "FIRED UP" ....

TO A SPOILED AND PETULANT CHILD ...

WITH A KILLER INSTINCT ...

AND NO MORAL OR ETHICAL VALUES ....

TO RESTRAIN HIM ....

FROM FIRING THIS WEAPON INTO A CROWD ...

JUST TO SEE THEM JERK AND TWITCH ...

FOR SPORT, OF COURSE ....

And so ....

NO WONDER THE GOOD PEOPLE OF AUSTRIA ...

WANT THIS MAN GONE FROM THEIR COUNTRY ...

SINCE THESE PEOPLE OVER IN AUSTRIA ...

STILL HAVE THE MEMORIES ...

AND WELL THEY SHOULD ...

OF ANOTHER MONSTER ....

RIGHT IN THEIR MIDST ...

WHO WAS ALSO SEEKING APPEASEMENT ....

ABOUT A HALF-CENTURY AGO ...

And so .....

[Livyjr]

And speaking about George W. Bush ....

And no moral or ethical values ....

NO COMPASS ...

TO GUIDE THIS NATION OF OURS, ON ITS WAY ....

All in the same breath ....

"Ex-Aide To Bush Found Guilty - Safavian Lied in Abramoff Scandal"

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 21, 2006; Page A01

A federal jury found former White House aide David H. Safavian guilty yesterday of lying and obstructing justice, making him the highest-ranking government official to be convicted in the spreading scandal involving disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Safavian, a former chief of staff of the General Services Administration, was convicted in U.S. District Court here of covering up his many efforts to assist Abramoff in acquiring two properties controlled by the GSA, and also of concealing facts about a lavish weeklong golf trip he took with Abramoff to Scotland and London in the summer of 2002.

A prosecutor urged a jury Monday to convict Safavian in the Jack Abramoff influence peddling scandal, saying he abandoned the public interest in favor of a secret relationship with the lobbyist.

Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist at the center of a wide-ranging public corruption investigation, was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison on March 29, after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in a deal that required him to provide evidence about members of Congress.

This was the first Abramoff-related legal action to go to trial and face a jury.

Several legal experts said the case could embolden federal prosecutors to seek additional indictments against cronies of Abramoff, who has been cooperating with the Justice Department since pleading guilty in January to corrupting public officials.

The jury of 10 women and two men came to its decision on its fifth day of deliberations after hearing eight days of testimony.

Safavian, 38, sat silently and without expression as U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman read the verdict aloud.

The jury found him guilty of obstructing an inquiry by the inspector general's office of the GSA and of lying to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, a GSA ethics officer and the GSA inspector general.

He was acquitted of obstructing the Senate's probe.

He faces up to 20 years in jail and $1 million in fines; sentencing was set for Oct. 12.

Safavian's attorney, Barbara Van Gelder, said she will seek a new trial.

Prosecutors "will say how this was a great day in the war on corruption," she said.

"I find they made a mountain out of a molehill, and now they're going to plant the flag on top of the molehill."

Safavian is the fifth person to be found guilty in legal actions connected to Abramoff, the once-powerful Republican lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe government officials.

Like Abramoff, the other four negotiated plea agreements and did not go to trial.

One of those, Neil G. Volz, a congressional aide-turned-lobbyist, testified against Safavian two weeks ago.

Legal observers cited the effectiveness of Volz's testimony as a strong indication that other Abramoff-related indictments or plea agreements are probably imminent.

They asserted that Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) is in particular jeopardy because he took part in the Scotland trip and has been mentioned in a veiled way in Abramoff-related guilty pleas, and because Volz, as Ney's former chief of staff, is in a position to testify against him.

Safavian's conviction "bolsters the credibility of Neil Volz as a witness," said Stanley M. Brand, an expert on ethics law.

"This is another building block in the case against Ney."

Jonathan Turley, a professor at the George Washington University School of Law, added:

"This is the type of conviction that tends to loosen tongues."

Spokesman Brian J. Walsh said in a statement that Ney faces no greater danger of prosecution than he did before the verdict.

"The Safavian case had nothing to do with Congressman Ney," Walsh said.

"He is confident that . . . he will be vindicated."

Besides Volz, the Justice Department has gotten guilty pleas from Abramoff associates Michael Scanlon, a public relations executive; Adam Kidan, a partner of Abramoff's in a Florida gambling-boat investment; and lobbyist Tony C. Rudy, once a top aide to former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

A federal judge in Miami yesterday granted Abramoff and Kidan three more months of freedom before they must begin prison terms for fraud convictions in a separate case involving the purchase of a cruise-ship line.

This will give the two more time to cooperate with investigations into official corruption in Washington and into the 2001 slaying in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., of businessman Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was killed a few months after he sold SunCruz Casinos to the pair.

Days before his arrest in September, Safavian had resigned as the White House's chief procurement policy officer, a job he got after leaving the GSA.

He had worked earlier as a lobbyist for Abramoff and also as a congressional aide.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges and, in a surprise move, took the stand in his defense.

His wife, Jennifer, also testified.

Safavian contended that he was a friend and not a business associate of Abramoff's, that he was forthright with federal investigators, and that Abramoff was not engaged in formal business dealings with the GSA because he was not a contractor with the agency.

But prosecutors Peter Zeidenberg and Nathaniel B. Edmonds introduced dozens of e-mails between Safavian and Abramoff to show the jury that Abramoff sought two government properties Safavian's agency oversaw while offering him favors, including the overseas trip.

They did not call Abramoff to testify.

In mid-2002, Safavian joined the GSA, which oversees the purchase and leasing of the federal government's billions of dollars in property around the country.

Soon after he arrived at the agency, he and Abramoff began e-mailing each other and exchanging information and strategic advice about how to buy or lease the GSA properties.

One was a parcel of land in Montgomery County, on which Abramoff hoped to situate a Jewish high school he supported.

The second was the Old Post Office Pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Abramoff wanted to convert the historic but underused structure into a luxury hotel for an Indian tribe client.

At the same time, Safavian and Abramoff kept in constant social contact -- on the local golf links and at Abramoff's Pennsylvania Avenue restaurant, Signatures.

Safavian also agreed to attend the junket to St. Andrews in Scotland, the birthplace of golf, which was arranged by Abramoff.

In addition to Volz, Ney and Safavian, the trip, via a chartered Gulfstream II jet, included two Ney aides and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed -- a business associate and longtime friend of Abramoff's.

Before that trip in August 2002, Safavian asked the GSA ethics office whether he could accept the gift of airfare without breaching the agency's ethics code.

In an e-mail requesting the ruling, Safavian called Abramoff a friend and a lobbyist "but one that has no business before GSA (he does all of this work on Capitol Hill)."

The office replied that Safavian could accept the airfare.

Nonetheless, Safavian wrote Abramoff a check for $3,100 before the journey began, an amount that Safavian contended throughout the trial was enough to cover the entire cost of the trip.

Zeidenberg and Edmonds derided that assertion.

They presented evidence that the check barely paid one-fifth of the real expense:

Hotel rooms ran between $400 and $500 a night, greens fees for golf at the fabled St. Andrews were $400 per game, and rounds of drinks in Scotland cost $100 each.

Chartering the jet, for nine passengers, cost at least $91,000.

[Livyjr]

And speaking about George W. Bush ....

And no moral or ethical values ....

NO COMPASS ...

TO GUIDE THIS NATION OF OURS, ON ITS WAY ....

All in the same breath ....

George W. Bush ...

And I ...

Are the same age ...

And so ...

We should have been taught similar things .....

One would have thought, anyway ...

When we were young ....

And growing up ....

And when I think on George W. Bush ...

I must say ...

THAT I AM TOTALLY CONFOUNDED .....

By that man .....

AS IF I CAME FROM MARS ...

OR THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON ...

And not earth, at all ......

If George is an example ....

Of the BEST AND BRIGHTEST ...

Of what the earth produced ...

As its "offspring" ....

In the year that I was born, anyway ....

And so ....

Out here in the country ...

Where I am ...

I think that life ....

Moves slower ...

For some of us, anyway ....

Than it does in some crowded, congested place ....

Like New York City ...

Or Washington, D.C. ...

And so ...

Up here ...

Well ...

We have the time to do what is known as "MULLING OVER THINGS" ....

Which we country folks probably do a lot ...

Not coming to conclusions ....

Right off the bat ...

Or at all, for that matter ....

Which is why city folk think we're addled ...

Or slow, or whatever ....

When what we are doing instead ...

Is MULLING OVER THINGS ...

As we are wont to do ...

And so ....

What we have been MULLING OVER UP HERE ....

Is the fact ....

That George W. Bush ....

Became President of the United States ....

On a millenium ....

Two thousand years after Christ ....

WHICH WAS A TIME OF GREAT TURMOIL .....

And a thousand years after the Norman Conquest ....

Give or take ....

Whatever .....

1,000 A.D. was also a TIME OF TURMOIL, I believe ....

And so ....

It's the MILLENIUM, once again ...

And out of somewhere .....

We have George W. Bush ...

Who is as ANTI- to everything that I hold dear as ANTI- can be .....

ANTI- to Christ, anyway .....

And ANTI- to what I know as American values ....

And he sure is ANTI- .....

To the concept of being CIVILIZED ....

As well as ANTI- to continually improving yourself, intellectually ...

And so .....

IF GEORGE AND I ....

ARE THE SAME AGE .....

AND HE IS THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST .....

OF THAT YEAR IN WHICH I WAS BORN .....

WELL ...

That don't speak much for my generation, at all ....

Which is something that I sure am not very proud of ....

And so ....

What does this all mean, in the end?

In the end, who knows?

We don't bother to even worry about those kinds of questions ...

Because up here ...

We know that there is a cycle of life ...

Nations rise ...

Nations fall ...

It happens all the time ...

And yet ...

Despite that ....

DESPITE THE GEORGE W. BUSH'S ....

People like us survive ....

Despite the turmoil ...

And the chaos ...

That seems to come on the various milleniums ....

Along with people like George W. Bush ...

And so .....

Out of that ...

We get hope ....

For a better day ...

In some tomarrow ....

AFTER GEORGE W. BUSH ....

And the destruction ....

That that one man ...

Has caused to this earth of ours ...

In such a short time ...

And so ....

[Livyjr]

And speaking of George ....

And HIS VALUE SYSTEM ....

As COMMANDER-in-CHIEF of OUR military forces ....

As it has spread ...

Like a pernicious disease .....

Through OUR military ....

Where what goes on in the ranks ...

REFLECTS THE ATTITUDES ...

OF NATIONAL COMMAND AUTHORITY .....

And so ....

"Marines announce murder, other charges"

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

38 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Seven Marines and a sailor have been charged with murder in the April death of an Iraqi civilian, the Marine Corps said Wednesday.

All eight also were charged with kidnapping, according to a Marine statement issued at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Other charges include conspiracy, larceny and providing false official statements.

Separately, the U.S. military in Iraq announced that murder charges were filed against a fourth Army soldier in the shooting deaths May 9 of three civilians who had been detained by U.S. troops.

Spc. Juston R. Graber, 20, of the 101st Airborne Division was charged with one count of premeditated murder, one count of attempted premeditated murder, one count of conspiracy to commit murder, and making a false official statement.

On Monday the military had announced that three soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division were charged with murder and other offenses in connection with the May 9 killings.

It was not clear why charges against the fourth soldier were not announced until Wednesday.

In the case of the April killing of an Iraqi civilian, the allegation is that Marines pulled an unarmed man from his home on April 26 and shot him to death without provocation.

Seven Marines and one Navy corpsman from the Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment were taken out of Iraq in late May and put in the confinement at Pendleton pending the filing of charges.

The Marine Corps identified the eight as: Marine Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, Marine Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Melson J. Bacos, Marine Lance Cpl. Tyler A. Jackson, Marine Pfc. John J. Jackson, Marine Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr., Marine Lance Cpl. Robert B. Pennington, and Marine Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda.

The case is separate from the alleged killing by other Marines of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha last November.

A pair of investigations related to that case are still under way and no criminal charges have been filed.

The accused in the current case will be assigned military lawyers at no cost, although they have the choice of hiring their own civilian attorneys.

Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the senior commander at Pendleton, will decide whether and how to proceed with preliminary hearings known in the military justice system as Article 32 proceedings.

Those in turn could lead to courts-martial for some or all eight.

On May 24 the Marines announced that Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer, the commander of all Marine forces in Iraq, had asked for a criminal investigation after a preliminary probe.

Together, the Hamdania and Haditha cases have generated international criticism of the U.S. and unfavorable publicity for the Marine Corps.

Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine commandant, visited Iraq to reinforce the importance of adhering to ethical standards.

"As commandant I am gravely concerned about the serious allegations concerning actions of some Marines at Haditha and Hamdania," Hagee told a Pentagon news conference June 7.

"I can assure you that the Marine Corps takes them seriously."

"As commandant I am the one accountable for organization, training and equipping of Marines," he added.

"I am responsible and I take these responsibilities quite seriously."

end quotes

General ....

Listening to you talk ...

I believe that you personally do ...

But the real problem ...

Is that the man above you ...

The civilian head of OUR American military forces ....

Including your Marines ...

Well, General ...

That man has no ethics ....

Nor moral compass ...

NOR SENSE OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ...

Which is adversely affecting your Marines ....

SINCE THIS MAN IS THEIR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF ...

Above you ...

And so .....

Since his LACK OF VALUES is on display to your Marines ...

24/7 ....

Well ...

His are what your Marines end up copying ...

Instead of yours ...

And so ...

[Livyjr]

And here is Ms. Hillary ....

"Democrats wavering on Hillary for president in 2008"

by Stephanie Griffith

Wed Jun 21, 10:04 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Some Democrats are having second thoughts about Hillary Clinton as their 2008 presidential candidate, wracked by doubts about her cross-party appeal, and disappointed by her position on US troops in Iraq.

Those reservations were given expression last week at a forum in Washington of liberal Democrats, where the New York senator was roundly booed when she expressed her opposition to setting a date for withdrawing US troops from Iraq.

"I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country," she said in remarks that prompted a chorus of cat calls at the "Take Back America" gathering of liberal Democratic activists.

"Her being booed last week had everything to do with Iraq," said political analyst Larry Sabato.

"The Democrats clearly have moved further to the left on Iraq, and she's not moving with them," said Sabato, who runs the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

Early polls have given the former first lady a wide lead for the presidential nomination over several would-be Democratic rivals, and more than two years before the November 2008 balloting, Clinton has amassed an enormous campaign war chest.

But she also has a major liability not faced by the other Democrats: the disdain of many Republicans and Independents who say they would never vote for her because of their disgruntlement over husband Bill Clinton's presidency.

Hillary Clinton, who has worked carefully to maintain a middle ground position on Iraq, has criticized Republican President George W. Bush's "open-ended commitment" to a military victory.

But to the chagrin of many, she also opposes against setting a "date certain" to pull US troops, even as some of her party's leading lights in the US Senate this week press for a phased withdrawal.

While liberals find her far too right-leaning on the hot-button issue of Iraq, conservatives have stamped Clinton as a liberal who would favor big government "tax and spend" politics and lenient social policies.

Although still the hands-down favorite for her party's nomination, Clinton's stance in the debate leaves her newly vulnerable, pundits said.

"Maybe she's a bit overconfident about the nomination."

"She's running a general election strategy ... she wants to stay moderate," said Sabato.

"I think she's going to have a much harder time getting the nomination than she thinks."

He predicted one challenge will be locking up the votes of centrist Democrats, with whom he said she has an even bigger problem than with left.

"There's a broader group who would never boo her ..."

"They all seem to say, 'Oh, I love Hillary, I think she's terrific'."

"' But of course, we can't nominate her because she can't win the general election'," said Sabato.

At last week's gathering, Clinton's fellow senator John Kerry -- one of the Democrats waiting in the wings should she misstep -- garnered cheers for backing a US troop withdrawal proposal within months.

But while Kerry -- the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee -- and several other prominent party members remain in the hunt, experts said Clinton is still the most viable contender for the nomination.

"She has put herself in the position that is most likely to win a presidency for a Democrat," said Thomas Mann, an analyst with the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"She's going to have to fight for it," said analyst Stephen Hess, also of Brookings, "but she certainly starts with greater name recognition, more money and a more coherent group of supporters than anyone else."

Mann said Clinton would be well-advised to stay the course, even if it prompts some chafing on the left.

"Hillarys problem with Iraq is more with activists than Democratic primary voters," he said.

To fine-tune her stance at this point, he added, would be "to make it seem that she'll move things for votes rather than for principle," he said.

"Her biggest challenge is persuading Democrats that she can win a general election in spite of the withering attack Republicans are certain to launch against her," he said.

"Thats why there remains a substantial market for someone other than Hillary."

[Livyjr]

And for something completely different ...

Well ....

Just because ....

"Study: San Andreas fault overdue for quake"

By ALICIA CHANG, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:15 p.m., Wednesday, June 21, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- New earthquake research confirms the southern end of the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles is overdue for a Big One.

The lower section of the fault has not produced a major earthquake in more than three centuries.

The new study, which analyzed 20 years of data and is considered one of the most detailed analyses yet, found that stress has been building up since then, and that the fault could rupture at any moment.

"The southern section of the fault is fully loaded for the next big event," said geophysicist Yuri Fialko of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Predicting exactly when that might happen, however, is beyond scientists' ability.

The analysis was published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Experts have estimated that a quake on the southern San Andreas of magnitude-7.6 or greater could kill thousands of people in the densely populated greater Los Angeles area and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage.

It was the 800-mile San Andreas fault, which runs down California like a scar, that caused the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that led to about 3,000 deaths.

But scientists know very little about the 100-mile dormant southern segment, which slices through Southern California from San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, to near the Mexican border.

The section last popped in 1690, producing an estimated 7.7-magnitude quake, but caused little injury or damage because hardly anyone lived there at the time.

Using satellite radar and global positioning data, Fialko measured the movement of the southern San Andreas between 1985 and 2005.

Small movements along a fault can relieve strain.

Calculating those subtle motions allows scientists to figure out how much strain is building up.

Fialko found that the southern end of the fault has shown little movement and that significant strain is building up.

The fault's slip rate, or average annual movement, was measured to be about an inch a year -- similar to previous estimates.

Surprisingly, Fialko found the two sides of the southern San Andreas behaved differently, with one side showing more flexibility than the other.

This could help scientists understand potential earthquake risks, he said.

Ken Hudnut, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist in Pasadena, who had no role in the study, said the latest research reaffirms the need to study the mysterious southern San Andreas more closely.

In the fall, Hudnut will head a $240,000 project that would conduct tests on the southern segment to get a better idea of the threat it poses.

------

On the Net:

U.S. Geological Survey: http://www.usgs.gov

Scripps Institution of Oceanography: http://www.sio.ucsd.edu

[Livyjr]

"Research: Earth running a slight fever"

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:06 p.m., Thursday, June 22, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years.

The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."

Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities.

The academy had been asked to report to Congress on how researchers drew conclusions about the Earth's climate going back thousands of years, before data was available from modern scientific instruments.

The academy convened a panel of 12 climate experts, chaired by Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, to look at the "proxy" evidence before then, such as tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediments, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers.

Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the panel wrote.

It said the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia," though it was relatively warm around the year 1000 followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.

Their conclusions were meant to address, and they lent credibility to, a well-known graphic among climate researchers -- a "hockey-stick" chart that climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes created in the late 1990s to show the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years.

It had compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures -- a 1 degree rise in global average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere during the 20th century -- and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.

That research is "likely" true and is supported by more recent data, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee, had asked the academy for the report last year after the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, launched an investigation of the three climate scientists.

The Bush administration has maintained that the threat from global warming is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.

"This report shows the value of Congress handling scientific disputes by asking scientists to give us guidance," Boehlert said Thursday.

"There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change."

The academy panel said it had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600.

But it considered the evidence reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.

Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations had the biggest effects on climate.

But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, the panel said.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.

------

On the Net:

National Academy of Sciences: http://nationalacademies.org

[Livyjr]

And from the environment ....

Which is political, of course ....

We go to George W. Bush's WAR ....

Which is as political as all get out .....

As this following article ....

On the FLIP-FLOPPING REPUBLICANS .....

Makes incandescently clear ....

June 22, 2006

NY Times

"G.O.P. Decides to Embrace War as Issue"

By JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, June 21 — Just a few weeks ago, some Republicans were openly fretting about the war in Iraq and its effect on their re-election prospects, with particularly vulnerable lawmakers worried that its growing unpopularity was becoming a drag on their campaigns.

But there was little sign of such nervousness on Wednesday as Republican after Republican took to the Senate floor to offer an unambiguous embrace of the Iraq war and to portray Democrats as advocates of an overly hasty withdrawal that would have grave consequences for the security of the United States.

Like their counterparts in the House last week, they accused Democrats of espousing "retreat and defeatism."

That emerging Republican approach reflects, at least for now, the success of a White House effort to bring a skittish party behind Mr. Bush on the war after months of political ambivalence in some vocal quarters.

As President Bush offered another defense of his Iraq policy during a visit to Vienna on Wednesday, Republicans acknowledged that it was a strategy of necessity, an effort to turn what some party leaders had feared could become the party's greatest liability into an advantage in the midterm elections.

The approach might yet be upended by more problems in Iraq, as Republicans were reminded this week with reports about two American servicemen who were abducted, tortured and apparently killed.

Some polls show a majority of Americans continue to think that entering Iraq was a mistake, and pollsters say independent voters are particularly open to the idea of setting some sort of timetable for withdrawal, the very policy Democrats have embraced and Republicans are now fighting.

But people who attended a series of high-level meetings this month between White House and Congressional officials say President Bush's aides argued that it could be a politically fatal mistake for Republicans to walk away from the war in an election year.

White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war.

Participants also included Mr. Bush's top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett.

Mr. Rove is newly freed from the threat of indictment in the C.I.A. leak case, and leaders of both parties see his reinvigorated hand in the strategy.

The meetings were followed by the distribution of a 74-page briefing book to Congressional offices from the Pentagon to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.

Republicans say the cumulative effect would be to send a message of weakness to the world at a time of new threats from Iran and North Korea and would leave enemies controlling Iraq's vast oil reserves, the third largest in the world.

(The book, including a chapter entitled "Rapid Response" with answers to frequent Democratic charges, was sent via e-mail to Republican lawmakers but, in an apparent mistake, also to some Democrats.)

A senior adviser to Mr. Bush said the White House had concluded that it was better to plunge aggressively into the debate on Iraq than to let Democrats play upon clear, public misgivings about the war.

"This is going to be a big issue in this election," said the adviser, who was granted anonymity in exchange for agreeing to describe strategic considerations about the war.

"Better to shape and fight it — as good and strongly as you can — than to try to run away from it."

In a telephone interview, Ken Mehlman, the Republican chairman, disputed the notion that the latest difficulties in Iraq would set back the effort to push the debate onto newly favorable terms for Republicans.

"The fundamental question," Mr. Mehlman said, "is if you think the enemy is more brutal than before, is the answer that you should surrender?"

Officials at the White House say they had always planned to use the formation of a new, permanent Iraqi government as a lever to seize control of a debate that had been slipping away from them.

The killing of the top terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, provided another useful lift.

And, they said, Democratic calls for speedy troop withdrawal provided an opening for them to use a "cut and run" argument against Democrats, which Mr. Rove used last week in a speech in New Hampshire.

Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, said House Republicans had been planning to introduce a resolution emphasizing the need to complete the mission in Iraq.

But, he said, the House leaders worked in consultation with the White House to hone the final language of the resolution, which read in part that "the terrorists have declared Iraq to be the central front in their war against all who oppose their ideology."

The strategy still required calming some uneasy Republicans,administration officials said.

A participant in one White House meeting, who would discuss the intraparty debate only after being promised anonymity, said Mr. Bush's aides sought to convince lawmakers that the political situation was not so dire because polls had also shown dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq in 2004.

Democrats say the climate is far different now, with a higher American death tally and fresh acknowledgments from even the administration that crucial mistakes were made.

"Two-thousand-six is not 2004," said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who is running the Senate Democrats' campaign effort.

"The American people recognize that the commander in chief got us into Iraq and it is his job to get us out of Iraq."

But Republicans who have expressed nervousness about the war earlier this month seemed less so by the time of this week's Senate debate.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a Republican who has frequently expressed concern about the war's effect on his prospects this year, said he favored a path that could be called "staying the course, or learning from our mistakes and now doing it right."

Mr. Shays echoed other Republicans by saying, "I would strongly oppose any premature departure from Iraq to help me or anyone else win election."

end quotes

It is a very telling statement ....

About the REPUBLICANS ...

And their VERACITY .....

OR MORE PROPERLY ...

THEIR COMPLETE AND TOTAL LACK THEREOF ....

When on the ONE HAND ....

Officials at the White House say ....

They had always planned to use the formation of a NEW, PERMANENT IRAQI GOVERNMENT ....

As a lever to seize control of a debate that had been slipping away from them .....

And on the other ...

Republicans ALSO SAY pulling out of Iraq now ....

WOULD LEAVE ENEMIES CONTROLLING IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ....

The third largest in the world ....

THAT IS LOGICALLY INCONSISTENT, OF COURSE ...

Since the NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT ...

WHICH THE REPUBLICANS ARE TOUTING ...

AS THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENT ....

IS IN CHARGE ....

OF IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ...

OR AREN'T THEY?

And of course ...

WE WILL NEVER GET A STRAIGHT ANSWER ...

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE ,,,

THE PENTAGON, ESPECIALLY ...

OR THE REPUBLICANS ...

As to which it really is ...

EITHER THE NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS NOT REALLY IN CHARGE ....

OF IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ....

IN WHICH CASE ...

THAT NEW GOVERNMENT IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT, AT ALL ....

OR ELSE ...

THE NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT ....

REALLY IS IN CHARGE OF IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ....

IN WHICH CASE ...

ACCORDING TO THESE SAME REPUBLICANS ...

THAT NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT ...

IS OUR ENEMY ...

AND THAT SURE IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT, EITHER ....

And so ...

THE BOTTOM LINE IS ...

EXPECT A LOT OF YADA, YADA, YADA ....

About IRAQINAM ...

And the alleged cowardly DEMOCRATS ....

BETWEEN NOW ....

And November of this year ....

FROM THE REPUBLICANS ....

WHO ARE WORLD-CLASS EXPERTS ...

AT TALKING OUT OF EVERY SIDE OF THEIR MOUTHS ...

ALL AT ONCE ...

As this above news article clearly demonstrates ....

Where the REPUBLICANS ....

Are unveiling ...

THEIR NEXT ROUND OF POLITICAL SLOGANS ....

To distract us from their incompetence running this nation of OURS ....

And so ...

[Livyjr]

June 22, 2006

NY Times

"G.O.P. Decides to Embrace War as Issue"

By JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, June 21 — White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war.

Participants also included Mr. Bush's top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett.

Mr. Rove is newly freed from the threat of indictment in the C.I.A. leak case, and leaders of both parties see his reinvigorated hand in the strategy.

Officials at the White House say they had always planned to use the formation of a new, permanent Iraqi government as a lever to seize control of a debate that had been slipping away from them.

"Bush: Hungary's struggle can inspire Iraq"

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 25 minutes ago

BUDAPEST, Hungary - Fifty years after Hungary's revolt against communism, President Bush said Thursday that war-weary Iraqis can learn from this country's long and bloody struggle against tyranny.

"Liberty can be delayed but it cannot be denied," the president said.

"Iraq's young democracy still faces determined enemies, people who will use violence and brutality to stop the march of freedom," Bush said in a speech concluding a quick trip to Hungary and Austria.

"Defeating these enemies will require sacrifice and continued patience, the kind of patience the good people of Hungary displayed after 1956."

Under threatening rain clouds, Bush spoke to several hundred people at Gellert Hill with a panoramic view of Budapest, the twisting Danube River and the hills beyond.

Rumbles of thunder occasionally punctuated his remarks.

Warily watching developments in Iran and North Korea, the administration prodded Tehran to respond as early as next week — and by mid-July — to an offer of incentives to suspend its disputed nuclear program.

It also said preparations were "very far along" for a possible test launch of a long-range missile by North Korea but it was not certain if it would, indeed, be fired.

"What we hope they will do is give it up and not launch," said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, traveling with Bush.

The Iraq war is widely unpopular in Europe as it is in the United States, and Bush sought to compare the U.S.-led drive to implant democracy in Baghdad with uprisings that led to the collapse of the Soviet empire.

But Bush also faced European concerns about secret prisons for terror suspects, U.S. abuse of Iraqi inmates and the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"It is my firm belief that our common responsibilities, duty now, is to fight terrorism," Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom told Bush in a gilded room at the Sandor Palace.

"This fight against terrorism can be successful only if every step and measure taken are in line with international law."

It was Bush's 15th trip as president to Europe and he will return in just a few weeks for the annual summit of industrialized democracies in St. Petersburg, Russia.

He also will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in what was East Germany under Soviet rule.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been irritated by Bush's attention and visits to former Soviet states.

Bush talked with Hungarian officials about how to reassure Putin that promoting democracy and freedom among Russia's neighbors "is not some kind of effort to encircle Russia but is, in fact, a good thing for Russia because democratic states make good and peaceful neighbors," Hadley said.

The stop in Hungary was hurriedly arranged when a visit to Ukraine was shelved because of delays there in forming a new government.

The White House settled on Hungary because October marks the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution in which students and workers demanded freedom from Moscow.

Twelve days later, Soviet forces brutally crushed the rebellion as Hungarians appealed in vain for America's intervention.

"They crushed the Hungarian uprising but not the Hungarian people's thirst for freedom," Bush said.

"In 1989 a new generation of Hungarians returned to the streets to demand their liberty and boldly helped others secure their freedom as well," the president said.

"By giving shelter to those fleeing tyranny and opening your border to the West, you helped bring down the Iron Curtain and gave the hope of freedom to millions in Central and Eastern Europe."

Bush also recalled his surprise trip to Baghdad last week and suggested similarities between Iraq and Hungary.

Bush said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "is committed to the democratic ideals that also inspired Hungarian patriots in 1956 and 1989."

"The success of the new Iraqi government is vital to the security of all nations," he said, "and so it deserves the support of the international community."

end quotes .....

George W. Bush's comparison ...

Of Hungary trying to shed itself ...

Of the TYRANNY ....

And OPPRESSION ....

Of the Soviet Union ....

To the people of IRAQ ....

Trying to shed themselves ...

Of the TYRANNY ....

And OPPRESSION ....

Of GEORGE W. BUSH ....

IS VERY APT ....

AND RIGHT ON THE MONEY ....

SO FAR AS I CAN SEE ....

And so ...

[Livyjr]

George W. Bush's comparison ...

Of Hungary trying to shed itself ...

Of the TYRANNY ....

And OPPRESSION ....

Of the Soviet Union ....

To the people of IRAQ ....

Trying to shed themselves ...

Of the TYRANNY ....

And OPPRESSION ....

Of GEORGE W. BUSH ....

IS VERY APT ....

AND RIGHT ON THE MONEY ....

SO FAR AS I CAN SEE ....

And so ...

Pride, George ...

Has never brought a man greatness ....

But, according to the way of life ...

Brings the ILLS ....

That make him UNFIT ....

Make him UNCLEAN ...

In the eyes ...

Of his neighbors ...

And a sane man ...

Will have none of them ...

- Lao Tze, Tao Te Ching ....

[Livyjr]

George W. Bush's comparison ...

Of Hungary trying to shed itself ...

Of the TYRANNY ....

And OPPRESSION ....

Of the Soviet Union ....

To the people of IRAQ ....

Trying to shed themselves ...

Of the TYRANNY ....

And OPPRESSION ....

Of GEORGE W. BUSH ....

IS VERY APT ....

AND RIGHT ON THE MONEY ....

SO FAR AS I CAN SEE ....

And so ...

ATTENTION, AMERICA ....

DO YOU KNOW ...

WHERE GEORGE W. BUSH'S HANDS ARE .....

RIGHT NOW?

IN WHOSE POCKETS THEY JUST MIGHT BE .....

AS GEORGE CONTINUES ....

TO TURN OUR EARTH ...

INTO HIS PRIVATE POLICE STATE .....

WHERE THE ONLY "LAW" ......

IF IT CAN BE CALLED THAT .....

IS WHAT GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS IT IS .........

AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT IN TIME .....

ACCORDING TO HIS WHIMS .....

OR MOODS ....

OR HYSTERIAS ....

OR PARANOIAS .....

OR HALLUCINATIONS ....

OR FITS OF PIQUE ....

OR MADNESS .....

"U.S. tracks suspected terror financiers"

By JEANNINE AVERSA, Associated Press
Last updated: 7:15 a.m., Friday, June 23, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has been quietly tracking people suspected of bankrolling terrorism, using a secret program that gives the government access to a massive data base of international financial transactions.

Treasury Department officials said they used broad subpoenas to collect the financial records from an international system known as Swift.

Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called the subpoenas "a legal and proper use of our authorities."

"Since immediately following 9/11, the American government has taken every legal measure to prevent another attack on our country," Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said.

"One of the most important tools in the fight against terror is our ability to choke off funds for the terrorists."

Under the program, U.S. counterterrorism analysts could query Swift's financial data base looking for information on activities by suspected terrorists as part of specific terrorism investigations, a Treasury Department official said.

They would do so by plugging in a name or names, the official said.

The program involved both the CIA and the Treasury Department.

Swift, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a cooperative based in Belgium that handles financial message traffic from 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of the United States.

It doesn't execute these money transfers.

The service generally doesn't detect private, individual transactions in the United States, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits.

It is aimed mostly at international transfers.

The administration defended use of the program, saying it plays a vital role in its efforts to identify terrorist financiers.

"Our subpoena of terrorist-related records from Swift has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks," Levey said.

The existence of the program was first reported Thursday night on the Web sites of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.

While confirming the newspaper reports, both Levey and Perino expressed concern that disclosure of the program could undermine efforts to track terrorism-related activities.

"We know the terrorists pay attention to our strategy to fight them, and now have another piece of the puzzle of how we are fighting them," Perino said.

The decision to publish was "a tough call; it was not a decision made lightly," said Doyle McManus, the Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau chief.

Treasury Department officials spent 90 minutes Thursday meeting with the newspaper's reporters, stressing the legality of the program and urging the paper to not publish a story on the program, McManus said in a telephone interview.

Swift acknowledged that it complied with the government's subpoenas but said the government's requests were for limited slices of data.

The group said it negotiated with Treasury over the scope and oversight of the subpoenas.

"Through this process, Swift received significant protections and assurances as to the purpose, confidentiality, oversight and control of the limited sets of data produced under the subpoenas," Swift said in a statement.

"Independent audit controls provide additional assurance that these protections are fully complied with."

Treasury Secretary John Snow suggested the program was limited in scope and wasn't an effort to snoop on law-abiding Americans.

"It is not a fishing expedition but rather a sharp harpoon aimed at the heart of terrorist activity," Snow said in a statement.

The financial messages routed over Swift's network carry information including the full name and address of both the sender and receiver, U.S. officials said.

Disclosure of the program follows intense controversy over President Bush's directive ordering the National Security Agency to monitor -- without court approval -- the calls and e-mails of Americans when one party is overseas and terrorism is suspected.

That program, which also began shortly after 9/11, was disclosed by The New York Times.

The administration has not disclosed the terror-tracking program but has spoken publicly about its efforts to disrupt terror fundraising efforts.

The New York Times and Los Angeles Times quoted their editors as defending their decision to publish despite being asked by the Bush administration to withhold publication.

Bill Keller, The New York Times' executive editor, said it considered the administration's arguments but in the end decided to publish.

"We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Dean Baquet, editor of the Los Angeles Times, said: "We weighed the government's arguments carefully, but in the end we determined that it was in the public interest to publish information about the extraordinary reach of this program."

Some in Congress were briefed on the operations, including members of the House Intelligence Committee.

Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., declined to comment.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., had been briefed about the program and understood it had had "a direct role in keeping our country safe," said his spokeswoman, Amy Call.

end quotes

Well, of course this is all "LEGAL" .....

Since all that word really means ....

Anymore ...

Is that George W. Bush said to go ahead and do it ....

And so .....

It is a comfort .....

To me ...

As an older American .....

That to be "law-abiding" ....

Here in OUR America .....

We no longer have to study .....

What is written down .....

In a bunch of fussy old books called LAW ....

Because that takes a lot of time ....

And effort ...

Which we Americans don't like to expend ....

To be "law-abiding" now .....

All we have to do ...

Is swear FEALTY ....

To George W. Bush ...

And then ...

To listen for his PRONOUNCEMENTS .....

On what it is "LAWFUL" .....

For us to do that day ...

Which is generally nothing at all ...

Outside of sitting there ....

And being loyal to George ...

Whatever he may require us to do that day ....

Which is to generally overlook everything that he is doing ....

IN OUR NAMES ....

All over the world ...

And so ....

[Livyjr]

June 22, 2006

NY Times

"G.O.P. Decides to Embrace War as Issue"

By JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, June 21 — Just a few weeks ago, some Republicans were openly fretting about the war in Iraq and its effect on their re-election prospects, with particularly vulnerable lawmakers worried that its growing unpopularity was becoming a drag on their campaigns.

But there was little sign of such nervousness on Wednesday as Republican after Republican took to the Senate floor to offer an unambiguous embrace of the Iraq war and to portray Democrats as advocates of an overly hasty withdrawal that would have grave consequences for the security of the United States.

Like their counterparts in the House last week, they accused Democrats of espousing "retreat and defeatism."

That emerging Republican approach reflects, at least for now, the success of a White House effort to bring a skittish party behind Mr. Bush on the war after months of political ambivalence in some vocal quarters.

As President Bush offered another defense of his Iraq policy during a visit to Vienna on Wednesday, Republicans acknowledged that it was a strategy of necessity, an effort to turn what some party leaders had feared could become the party's greatest liability into an advantage in the midterm elections.

White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war.

Participants also included Mr. Bush's top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett.

Mr. Rove is newly freed from the threat of indictment in the C.I.A. leak case, and leaders of both parties see his reinvigorated hand in the strategy.

The meetings were followed by the distribution of a 74-page briefing book to Congressional offices from the Pentagon to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.

Republicans say the cumulative effect would be to send a message of weakness to the world at a time of new threats from Iran and North Korea and would leave enemies controlling Iraq's vast oil reserves, the third largest in the world.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a Republican who has frequently expressed concern about the war's effect on his prospects this year, said he favored a path that could be called "staying the course, or learning from our mistakes and now doing it right."

end quotes

It is a very telling statement ....

About the REPUBLICANS ...

And their VERACITY .....

OR MORE PROPERLY ...

THEIR COMPLETE AND TOTAL LACK THEREOF ....

When on the ONE HAND ....

Officials at the White House say ....

They had always planned to use the formation of a NEW, PERMANENT IRAQI GOVERNMENT ....

As a lever to seize control of a debate that had been slipping away from them .....

And on the other ...

Republicans ALSO SAY pulling out of Iraq now ....

WOULD LEAVE ENEMIES CONTROLLING IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ....

The third largest in the world ....

THAT IS LOGICALLY INCONSISTENT, OF COURSE ...

Since the NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT ...

WHICH THE REPUBLICANS ARE TOUTING ...

AS THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENT ....

IS IN CHARGE ....

OF IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ...

OR AREN'T THEY?

And of course ...

WE WILL NEVER GET A STRAIGHT ANSWER ...

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE ,,,

THE PENTAGON, ESPECIALLY ...

OR THE REPUBLICANS ...

As to which it really is ...

EITHER THE NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT IS NOT REALLY IN CHARGE ....

OF IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ....

IN WHICH CASE ...

THAT NEW GOVERNMENT IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT, AT ALL ....

OR ELSE ...

THE NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT ....

REALLY IS IN CHARGE OF IRAQ'S VAST OIL RESERVES ....

IN WHICH CASE ...

ACCORDING TO THESE SAME REPUBLICANS ...

THAT NEW IRAQI GOVERNMENT ...

IS OUR ENEMY ...

AND THAT SURE IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT, EITHER ....

And so ...

THE BOTTOM LINE IS ...

EXPECT A LOT OF YADA, YADA, YADA ....

About IRAQINAM ...

And the alleged cowardly DEMOCRATS ....

BETWEEN NOW ....

And November of this year ....

FROM THE REPUBLICANS ....

WHO ARE WORLD-CLASS EXPERTS ...

AT TALKING OUT OF EVERY SIDE OF THEIR MOUTHS ...

ALL AT ONCE ...

As this above news article clearly demonstrates ....

Where the REPUBLICANS ....

Are unveiling ...

THEIR NEXT ROUND OF POLITICAL SLOGANS ....

To distract us from their incompetence running this nation of OURS ....

And so ...

Officials at the White House say ....

They had always planned to use the formation of a NEW, PERMANENT IRAQI GOVERNMENT ....

As a lever to seize control of a debate that had been slipping away from them .....

And so ....

YADA, YADA. YADA ....

And some more YADA, YADA, YADA ....

And still YADA, YADA, YADA ....

"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"

"WE WON!"

"MAJOR COMBAT OPERATIONS IN IRAQINAM ....."

"ARE OVER ...."

"ARE OVER ...."

"ARE OVER ...."

"ARE OVER ...."

Ad infinitum ....

DON'T QUESTION ...

THAT IS DEFEATIST ...

JUST OBEY ....

And so ....

ISN'T DEMOCRACY JUST WONDERFUL?

It makes for real peaceful neighbors ....

I have heard, anyway ....

And so .....

"Iraqi govt declares state of emergency"

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

4 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew Friday after insurgents set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

U.S. and Iraqi forces also clashed with insurgents in southern Baghdad.

The prime minister ordered everyone off the streets of the capital from 2 p.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Saturday.

The order came at around noon, when many residents were in prayer, and sent many rushing home to beat the curfew.

In other violence, a bomb struck a Sunni mosque in a town northeast of Baghdad, killing 10 worshippers and wounding 15 in the same town where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was slain earlier this month, police said.

The explosion occurred in front of the Grand Hibhib mosque in Diyala province, according to the provincial joint coordination center.

In the southern city of Basra, a car bomb ripped through a market and nearby gas station, killing at least five people and wounding 15, including two policemen police said.

At least 19 other deaths were reported in Baghdad.

Al-Zarqawi, the leader of Iraq's most feared terror group al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed June 7 in an airstrike in Hibhib, which is near Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Throughout the morning Friday, Iraqi and U.S. military forces clashed with attackers who were armed with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and rifles in busy Haifa Street that runs into the Green Zone, site of the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government.

Two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman were wounded in the fighting, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.

The region was sealed and Iraqi and U.S. forces conducted house-to-house searches.

Gunmen also attacked a group of worshippers marching from Sadr City, the Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad, to the Buratha mosque on the other side of the city to protest a suicide attack a week ago on the revered Shiite shrine.

At least one marcher was killed and four were wounded, Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.

The U.S. military on Friday said a Marine had died in combat and a soldier was killed in an unspecified non-hostile incident three days earlier.

Their deaths raise to at least 2,514 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The new security measures came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought to rein in unrelenting insurgent and sectarian violence.

He launched a massive security operation in Baghdad 10 days ago, deploying tens of thousands of troops who flooded the city, snarling traffic with hundreds of checkpoints.

While violence had diminished somewhat, the outbreak of fighting on Haifa Street and in the Dora neighborhood apparently prompted al-Malaki to declare the state of emergency even as Friday prayer services were in progress, sending many residents scrambling homeward to beat the curfew.

Also Friday, police said they found the bodies of five men who apparently were victims of a mass kidnapping from a factory on Wednesday.

The bodies, which showed signs of torture and had their hands and legs bound, were floating in a canal in northern Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it killed four foreign insurgents in a raid north of Fallujah.

Two of the dead men had 15-pound suicide bombs strapped to their bodies.

The military said an insurgent thought to be an Iraqi also was killed in the raid, which was launched on information from a suspected arrested in the region in previous days.

Separately, the military said, it detained a senior leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and three other suspected insurgents Monday during raids northeast of Baghdad, near where al-Qaida chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air raid earlier this month

[Snuffysmith]

ONLY IN AMERICA

CEOS EARN 262 TIMES PAY OF AVERAGE WORKER REUTERS (ABC NEWS, JUNE 21)
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2104151

STUDY: 25% OF AMERICANS HAVE NO ONE TO CONFIDE IN - JANET KORNBLUM (USA TODAY, JUNE 23): In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important, says a study in today's American Sociological Review. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-0...riendship_x.htm

QUOTATIONS FOR THE DAY

"WE GREW UP ON TV, AND THE GOVERNMENT KNOWS IT."

--Nezua-Limón Xoloquinta-Jonez, in a comment to the article "Military Tragedy Vs. Bush Bounce" (BagnewsNotes blog, June 21)
http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/20...ary_traged.html (scroll down link for item)

"MAYBE IT'S THE LOVE FOR SPORTS. THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT PROBABLY IS."

--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, suggesting which of her attributes led to her to be included in a recent men's magazine poll that asked men which woman they'd invite to dinner; cited in "Rice 'Stunned at Making List" (New-Record.com, Greenboro, NC, June 15)
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...EC0101/60615001

[Snuffysmith]

HADJI GIRL

I WAS OUT IN THE SANDS OF IRAQ
AND WE WERE UNDER ATTACK
AND I, WELL, I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE TO GO.
AND THE FIRST THINK I COULD SEE WAS
EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE BURGER KING
SO I THREW OPEN THE DOOR AND I HIT THE FLOOR.
THEN SUDDENLY TO MY SURPRISE
I LOOKED UP AND I SAW HER EYES
AND I KNEW IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.
AND SHE SAID
DURKA DURKA MOHAMMED JIHAD
SHERPA SHERPA BAK ALLAH
HADJI GIRL I CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU?RE SAYING.
AND SHE SAID
DURKA DURKA MOHAMMED JIHAD
SHERPA SHERPA BAK ALLAH
HADJI GIRL I LOVE YOU ANYWAY.

THEN SHE SAID THAT SHE WANTED ME TO SEE.
SHE WANTED ME TO MEET HER FAMILY
BUT I, WELL, I COULDN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO SAY NO.
CAUSE I DON?T SPEAK ARABIC.
SO, SHE TOOK ME DOWN AN OLD DIRT TRAIL.
AND SHE PULLED UP TO A SIDE SHANTY
AND SHE THREW OPEN THE DOOR AND I HIT THE FLOOR.
CAUSE HER BROTHER AND HER FATHER SHOUTED
DURKA DURKA MOHAMMED JIHAD
SHERPA SHERPA BAK ALLAH
THEY PULLED OUT THEIR AKS SO I COULD SEE
AND THEY SAID
DURKA DURKA MOHAMMED JIHAD
SHERPA SHERPA BAK ALLAH
SO I GRABBED HER LITTLE SISTER AND PULLED HER IN FRONT OF ME.
AS THE BULLETS BEGAN TO FLY
THE BLOOD SPRAYED FROM BETWEEN HER EYES
AND THEN I LAUGHED MANIACALLY
THEN I HID BEHIND THE TV
AND I LOCKED AND LOADED MY M-16
AND I BLEW THOSE LITTLE F***ERS TO ETERNITY.
AND I SAID

DURKA DURKA MOHAMMED JIHAD
SHERPA SHERPA BAK ALLAH
THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THEY WERE F***ING WITH A MARINE

--The lyrics to the "Hadji Girl," sung by a Marine, Cpl. Joshua Belile, who was videotaped during the performance; cited in Thomas Riggins, "The 'Hadji Girl' Debate and the Fog of War" (Political Affairs Magazine/Selves and others, June 21)
http://www.selvesandothers.org/article14713.html

[Livyjr]

HADJI GIRL

THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THEY WERE F***ING WITH A MARINE

--The lyrics to the "Hadji Girl," sung by a Marine, Cpl. Joshua Belile, who was videotaped during the performance; cited in Thomas Riggins, "The 'Hadji Girl' Debate and the Fog of War" (Political Affairs Magazine/Selves and others, June 21)
http://www.selvesandothers.org/article14713.html

This guy sounds like one sick pup, here, Snuf ....

The kind that you would just like to walk over to ....

And punch his lights ...

Right clean out ...

And drop him like a ton of rocks ...

Right where he was formerly standing ....

And so ....

I wonder who is supposed to be impressed by this kind of BULL **** ....

Because it sure is not me ....

And this guy don't sound like a real Marine to me, at all ....

JUST SOME COWARD WHO GOT ONE OF THEIR UNIFORMS TO WEAR ....

BUT DIDN'T GET WHAT MAKES A REAL MARINE INSIDE OF IT ....

JUST A COWARD, INSTEAD ...

BECAUSE ONLY COWARDS MISTREAT WOMEN AND YOUNG GIRLS ....

REGARDLESS OF THEIR NATIONALITY .....

And so ....

He reminds of the first sight that I had in Kennedy Airport when I got back from Viet Nam about 3:00 A.M. in the morning ....

Back in January of 1970 ....

This BIG DRUNK in a MARINE dress uniform was harassing all the people waiting in the waiting area ....

Getting right in their faces ....

Or yelling in their ears ....

LIKE A GREAT BIG FOOL ....

And when he saw me coming along ....

In my Army uniform ....

His little pig eyes began to narrow ....

But then ....

Something connected in his little pea brain ....

And he turned ...

And moved away from me ...

And he stayed away ...

Because with my mind ....

I let his little pea brain know ...

UNEQUIVOCALLY .....

That if he came near to me ...

I was going to scatter his **** all over that place ....

Without a moment's hesitation ...

And with no remorse whatsoever ....

And so ....

What an advertisement for America this fool above here is ....

ESPECIALLY IF HE IS ON VIDEOTAPE ...

AS AN ALLEGED UNITED STATES MARINE ....

HOW VERY GEORGE W. BUSH OF HIM, INDEED ....

MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE ...

And so ....